Santa Ana-based MSC.Software Corp., a maker of simulation software for manufacturers, aerospace and defense contractors, has seen a lot of recent changes in its upper ranks.
A few weeks ago, the company named Ashfaq Munshi temporary chief executive after former chairman and chief executive Bill Weyand and former chief operating officer Glenn Weinkoop stepped down.
The company didn’t say why the two resigned.
The company’s board said it hired a search firm to find a permanent chief executive.
It also recently named current board members Donald Glickman and Robert A. Schriesheim as non-executive co-chairmen.
In MSC’s latest move, it also reappointed Masood Jabbar to the board. Jabbar had previously served as director from 2005 to 2007.
Jabbar’s spent 16 years in senior management positions at Santa Clara’s Sun Microsystems Inc. He’s also done stints at Xerox Corp. and IBM Corp.
The executive moves are MSC’s second shakeup in the past five years.
In 2005, Weyand replaced Frank Perna as chief executive. Sam Aureimma replaced John Laskey as chief financial officer.
Laskey was hired in 2004 to replace Louis Greco, who stepped down amid a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into delayed and restated financial results.
Weyand oversaw job cuts and sales of some of MSC’s unprofitable businesses.
It’s been tough going for MSC recently.
Shares are off about 60% in the past 12 months to a market value of about $250 million at recent check. Last year a large hedge fund shareholder recommended that the company “explore strategic alternatives,” including a possible sale.
Bridge to India
Huntington Beach-based BridgeCo Inc., a well-funded Swiss chip startup that recently moved its headquarters here, said it’s set to open a development office in India.
BridgeCo is fresh off a $6 million round of venture financing.
It’s raised some $70 million to date.
The company said it’s set to spend about $2 million to open a software engineering office in Bangalore with about 20 workers.
The company designs chips and software that help home audio devices wirelessly stream music over the Internet or home networks.
Grand Canyon Home
D-Link Systems Inc.’s networked security cameras have found a home in the Grand Canyon.
The Fountain Valley-based maker of networking gear for consumers and small businesses landed some 30 of the devices at the Grand Canyon Skywalk, an all-glass observation deck that’s for those without a fear of heights.
The Skywalk,which opened in 2007 and has become a popular tourist stop,needed a surveillance system to monitor the site, visitors and a nearby building.
The observation deck is on the western edge of the canyon. It’s a glass bridge shaped like a horseshoe that is suspended 4,000 feet above the Colorado River.
Some 250,000 people visit it each year.
D-Link, part of Taiwan’s D-Link Corp., is providing a video surveillance setup that’s designed to monitor visitors, retail shops, ticket booths and a photo department.
The monitoring is done remotely from a data center in Las Vegas.
The Skywalk technology team needed cameras that didn’t require lots of cords and cables.
D-Link’s cameras use a technology called “power-over-Ethernet” where the electricity needed to run the cameras is accessed over network cables.
Feeds from D-Link’s security cameras can be monitored over the Internet, on cell phones and portable computers, like those in police
cars.
Among D-Link’s camera customers are city governments, school districts and shopping malls.
Big sales are coming from security-obsessed Britain, where officials are buying cameras for added surveillance in airports and subway stations.
New Deals, Executives
Another day, another announcement from Irvine’s Kofax PLC.
The company, which makes software that helps businesses cut down on paper, has been on a tear lately.
It’s added seven executives and directors in the past six months and announced several deals.
The hiring is part of organizational changes at Kofax during the past year or so. The deals are rolling in as Kofax beefs up its sales force.
Most recently, the company added James Hendrickson as its vice president of technical services. Hendrickson will oversee Kofax’s telephone support group, maintenance and related services.
Kofax also said it inked a deal with a “large county government health and human services agency” in Southern California that’s valued at around $250,000. It didn’t name the agency.
Kofax is set to customize its software to create a database of healthcare application forms in multiple languages.
The company said it anticipates an uptick in demand for this type of software as federal funds are allotted to promote to the automation of processing of patient records and medical insurance claims.
Part of the American Recovery and Reinvest-ment Act, better known as the stimulus bill, gives financial incentives to doctors’ offices and hospitals to adopt electronic health records, among other cost-saving technologies.
Correction
In the Business Journal’s March 23 story on Santa Ana-based Powerwave Technologies Inc., the company’s chief executive should have been Ronald J. Buschur.
