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Mr. Gettings has more than 25 years of experience in the field of information technology. A native of Arlington, Virginia, Mr. Gettings began his career as an analyst for Bell Atlantic Management Services, Inc. (now Verizon, NYSE:VZ) in the early 1980’s. He conducted life cycle cost analysis of PBX systems and Bell Centrex service. The results of his analysis helped to determine Bell Atlantic’s pricing and tariffs as a newly formed Baby Bell and long distance carrier competitors. In 1986, Mr. Gettings worked at Robbins Gioia, a project management firm that primarily manages large government and military programs. While at Robbins Gioia, he worked on projects for EDS, the US Air Force and the US Postal Service as a software engineer, and conducted new business development. It was during this time that Mr. Gettings first gained exposure to what is now the Internet. As early as 1987, he was using this now common technology to move files between the Air Force and Robbins Gioia.
In 1990, Mr. Gettings founded an interactive voice response company, GVC which provided long distance calling cards and 900 numbers for NFL, NBA and major league baseball stars including Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Jim McMahon, Boomer Esiason and many others. Mr. Gettings developed of one of the first programming languages for interactive voice response PL. in 1991 GVC was sold sold to a public company RCOM, traded on the NASDAQ.
In 1992, Mr. Gettings established ECONOCALL, a long distance telecommunications company based in Canada. ECONOCALL designed and built a large network of long distance network switches. These switches provided some of the first 1 plus number service authorized for use in Canada as part of the CRTC de-regulation of the Canadian Bell system. Under Mr. Gettings’ leadership, ECONOCALL was one of the first telecommunications carriers to implement SS7 (Signaling System 7) technology and integrate with Bell Canada’s network. ECONOCALL was acquired by Sprint Canada in 1994.
In 1994, Mr. Gettings started both a competitive access provider (CAP) and Internet service provider (ISP) in Canada. This company, called E-Connect, created a large, multi-city fiber optic network that wired every floor of hundreds of large Canadian office buildings including the Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver stock exchanges, most major Canadian banks and brokerage firms including the Royal Bank of Canada. E-Connect was later sold to AT&T Canada, and AT&T still operates portions of the network today.
In 1998 and 1999, Mr. Gettings sold two Internet service provider businesses he co-founded and operated in the United States; to Verio, now NTT (NYSE: NTT) and CenturyTel (NYSE:CTL). During this time, Mr. Gettings also worked as a management consultant for DynCorp business development and analysis of its I&ET division.
By 1999, Mr. Gettings recognized that enterprises would shift from circuit switched (ISDN) networks for carrying video to packet switched (internet) networks. He consulted for one of the largest video conferencing companies in the US, FREBON, to help implement video over IP for their customers. This experience provided the basis for videoNEXT first providing video conferencing in 2000, and then video surveillance in 2002.
videoNEXT counted among its first clients the United States Department of Education. Since then, Mr. Gettings designed and implemented video surveillance systems for the US Air Force, the US Army, US intelligence agencies, the US DHS and numerous others. Mr. Gettings continued focus is to develop partnerships such as those he established with Northrop Grumman, L-3 Communications, Raytheon, Siemens, Johnson Controls and other large systems integrators, solution providers and OEM manufacturers. Mr. Gettings is also responsible for capital formation, and has attracted and negotiated several substantial venture capital investments, notably from Delta Private Equity Partners, Newlight Associates, and Longstreet Partners, LP. | 