TANgents Summer 2004

Since mid-90's, Ainsworth has included information technology as part of broader economic development efforts

Reprinted from the Nebraska Department of Economic Development's Nebraska Development News, March 2004

Editor's Note: Ainsworth was one of the first communities to start a community information technology committee in the mid-90's. More recently Ainsworth participated in Technology Across Nebraska's IT Planning and Mini Grant program as part of three-county planning effort. Ainsworth's focus on providing technology training to residents in the mid-90's-resulting in a local workforce with technology skills-- gave Ainsworth an edge in recruiting a call center for an Omaha IT firm. Although that first call center closed, Ainsworth has now recruited a new call center. Does your community have a workforce with the computer skills necessary to support a call center? Is technology-related development one piece of your community's broader economic development efforts?

Technologent, Inc., a California-based technology company, expanded to rural Nebraska last November, locating its first national service center in Ainsworth. The company currently employs 30 people and has plans to recruit and hire more employees this spring. The Ainsworth center is an expansion of Technologent's services that address new inside sales, targeting service contracts and maintenance agreement renewals for products manufactured by Sun Microsystems.

The company is located in a downtown building owned by Brown County Development, Inc. Interestingly, about the same time that the development corporation was marketing the building with partners North Central Development Center, the city of Ainsworth, Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) and DED, Technologent CEO Tom Gallaway was looking to expand his company in another part of the country. Gallaway grew up in the Ainsworth area and graduated from Bassett High School. A phone call from his mother spurred him to contact Sheryl Hiatt with DED about the vacant building.

DED awarded Ainsworth $505,000 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to help with the startup of Technologent.

"State and local economic leaders came together to make this happen," said Julie Younkin, director of Technologent's Ainsworth location. "DED and NPPD played a huge role in recruiting the Gallaways. They could have chosen any location in the U.S., but their decision was made easier by the incentives that Nebraska offered and by Tom's desire to grow his company in his home state."

The center's employees are mostly from the Sandhills region and within a 50-mile radius of Ainsworth, but the company also has recruited employees from as far away as Omaha, Oklahoma and Boston. The company has made significant investments in job training, bringing Sun Microsystems trainers, and most recently Wilson Learning, to Nebraska to provide onsite training and conduct a two-day relationshipselling workshop, respectively, for account representatives. All employees are Sun certified and authorized to sell new computer
equipment.

"This is another testament to the type of company that Technologent is and the length they go to reinvest in their people," Younkin said.

Technologent specializes in enterprise systems, storage solutions, data management, and e-business infrastructure. Its core business is the architecture and deployment of strategic information technology solutions. The company is an authorized reseller for Sun Microsystems, and teams with Sun and other industry-leading technology providers, such as VERITAS, Cisco, Oracle and Hitachi Data Systems to design systems specific to client needs. Corporate offices are located in the San Diego area with sales offices in Dallas, Houston and Austin, Tex., and San Francisco.

"The company's impact on the local economy has already been impressive," said Younkin. "We have Technologent and Sun employees and outside trainers here monthly," added Younkin. "They are staying in area hotels, buying food, filling up with gas, and buying souvenirs to take back home. It's all good."

For information, contact Sheryl Hiatt at (402) 589-0027, or e-mail: shiatt@neded.org .

TANgents, a quarterly publication of Technologies Across Nebraska, is edited and produced by Linda Tempel, University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension, ltempel@unlnotes.unl.edu, and Anne Byers, Nebraska Information Technology Commission, abyers@notes.state.ne.us. Please contact us if you would like to contribute an article or an idea for an article. Comments and suggestions are also welcome.