Chaparral shelves $60 million IPO

LONGMONT — Chaparral Network Storage Inc.’s proposed $60 million initial public offering has gone up in smoke. The company filed paperwork with regulators to withdraw the deal because of “general market conditions.”

Chaparral Network Chief Executive Officer Gary Allison told the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Feb. 15 letter that the company’s intent to withdraw the offering was “due to general market conditions and a determination that it would be in its best interest not to proceed at this time.”

Chaparral originally filed to register the stock with the SEC in March 2000, and filed one amendment in April, but never revealed any pertinent financial details such as the number of shares it planned to sell or its per-share offering price. Net proceeds of the offering were to have been used for working capital and other general purposes.

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Credit Suisse First Boston, Salomon Smith Barney, Bear Stearns and Needham & Co. were all to have participated in the IPO.

Chaparral is primarily focused on developing products for use in the market of storage-area networks, or SANs. Had the IPO been completed, Chaparral shares would have traded on the tech-heavy Nasdaq using the ticker symbol CHAP.

StorageTek, Siemens Medical partnerLOUISVILLE ? Storage Technology Corp. (NYSE: STK) is partnering with Siemens Medical Systems Inc. to offer service and support for high-performance medical images and data archival solutions.

Siemens will integrate StorageTek’s tape products with its radiology and cardiology solutions, providing Siemens’ customers with easily managed patient information in a centralized data archive. As information is added to a patient’s file, StorageTek’s technology provides the health-care community with a system to store and access records to help deliver timely patient care.

New federal regulations that govern the security of patient information have resulted in an increased need for storage capacity in the medical field.E-books ready for check outBOULDER ? Local e-book developer netLibrary is providing students and faculty at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss. with access to a collection of more than 2,500 e-books.

The collection, which will be available at the university’s library, includes full-text electronic versions of published books that students can search, borrow, read and return over the Internet. The e-books can be downloaded and text accompanied with a citation can be copied and pasted into a document.

The e-books are available for varying checkout periods and are automatically checked back into the library collection when the checkout period expires. The collection is available online at the Jackson State library Web site (sampson2.jsums.edu).Ribozyme begins testingBOULDER ? Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Boulder-based leader in ribozyme therapeutic development, has started phase II of a clinical trial for a breast cancer drug being developed in partnership with Chiron Corp., an Emeryville, Calif.-based biotechnology company.

The trial will evaluate the utility of ribozyme-based, anti-angiogenic drug Angiozyme. This is the first of a series of phase II trials this year investigating the clinical activity of Angiozyme in metastatic breast, colorectal, lung, renal and melanoma cancers. The principal work will be done at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver will be another trial site. Concepts Direct delistedLONGMONT ? Failure to meet a listing regulation has forced direct marketing company Concepts Direct Inc. (Nasdaq: CDIR) to list its shares of common stock on the Nasdaq Small Cap Market. The change will remove the company’s listing on the Nasdaq National Market. The change was effective Feb. 5.

Shares will continue to trade under the “CDIR” symbol. Concepts Direct was required to make the change because of a listing regulation that requires a minimum public float value of $5 million. Concepts Direct plans to relist its stock on the Nasdaq National Market once market conditions improve. Ereo, Accumedia sign with Catapult BOULDER ? Catapult PR-IR, a public and investor relations firm specializing in high-tech markets, has added Ereo Inc. and Accumedia to its client list.

Ereo is a developer of Internet search technology using images. The Westminster-based company received funding and other resources through Boulder venture capital firm iBelay. Boulder-based Accumedia is developing a software platform for managing and distributing digital content for media.

Catapult will assist both companies in establishing positions in their client’s markets. The firm will handle press release development and distribution, editorial press tours and event marketing for Accumedia. Catapult will serve as an extension of Ereo’s communications team. Gold Systems releases Vonetix 2.1BOULDER ? Gold Systems Inc., a developer of wireless Web solutions, has released the second generation of its Vonetix solution.

Vonetix 2.1 enables companies to provide their customers with instant access to information and transactions. The product makes use of voice response, speech recognition and wireless Web technologies. Vonetix provides telephone access to Web-based content without requiring companies to update their existing infrastructures.

Gold Systems will deliver Vonetix 2.1 to partner Avaya Inc. for inclusion in its Conversant System for Interactive Voice Response Version 8.0. The new version supports Conversant versions 6.1 and 7.0.