George Langan, CEO of eXpresso Corp., accepted the award during a ceremony at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the annual gathering that highlights new products in the electronics industry.

The California-based company won the award for a software product called eXpresso that enables multiple users to work on the same Microsoft Excel spreadsheet at the same time, while tracking all changes.

"In a nutshell, eXpresso is delivering today what Microsoft has promised that its Office suite will do in the future," the magazine said in announcing the award.

On Friday, eXpresso Corp. was told it also won one of InfoWorld's 2008 Technology of the Year Awards.

Originally developed as an inventory tool for manufacturing, eXpresso Corp. found no enthusiasm for its software product from venture capitalists or potential customers. Then, said Langan, an official of the company's lone customer pointed out its unusual approach to spreadsheets, the database used to run many businesses.

The company turned in that direction and developed the program so businesses could easily share and control spreadsheets.

"Basically Excel spreadsheets run most businesses," said Langan, "everything from production schedules to sales, marketing reports and programs, all of the financial data."

He said the eXpresso product solves a number of issues, "of people being to able to instantly share Excel spreadsheets and have complete version control on them, plus a complete audit trail where I can tell everybody who changes a spreadsheet, the changes that were made and who made them."

The company charges $80 per person a year for the service.

It is working on a version of the product that will allow the same uses for PowerPoint presentations.

Langan, who lives in Park City, said he is in the process of hiring additional staff beyond the 10 he employs and moving the company to Salt Lake City.

tharvey@sltrib.com

- PC World magazine