Ecora, Accentus take SwANH honors

Baseball fans may have to wait until after the World Series before learning who the Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year award winners are, but for New Hampshire’s techies, the news is already out.

Ecora Software of Portsmouth was presented with the MVP award and Accentus of Lebanon took Rookie of the Year honors at the Software Association of New Hampshire’s InfoXchange Conference at the Center of New Hampshire in Manchester. SwANH presents the awards annually to small companies in New Hampshire that have demonstrated excellence and achievement in the software and information technology industry. Gov. Craig Benson presented the awards to CEOs Alex Backman of Ecora and James C. Perkins of Lebanon.

About 185 people attended the daylong conference, which included seminars on homeland security, wireless communications and growing a business in New Hampshire. (See related story on page 3B)

SwANH Chairman James McKim said the turnout was encouraging and may be a sign that some IT professionals who have been out of work during the prolonged slump in the software industry have either found new jobs or started new companies.

“We see more job postings and we see more people being hired,” said McKim, though low-wage overseas companies still threaten the survival of many U.S. firms. Foreign competition is matching the quality as well as beating the price of what U.S. firms can offer in the high-tech field, he said.

“The cost per employee overseas is much less than ours and the quality is about the same,” McKim told the conferees, adding that design and systems management may be more promising pursuits than software development for American entrepreneurs.