3Ci Co-founder and COO, Mark Smith was a featured panel speaker at the latest South Florida Technology Alliance (SFTA) event that tackled the imminent nightmare scenario of: The Internet is Running Out of Addresses- What Does that Mean to Your Business.

The panel addressed the issues facing the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 and answered the following questions:

• What are the business opportunities and challenges?

• What is the cost of not doing anything?

• What do we do next?

Ronnie Frames, director of net engineering at Peak 10, and Mark joined the discussion after an eye-opening keynote by John Curran, president and CEO of American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN).

As of February 2011 the last allotment of IPv4 addresses were allocated.  What’s an IP address? They’re numbers computers use to contact each other over the Internet. A solution was needed to ensure that every computer, mobile phone, car, gaming console, refrigerator, and any other Internet-connected device can talk to each other.

That solution is IPv6, which creates new addresses and greatly increase the number of available addresses, ensuring this communication nightmare never happens again.

IPv6 must be adopted for the continued growth of the Internet but with the transition comes growing pains, as IPv6 is not backwards compatible with IPv4. Everyone from the individual to enterprise companies, Internet service providers, equipment vendors and content and hosting firms will be affected. Planning for the transition and the wrath of complications that will surely follow is vital.

In just three short years, more people are expected to browse the Internet on their mobile device than on their desktop. Mark spoke about how the rapid adoption of smartphones helped hasten the end of IPv4 and how the mobile industry is dealing with the transition to IPv6.

Mark also noted how, as an entrepreneur, he recognizes “where there is pain, there is opportunity”. As the transition begins there will be many occasions for people with IPv6 knowledge to create businesses around professional services and transition assistance.

[ click to see full-size image ]

About the SFTA

The SFTA promotes the growth, success and awareness of the regional technology community. Through events, networking, programs and education, SFTA provides South Florida’s technology-related companies, academic institutions, entrepreneurs, governments and related organizations with an active forum to grow the business of technology in our region.

3Cinteractive was honored to be a recipient of the South Florida Business Journal’s (SFBJ) 2010 Fast Tech Award, which recognizes the fastest growing technology companies in South Florida based on highest percentage of revenue growth over the past year.

At a breakfast ceremony on October 5th the South Florida Business Journal recognized 3Ci, which ranked second on the list of 25 with 137% revenue growth. This is the third consecutive year 3Ci has ranked in the top three of the Business Journal’s Fastest Growing Technology Companies list. In 2008, 3Ci ranked first on the list with 1,263.6% revenue growth. Processing over a quarter billion mobile transactions a month, 3Ci is well on pace for similar revenue growth in 2010. New initiatives in mobile health care (mHealth) and mobile web development (mWeb) are driving that growth.

“We are honored to receive this award from the South Florida Business Journal, the leading business publication in our market,” said John Duffy, 3Cinteractive’s Founder and CEO. “Our success is a direct result of our clients. We feel fortunate that some of the world’s largest brands such as ESPN, TracFone, Walgreens, and AT&T look to us to help solve business challenges.”

3Cinteractive Co-Founder and President Mike FitzGibbon was a featured speaker at the event along with IBM Chief Information Officer Pat Toole. Mike spoke about the importance of employing great people, coupled with laser focused planning as the key factors to 3Ci’s success. Check out what Mike had to say here.

Pictured, from left to right: Kevin Gale, Editor, South Florida Business Journal; Mike FitzGibbon, Co-Founder and President, 3Cinteractive; Mark Smith, Co-Founder and COO, 3Cinteractive: and David Clarke, Managing Partner, BGT Partners

By Jeff Ostrowski
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Photo: Thomas Cordy/The Palm Beach Post
Posted: 2:23 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010

Many entrepreneurs aim to just survive the Great Recession. Not John Duffy.

His mobile marketing firm, Boca Raton-based 3Cinteractive, has found a high-flying niche in an otherwise-moribund economy.

Thanks to the growing importance of text messaging and smartphones, Duffy expects revenue to hit $40 million this year, more than twice last year’s sales. As most companies tighten their budgets, 3Cinteractive is hiring workers and plans to move into larger space in Boca.

In one indication of 3Cinteractive’s explosive expansion, the company ranked 28th on Inc. magazine’s recent Inc. 500 list of the nation’s fastest-growing privately held companies. 3Cinteractive’s sales soared 6,800 percent in the period covered by Inc.’s ranking, from less than $250,000 in 2006 to more than $16 million in 2009.

The five-year-old venture provides a variety of cell phone services to large companies. For example, when Walgreens texts customers to let them know their prescriptions are ready, 3Cinteractive makes the system work.

When staffing firm Interim HealthCare wants to alert workers about job openings, 3Cinteractive technology lets Interim text thousands of workers. And when prisoners make collect calls to their relatives’ cell phones through AT&T’s 1-800-CALL-ATT, it’s a 3Cinteractive innovation that puts the calls through.

Duffy, 44, and partners Mike FitzGibbon and Mark Smith co-founded 3Cinteractive in Delray Beach in 2005. They thought mobile phones were poised for an Internet-style explosion in business activity.

The trio later moved the company to Boca, and their instincts about the future of mobile marketing proved correct. The launch of the iPhone™ and a spate of Android® phones boosted the profile of handheld computers. Lucky for 3Cinteractive, the patchwork of mobile operating systems (including iPhone, Android and BlackBerry®) isn’t easy for companies like Walgreens and Interim HealthCare to navigate.

