Recovered technology sector takes positive steps

If time heals all wounds, then it seems that the gashes made by the tech bust are nearly closed.

The technology sector in Northern Colorado is dominated by two separate segments – the large, high-tech companies that make up some of the region’s largest employers and the small, technology startups that are vying for a piece of the market.

The good news is that in Northern Colorado the last year has seen big leaps in a positive direction for both sectors, and word is that it should continue in that direction.

SPONSORED CONTENT

How Platte River Power Authority is accelerating its energy transition

Platte River Power Authority, the community-owned wholesale electricity provider for Northern Colorado, has a history of bold initiatives.

The year started out well, with Intel settling into the former Celestica building on Harmony Road. The company acquired 250 employees from Hewlett Packard in December 2004 to start its Itanium design center in Fort Collins. By the start of 2006, the site had added about 100 employees to its ranks.

Intel not only generated primary jobs, it also attracted attention. In early January, Intel’s competitor Advanced Micro Devices held a job fair in Fort Collins – probably not coincidentally. The company purchased space at LSI Logic’s vacated building on Harmony Road, dubbing the site the Mile High Design Center, and has already hired more than 80 people with plans to continue hiring into 2007.

Competition also brought another technology firm to Fort Collins. After fighting a legal battle with LSI over an alleged talent raid, Broadcom Corp. revealed in early 2006 its intentions of setting up and growing a Fort Collins design center. The lawsuit was settled and Broadcom spokesman Bill Blanning said that the Fort Collins center would grow organically from about a dozen employees.

“One of the trends that you can’t help but see is all the integrated circuit design,´ said Doug Johnson, interim executive director of the Fort Collins Technology Incubator and organizer of NoCo Net, a networking group for the underemployed and unemployed started in the wake of tech-sector job losses.

Johnson said that these large tech companies have drained the NoCo Net talent pool of workers skilled in circuit design. Another segment that he sees a lot of hiring is in product management and business development. These people tend to be tech workers with MBAs.

In his role at the incubator, Johnson gets a view of the region’s other technology sector – small companies that have been innovating and growing quietly, but are poised to become Northern Colorado’s economic engine.

“There are two companies in the incubator that moved from a garage to 20 people in the space of two years,” Johnson said. “Where will they be at in five years?”

The incubator itself will be undergoing some change in 2007, as the board works through a reengineering effort. While details aren’t yet available, Johnson hinted that the incubator was likely to take on a new layer of issues important to growing the technology industry. He estimates that the incubator will grow to many times its current size.

“We’ve got a lot of momentum,” Johnson said.

Much of that momentum comes from the increasing partnerships being forged in the technology community. This year, players from all aspects of the community formed to create the Clean Energy Initiative that will focus on growing the clean energy industry in the region. Colorado State University, one of the drivers behind the initiative, has always been a major force in the research world, but it is really stepping up to become a major economic player as well.

“I think you’re going to see more commercialization and more spin-off companies,´ said Mark Wdowik, vice president of technology transfer at the CSU Research Foundation.

Wdowik came to CSU this year to fill a newly created position that would focus on technology transfer. Such an addition is a testament to the changing culture at CSU that looks to couple innovation with commercialization.

“This isn’t all just about money,” Wdowik said. “We need to help the rest of the world and we have the technologies to do that.”

Wdowik said there are many exciting technologies in the commercialization pipeline right now. For example, a facial recognition technology for Department of Defense/Homeland Security and corporate security and tracking applications is in early stages with a yet-to-be-named company.

“It’s cutting-edge technology that we’re seeing here,” he said.

In all, the technology future looks bright for Northern Colorado. The large technology companies are once again stepping up to keep the region’s engineering talent fresh and to the area a technology hub in the U.S. And the small companies continue to plug along, promising to become the region’s next Advanced Energy Inc. or Heska Corp.

Coupled with all of the cutting-edge work coming out of CSU, 2007 promises to be an exciting year.