John Panaccione, president and CEO of LogicBay, said he relocated the three-year-old operation last September [to Providence] so he’d be closer to home. Now, he said, the company will look to raise capital to hire more employees and break into new markets.

Now, the Business Development Company of Rhode Island, a non-bank lender based in Providence, has given LogicBay a five-year, $425,000 loan to refinance previous debt from Cleveland-based National City Bank, Panaccione said.

LogicBay develops software to manage dealer or distributor training, replacement-parts ordering, and other customer-service support. Instead of selling its software, LogicBay uses a "software-as-a-service" (SaaS) model and sells one to three-year service contracts. The SaaS market was $2 billion in 2004, and is expected to grow to $12 billion by 2010.

The private company...became profitable in a relatively short time, netting gains in its third year (2005) with revenue of $5.4 million, he said.

Panaccione said he hopes to raise “$1 million to $3 million” in venture capital over the next several months...LogicBay now employs 22 people, he said, and it plans to hire five more over the next year, as managers and software engineers.