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By
Laurie
Falconer
Consider
this scenario: outside of rural Brownfield, Texas, a highway patrol
officer pulls over a fast-moving car for speeding. While talking
to the driver, the officer notices something amiss. He pulls out
his Palm Pilot and asks the driver to touch a fingerprint screen
with his finger. Within a few minutes, the officer has information
linking the driver to a string of armed bank robberies, one in which
a bank teller was killed. Bingo, the officer arrests the driver
and takes him into custody.
Here’s another scenario: A man is traveling on business in
Detroit and goes out to dinner alone. He’s walking back to
his hotel when he suffers a near-fatal stroke. He is rushed to the
emergency room, where he is unconscious. The doctor on call pulls
out his (PDA) Personal Digital Assistant and touches the man’s
finger to the screen. Instantly the doctor has the man’s history,
including allergies to medicines and prior history of high-blood
pressure. The doctor makes a fast diagnosis, provides appropriate
medications to the man, and within days the man is on his way to
recovery.
In another scenario, a doctor is attending his daughter’s
piano recital and receives a text message on his smartphone that
one of his patients requires a prescription. Without leaving the
recital hall, the doctor writes the prescription, signs it, and
sends it wirelessly to a fax machine at Walgreens.
 Liza
Valdez Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
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What about a cardiac patient with a heart monitor attached to a
PDA for wireless heart monitoring? Or traffic monitoring remotely?
Or sending a document to print from a Handspring device to any printer?
The scenarios go on and on, and it is due to a startup company in
Illinois called ATSONIC.
In charge of ATSONIC is CEO Joe Pirzadeh, an interesting character
who has done many things. This includes, design for a nuclear power
plant in Illinois and development of an “escalator”
for slot machines (previous slot machines would jam), for which
he earned a patent in both the United States and Canada.
Pirzadeh founded ATS, the parent company of ATSONIC, in 1994, and
at one time had more than 1000 employees in the company, which provides
project management and consulting (consulting for telecommunication
projects and international training).
Since 1994, Pirzadeh has expanded the business to include ATS plus
three subsidiaries: Atsonic Canada, which provides project management
and consulting in Canada, Prolima, which provides project management
and consulting to telecommunications and healthcare companies, and
ATSONIC, which was established as an expansion company for software
development.
Dr.
Mugur Tolea Chief Technical Officer (CTO) |
How
It Started
A little less than two years ago, when the telecommunications industry
was showing the first signs of a shake-up, Pirzadeh and his team
spent some time studying the industry to see where it would go.
The team realized huge investments were under way into mobility,
including both PDA and wireless technologies.
Companies like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, Sony, Ericcson
and Nokia were all developing technology to combine cellular phones
with PDAs. At the same time, end users were beginning to demand
more functionality in mobile phones. After much consideration, Pirzadeh
and his team decided to develop intelligent mobile solutions and
custom for business applications for PDAs and smart phones (devices
which combine mobile phones and PDAs).
ATSONIC has a number of products, which it is marketing to companies
such as NexTel, Verizon, Sprint, Motorola, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard,
various law enforcement entities (including the FBI), insurance
companies and health care systems. For the most part, ATSONIC markets
its products directly.
ATSONIC develops the software in a number of locations besides the
United States. Developer locations include China, Canada, France,
Romania and the Ukraine.
Of competitors, ATSONIC has two. The first is Printrak, which competes
with ATSONIC for its fingerprint technology. Printrak is owned by
Motorola and is missing a key element of the fingerprint technology
that makes ATSONIC’s offering special – wireless capability.
The second competitor is Printeron, a small company based in Canada
which appears to be lacking resources for major expansion.
 •
sweetAUTH Provides network service authentication using
end-user digital fingerprints.
• sweetCAM Provides real-time video surveillance
at homes, offices, babysitter sites, kindergartens and anywhere
personal or residential safety can be an issue.
• sweetCHECK Provides ability to write,
sign and send checks anywhere and anytime from a PDA.
• sweetCOMM Includes mobile-to-mobile
full connectivity for data and file transfer, plus full voice
and video real-time conferencing.
• sweetFAX Allows users to edit, print
and send Microsoft Word documents to any fax machine directly
from a mobile phone.
• sweetFINGER Helps law enforcement and
security agents scan, collect and verify biometrics data (such
as fingerprints) directly from check points, crime scenes or
other field situations, in real-time and mobility conditions
using enhanced wireless mobile devices. Bundled with state of
the art fingerprint recognition devices for PDAs, sweetFINGER
software provides enhanced capabilities for electronic processing
and transmitting scanned biometrics data to designated centers
for collection, centralization and verification.
• sweetFORM Includes a tool for accessing,
editing, sending and printing/faxing most common forms, contracts
and over 100 document templates from a smart phone.
• sweetFORTWO Provides a safe, private
and comfortable way for singles to meet.
• sweetFLY Includes real-time major airline
flight schedules, updates, reservations, itineraries, airports
and weather conditions in the continental U.S.
• sweetHEART Provides wireless real-time
capture, remote monitoring and recording of electrocardiogram
from personal portable systems for hear patients.
• sweetKITCHEN Includes famous world
kitchen recipes from more than 30 countries in the PDA or smart
phone.
• sweetMONEY Provides secure and convenient
tools for banking, personal finance tracking and transactions,
rates and loan calculators, stocks, taxes and more. Works with
major personal money manager software packages.
