MAP presents awards to two area businesses
Present for the Morgantown Area Economic Partnership presentation of awards were, left to right, Donald Reinke, president, MAP; Craig Hartzell, Azimuth, Inc.; Leah Summers, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, and Parry Petroplus, chairman of the Business Appreciation Committee of MAP.
The Morgantown Area Economic Partnership recently presented awards to two Morgantown area businesses: Mylan Pharmaceuticals and Azimuth, Inc. Leah Summers accepted for Mylan, while Craig Hartzell represented Azimuth. The awards were presented at the MAP annual economic development meeting. The Morgantown Area Economic Partnership is a non-profit, public-private sector partnership that encourages and assists business to remain, expand or locate in the Morgantown area. Operating under the direction of an 18-member board of directors, this economic development partnership includes representation from the Morgantown Area Chamber of Commerce, the Monongalia County Development Authority, West Virginia University, state and local banks, utilities and businesses.
The Dominion Post, June 12, 1994
Small companies get big partner
Small businesses in Morgantown and Fairmont have a new partner -- and it is a big one.
Morgantown Energy Technology Center of the U.S. Department of Energy has partnered with Azimuth, Inc., of Morgantown and D.N. American of Fairmont, both members of the four-year-old West Virginia High-Technology Consortium.
Azimuth is helping METC reduce its document-handling costs through the use of computer software produced by Excalibur Technologies, Inc.
The firm's tasks include installation of software, designing other system components, and developing information storage and retrieval strategies.
D.N. American is assisting METC's information management activities, which includes several computer functions: network and communication analysis, records management, software engineering, evaluation of new information technologies and software applications.
The WVHTC is a non-profit organization that provides technical, educational and promotional assistance to West Virginia's emerging advanced-technology businesses. Its membership roll includes nearly 70 businesses, most of them in native West Virginia firms.
METC, operated by the DOE's Office of Fossil Energy, conducts and manages research, development and demonstration projects by building strategic alliances with industry. These industries will commercialize new technologies for production and use of fossil energy resources.
METC has been in the Morgantown community for 40 years and is one of its largest employers.
The Dominion Post, 1994
Two area firms '94 Blue Chip Enterprises
Azimuth, Inc., of Morgantown and Alamco, Inc., of Clarksburg were among six top small companies in the region honored as 1994 Blue Chip Enterprises at a banquet in Pittsburgh.
The others are Halleyville Manufacturing Co. of Bloomsburg, Pa., Trau & Loevner, Inc. of Pittsburgh, Valley Joy Distributors of Orangeville, Pa., and Touchstone Research Laboratory, Ltd,. of Triadelphia, Ohio County.
The Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative is a collaborative effort of Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co., the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Nation's Business magazine.
A high-tech startup company, Azimuth officials believed that building alliances would build more business. Adam Macias and Craig Hartzell started the software company in Morgantown after serving together in the U.S. military.
Their company sought government contracts but without an established track record they found the going difficult. Azimuth teamed with larger, established contractors and learned the procurement process through government-sponsored programs.
The founders learned plenty and now have sales topping $1 million and more teaming opportunities in their future.
Drops in natural-gas prices combined with law changes affecting the tax benefits of drilling partnerships left the publicly owned Alamco in deep trouble. In 1987 the company found itself in a financial hole and fighting several legal battles.
It also found itself a new CEO, John Schwager. He trimmed expenses, instituting a "bottom-up" budgeting program, restructured some debt and changed drilling strategies to include more Alamco-owned wells.
The changes worked. Today the gas well-drilling company is thriving and seeking new opportunities.
"Strengthening small businesses has become a national priority and the need for pragmatic ideas and examples is more crucial than ever," said Bennett Cooper, general agent for Connecticut Mutual. "(We) see these business as the new Blue Chip companies, and we are proud to support them."
The four-year-old program helps small businesses by forming a networking alliance and by sharing strategies for success.
The Innovator, Fairmont, WV 1994
Azimuth Installs Electronic Imaging System for METC
The U.S. Department of Energy's Morgantown Energy Technology Center (METC) announced that Azimuth Inc., a high technology services company headquartered in Morgantown, has completed the first phase of the Electronic Document Image Processing System (EDIPS) contract at the METC facility in Morgantown. This completed phase of the EDIPS effort is an initial step of METC's conversion to a full-fledged electronic document management process for its research and development divisions. This modern process will allow up to 100 METC users to instantly access information at their personal computer workstations, instead of physically searching through volumes of paper documents.
The first phase of the EDIPS effort involved the installation, integration, and testing of scanning and imaging software at the METC facility in Morgantown. Before the software was installed, Azimuth performed a site survey of METC's computing resources and provided recommendations for the best commercial software. The entire system was designed to meet METC's requirements and needs.
Working with multiple operating systems (such as VAX/VMS and DEC Ultrix™) and software languages (such as C and UNIX shell scripts), Azimuth engineers customized the software to fit METC's environment. This involved establishing computing links between METC's VAX mainframe computers and X-terminal scanning workstations used for converting paper documents to electronic data. After debugging and testing the software and network throughput, Azimuth provided METC officials with a full demonstration of the system, including scanning, indexing, and optical character recognition (OCR) processes.
A complete conversion from a manual document-management process to an electronic process at METC will result in reduced physical storage requirements, easier access to documents, increased document-management efficiency, and reduced document-management costs. The adoption of DIPS can result in labor savings of up to $1.6 million per year at METC.