Big-Name Tech Companies Dot Metro North Region
Published Apr 17, 2008
Avaya, in NorthGlenn, is a leading telecommunications firm with more than 2,500 employees working in the Metro North area.
Move over, California’s Silicon Valley. Look out, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. The Metro North region today boasts a reputation as a robust high-technology hub with big names such as Avaya and Sun Microsystems thriving alongside startups and spinoffs.
“A number of high-tech businesses are already located here, from software developers to hardware developers,” says Susan Grafton, Westminster’s economic development manager. “High-tech businesses like to be in an area where there are similar types of businesses because they know there’s workforce capability.”
In a nutshell, that’s Grafton’s strategy for attracting and retaining technology-based enterprises – tout Metro North’s pool of extraordinary talent. The strategy works, according to Deb Kline, a spokeswoman for Avaya. “One of the reasons the area has been attractive to us is because of access to the universities and colleges, so there’s an educated workforce nearby,” she says. She also cites the area’s strong economy and easy access from both coasts as reasons to do business in the Metro North region.
Of the company’s 20,000 employees worldwide, about 2,500 work in Colorado, most in the Westminster facility.
Avaya specializes in business communications. Avaya’s newest initiative is dubbed communications enabled business processes, a holistic approach that integrates a company’s communication methods to ensure real-time notification and response. “I can call into my mailbox and get my voice mail, access my e-mail, manipulate calendars and assign tasks – and do all this with my phone,” Kline explains.
Imagine, she adds, receiving a computer-generated notice on your cell phone, informing you that inventory is low, and you have the ability to place an immediate order using your phone.
“This is new territory that Avaya has been largely responsible for in the way of innovation,” Kline says.
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
Photo by Michael W. Bunch
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