Bob Baron, president and CEO of Baron Services, Inc., shown above speaking at a recent grand opening event for an expansion at Baron Services, was honored as one of seven executives by Ernst & Young with the Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Alabama/Georgia/Tennessee region.

Through the years, Baron Services has been able to use new technology to more precisely and quickly determine weather events and who will be affected. However as president and CEO of Baron Services, Bob Baron has yet to develop a system to accurately track the awards he and his company keep winning.

On June 26, Baron was given yet another award for his outstanding leadership and business acumen when he was honored as one of seven executives by Ernst & Young with the Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Alabama/Georgia/Tennessee region. This group of exceptional entrepreneurs was selected by an independent judging panel made up of regional business, academic and community leaders. The winners were revealed at a gala event held at the Grand Hyatt in Atlanta.

“While I received the honor individually for being a “visionary”, it is Team Baron, which included my wife and son, that helped turn that vision into the growing business we are today. When we started, Phylis put up with an in-home business and did all our bookkeeping. Bob Jr. came home from school with a CPA and great job prospects, but elected to give me and this fledgling business a year of his life for free. After 30 some years in weather, and 20 building the company, it is just a wonderful honor that our team is recognized by our peers at a national level, and it is another tribute to the world changing technology being regularly accomplished by the various companies in Cummings Research Park,” Baron said. “Our early success was driven by a total focus on developing weather tools to save lives. We were very focused. Now what’s driving success is a very talented team that shares the same focus.”

Baron founded his company in 1990 with the goal of helping people detect, disseminate and quickly respond to weather events. Baron Services focuses more energy on meteorological innovation than any other weather company or group of weather companies in the world. They serve a wide range of industries ranging from broadcasting, public safety, marine, aviation and worldwide weather concerns. Baron’s secret to success: innovate aggressively and anticipate customers’ future needs, and always secure talented, creative individuals as the core employees of the company.

Never one to rest on his laurels, Baron is already planning his new product milestones. “We have just introduced thru XM specially designed weather for the automobile and for fishermen/boaters on inland waterways. I think this will be a very well received product and we are spending a lot of time nurturing its introduction. And we’re just releasing a new product called “Omni” which displays worldwide live weather and extremely high resolution mapping, both in 3-D, which will allow us to show weather information in ways never before possible,” said Baron.

“We heartily congratulate this year’s winners on their success,” said Joe King, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year program director for Alabama/Georgia/Tennessee. “The Entrepreneur of the Year award recognizes all of the hard work, ingenuity and care these leaders have put into building and improving their businesses and communities. This group of winners is truly remarkable for all that they have accomplished.”

Awards are given to entrepreneurs who demonstrate extraordinary success in the areas of innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities.

Regional award winners will be eligible for consideration in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 national program. Winners in numerous national categories, as well as the overall national Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award winner, will be announced at the annual awards gala in Palm Springs, California, on November 15. The program has expanded to recognize business leaders in over 135 cities in 50 countries throughout the world. The awards are the culminating event of the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum, the nation’s most prestigious gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies.