Volker Straub and Matthias Horch moved from their native Germany to the United States in 2000 to launch a U.S. subsidiary of TDS, a German application hosting provider.
Less than a year later, the tech bubble had burst, and they were told to pack up and come back home.
But Michigan had won them over -- its woods, its waters, and even its wintertimes. Straub and Horch decided to stay and build their own application hosting business.
The result? Southfield-based Secure-24 Inc., which is now building out its third data center, employs 30 people, and has experienced 100-percent-plus revenue growth in each of the past five fiscal years.
How is such growth possible? Straub and his sales manager, Matthew J. Wenzler, say it's because the company speaks the language of businesses who increasingly have to worry about compliance issues in their IT systems. The company hosts applications handling everything from ultra-sensitive financial information to health care information, and uses advanced firewalls and gateways, intrusion detection and top-flight security to stay in tight compliance with industry and government standards.
Secure-24 has also added help desk services in recent years to provide complete outsourcing services, focused at the middle market.
Secure-24 offers two data centers in Southfield, and one in Arizona. The newest center, just off Lahser Road, was originally built by the telecom carrier XO Communications. It features two-foot-thick walls, advanced fire suppression, tons of gigabit connectivity, and enough backup power to last for weeks in a blackout.
The company's client list is a Who's Who of corporate America, from auto suppliers to consumer firms. Secure-24 hosts everything from corporate marketing images to online catalog data to the image files of an advanced animation company.
One example: United Road Services (www.unitedroad.com), the nation's largest nationwide provider of vehicle logistics. They have tapped Secure-24 to run their critical application environment for all business-facing applications, as well as support services for all end users in the company.
Secure-24 also serves Monroe-based Hilgraeve, which offers HyperSend PDX, a data transmission system for health care centers. Secure-24 offers Hilgraeve fully managed hosting focused on industry compliance.
And, the company provides "media asset management" to the advertising giant Doner, which allows their employees and customers secure access to images, sound and video from all over the world.
Perhaps most engagingly, the company is crazy about Michigan and the Detroit area.
"Michigan is a really good place to be," Straub said. "We find it very different from what we read in the headlines."
That's partially because of the top-shelf IT talent being produced by the state's universities -- recent graduates who are eager to stay close to home, very happy they don't have to leave Michigan to have a challenging technology-based career, and therefore very loyal.
"It's easy to find great people here," said Sandy Hemingway, the company's marketing manager.
And there's good IT mentoring here too. Straub said former Compuware Corp. president Joe Nathan serves on Secure-24's board and is a key adviser.
More at www.secure-24.com
Secure-24: hosting on the grow
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