Huntsville well represented in state IT awards

Analytical Services andchiefs of AdeptMedia and Digium recognized

A Huntsville-based company and executives from two other Huntsville firms received awards Thursday night from the Alabama Information Technology Association.

Analytical Services Inc. was selected the 2006 Large Technology Company of the Year. Preetha Pulusani, CEO and president of AdeptMedia, was named the Top Executive in Information Technology, and Mark Spencer, founder and president of Digium Inc., was named Entrepreneur of the Year.

The association received more than 30 nominees from across the state in four categories - Large Technology Company of the Year, Small Technology Company of the Year, Top Executive in IT and Entrepreneur of the Year, said Kate Gray, the association's executive director. "There was a good showing from Huntsville" among the winners.

The awards were part of the group's third annual Leadership in Technology Awards program held in Birmingham. Next year's awards banquet will be in Huntsville.

"We consider winning this award to be a great honor for our entire company, but especially for our dedicated employees providing outstanding IT services to our customers," said Irma L. Tuder, Analytical Services founder and CEO, in a press release. "Over the past 14 years, they have delivered innovative processes, programs, tools and solutions that continually exceed customer expectations in the federal IT marketplace."

Last year, sales performance in Analytical Services' IT business area increased more than 60 percent because of the growth at Huntsville and Montgomery locations and across the country. Sales to the Army and the Defense Information Systems Agency increased, and the firm added customers from the Air Force, Navy, Securities and Exchange Commission, Counterintelligence Field Activity and the Joint Integration Operations Center.

Pulusani, former president of Intergraph Corp.'s Security, Government & Infrastructure division, retired in February after 25 years with the company. She was named president and CEO of InterThink Solutions, which provides marketing services for the financial and manufacturing industries. InterThink recently changed its name to AdeptMedia.

"I'm certainly very honored by the award," Pulusani said. "It's good for us to recognize that there's quite a bit going on in IT in the state and in Huntsville."

Spencer is the creator and main developer of Asterisk, an open-source, Internet-based private branch exchange, or PBX.

Asterisk is a free, open-source software that Spencer created and released in 1999. The software establishes phone calls over the Internet and handles voice mail, caller ID, teleconferencing and other applications.

Spencer estimates that Asterisk has about a million users; some 1,000 downloads of the software are obtained from Digium's Web site each day. In July, Spencer was ranked No. 17 on Inc. magazine's "30 Under 30: America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs" list. The April 10 edition of Forbes magazine featured Spencer and Digium.

The 2006 Lifetime Achievement in Technology award went to Jim Busby, chairman and CEO of CentraLite Systems Inc. in Mobile.