Tech Company Spotlight - GlobalNet Services

dcTechSource sat down with Ori Reiss, president and CEO of Rockville, MD-based GlobalNet Services, an IT firm and premier Google partner that grew by 44 percent last year and expects to continue the growth this year, hiring more people. The company was at FOSE this week and is sponsoring an enterprise search showcase in the fall.

By Avery Fellow | March 29, 2010

GlobalNet Services, Inc. Founder, President and CEO
Ori Reiss

Location
Rockville, Maryland

Services offered
Web application development, system integration, Google enterprise search and Google maps, business intelligence, reporting and executive dashboards

Number of employees
75

Year founded
1995

How did GlobalNet get started?
In the early 1990s, I was working for a consulting company on a project for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Internet was very new and I was working on implementing the FDA’s first web-based applications portal using a new technology called a "Web browser." What allowed me to implement this solution was a side project I was working on; one of the first yellow pages on the Internet. My thought was to put all the White pages and Yellow pages on the Internet together, allowing people to search through various local and global phone books.  At the same time, the FDA needed their reviewers and researchers to be able to retrieve information from disparate systems with a common interface.  I created a prototype for them based on Web technology.  The FDA liked it so much that they choose to add more funding to the project. It became GlobalNet’s first project, and is still going strong today. Since then, we’ve been performing a number of different strategic software and systems projects for the FDA and have become known as the company who gets things done on time and within budget.

Major clients
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, New York Life Insurance Company, Navy Federal Credit Union, University of Maryland, Arbitron

Major partners
Google, Microsoft, IBM, Citrix, Rackspace, Adobe Business Objects and CAST

Tell us about your work with the University of Maryland.
I was at the University of Maryland student center and I saw a story on the front page of the student newspaper on how the Google search appliance on their university Web site wasn’t working for them. We proposed a solution and they liked it. Since I’m an alum, we offered to do it pro bono. For a couple months we worked alongside their Web and IT people to improve the search engine. After the project was completed, we were pleased to see that the student newspaper came out with another article about how GlobalNet Services improved and upgraded the search engine for the University.

What is your business relationship with Google?
In 2000, Google came out with a hosted product for organizations. We tested it, liked it, implemented it and ultimately switched all of our search engines to the Google search engine. Our relationship with Google started before they even began their official partnership program. So we, in essence, became one of their first partners. To date, we’re one of their top three partners in revenue. We share leads and technical resources, conduct seminars and webinars and we have 12 certified Google engineers on staff.

What are your differentiators?
For a small company we have a lot of technology. In addition to Google, we have partnerships with Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. We are working to become CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) Maturity Level 3, which is a high rating for a company our size.

While we work in the government space, we are not a typical government contractor. We focus much more on the technology and select and train our people so they are on the leading edge of technology. When we bring someone on, it’s not for a contract, it’s for the long term.

We also recently just added a partnership with CAST, which gives the client transparency into their software code. It enables them to assess the quality of the product delivered by us or someone else.

What are GlobalNet's priorities for 2010?
We are trying to forge relationships with other agencies. We are very focused on Health and Human Services and want to break into other civilian agencies. In addition, our goal is to continue on to CMMI Maturity Levels 4 and 5. We also want to continue to focus on growing our business with our partners.
 
How would you describe the work culture at GlobalNet?
It’s very informal and open door atmosphere. We have Wii and foosball tournaments and go to Caps and Wizards games. People like coming to work. It’s a very creative culture. We listen to our employees and our team members know that they can come in to my office and talk about anything.

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