BitLeap

BitLeap is Making Headlines

Jul. 14, 2005 12:00am

A call for backup - New system offers data-storage solution

THE PATRIOT-NEWS By: Dan Miller

Is BitLeap ready for its big leap?

Three 20-somethings who run this high-tech company at Murata Business Center think so. They may soon find out.

BitLeap was created in June 2004 by Guy Suter and Lindsay Snider, both 26. They were later joined by Ian Berry, 21, a Shippensburg University student.

After months of testing, BitLeap says it is ready to hit the market with a new product called LeapServ. The metallic device, about as big as a shoe box, plugs into a computer and provides the user with automatic off-site backup of data. It eliminates the need for manual backups using tapes.

Information entered into computer files is automatically encrypted and sent over the Internet to remote storage sites in Harrisburg and Michigan. All data goes to both sites in case one site goes down, Snider said. The company may add a third location, and data would still be stored at two of three sites.

People using LeapServ can easily retrieve all previous file revisions, Snider said.

Suter said comparable systems are software-based and cost $500 a month or more.

“We put hardware in the company’s location,” Suter said.

Prices start at $50 a month, making LeapServ affordable for small to medium-size businesses that don’t have a big information technology budget or IT staff, Suter said.

BitLeap has received support from Ben Franklin Technology Partners, a state-funded economic development organization that invests in young companies. In January, the partnership made a $40,000 loan to BitLeap, enabling Snider and Suter to devote themselves to the venture full time.

The company is getting its name out through partnerships with established area high-tech companies such as PA Online, an Internet service provider based in Harrisburg. BitLeap is included in a package of technology services PA Online is marketing to businesses.

BitLeap is targeting health-care and long-term care providers in its marketing. New federal laws, like the Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act and Sarbanes-Oxley Act, increase the need for secure data backup, Suter said. He has given marketing presentations to long-term care executives twice his age.

“We don’t have the contacts, we don’t have the information, we don’t know how to speak the language,” Suter said. “The more people we talk to who talk to the people, the better we are going to be. We’re setting up relationships.”

How BitLeap and PA Online got together is testimony to the value of Murata, which opened in 1997 as a business incubator in a former electronic crystal plant in Carlisle.

PA Online wanted to sell an Internet phone system to Murata, which asked BitLeap to evaluate the system. That brought BitLeap in contact with PA Online.

PA Online CEO Pamela DeLissio said BitLeap is more than a high-tech startup with a promising product.

“They have a solid business plan,” she said. “If you don’t have a vision or a strategy to get there, it ain’t gonna happen. They have a business advisory board. They aren’t just three guys trying to figure it out on their own.”

Suter and Snider had worked together at another Internet service provider, Mechanicsburg-based PA.net. They maintained computer servers scattered over several states.

“We learned how to manage a lot of equipment without much staff,” Snider said. “We got into a maintenance mode, and we lost the freedom to do cutting-edge stuff.”

In February, BitLeap added a fourth partner, Kurt Suter, as chief financial officer.

Suter, Guy’s uncle, is on the board of directors of F&M Trust and the Cumberland-Perry Association for Retarded Citizens. At 64, Kurt Suter has been starting, buying and selling businesses longer than any of the other BitLeap principals have been alive.

“They’re not kids by a long shot,” Kurt Suter said. “They are pretty sophisticated. There’s a huge market for people who need to back up data in a safe manner who are not doing it, and it’s very expensive. I think they have a good shot at it.”

BitLeap is a big change for Kurt Suter, who spent most of his business career as a developer in the hotel and lodging field.

“It’s a whole new way of looking at business for me,” he said. “This is just something small that you can send to people through UPS. It”s a product as opposed to a building. But if you come in one morning and your business has burned down, these guys can save you.”

Guy Suter said BitLeap has the funding it needs to get through this year. Kurt Suter is working to line up a second round of financing from investors.

Besides using Murata as a test bed for LeapServ, BitLeap has formed a partnership for the product to be used by Thornberry Limited, a home health-care software provider based in Lancaster.

“We’re excited by BitLeap’s important contribution toward the successful operation of our home-care providers,” Thornberry President Tom Peth said in a statement when the agreement was announced in June.

Guy Suter predicts BitLeap will start showing a profit by the end of this year and be self-sustaining by January. Berry said one key to the company’s technology strategy is perfecting LeapServ software to where the boxes practically build themselves.

“Anything repetitious we try to get the computers to do on their own,” Berry said.

It took PestPatrol, an anti-spyware software company born in Murata, almost four years to achieve a positive cash flow. Last August, it was acquired for $40 million by Computer Associates International Inc., making PestPatrol the most successful company in Murata’s brief history.

“I would bet this company is going to keep growing,” said Pam Martin, who works with BitLeap as regional director of Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

But BitLeap also built in some good luck in case all else fails. The office chairs in BitLeap’s suite at Murata are passed down from PestPatrol.

“Never buy new furniture,” Martin tells Guy Suter.

Dan Miller: 717-249-2006 or danmiller@patriot-news.com

INFOBOX: ON THE INTERNET MORE INFORMATION ABOUT
BitLeap and its LeapServ data-backup system is available online at http://www.bitleap.com/.