TriGeo lands pair of major customers

POST FALLS – North Idaho technology company TriGeo Networks announced this week that it has landed two significant sales to major customers, including its largest contract to date.

CEO Michelle Dickman said the company landed a $160,000 contract to provide its network security tools to Temple University Health System, based in Philadelphia. TriGeo’s previous largest deal was for about $90,000.

In addition, TriGeo made an initial $40,000 sale to Atlanta-based World Travel, the nation’s third-largest online travel company, Dickman said.

The World Travel contract should grow to at least the size of the Temple deal as the company tests the TriGeo tools, she added.

The sale to Temple was doubly sweet because TriGeo beat out a much larger competitor, NetIQ, Dickman said. TriGeo sells a system called Contego – a monitoring tool that allows control over firewalls, virus trackers and other security programs within a network.

Dickman said the Temple sale “gave us instant street credibility” because of the size of the contract.

In total, about 4,200 computers and several hundred servers there will be equipped with TriGeo products.

TriGeo was launched in Moscow, Idaho, in 2001. Dickman said she expects 2004 revenues of between $1.6 million and $2 million.

Dickman said the company’s next goal is to accelerate marketing and sales efforts.

“Both deals (Temple and World Travel) were done by cold calling, working the phones and showing them through online demonstrations how our product works,” she said.

The privately held firm is trying to raise money in a new round of financing that would ramp up sales and add about four new jobs, bringing the company total to more than 20.