A new report by ComputerWorld says that Philadelphia is home to three of its top 100 best places to work in information technology.

The University of Pennsylvania took the highest honors, rated sixth in the country. The institution has 282 IT employees who can receive, as the publication reports, cash bonuses if they are elected to win its Models of Excellence, an employee-recognition program. Not to mention free tuition for employees.

Vanguard was ranked 29th, which focuses all of its custom development in-house and is reportedly planning to spend $30 million on training this year.

Temple University was rated 67th, and among its lucrative bonus incentives, it offers full tuition remission for employees, half-off tuition for spouses, and free tuition for children.

Did the report miss anyone’s workplace which they feel should have been nominated locally?

And he’s got proof.

On Wednesday, 100 companies in the Philadelphia region were awarded at the Entrepreneurs Forum of Greater Philadelphia‘s Philly 100. It wasn’t an arbitrary designation; these are companies that were able to meet the contest’s stringent restrictions: real growth in sales and revenue figures year-over-year, among others.

“We know of a number of award programs, top 25s or top 50s, they were not able to fill their quota. The good news is that we were able to achieve our top 100 with some great firms,” Ross said in a telephone interview early this week.

Of course, the gains are modest, but they’re gains, found by companies that are staying current and nimble in concerning times.

“We don’t see some of the hugely dramatic numbers that we’ve seen across the board, but they’re growing. They’re making it through the economic times and continuing to thrive and grow employment.”

Since retiring, Ross has been steering the Forum as Executive Director for six years, volunteering 20 to 30 hours a week to help young businesses connect with veterans. The service — which is funded by business sponsors and the Forum’s monthly events — is offered free of cost.

Like the businesses it recognizes, the Forum, too, has refocused its efforts to stay current. After a series of focus groups, it has launched its fiscal 2011 event series, “True North,” which focuses on young, early-stage businesses and high-growth late-stage companies. And it’s now offering an “experts on-demand” advice service that any entrepreneur can take advantage of.

After the jump, Ross talks about the Philly 100 winners, the region’s information technology growth, and about the Forum’s newly found strategy.

Tell us some history about the Forum—

The Forum has been in existence for 25 years. It started in the Philadelphia area as a spring-off of something being done by MIT. That relationship severed, but some local entrepreneurs and VCs formed the group with overall mission of helping grow small businesses through education and access to resources. That mission really hasn’t change that dramatically.

It’s also important to understand how the forum is funded. We receive no public funds from any organization. We are really funded by a group of local businesses that are interested in entrepreneurialism and that want give back to the community.

What’s your background as an entrepreneur?

I retired after 32 years in the IT industry, working for Unisys. Back in the 80s, there were no channels of distribution, so computers were sold through a direct sales force. That caused us to have help small companies get into business.

Can you give some details about Experts on Demand? Who’s helping?

We have expertise in public relations, strategic planning, funding, intellectual property, and more. If you’re starting up some sort of a mobile technology company or some kind of software company, but you’re in the early stages, we’ll hook you up with one of our people and they’ll go through with an individual company where are you, what are your issues and kind of set you on the path of heading toward a resource that can help you.

What does this year’s Philadelphia 100 say abut the entrepreneurial community in Philadelphia in 2010?

There are a couple broad things I can say. First of all, Philly 100 is based on sales and revenue growth year-over-year and a number of other accounting metrics; you can’t have declared bankrupt, you have to be a private firm, etc. Obviously, in this period of time, year-over-year sales growth is a difficult thing to accomplish. We know of a number of award programs, they did a top 25, or top 50, they were not able to fill their quota. The good news is that we were able to achieve our top 100 with some great firms. We probably have a higher percentage of repeat winners than we’ve had in a while, so that speaks to some of these strengths of established firms, firms that have good processes that have good business plans that allow them to adapt to changing business conditions.

And how did the IT community fare in this year’s awards?

My quick take is that 30 percent of the winners are core technology companies, either through products or services.  I suspect that a number more could be considered IT-based firms that offer a variety of services based upon technology platforms.

How does someone get involved with the Forum? Is there a fee?

