Portland seeks to nurture software startups – seeks to be a "first adopter" for products developed by the region’s software community

Mayor Sam Adams announced in December that Portland would seek to be a "first adopter" for products developed by the region’s software community, to provide a boost to a sector that officials consider key to Portland’s economic future.

When GreenPrint Software set out to retool its products last year, shifting from the consumer market to target the much larger corporate landscape, the Portland startup turned to the city for help trying out its new offerings and to prove its tools perform as promised.

GreenPrint aims to eliminate wasteful printing, saving paper, printer toner and ink by showing clients what they’re sending to the printer and making it easy to cut out unnecessary pages or images. The company won raves for its first edition, directed at home PC users, but big companies found it unworkable on corporate computer networks.

Portland officials tested an early version of the revamped software last fall, pointing out bugs and evaluating its performance. When GreenPrint completed its upgrade, Portland awarded GreenPrint a four-year contract worth $120,000 to install its software on as many as 5,500 city computers.

By Mike Rogoway, The Oregonian

Full Story: http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2010/05/portland_seeks_to_nurture_soft.html