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SOFTWARE
COUNCIL ON THE MOVE
We are pleased to announce our recent move. Please
update your address books with our new address and phone information
today!
New
Address:
Software Council of Southern California
2537-D Pacific Coast Hwy., Suite 348
Torrance, CA 90505
New Phone: (310) 325-4000
New Facsimile: (310) 878-0358
COMMON
IP MISTAKES
By David Hayes, Partner, Dorsey & Whitney LLP
The
practice of intellectual property law often entails dealing
with the consequences of past mistakes that are made at the
formation or early stages of a company, when the primary focus
is on the company's growth and survival, and resources for legal
advice are scarce. At such times, companies often overlook or
are unaware of intellectual property issues that can give rise
to liability and undermine the protection of their intellectual
property.
Following is an outline of some of the most common intellectual
property mistakes made by start-up firms, along with some suggestions
for avoiding them.
MORE
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COST-EFFECTIVE
PUBLIC RELATIONS: FIVE TIPS FOR EMERGING TECH COMPANIES
By Rose Maciejewski, Vice-president, Ruder Finn
In
the late 90’s, with the proliferation of “new”
technologies and exciting possibilities, the cost of public
relations escalated. Creating buzz was the Holy Grail, and companies
paid thousands of dollars both internally and externally to
appear as a lead source in the cover story of Red Herring. Now,
just as readers of the popular book “The Da Vinci Code”
are left questioning how to find the real Holy Grail, today’s
seekers of the public relations holy grail are left to ponder
how to find it without spending exorbitant amounts of money.
MORE>>
MEMBER
SPOTLIGHT: INTERVIEW WITH 2004 CEO OF THE YEAR, GEORGE KLAUS
Interview by Jennifer Beever
In February of 2004, the Software Council of Southern California
named Epicor’s CEO, George Klaus, as CEO of the Year. We
managed to catch George Klaus for an interview just as Epicor
announced its first quarter revenues for 2004 were up 26% over
last year.
JB: What do you see as the critical business issues in
your industry today?
GK: Over the past 12 months, the software industry continues
to see considerable consolidation, which means the business
landscape is almost constantly changing for software providers
and their customers. Epicor has always exclusively served the
midmarket: companies with annual revenues between $100 and $500
million. The midmarket remains an under penetrated market, and
we have become leaders in that space by providing the same functionality
needed by the Fortune 500 on more cost effective technology
platforms and implementation.
MORE>>
TRENDSETTER
BAROMETER: FAST GROWTH COMPANIES MAINTAINING THEIR STRIDE
Service and Technology Companies Faring Best
Back
to the future! Revenue growth targets for America’s “Trendsetter”
companies are at their highest—and worries about market
demand at their lowest—in more than three years. Disproportionate
new hiring and capital investments are planned by the fastest
growers—suggesting that if others can achieve a threshold
level of growth, more new jobs and greater investments will
follow.
New Growth in Revenues, Jobs, and Investments Expected
CEOs of the nation’s fastest growing private companies
are aiming higher. In the first quarter they upped their projected
corporate revenue growth for the next 12 months to an average
of 20.2 percent, from 19.6 percent in the prior quarter. This
is the first time their growth target has exceeded 20 percent
since fourth quarter, 2000.
MORE>>
FIVE
COMMON WAYS TO KILL A VC DEAL
Richard Koffler, CEO, Koffler
Ventures
As
the years-long nuclear winter in the capital markets turns into
spring, growing numbers of hopeful entrepreneurs are back knocking
at the doors of early-stage venture capitalists and angels investors.
Whether winter or spring, though, many entrepreneurs with viable
ideas and even market momentum will make fatal mistakes that
will kill their deals. Let’s look at five common deal-killers.
MORE>>
HEALTH
SAVINGS ACCOUNTS: THE NEW WAVE IN HEALTH CARE?
By Jim Wisdom, CFP
“The
Health Savings Accounts that President Bush recently signed
into law may well be the most important piece of legislation
in 2003”, said Martin Feldstein, a former chairman of the
Council of Economic Advisers and an economics professor at Harvard
University. “ These new tax and medical insurance rules
have the potential to transform health care finances, bringing
costs under control and making health care reflect what patients
and their doctors really want.
MORE>>
LEAN
THINKING MEETS SOFTWARE
By Frode L. Ødegård, President, Lean
Software Institute
The
Lean philosophy can be stated as follows: only expend cycle
time and capital on that which directly contributes value to
the customer. Everything else is considered waste. In software
development, as much as 95% of the cycle time and 80% of the
development efforts are NOT value-added from the customer's
perspective.
Lean began at Toyota, which is able to develop new car models
four times faster than its competitors and with better quality.
In this article, we discuss how the Lean philosophy can be adapted
for software product development. We will also provide some
hints on how software executives can get started with a Lean
initiative. Business results from a Lean Transformation include
significant cost savings, improved quality, and a dramatic reduction
in time-to-market.
MORE>>
OFFSHORE
OUTSOURCING PAPER
The Software Council is pleased to announce the publication
of the white paper Offshore Outsourcing In Today’s Global
Economy: Defining And Executing An Effective Strategy. This
position paper examines the state of offshoring today in the
United States. You can request this document compliments of
Software Council at www.scsc.org/resources/offshoring_white_request.htm.
We wish to extend special thanks to all survey respondents and
particularly to the following individuals for their assistance
and contributions:
- Lee
Shaeffer, Software Council of Southern California, principal
author
- Hoshi
Printer, president of the Software Council of Southern California;
executive vice president and CFO, Autobytel, Inc.
- Hazim
Ansari, Esq., CEO of Metrix Services, Inc.
- Deepak
Sharma, president of Software Development Center, Inc.,
- Jon
Kraft, senior vice president of sales and marketing, CoreObjects
Software
- Shivbir
S. Grewal, Esq., Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth
- Chris
Ivey, Esq., Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth
- Richard
Koffler, chief executive officer, Koffler Ventures
- Dimitri
Nikouline, president, Murano Software, Inc.
- Mark
Skiba, CEO, TradeBot Exchange Inc.
- David
Knight, terbine.com
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CONTENTS
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