It doesn’t cost you anything to be a member. We charge a modest amount for monthly events. That’s one of the differentiators that we talked about in terms of our positioning. We provide great educational content and you don’t have to make a $10,000 commitment to join. If you wish to be involved as a sponsor, there are fees that range from $500 for a small company to $2500 for a big company.

Even for small beverage production startup Cintron Beverage Group, based in South Philadelphia, tracking inventory was, in a word, chaotic.

“There were so many orders going in and out, and the ability to track inventory in real-time didn’t exist,” says Chief Marketing Officer Donna Davin, who handles production, operation, product development and marketing, a tall order.

So when the 20-employee company—which produces a line of energy drinks, iced teas and fruit-flavored beverages—was pitched by its logistics provider DF Young on a new IT solution that could ease the process and consolidate having to manage multiple tech vendors, things were bound to get easier.

In 2007, DF Young couldn’t find an integrated IT solution for its business, so it set out to create its own. Now, the company is able to market its integrated IT solutions to other small- to mid-sized businesses. And though DF was focused on logistics, there was a larger opportunity at stake, executives decided: providing IT services from start to finish, from the email environment to its sophisticated logistics software.

Superior Technology Solutions, a subsidiary, was born.

“We had a sweet spot of mid-sized companies that had growing needs and noncorporate mentalities. It was about getting the job done, not just process for process’s sake,” says Superior CEO Wes Wyatt. And, Wyatt says, it’s not just about selling IT service for service sake. Customer service is key.

That couldn’t be more true for Cintron. With the software, Davin can track sales, generate orders and keep track of the cost of goods. But more importantly, Davin says, Superior is also able to add custom configurations that allow her to do her job better. For instance, if she needs a breakdown of sales listed by customer, and it isn’t already an included feature, Superior is quick to add it.

[Superior] brought a lot of organization to the business,” Davin says.

Having commercially launched its IT solutions earlier this year, Cintron is one of Superior’s first three customers. Wyatt expects that number to grow to ten in coming months.

And Davin’s testimonial is certainly chorus to that.

She’s worked for Nestle, handling millions of orders, and knows her way around logistics software. She prefers Superior’s product, she says.

“I’ve used these systems a lot. This is very intuitive and easy to get on and figure out without any direction.”

More than 100 folks packed the room for the "Refactoring legacy applications for SOA using Spring Technologies" session led by Oleg Zhurakousky.

On Thursday, about 450 software developers, IT managers and business executives from around the world ventured to Old City for Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise, a locally-organized, two-day conference for high-level enterprise software development discussion.

Patrons packed the Society Hill Sheraton’s outdoor patio, breaking from sessions—comprised of mobile, frameworks, agile development, management, infrastructure and languages tracks—talking and fielding phone calls beneath the stunning pink blossoms of Cherry trees. The hotel offered more space than last year’s conference, held in Conshohocken.

Now In its fifth year, Chariot Solutions has seen the conference grow from a small university-hosted conference of 50 people—comprised mostly of Chariot’s own employee speakers—to an international conference of high-level software development discussion. [Full Disclosure: Chariot is a long-time sponsor of Technically Philly]

“Conceptually, we’d like it to be a free conference,” but the increasing size and cost of organizing the conference has led to the conference’s $375 ticket fee, Chariot co-founder Michael Rappaport told Technically Philly in between sessions. None of the presenters are paid, organizers say.

The trending topic this year, says Rappaport, was mobile app development. Though there was a track dedicated specifically to the topic, discussion around mobile was peppered throughout other tracks and presentations.

Dozens of attendees were showing-off their new iPads and when one presenter asked how many in the room were using an iPhone, nearly all those present raised their hands. “Last year, mobile didn’t even have a presence,” Rappaport says. New frameworks, like Groovy, Grails and Ruby on Rails were also dominant.

The conference is certainly not for the average technology user. Most of the sessions were high-level breakdowns of development-specific topics and the processes, catered for business IT teams.

Speakers mingled with attendees throughout hotel conference grounds and there was generally a friendly atmosphere that also suggested that folks might have attended several conferences past with one another. In talking with about a dozen attendees—many from the region—most were pleased with what the conference had to offer.

Several sponsors showed off in the conference’s registration area, like Gigabit City, the local community and city government push to bring Google fiber to Philadelphia.

Attending the conference? Let us know what you thought of this year’s conference. Did it meet expectations?

Mayor Nutter has announced plans to significantly invest in city information technology and pursue paperless government efficiencies in an attempt to improve tech infrastructure, cut costs and streamline city services.

“We may not be completely paperless, but we will use less paper,” Nutter said in his budget address to City Council this morning before a packed crowed that filled the historic Council chamber’s floor and balcony seating.

If City Council approves the budget, Nutter says that an “unprecedented” investment in city technology will provide $120 million to improve IT over the next five years, including $25 million in FY11.

Job creation is also a priority of Nutter’s $3.87 billion budget proposal. Nutter promised to restore in 2014 the wage and business tax reduction schedule, halted last year. He also referenced tech tax incentive pilot studies announced last week, which will allow technology firms to sell services outside of the city tax-free.

Nutter insisted that tax increases did not make sense during a recession, proposing instead two new city revenue streams�a hike in trash collection fees and a sales tax increase on sugar-sweeneted beverages�to help close the city’s budget shortfall. With the city buried by double-digit unemployment, Nutter told the crowd that Philadelphia “must not allow our present to be our future,” later quoting Thomas Paine: “These are the times that try men’s souls,” he said.

The announcements are more evidence of the municipality’s continued attention to city technology. City Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank hinted at the Mayor’s intent to invest in IT at a Refresh Philly event a year ago. The administration overhauled the Division of Technology last year, placing Frank in charge of 33 city agencies and 520 employees. Last month, Councilman Bill Green introduced legislation to enact a permanent Chief Information Officer position as part of the Mayoral cabinet.

Nutter also praised in the address Councilmen Green and Rizzo for their work with the motor vehicle cell phone ban.

The legislation would require the CIO to report directly to the Mayor and to create an annual IT strategic plan that includes productivity enhancements to help the city utilize paperless services. It also gives the CIO more oversight over city department technology appropriations.

“When they wrote the Charter in 1952, no one imagined there could be a paperless system,” Green told Technically Philly during a telephone interview this morning. “[The legislation would] make investment in and continual upgrade of our technology a permanent part of city government.”

Last July, Mayor Nutter issued an executive order to reorganize the city’s Division of Technology, placing then CIO Allan Frank in charge of the city’s entire IT system, including 520 employees. The new role, Chief Technology Officer, placed Frank on the mayoral cabinent.

Though Green backs the work Frank has been doing as CTO, he says he’d like to see some changes. Department heads aren’t easily giving up the IT portion of their budgets, he says, a problem his legislation could solve. Green says that it is paramount that the city starts addressing tech issues like these immediately. “It’s been two years into the administration and we haven’t made any serious technology implementations,” he says.

If the bill—backed by Councilmembers Blondell Reynolds Brown, Curtis Jones, Jr., Jack Kelly, W. Wilson Goode, Jr. and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez—passes Council and the ballot referundum is approved by voters on May 18, the legisilation would immediately go into effect.

Green expects that Nutter would appoint Frank to the CIO position should the legislation pass.

Last November, the trains that normally shot South in regular intervals on the Broad Street Line were at a standstill.

But as SEPTA’s transit workers—at strike over wage and pension issues—were busy on the picket lines, nothing was going to stop Eric Harper, bound to a wheelchair, from making it to class. Harper, living in North Philadelphia, trekked more than 40 blocks to Drexel University.

Harper is one of ten students that graced the stage at Drexel’s Mitchell Auditorium Tuesday morning to receive his diploma for ITWorks, an Information Technology job-training program for disadvantaged young adults. Harper is a member of the first graduating ITWorks class, a program put together by NPower PA, a nonprofit that does IT work for other local nonprofits.

