Welcome Miltenyi Biotec!

What does a product for isolating T-cells from mice tissue have in common with a commercial time-scale system designed to function as a nation’s official clock? They are both the world’s leading technologies in their respective fields. The other thing they have in common is that I get to help introduce them to the world -- as I did this past week. Oh -- and one more thing -- neither one is IT.

I’m very pleased to announce Miltenyi Biotec as my latest client (#244). Based in Germany, the company has offices, production and distribution worldwide. One of their key areas of innovation is isolating specific types of cells by placing them in suspension with sub micron-size magnetic beads bonded to antibodies. The target cells are bonded to complementary antibodies, which makes cell and bead come together like a key in a lock. Applying a magnetic field then extracts the cells while keeping the cells viable. Neat, huh?

Last week I wrote web pages introducing their latest products.

Meanwhile, in California, a client I’ve had for nine years — Symmetricom (#163) -- published a white paper I wrote promoting the world’s first commercial off-the-shelf time standard. It’s similar time-scale technology to what the U.S. Naval Observatory uses in Colorado Springs to set U.S. time. But it is packaged in a way that is much more -- well -- scalable.

National time service is a core and growing business for the company. A year ago I wrote a case study showing how Brazil synchronizes the equipment on its power grid using Symmetricom products.

I keep hearing -- as I did at the MIT Enterprise Forum last week -- that the real action is moving out of IT and into areas that are more engineering intensive. Given what some of my more recent projects have been, I wouldn’t argue.