• sweetNET Consists of a suite of conceptual
software technologies that allow extracting, processing, sending
and printing of different stored information from a connected
mobile device to any data/fax recipient connected to a public
telephone network, suing optimized packet data streams and adapted
Internet protocols. A connected mobile device is defined as
any PDA, notebook, tablet, mobile phone or any other handheld
computer equipment that supports native network IP connectivity.
• sweetOFFICE Provides a document converter
and email attachment processor in viewable files on mobile devices.
Includes integrated options for email, printing and faxing,
and works with major office productivity software.
• sweetPLANNER Allows a user to take
a project with him/her and access information anytime, anywhere.
Includes ability to plan, organize, collaborate and track milestones,
resources, priorities, contacts and budgets.
• sweetPRINT Allows a user to print to
more than 17 million original laser printers directly from a
PDA.
• sweetRESTO Provides a real-time restaurant
finder using location base services. Provides updated locations,
directions, menus, prices, amenities; uses favorites and pre-elected
areas for convenience and efficiency.
• sweetRX Enables medical professionals
to write, send and print prescriptions wirelessly to their offices
or pharmacies. Includes an integrated patient prescription management
system that is fully compliant with pharmaceutical standards.
• sweetSIXTEEN Includes entertainment,
extreme action and excitement for teenagers: news, events, sports,
messaging, picture galleries and games.
• sweetTICKETS Provides a wireless application
and portal for ticket reservation and sales for movie theaters,
sports events, festivals and other art and recreational events.
• sweetTIME Offers up-to-the-minute time
tracking capabilities for business and personal activities.
• sweetTRAFFIC Offers live video traffic
updates on mobile phones and PDAs.
• sweetWALLET Provides financial management
by offering multiple financial tools, bank account management
options, and expense tracking capabilities for personal and
business expenditures.
• sweetWORD – Includes a mobile
dictionary plus translations, spelling, thesaurus and other
features in the 10 most used languages with network download
capabilities. |
A
Sweet Product Suite
ATSONIC has a number of products, all developed to fulfill a certain
market need. Of course, to hear Pirzadeh explain it, one would think
that he and his engineers simply came up with interesting technology
and then found a use for it in the market. Says Pirzadeh, “There
are two different ways to bring a product to market – one
is to do something the customers request; the second is to develop
technology and bring it to the market.”
One could argue that the technology would not sell if the market
was not demanding it. In fact, studies show that market demand for
this type of technology is strong. According to a study by G2 Research
Inc., the U.S. market for public safety information systems is projected
to grow to $2.7 billion by the end of this year. And that represents
only one of the markets ATSONIC is targeting.
With business going mobile, a large opportunity exists. IDC predicts
IT mobile/wireless spending to grow to $83 billion by 2005. Regardless,
Pirzadeh and his team appear to have come up with technology that
the market wants, particularly for law enforcement, the business
sector and health care.
Joe Pirzadeh is an interesting character
who has done many things. This includes designing for
a nuclear power plant in Illinois and inventing an “escalator”
for gaming devices for which he earned a patent in both
the United States and Canada. Pirzadeh came to the U.S.
in 1978 and is educated as a mechanical engineer. He worked
as a consultant just prior to starting ATS, the parent
company of ATSONIC, in 1994.
Pirzadeh has accomplished much during his tenure as CEO
of the ATS family of companies, but perhaps his most notable
is the successful resolution of a lawsuit ATS brought
against Motorola. ATS had a long history of working with
Motorola providing outsourced and on-site engineering
and project management for the company. ATS at one point
used billboards to publicize the suit in order to grab
Motorola’s and public attention. Pirzadeh, with
the help of the ATS legal and financial team, led the
company through an amicable settlement.
As evidence of the amicable settlement by the two companies,
ATSONIC now counts Motorola in its growing roster of customers.
ATSONIC is providing its technology for use in Motorola
mobile phones by Nextel, a service provider partner of
Motorola. ATSONIC is providing its sweetFAX software application
for use in Motorola’s iDENphone. The sweetNET and
sweetMED are also under consideration by Nextel. |
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With customers like the law enforcement as well as leading health
care systems and insurance companies all considering and testing
the company’s products, ATSONIC is in a sweet position. The
team even named the solutions “sweet”. Below is an overview
of the products ATSONIC is marketing banking and finance, business
productivity, custom applications, healthcare, law enforcement,
oem integration, personal productivity, service providers, and security.
ATSONIC is winning many contracts with this product suite. One of
the most significant is Hewlett-Packard. HP has recently integrated
ATSONIC’s sweetPRINT mobile printing software into its iPAQ
Pocket PC solutions catalog and IBM and Panasonic show interest
to integrate ATSONIC technologies to their technology.
The Finances
ATS, the parent company of ATSONIC, is a private venture –
waiting, as with most private companies during the current economic
times, for the right time to go public.
For ATSONIC, this is good, because the company is fully funded through
ATS, which means the company can develop its products and bring
them to market with limited scrutiny from investors. This gives
the company time to make its products successful and become profitable
before going public.
When asked the timing for revenues and profitability, Pirzadeh answers
that he expects revenues in first quarter next year. He did not
provide profitability forecast.
A Final (Sweet) Word
With market demand increasing, and a product suite poised to meet
that demand, ATSONIC appears to be perched on the precipice of a
daring leap into wireless opportunity. ATSONIC is poised for success.
Through infiltration of the law enforcement (among other companies
and organizations), it has found a path to business success.
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