Model Metrics Inc

Name: Adam CaplanBusiness: Model Metrics Inc.Headquarters: ChicagoIndustry: IT Product/service: Cloud Computing ServicesNumber of full-time employees:200Year begun: 2003

The recession

During the recession, many businesses slowed down their innovation purchase decisions by cautiously choosing investments in hopes that the economy would improve. This resulted in slower sales cycles and many deals cut altogether. Like any services business, Model Metrics was challenged to continue to innovate and attract new business.

Model Metrics doubled down on the two glimmers of hope in the innovation industry - cloud computing and mobility. It invested aggressively in development, in other words than cutting back, and built a mobile cloud platform, enabling users to take critical business functionality with them wherever they go.

Greater earnings. In 2009, mobile accounted for 5% of revenue, however emerging from the recession, it now accounts for more than a third of the business. With a halo effect, our early mobile cloud innovation introduced more research in projects across our services portfolio and increased revenue for the business.

We've always been focused on helping enterprises capitalize on the benefits of cloud computing to run their businesses, however we took a gamble that mobilizing the cloud would be the then frontier. We had to act fast to stay on top, developing a potential new revenue stream.

The recession

During the recession, mobile projects accounted for only 5% of our revenue. Unlike most, we hired and tapped into our expanding team's skills to develop the 2GO Mobile Cloud Platform, the first mobile cloud platform developed for the enterprise. The 2GO Mobile Cloud Platform proved disruptive beyond expectations - in cost efficiency, technology research, ease of use, customer demand and new business. It met an immediate and growing need for enterprise users to take critical business functionality anywhere and on any mobile device.

As mobile content continues to explode, employees favor new form factors like tablets to conduct business. By 2013, Gartner analysts predict that mobile devices will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. We see this inside our company and with clients in pharmaceuticals, retail, consumer packaged goods and other industries. Happily, we were ahead of this trend by supporting tablets like the iPad early on and expanding their business value with 2GO.

The demand for mobile devices

The demand for mobile devices, coupled with the rise of cloud computing in the enterprise, leads to an IT trend that all businesses will in the end have to navigate: taking the cloud mobile. An example to bring this to life is Zimmer Holdings, Inc., a four billion dollar global leader in musculoskeletal care. Working with our team, Zimmer deployed a custom iPad solution using 2GO Mobile Cloud for Tablets to 1,200 sales employees worldwide. The application, a digital sales aid, is one of the industry's largest enterprise iPad roll-outs to date.

While competitors cut innovation and development to wait out the customer spending freeze, we took a strategic risk to invest aggressively in new innovation development. With risk came reward. We have made a name for Model Metrics in mobilizing the cloud, distanced ourselves from the competition, and today our mobile practice drives more than one-third of our business and continues to skyrocket.

The recession that started in December 2007 dealt a crippling blow to U.S. small businesses. Facing tough times, many entrepreneurs did something creative, imaginative or cutting-edge with their business models, which allowed them to survive and thrive. We want to hear your stories. Our hope is to spotlight American ingenuity, especially at a time of continuing economic certainty.