vMobileTech Chairman Dave Zabrowski, CEO Ray Lubeck and Vice President of Operations Tom Sykes, from left, are displayed
live on their iPhones on Tuesday in Folsom. vMC’s technology has drawn interest from firms looking to cut travel and other costs.
Imagine you are an engineer in Saudi Arabia, trying to reboot a water desalination plant costing its operators tens of thousands of dollars an hour while it is offline.
The component responsible for crashing the plant was manufactured in California and its inner workings have you stumped.
Solving the problem might entail a lengthy exchange of information with the home office over the Web, or possibly waiting a couple days for a California-based troubleshooter to fly in.
But now Sacramento startup company vMobileTech is offering a different solution.
The company has developed software it calls “visual mobile collaboration” – or vMC for short – that can simultaneously deliver live streaming video, photos, real-time audio and instant messaging from mobile phones to multiple users all over the world.
With vMC, you could initiate a live session from Saudi Arabia on your mobile phone. Experts from the California home office could communicate in real time as you provide photos or video of every inch of the disabled component. Experts around the world could join the live session to brainstorm, all receiving the same information instantly.
The result is a potentially huge savings of time and money, including millions that large international firms spend annually to send technicians, engineers, manufacturers and installers around the globe.
“There are so many possibilities. Think of the industries that could benefit from this … manufacturing, transportation, construction, security systems and utilities and more,” said Ray Lubeck, who co-founded vMobileTech with Tom Sykes.
Sykes added: “This is something where people say, ‘Why isn’t somebody already doing this?’ “
Company Chairman Dave Zabrowski, whose 25 years in the high-tech industry include 16 years at Hewlett-Packard, has the answer: “The technology to make this possible really didn’t exist 10 years ago.”
Zabrowski said vMC’s benefits go beyond trimming business travel budgets. He said it will allow businesses to “drastically decrease their field costs by improving worker productivity, resolving service calls in one visit … and make better utilization of subject matter experts while increasing customer satisfaction.”
Simply put: vMC brings a problem to the expert, as opposed to the pricier model of transporting the expert to the problem.
The software will operate over existing 3G-and-higher networks – mobile-to-mobile, or mobile-to-personal computer/laptop.
vMC is being tested by a handful of companies, including a major international airline and Sacramento Control Systems (SCS) in Rancho Cordova.
Bob Rice, chief operating officer of SCS, which installs, repairs and monitors complex security and fire alarm systems statewide, said his firm had a recent experience before it started testing vMC that would have been tailor-made for the software.
“We had a problem with a fire alarm system in Napa that we just couldn’t figure out, so we had people drive all the way down there. They got down there, and in about two or three minutes, they said, ‘Oh, we see, that’s the problem.’ So they wasted all day for something that we could have fixed quickly if we could have just seen what it was.”
Rice said SCS serves 2,800 clients from Bakersfield to the Oregon-California border, and many of the company’s systems are networked together.
“For us, the (vMC technology) could be big,” he said.
vMobileTech started coming together a little more than two years ago, with some help from Gilles Attia, a Sacramento lawyer who specializes in assisting technology startups.
Lubeck and Sykes, each with two decades of experience building technology service and financial organizations, welcomed Zabrowski’s high-tech experience, which included nurturing technology startups.
The complicated proposal that would become vMC was turned over to a group of local engineers with specific skills in telecommunications, wireless solutions and information technology. Zabrowski said the team put vMC together in about 18 months.
Last year, vMobileTech started talking up its technology. In November, a panel that included angel investors and venture capitalists selected vMobileTech as the “most promising venture” at the Innovation Showcase in Grass Valley.
vMobileTech expects to release vMC commercially in the second quarter this year.
The company plans to make money by charging for licenses to use the software. Costs of monthly subscriptions will vary by business practices.
Attia said technology similar to vMC is being used “for social media purposes,” but not on the mass industrial scale envisioned by vMobileTech.
“I think it’s all in the execution, and I think they have a really good opportunity to build a great company, because (vMC) complements what people in the field need to solve problems.”
vMobileTech is currently a virtual company, listing temporary offices in downtown Sacramento. About a dozen workers are involved in daily operations. It plans to open its headquarters in the Sacramento area, initially expanding to 50 employees.
For additional information on vMobileTech, call (530) 613-8290 or visit www.vmobiletech.com.