If the New York Yacht Club/Young America Challenge team is successful in its attempt to capture the America’s Cup in New Zealand in 2000, a small Rhode Island software company will have played a critical role in bringing the vaunted Cup back to Newport.
Mesa Systems, Guild Inc. is an eight-year-old high technology company with modest offices off Quaker Lane in Warwick. The company’s specialty is systems and software development.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
For the Young America Challenge team, Mesa Systems and its Mesa/Vista — a cutting edge technology program — is bringing together the talented engineers and project managers who are designing the yacht.
Winning back the America’s Cup is as much about capitalizing on technology as it is about sailing skills. The key to Mesa’s technology is its timeliness.
The company’s software lets more than 20 designers, engineers, and consultants communicate about various test results on their design, share plans and diagrams, and share memos and other data.
Jack Cowie, vice president of marketing for Young America, said that when work started on the yacht, experts relied on overnight delivery, faxes and e-mail to share ideas and information. But, said Cowie, it simply wasn’t fast enough.
“We found that information was not getting shared quickly and reliably enough, and there was a lot of information that didn’t lend itself for fax and e-mail.”
Cowie said the team needed to find a way to have designers post updated design information as soon as it was available for collaborators across the country. The testing team, said Cowie, needed to feed back test data to the designers in real time, so designers could make changes and prototypes could be turned around in days, not weeks. Schedules, action items, and other internal communication needed to be available to the entire Young America team, and travel costs needed to be reined in, Cowie said. Enter Mesa Systems and its Mesa/Vista program.
Mesa/Vista provides unique web technology, enabling web access to live data from the tools that are already being used in their computer environment. Through a web browser, Mesa/Vista exposes all relevant information to stakeholders involved in the project, and allows them to provide input to live data, no matter where it resides. The technology, according to Cowie, creates a secure project development environment and allows the team to compete among the best technologies in the world. Using Mesa/Vista, we will be able to accomplish 20 weeks worth of on-water testing in seven weeks,” said Cowie. “This will really give us a leg up on our competition in our race to win the America’s Cup.” For Mesa Systems Vice President Alan Hecht, working to regain the America’s Cup has been an exciting venture. Mesa employees have enjoyed a ride on a racing yacht and attended a picnic with the Young America Challenge team. It’s been a lot of fun,” Hecht said. Hecht also suspects that the relationship and potential exposure will be good for business. Mesa Systems is part of the team — and when information and updates about the America’s Cup race is distributed, Mesa’s name is often connected to it as a sponsor. The name is getting out, not simply across the country, but throughout the world. Hecht said working on the America’s Cup project has not been all that different from working for other clients. They’re developing a product — fast hulls and fast sails,” said Hecht. “Our technology is applicable anywhere.” The boat that its backers hope will challenge for the Cup in New Zealand has been christened the Spirit of Rhode Island. It is fortunate, perhaps, that Mesa Systems has been able to enjoy some publicity surrounding its relationship with the Young America Challenge team. Some others involved in the project are kept secret. America’s Cup rules allow boat builders to keep the keel and rudder hidden until just before the trial runs, which start in October 1999 in Auckland, New Zealand.
