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Around the World in a Nanosecond

Providing its voice and data network for this year's Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup was a proving ground for Basking Ridge, N.J.-based Avaya Inc. (NYSE:AV), including its network operation center in St. Petersburg. Touted by the firm as the world's largest con-verged voice and data network, it linked 20 sports stadiums in Korea and Japan to provide "mission-critical" functions such as stadium operations, management of logistics for 32 teams, match statistics and player information and materials inventory. The network provided viewers along with athletes, coaches, officials and the press the latest news, real-time scores, statistics and video coverage from the matches.

More than 10 terabytes of data the equivalent of half the written material stored in the Library of Congress crossed Avaya's network center in St. Petersburg during the World Cup soccer games.

In two weeks of soccer matches alone, from May 31 to June 14, the network carried nearly four ter-abytes of data. A terabyte is equiv-alent to a thousand billion bytes (1,000 gigabytes). The 10 terabytes of data the network carried for the duration of the matches translates to six years and seven months of continuous MP3 download-and-play music or half of the 24-million volumes of material stored in the U.S. Library of Congress, the largest library in the world.

This year's World Cup was the first time a network for the event supported simultaneous matches in two countries. Avaya's network included 40,000 connections among 20 stadiums, two international media centers and two remote FIFA headquarters locations.

Statistics on the network's performance during the games include "virtually zero downtime" and a packet loss of less than 0.00001 percent. The Avaya Web site (www.avaya.com) says that "is about the same as reading today's editions of the Financial Times and perhaps finding a missing period at the end of one sentence." The network speed was 70 milliseconds or 7/100 of a second, roughly the blink of an eye, between the Korea international media center and the Japan center.

"We monitored the entire World Cup network," says Joan Grohe, data services staff director for Avaya in St. Petersburg. "We had a team of 12 people from St. Petersburg in Korea and Japan. They helped manage the international media centers. We had another 20 folks here who worked around the clock to support those in-country folks."

Avaya will provide these network services for FIFA's 2003 Women's World Cup in China and the 2006 Men's World Cup in Germany.

More Tech Transfer
Intelligent Micro Patterning LLC, a St. Petersburg technology company, has come up with a way to circumvent an old process for developing high-tech products such as micro chips.

Its technology allows manufacturers to design products and then transfer the designs from a computer directly to the final manufacturing process. Intelligent's technology essentially replaces the photo mask process for development of new products such as microchips. A photo mask is akin to a stencil, where paint is sprayed on the stencil, leaving the design behind.

The photo mask process works. But it can take up to a month or more to get a design finished. In comparison, Intelligent's process, which uses optical technology, sends designs directly to the building stage. Intelligent's technology is one more example of how technology developed at the University of South Florida has been "transferred" into an enterprise. "It allows a faster time to market for products," says Jay Sasserath, chief executive officer of Intelligent Micro Patterning. Sasserath is joined in the business by David Fries, his partner and fellow founder. The company is a startup. However, Sasserath says the potential market for the technology "is huge." The name for its most recent technology is the SF-100 maskless pho-tolithography system, which uses Smart Filter technology.

Help For Small Businesses
The University of South Florida's Small Business Development Center (SBDC) wants you to know that it provides some inexpensive, sometimes free, methods for entrepreneurs to start a business and keep it going. To learn more about them, call 813/905-5800. Or, email sbdc@coba.usf.edu. Its classes are offered at 1101 Channelside Dr., Room 111, at USF's Downtown Center in the Tampa Port Authority building.

Tax Software Online
The state Department of Revenue says it is making its tax jurisdiction software available on the Internet at the following site: http://geotax.state.fl.us/dorPubIdx.jsp People can download county and state databases of address listings meant for tax jurisdiction. The listing are part the state's way of complying with the Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Act, which in a nut-shell is intended to determine the origination point of cellular phone calls for tax purposes.

Harris Wins Contracts
Harris Corp. (NYSE: HRS) says it has won a $43 million contract from the federal government to help the U.S. Air Force Satellite Control Network operate and maintain its commu-nications systems in Colorado and California. The two key facilities mainly monitor and posi-tion satellites, and also operate them while they are in orbit. Harris says the contract contains options valued at more than $355 million over the next seven years.

Harris, which has headquarters in Melbourne (Fla.), is an international communications equipment company focused on providing product, system, and service solutions for commercial and government customers. It operates five divisions that serve markets for microwave, broadcast, network support, secure tactical radio, and government communications systems. It employs more than 10,000 employees, including 4,000 engineers and scientists.

Harris also recently won a $10 million contract from Lockheed Martin Corp. to help build fiber optic transmitter and receiver units for the Air Force's F-22 Raptor jet fighter pro-gram. Harris says it expects that contract to grow to $23 million. It is one of more than 100 Florida companies small and large helping Lockheed Martin with the Raptor. The new jet fighter

Florida Is Business Friendly
When it comes to providing a business climate that small businesses consider "favorable," Florida ranks high fifth in the nation according to a survey done by the Small Business Survival Committee, a Washington group that monitors the 50 states' business activities. (http://www.sbsc.org.)is designed for stealth, speed and agility. It will replace the F-15 Eagle.

Rankings are based on government costs that impact small business such as personal and busi-ness taxes, property taxes, sales, gross receipts and business taxes, death taxes, unemployment taxes, health care costs and labor costs. Separately, Plants, Sites & Parks magazine ranks Florida first in development of major business projects that will attract new jobs. The magazine surveyed 25 of the largest employment generating business projects to come up with its rating. Florida had four of the top 25 projects in the nation, according to the magazine.

The report is called Small Business Survival Index 2002.
Here are the top five states:
1. South Dakota
2. Nevada
3. Wyoming
4. Texas
5. Florida

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