bought another 2500 shares today
From the Baltimore Business Journal 4/10/00
RWD subsidiary taps into e-business needs
By Roger Hughlett
RWD Technologies Inc., expanding its reach into electronic commerce and online educational services, has launched a new dot-com company to harness these growing areas of Internet business.
The subsidiary, which will be called Latitude360, will be headed by David Yager, who joined the company last year as director of RWD's Applied Technology Laboratory and vice president of the Internet Technologies and Systems Integration division.
The systems integration division, which currently employs 375 people, will be transformed into Latitude360. The company will work with clients to create an end-to-end Internet strategy.
"We will strengthen companies by helping them learn about and implement appropriate business solutions quickly and efficiently, which is vital for serving customers in the digital economy," said Robert W. Deutsch, CEO of RWD (http://www.rwd.com).
All forms of e-commerce -- business to consumer, business to business and business to employee -- and distance learning will be Latitude360's primary focus areas.
The company uses best-of-breed software systems in order to design a complete Internet system for its clients. In essence, Latitude360's people put together all the pieces of the puzzle -- from internal e-mail systems to a Web site for customers, employees or partners.Target clients for the business include mid-size and pre-IPO companies, Yager said.
Yager, who spent 12 years as a professor and director of the Imaging Research Center at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said Latitude360 is expected to bring in $45 million in revenue in its first year of operations.
"It's an exciting time for us," he said. "We are moving at warp speed."
Analysts are remaining cautiously optimistic about the overall company's future because of weak fourth quarter earnings last year. William Loomis, information technology analyst with Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc. in Baltimore, said the company should report 25 percent growth in earnings over the next three years. |
