The sales force from Cubic Corp.’s transportation arm has been all over the place, under the elevated railroad in Chicago, on the turnpikes of chilly New Hampshire and in Brisbane, Australia, where the trains make stops in Walloon, Ipswich and Burpengary.
Cubic (NYSE: CUB) announced several transportation wins in November.
The business introduced its Ventra mobile device app for Chicago-area transit riders. Available for iOS and Android phones, Ventra lets users plan, manage and pay for their rides on Chicago’s many mass-transit systems using the one app. Financial details of the arrangement were not disclosed.
Cubic’s transportation unit recently won a three-year extension of its work on the Brisbane, Australia transit system. Again, financial terms weren’t disclosed. Cubic operates and maintains a smart card system that Brisbane residents know as the Go Card. The San Diego company, which has had the Brisbane business since 2003, said it plans to bid on the next-generation smart card system set to be introduced in 2019.
Very early in the month, Cubic said it won a five-and-a-half-year, $52 million contract from the New Hampshire Department of Transportation for its turnpike system. Under the deal, Cubic will deliver back-office technology for the E-ZPass system that supports the state’s toll roads. Features of the new system include predictive analytics. New Hampshire has options to increase the deal by three, six or nine years.
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Second City Beckons: Speaking of the City of the Big Shoulders, ScaleMatrix is looking to expand its data center business in Chicago toward the end of 2016. Co-founder Chris Orlando said it might acquire an existing business or build new. ScaleMatrix already has a Houston location to complement its Kearny Mesa data center. In Kearny Mesa, the business recently invested $3 million in the electrical power system to increase capacity.
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FuelRods for Fliers: North County-based Tricopian LLC has lined up a partner to roll out its FuelRod vending machines in the major airports in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. The kiosks will appear in Boston soon, the company says. The kiosks dispense Chinese-made battery chargers that are about the size of a roll of coins. Travelers can buy them to recharge played-out smartphones and tablets. After an initial purchase, customers can swap spent FuelRods for fresh ones, free of charge, at any airport kiosk.
Airmall USA of Pittsburgh is tending the new kiosks. The airport developer and concession operator is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fraport AG Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide.
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Cybersecurity Notes: Crypteron Inc., a young company in the EvoNexus incubator, offers software to protect cloud applications from data breaches. It recently said that its product will work seamlessly with Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud platform and that customers can now get its software via the Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Azure Marketplace. The small business added that one customer, Kearny Mesa-based Ten8Tech Inc., was able to deploy sensitive FBI data in the public cloud, thanks to its product, which adds a few lines of code to customer data. Crypteron is based near the University Towne Center mall. Sid Shetye is CEO.
Speaking of cybersecurity, Bruce Roberts has joined the board of advisers at Fhoosh Inc., the San Diego-based cybersecurity software company. Readers may know Roberts as former president of Cubic Defense Systems. Fhoosh says its bankLevel+ Security product makes data useless to hackers by breaking it apart, disassociating, separately encrypting and dispersing it. Eric Tobias is CEO.
Separately, ESET, which has its North American office in San Diego, has a new way to engage its consumer audience. Its ESET Parental Control for Android app helps parents oversee their child’s online experience on a mobile device. There is a free version and a $29.99 premium version.
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Very Small and Silver: Kearny Mesa-based nanoComposix Inc. said it has supplied the National Institute of Standards and Technology with silver nanoparticle reference material for researchers. The material won’t degrade in the same way that regular silver nanoparticles do. Consumers might encounter silver nanoparticles in several places: in or on socks, shoe liners, fabric, handrails and keyboards. The material serves as a bactericide, among other uses.
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Short Takes: Kontron AG, a German company with its U.S. office in Poway, announced several new product releases recently. Among them is a rugged tablet computer with a bright display meant for extreme environments. Measuring 10 inches diagonally, it is the first product in a line that Kontron will call Endurance Tablets. … Qualcomm Inc. said it is dedicating Thinkabit labs at three schools, making the announcement at Lewis Middle School in Allied Gardens. The lab program encourages students to further their studies in math and science.
Send San Diego technology news to bradg@sdbj.com.