“If it was easy, everyone would do it,” Duffy said. “What we are good at is integrating complex pieces of technology.”

So far, Duffy said, there’s little competition in the mobile marketing niche, and 3Cinteractive quickly reached profitability. The company’s early backers include Miami Dolphins legend Dan Marino and former Apple Chief Executive John Sculley, who lives in Palm Beach.

While most of its 70 workers are in Boca, 3Cinteractive has an office in Uruguay, along with workers sprinkled throughout the U.S. and Europe. Duffy predicted the company’s staff will triple in the next few years.

Duffy hopes 3Cinteractive’s growth will spur the tech sector in Palm Beach County, although he acknowledges that it’s not the easiest place to run a technology company.

“There’s limitations,” Duffy said. “We don’t have access to some of the personnel we’d like. We struggle to hire database administrators.“

It would be easier to hire in Silicon Valley, Duffy said. Undaunted, he’s trying to incorporate the best of Silicon Valley start-up culture while rejecting the worst. 3Cinteractive’s dress code is strictly casual, and the office’s interior decor looks more like a contemporary art gallery than a typical cubicle farm. There’s a motorcycle in the lobby, a foosball table in the conference room, a collection of guitars in Duffy’s office and cubicles made of shiny metal.

But, Duffy said, he discourages the slavish devotion to work that became synonymous with Silicon Valley during the tech boom.

“We don’t like people working around the clock,” Duffy said.

3Cinteractive, along with Neustar, was proud to sponsor the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) 2010 Consumer Best Practices (CBP) Public Forum event. 3Ci also played host to the MMA’s CBP Committee Meeting at our offices in Boca Raton as well as a VIP dinner at the Seagate Beach Club in Delray Beach.

Pictured, left to right: Niki Dunbar, 3Cinteractive; Alison Billings, T-Mobile USA; Mike FitzGibbon
and Mark Smith, 3Cinteractive; and Ryan Martin, U.S. Cellular

By all accounts both the MMA CBP Committee meeting and the Industry Forum were a big hit. All of the feedback regarding the events was tremendous and several highly productive meetings occurred as a result of the forum.

3Ci thanks Neustar, the MMA, the CBP Committee members, and the forum attendees for helping to make this year’s Consumer Best Practices Forum a success, and special thanks go to Kelly Dowling, Jeff Michaud, and Joe Arcadi of the 3Cinteractive team for their efforts.

The forum, held at the Boca Raton Resort and Club in Boca Raton, Florida, discussed the CBP Guidelines, which are produced by the MMA’s CBP Committee (of which 3Cinteractive is a member). The guidelines provide measures of acceptable and unacceptable practices. Updated regularly, these guidelines set the industry standard for cross- carrier mobile content services, such as short messaging service (SMS), multimedia messaging service (MMS), shortcode programs, interactive voice response (IVR), and mobile web.

Mark Smith is 3Cinteractive’s Chief Operating Officer. As part of the company’s management team he is responsible for all facets of operations and administration. Mark brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in the areas of wireless technology, ecommerce, and telecommunications solutions for enterprises and brands to 3Ci. 

Prior to the start of 3Cinteractive, Mark spent 16 years at MCI. After leaving MCI Mark joined startup iBill (one of the first Internet-based payment processing companies). Mark served as Executive Vice President of Sales and Operations and was instrumental in helping to build the company up to over four hundred employees strong, processing over a half a billion dollars a year in payments.

After the sale of iBill in 2002 to Intercept, a publicly traded company in Atlanta, Mark has been involved in several new ventures, including PayVentures, Governmental Management Services, and 365 Billing.

Something that you may not know about Mark is the fact that, prior to starting 3Cinteractive, he had never before sent a mobile text message. As Mark tells it, “When we started 3Ci, I had never sent a text message in my life. For the first year, most of the people we spoke to about the coming wave of mobile marketing and text messaging looked at us like we were out of our mind. It is really gratifying to see how prevalent and important text messaging and mobile marketing has become.”

Now that he is one of our text messaging experts, Mark has helped lead the charge for 3Cinteractive to affect the direction of the industry itself. 3Ci is an active member of organizations such as the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and CTIA - The Wireless Association. In particular, 3Cinteractive is involved in the Best Practices Committee and the Mobile Commerce Committee with the MMA, demonstrating that mobile marketing is more than things like ringtones and wallpapers and other consumer oriented entertainment products.

Mark is a proud graduate of the University of Texas and while 3Ci is his day, evening, night and weekend job, he is a dedicated husband and father as well as an avid runner and skier.

Over a 6 week promotional campaign, Cricket Wireless will drive consumers to the Cricket website to increase their subscriber base.  Each week listeners will be given a different keyword to text in to win one of many grand prizes including cell phones, prize packages and gift cards. The consumer will then immediately receive a text message back informing them if they are an instant winner.  Even participants who are not instant winners will still be directed to the Cricket website to download free digital content and be entered to win one of the grand prizes.

3Cinteractive is providing complete technology fulfillment for the promotion including website integration, the mobile application, registering winners, and redemption tools. “3Ci’s comprehensive involvement in the campaign allows Cricket to focus on their clients and branding,” says Mark Smith, 3Ci’s COO. “It was really exciting to  work on such an extensive project where we not only designed the mobile application, but also the web component of the promotion.”