IBM honors Missoula company TerraEchos for sensorDecember 3, 2010 | Company News

The Missoulian...November 30, 2010
The bad guys want to drop a bomb on a power plant - but the plant has a secret weapon.
It's a powerful ear. The ear, a sensor buried underground, can hear the slightest sound. Footsteps. Tree roots creaking underground. The wind blowing through branches.
This gizmo, the AdelosS4, has another superpower. It can identify all those sounds at once in real time. And when it detects a particular noise - the spinning propellers of a plane, say - it pinpoints the plane's location and alerts plant security.
TerraEchos, a Missoula company owned by S&K Technologies, created the AdelosS4. The threat on the power plant is hypothetical, but the technology and its "high-performance" capabilities are both real and state-of-the-art.
The engine in the AdelosS4 uses IBM technology to read the gobs of acoustic data, and in a local ceremony Monday, IBM honored TerraEchos with its CTO (chief technology officer) Innovation Award.
"When we learned we were semifinalists, we were flabbergasted," TerraEchos president and chief executive officer Alex Philp said at the gathering at the Hilton Garden Inn. "We also were panic stricken."
That's because the top nominees must put on live demonstrations of their technologies. IBM selects the winner after the live demo, and Philp feared that meant rigging the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino with the covert intelligence and surveillance system.
Instead, though, TerraEchos recorded and presented a demonstration, and last month, the worldwide technology company presented the award to TerraEchos in Las Vegas in front of 11,000 people. The recognition lauds visionary IBM business partners for ingenuity, and to pass on the kudos to tribal owners S&K Technologies and other partners, Philp requested the local ceremony.
This investment is the first that S&K Technologies made outside the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and Philp said the company's various partnerships led to a rare success story in the strained economy. Based in Pablo, S&K Electronics designs and manufactures the AdelosS4, and TerraEchos spun out of GCS Research. All those companies had representatives at the news conference, as did IBM.
"I want Montana and Missoula to be known (as) a place where innovation can occur if you have the right partnerships," Philp said.
IBM's Jeremy Clement said Monday nominations for the award come from around the globe, and competition this year was fierce. But TerraEchos demonstrated a unique solution and one that can be used in a variety of ways, from securing borders to protecting valuable energy infrastructure, such as pipelines.
"It really is a cutting-edge, truly innovative solution," Clement said.
TerraEchos is working with the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy, which holds the patent for the original listening technology. TerraEchos holds the first and only license for its commercial production, according to the company. Other possible clients include energy companies with valuable and remote infrastructure.
TerraEchos employs eight people; parent company S&K Technologies has roughly 35 direct employees in Montana and some 300 across the nation.
Reporter Keila Szpaller can be reached at @KeilaSzpaller, 523-5262, keila.szpaller@missoulian.com or on MissoulaRedTape.com.