Life Technologies Corp., one of the top public companies in San Diego as ranked by market cap, is named one of CIO Magazine’s 2011 CIO 100, a feature honoring the top large companies for their best use of IT. CIO spotlighted the Carlsbad-based life sciences giant for its innovative use of mobile apps, especially its use of a business intelligence app for the Apple iPad from Solana Beach’s Mellmo LLC. Life Tech’s sales force uses the app to help make sense of the tremendous amount of data flowing into the company’s servers … Ooh, la la! Aviation Week & Space Technology ranks Cubic Corp. as the No. 1 aerospace and defense company with sales between $1 billion and $5 billion. The magazine is honoring Cubic and winners in other revenue categories on June 22 at the Paris Air Show. Cubic was founded by the now 96-year-old Walter J. Zable, who is a legend in defense industry circles. Amazingly, he’s still active in the business he founded in 1951, the very early days of the Cold War. Forbes magazine lists Zable as one of the 16 oldest executives in the world … Del Mar-based hotel guru Bob Rauch has teamed up with San Diego-based real estate guru (and regular San Diego Business Journal columnist) Gary London to launch business to broker hotel deals in Southern California. The two say that they’re the first to the party as far as matching sellers and buyers of properties from the smallest to the largest hotels. No other firm is dedicated to this market niche, which is pretty incredible considering the number of properties that change hands every year … The Century Club of San Diego, which runs the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open, hires Peter Ripa as its new tournament director. Ripa, who held a similar executive role with the Crowne Plaza Invitational in Fort Worth, Texas, succeeds Tom Wilson, who plans to retire after this year’s big golf fest. The local PGA tournament, held annually at Torrey Pines, is one of the biggest sporting events of the year here, so this is a big move on the part of the organization … Be safe. On June 10, volunteers from the local offices of Deloitte, who specialize in Internet security for their business clients, spent part of the day at the King Chavez Preparatory Academy in east San Diego teaching the middle school students about online safety, especially involving social media sites. The team was one of 70 nationwide participating in a national day of volunteering … Happy Birthday! Time flies when you’re havin’ fun! The local offices of Mintz Levin, the very high-profile national law firm that hit town a half decade ago, celebrated it’s fifth anniversary here June 8 in Carmel Valley off Interstate 5. Till next week.
Contributing Editor Tom York pens the SDBJ Insider for your reading pleasure. He can be reached via tyork@sdbj.com or tom.york@gmail.com.
