ITA CityLIGHTS Winner 2009

SmartSignal

Winner of the Lighthouse Award

SmartSignal, winner of the Lighthouse Award in 2009, initiated predictive analytics for product health and maintains its status as the worldwide leader in the power, oil and gas, and aviation industries.  SmartSignal detects, diagnoses, and prioritizes equipment and process problems before they become costly failures.  Drawing on over 40 patents, SmartSignal delivers specific, relevant, and actionable intelligence that makes people more proactive and productive.

SmartSignal continued to grow in 2009, hiring 13 new team members and expanding their customer roster by 17.  Among those customers is the first in China, Zhejiang Energy.  Chevron inked a multi-million dollar deal and Invenergy became a strategic partner.

SmartSignal introduced two new products into the market, further expanding their portfolio of predictive analytics. 

SmartSignal has built a national reputation, and now international, and is recognized as an excellent product, further cementing the region’s growing stature as home to quality technology companies.

ITA CityLIGHTS Winner 2009

Linda Darragh

Winner of CityLIGHTS Award

The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business advances the knowledge and practice of entrepreneurship and innovation across the university and in the greater business community.   The center supports entrepreneurial development through its cutting-edge curriculum, innovative hands-on learning experiences, leading faculty research, conferences, mentorship, and community and global outreach programs.  

Over the past year the center celebrated unprecedented levels of entrepreneurial activity among the student body, including a record-setting 126 submissions to the 2009 Edward L. Kaplan New Venture Challenge (NVC), Chicago Booth’s premier, yearlong business plan competition.  To date, the NVC has helped launch more than 55 companies, which have gone on to raise more than $100 million, and create hundreds of jobs.
 
Through the efforts of Linda Darragh, the center also deepened its impact on the local business community through the Exploring Entrepreneurship Conference Series, which examines specific industries that are key to the economic growth of the region.  In 2009, the Polsky Center focused on the challenges and opportunities facing the food industry, and earlier this year held a sold-out event exploring innovations in the education industry.   The center continues to support entrepreneurial learning and collaboration through workshops, conferences, and networking events throughout the year, as well as through valuable resources such as Hyde Park Angels, our angel investor network, and the ARCH New Business Incubator, to add value to the local economy.
 
For more information visit www.ChicagoBooth.edu/entrepreneurship.

ITA CityLIGHTS winner 2009
Spotlight Award
Rich Holada, SPSS Inc.

SPSS is a market leader in predictive analytics and statistics, with 250,000 customers that span 100 countries, 50 U.S. states, all major foreign governments, and virtually all top colleges and universities. SPSS provides a comprehensive predictive analytics portfolio that includes data collection, text and data mining, advanced statistical analysis and predictive solutions. The advanced offerings of SPSS enable customers to predict future events and proactively act upon that insight to drive better business outcomes. With unique deployment technologies, these capabilities can be easily deployed into existing business processes for better, faster decision making. 

Under Rich Holada’s expertise, SPSS success continued in 2009, further solidifying leadership in the predictive analytics and statistics field, and was acquired by IBM on October 2, 2009 for $1.2 Billion US.  The acquisition further strengthens IBM’s Business Analytics and Optimization consulting services, providing a point of differentiation for IBM’s offerings.  
  

ITA CityLIGHTS Winner 2009

Rising Star Award

Aleri

Aleri, a leading provider of enterprise-class complex event processing (CEP) technology and CEP-based solutions for financial services, provides a high performance platform to quickly build and deploy real-time data analysis applications, without compromising data management, scalability, performance, or security.

Aleri  was acquired by Sybase, Inc. on February 4, 2010.  Sybase, Inc. is an industry leader in enterprise and mobile software.  CEP is an integral part of real-time analytics and with this acquisition, Sybase strengthens its overall analytics platform and leadership position to better meet the needs of enterprises requiring real-time analytics processing. 

"The addition of Sybase development resources to the Aleri platform will accelerate the pace of innovation adding new features to the CEP engine," said Jerry Baulier, Vice President, Engineering of Sybase, (former CTO and VP Engineering of Aleri).  "Furthermore, Aleri customers will benefit from the strength of Sybase's worldwide customer support organization."

ITA CityLIGHTS Winner 2009
CEO of the Year Award
Bill Conroy, Initiate Systems

Bill Conroy, President and CEO of Initiate Systems, continued to build the business in 2009, further establishing the business as the leader in multi-domain Master Data Management (MDM).  The success of the company, under Bill Conroy, caught the attention of IBM, which acquired Initiate on March 1, 2010 for an undisclosed sum. 

Initiate's software helps healthcare clients work more intelligently and efficiently with timely access to patient and clinical data.  By adding Initiate's software to its software portfolio, IBM will be better equipped to help clients draw on data from hospitals, doctors' offices and payers to create a single, trusted shareable view of millions individual patient records.  The acquisition will also enhance IBM's ability to enable governments to access information from multiple systems and agencies to provide better services to citizens. 

Bill Conroy will oversee the integration of Initiate into IBM’s Business Analytics and Optimization Consulting organization supported by 4,000 consultants and a network of analytic solution centers.