Tech meltdown? What tech meltdown?

Robert Matheson, president/CEO of Glenbriar Technologies Inc., heard the rumours. He read the news stories. But his well-positioned Calgary IT company (CNQ:GBRT) was able to brush off every scrap of poisonous fallout from the great North American tech market crisis, circa 2000.

For evidence, we humbly submit the balance sheet: Glenbriar's revenues improved by 1,496 per cent between 1999 and 2003.

Matheson recalls turning around one day at the apex of the tech crisis and finding that most of Glenbriar's peers and/or competitors had disappeared.

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge

Robert Matheson is savouring Glenbriar's strong showing.

"Evaporated. Gone. They really seemed to just dry up and blow away," he said.

But Glenbriar's no-frills business plan, diligent cost- cutting strategies and reliably efficient products carried the company straight into the upper ranks of Deloitte & Touche's Fast 50 list last year. In ranking the company Canada's 13th fastest-growing technology company for 2004, a Deloitte & Touche evaluator praised Glenbriar's "tremendous accomplishments during economically challenging times."

A 40-member team with offices in Calgary, Vancouver and Kitchener, Ont., Glenbriar cracked the $5-million mark in annual revenues last year.

For the non-specialist, it can be a challenge to nail down the precise nature of the products any given IT company actually delivers to its customers, which in this case include Peterbilt Pacific Inc. and five Ontario branches of Magna International. But Matheson does a good job of keeping jargon from overwhelming the explanation - most of the time, anyway.

Along with providing "workflow improvement solutions" for small and mid-sized businesses, Glenbriar's most intriguing service is wiring corporate offices for VoIP. That's voice over Internet protocol, the Internet-based voice-networking system that Matheson believes has sounded the death knell for the traditional business phone.

"We've done all the homework. And we abide by what one of my colleagues refers to as the 'Drink your own whisky' philosophy," he says with a grin.

"You install the system on your own machines first. So if somebody asks, 'How do I know this works?' we invite them into our shop to have a look."

Glenbriar's VoIP system integrates traditional public telephone trunks with IP phones, allowing corporate customers to speak with clients and colleagues via Internet.

"Where your ethernet cable comes to your desk, it goes into the phone and into the computer," he explains by way of illustration.

"We serviced one shared office in Vancouver with more than 25 businesses. When outside calls come in through a common receptionist, a computer screen displays who's calling, which business they're calling, provides them with the greeting for the particular business as well as a list of locals," he says. "And the voice quality is crystal clear."

For another West Coast client, Glenbriar set up a series of VoIP international call centres: Two in the Vancouver area and a third in Kuala Lumpur, with sites in Singapore and Australia in the works - each 100-per-cent efficient and 100-per-cent secure.

"Security is a big thing with us. We've got a system the same as the one the U.S. Navy has deployed in Iraq and the one NASA uses in its Utah desert research facility. And these guys don't fool around when it comes to security," adds Matheson.

Glenbriar Technologies was founded by Matheson, his engineer brother Glenn and high-school buddy Brian Tijman (Glen-Bri-R ... get it?) in the late 1990s and they still control more than half of Glenbriar's publicly traded shares.

According to Matheson, the company switched its listing from the TSX Venture Exchange to the Canadian Trading & Quotation System (CNQ) last fall, after Venture Exchange officials dragged their heels while reviewing a Glenbriar transaction proposal. When the exchange still hadn't acted after six months of waiting, disgusted Glenbriar board members opted for a change. "We weren't halted or suspended, or told anything was wrong. They just didn't respond. We can't do business that way," Matheson says.

Armed with degrees in law and finance from the University of B.C. (he remains on the registry of the Law Society of Alberta), Matheson teamed up with his co-founders after serving as general counsel and VP of administration for a Calgary energy company.

Casting about for fresh opportunities in 1995, the trio launched a junior capital pool on the old Alberta Stock Exchange and eventually found its way first into the oil and gas game and ultimately the IT business.

Shortly thereafter, most of the industry joined hands in a collective swan dive. That's about the time Glenbriar Technologies began moving in the opposite direction.

(Tom Keyser can be reached at tomk@businessedge.ca)