Mike Gianoni, who has run Daniel Island software company Blackbaud for more than a decade, has invested in a much smaller local tech firm.
Gianoni made a strategic investment in Newmoyer Geospatial Solutions, a Mount Pleasant company known as NGS, and joined it as a strategic adviser, the company announced Sept. 30. Neither side disclosed the size of the investment.
NGS builds mapping systems for military, intelligence and public safety customers. It said Gianoni will work with its leaders on strategy, growth and “the path from engineering services company to software company at scale.”
“Jason has led a talented engineering team for over a decade focused on complex software for the Department of Defense, and I look forward to advising them on this next phase of growth,” Gianoni said in the announcement.
NGS said the value for the company is “the operating experience that comes with the capital.”
“Mike has built software companies at a scale few founders ever reach, and he has done it by hiring well, thinking long term and holding a high standard for the product,” said founder and CEO Jason Newmoyer. “Having him invest in NGS and sit alongside our leadership team is a significant step for the company. We know how to build mission-critical systems that work in the field. Mike knows how to build a software company around them.”
Newmoyer remains CEO, and the teams and contacts that support customers are unchanged, the company said.
Who NGS is
Newmoyer started his career at Esri, the mapping software maker, and founded NGS in 2009, according to the company. He has since supported programs at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Army Geospatial Center, the Army Intelligence and Security Command, U.S. Special Operations Command and the Defense Health Agency, the company says.
Chief Technology Officer Chris Wyse is a Marine Corps veteran who previously worked at SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic, the Navy command now called Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic, and at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, according to the company.
NGS works from an office at 222 W. Coleman Blvd. and describes itself as a small business. Its website displays the logos of more than 30 organizations, including military commands, defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman and Accenture Federal Services, and the Charleston Police Department, under the heading “Trusted across defense, intelligence, and industry.” The company also holds a General Services Administration Multiple Award Schedule contract, a vehicle federal agencies use to buy from approved vendors.
From contracts to products
The shift Gianoni is backing centers on CoreSpatial, a geospatial platform NGS built on open-source software. It packages a hardened version of the GeoServer map server with worldwide basemaps, an imagery management tool, critical infrastructure data from the Department of Homeland Security and a web portal for maps and dashboards, according to the company.
NGS has added to the platform this year and made it easier to buy. With those changes, “procurement is no longer the bottleneck,” the company said in its third-quarter newsletter.
In July, it added CoreSpatial 3D, a module that streams 3D terrain, imagery and buildings using a self-hosted version of Cesium’s 3D mapping software. NGS says the module can run on connected, restricted or fully disconnected networks.
The company says CoreSpatial has earned an “awardable” rating on Tradewinds, a marketplace run by the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office that is meant to speed purchases of vetted technology. NGS says the process can move from discovery to contract in about 45 days. CoreSpatial is also listed on Amazon Web Services’ marketplace with a 30-day free trial.
The company’s third-quarter software release, announced Oct. 14, moved the server to GeoServer 3.0. A server build issued the same day was the first made from the company’s version of GeoServer designed to meet FIPS 140-3, a federal security standard for encryption modules, NGS said.
An AI side business
NGS is also selling advice. In July it launched AI Advisory, a practice that helps commercial companies adopt artificial intelligence, and brought in Carl Henson, a business executive whose doctoral research focused on AI adoption, to help build it.
“Most organizations know AI can help. Fewer know how to adopt it without exposing sensitive data, spinning up shadow tools, or locking themselves to a single vendor,” the company wrote when it launched the practice.
Its original model starts with a 30-day review of how work moves through a business, then pilots three to five workflows before training the client’s staff, according to the company.
Gianoni’s résumé
Gianoni is president and CEO of Blackbaud, which sells cloud software to nonprofits, schools, foundations and health care organizations, and chairman of the board at Teradata, according to the announcement. He holds engineering and business degrees and an MBA from the University of New Haven and lives in Charleston, according to NGS.
NGS has not said how many people it employs or what it earns.