Through a collaboration with the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, NPower helped identify a need for a cost-free training program to help young high school or equivalency graduates that were neither employed or seeking post-secondary education, whom were getting by on part-time work. It was as much an opportunity to to support the community and it was to support NPower’s partner organizations, who were seeking more hands in their IT departments.

“Sometimes it’s hard to make the connection between what we’re doing on the IT side and the direct impact on the community. Here’s a program that we can point to and say that we’re having a direct impact on the lives of these individuals,” says NPower Director of Fundraising and Communications Anthony Pisapia.

Drexel's Goodwin College

Students of ITWorks spent 8 hours per day, five days a week for the last 12 weeks at the Goodwin College of Professional Studies, Drexel’s adult learning center. An additional five weeks were spent at internships throughout the region, at organizations like PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the Philadelphia Horticultural Society and Reed Technology and Information Services, among others.

The free program had little technology skill requirements. Applicants needed only know the basics, like how start a computer, use the Internet, and compose in Microsoft Word.

“This program is about how we can train individuals in the types of things we do at a basic level,” Pisapia says. “This is the first time that some of the individuals have ever been in an office setting. Many of them often go into retail or food service right out of high school.”

The students were offered workshops on professionalism, communication and other soft skills to cover what they lacked. The program also helped students with interview and resume writing workshops.

Horsham-based Reed Technology, which manipulates data for clients like the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a growing list of pharmacuetical clients, was one of the organizations that worked with an ITWorks intern.

Reed Vice President, Operations and Technology Services David Ballai says that the company offered the intern a base salary and that she learned basic IT, like wiping and rebuilding systems, and some basic networking training. The intern has even tested for her Microsoft Certification, Ballai says.

Still, in this tough job market, Pisapia says that many company executives that are perhaps considering hiring participating students are still very much in a “wait and see” battle with the economy.

Lila Santos, a graduate of ITWorks, offered her thoughts on the program. Santos, a single mother, called the program a “last hope,” in a letter to organizers.

“I wanted to be a role model for my son and didn’t know where or how to begin. Coming in as a person with little knowledge of configuring software or hardware, I not find myself wanting to learn more and more about technology,” she wrote.

“ITWorks gave me hope when I thought there was no more chances.”

Every Wednesday, Shop Talk shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others here.

Atlantic City doesn’t have a single city employee overseeing its IT infrastructure, resulting in “inefficient, ineffective and unsecure processes,” according to a report by the New Jersey state comptroller [PDF].

Since 2006, the city has outsourced its IT functions to Newark’s New Jersey Institute of Technology, paying $2.47 million over 4 years for services covering the city’s networked PCs, servers and desktop support, GovTech reports. The comptroller recommends that hiring two IT staff members could allow “substantial savings and a full-time dedicated staff available on a daily basis to serve all City departments.”

The report also alleges that city awarded annual contracts to NJIT and a subcontractor without a state-mandated competitive bidding process. Though NJIT is exempt from that process as an education institution, it subcontracted work to a private company, and the city sometimes paid that subcontractor directly, giving the “apperance of an attempt to avoid State bidding requirements,” the Comproller’s Office said in the report.

The report urges the city to develop an IT strategy, improve its computer hardware and software tracking system and review user access to the network.

More than $300,000 in state grants and matched local funding is being divvied out to training programs for tech support, Web design, programming, networking and a variety of IT vocations.

The grants and matching funds are a part of a larger investment of $760,000 in grants and $510,000 in matched funding for a total impact of $1.25 million, according to an announcement made last week by the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board.

The funds are being distributed to improve industry competitiveness and to address workforce needs in the region in logistics and transportation, advanced manufacturing, higher education and the allied health fields.

The most significant IT investments include Cheney University, with grants equaling $73,875, Pierce College, with $69,000 and Lincoln Tech, with $58,642.

“We know only 30 percent of the jobs in Philadelphia are unskilled, so this investment will play an integral role in keeping people employed and helping businesses to improve productivity,” Investment Board CEO Sallie A. Glickman said in a statement.

According to the organization, 70,000 workers have participated in the program since 2005, resulting in a 6.6 percent average wage increase.