That Was IBM, This is Now - Out to Lunch - It's Baton Rouge

Though Louisiana isn t known for its tech community, Silicon Bayou
has produced some pretty impressive tech companies over the years.
One of the most impressive is a nationwide industry leader, Watch
Systems. Mike Cormaci is president and co founder of the nearly 20
year old IT company that is well known to law enforcement agencies
around the country because of its flagship product, Offender Watch,
a sexual offender management and community notification software
used by more than 3,500 agencies 60 of the offender pool within the
US. Before Offender Watch there was no comprehensive registry for
sex offenders. Every jurisidiction and state had its own system for
monitoring and managing sex offenders and they didn t talk to each
other. Offender Watch has changed all that. Ben Cherbonnier is a
pioneer in the local IT community. Ben got his start as information
systems director at a local CPA firm, Postlethwaite and
Netterville, in 1969. In 1984 Ben went out on his own and founded
CMA Technology Solutions, which, shrewdly, capitalized on the
growing number of businesses that were just beginning to go
digital. CMA sold, installed and serviced IBM equipment to business
clients. Today, as the Inernet and cloud computing have changed the
face of IBM and, indeed, the computer business in general, CMA has
grown and diversified to provide a variety of hardware and software
solutions for its customers across three states. Photos at Mansurs
on the Boulevard by Karry Hosford.

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