Corridor In The News

Recession-tested Orlando company battles back in training simulation

By Richard Burnett, Orlando Sentinel
October 10, 2010

Waymon Armstrong and his high-tech training company weathered a near-fatal storm nearly a decade ago, long before the housing meltdown and financial crisis pushed the U.S. into the worst recession since World War II.

ECS Vice President Joe O'Connell, from left, President Waymon Armstrong and Chief Operating Officer Larry Kayne use an iPad and wireless phone to display samples of the company's interactive training games.Armstrong's business, Engineering & Computer Simulations Inc., almost went under when it was hit by both the dot-com meltdown and losing bids for some big defense contracts.

But after sinking into debt, losing most of its revenue and dwindling to only a few employees, the Orlando-based company, known as ECS, has regained its stride and is now a prominent small-business player within Central Florida's training-and-simulation industry, considered the largest cluster of such companies and military agencies in the U.S.

ECS' specialty — developing sophisticated, interactive computer games — gained a strong foothold in the U.S. military's training arsenal, especially after the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Sales are expected to reach $12 million this year, fueled by work for nearly every branch of the military, NATO and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It already employs nearly 60 software developers and other high-tech workers and plans to add another half-dozen jobs by year's end.

ECS' turnaround has even received national recognition: Earlier this year, it was chosen as the U.S. Small Business Administration's Small Business of the Year, and Armstrong was honored as the SBA's Small Business Person of the Year. It also won the Florida High-Tech Corridor Council's Innovation Award.

Armstrong, who once amassed $300,000 in credit-card debt to keep ECS afloat, said memories of the company's tough times are never far away. Which is why, when the 2007-09 recession struck, the company was ready for it.

"Believe me, there were a lot of lessons learned that we applied to help us get through this recession," he said. "It guided everything that we did — decisions about our lease terms, where we spent our money, what we invested in, how fast we would grow. We built the company back up gradually, very gradually."

ECS' earliest projects, back in the late '90s, involved computer-generated "virtual tours" of proposed airport renovations, Armstrong said. The company produced a computerized video, for example, of how Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport would look based on a proposed expansion plan.

Later, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, ECS produced a terrorism simulation program for training use at Orlando International Airport, Armstrong said. ECS hoped the market for such products would thrive after 9-11, but instead the company's airport-related business "dried up" as airports retrenched financially amid the slump in air travel, he said.

Combined with the unsuccessful military contract bids, that sent ECS into a downward spiral for several years, according to Armstrong. The company avoided bankruptcy, however, and recovered bit by bit, contract by contract, until it eventually paid off all its debts, he said.

Today the company produces a diverse set of PC-based software programs that provide desktop training for combat medics, emergency responders, hazardous-materials workers, and military commanders, among others.

Using avatar figures, full-motion 3D animation, and other technologies, ECS' interactive system — dubbed the Nexus Virtual World — has become a multimillion-dollar business for the company, officials said.

ECS has also expanded into non-military, civilian arenas such as health care, education, transportation and even electronic casino games.

Company officials expect the non-military part of the business to grow during the next few years as the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down and Pentagon budgets tighten.

"There's little doubt the defense budget is going to shrink — everyone knows and expects that," Armstrong said. "We're looking ahead to show how the kind of training technology we have can be critical to other areas. In health care, for example, it can improve medical training while dramatically bringing down the costs of medical care, which is going to be very important in these days of health-care reform."

ECS is not alone in its focus on finding new markets for its training-and-simulation technology, said Ken Kelly, an industry consultant in Orlando and former chairman of the National Center for Simulation industry association, which is based in Central Florida Research Park in east Orange County.

"You have quite a few simulation companies expending their resources on finding new business in areas such as health care, transportation and other non-defense applications," Kelly said. "We're seeing a lot of that, not only by small companies, but medium and large ones, too. It's very, very competitive out there."

Armstrong said ECS has already noticed an increase in the number of large corporations competing for deals that were once the province of small businesses. "We're seeing a lot of bigger companies going after the smaller projects," he said. "I used to tell my friends with the big companies that at least leave some of the crumbs for us. But now they're even going after the crumbs."

Part of ECS' competitive strategy, Armstrong said, is to do what small businesses do best: be agile, flexible and proactive, and stay on the cutting edge of technology. "For example, we're now putting a lot of social-networking capabilities into our virtual-world training systems," he said. "That's how we stay on top of the latest in technology and also how we keep our software developers engaged and challenged, since many of them are [twentysomething] millennials."

ECS has come a long way from its near-calamity a decade ago, said Kelly, the industry consultant.

"There are a lot of small businesses that struggle early on in their existence, and many don't survive," he said. "The ones that do make it through that period typically come out stronger."