Involta named Innovator of Year at MEDCO event

MEDCO President Nick Glew, Involta CEO Bruce Lehrman and CBJ Publisher John Lohman shown with the Innovator of the Year award at the March 9 MEDCO luncheon.

By Adam Moore
adam@corridorbusiness.com

 

CEDAR RAPIDS—Data centers and IT service providers have become crucial partners as the business world shifts to the cloud, and the Marion Economic Development Corp. took time during its annual luncheon to recognize one Corridor company leading the way.

MEDCO and the Corridor Business Journal on March 9 presented the organization’s 2016 Innovator of the Year award to Involta, a national provider of IT intelligence and infrastructure with a data center in Marion.

“The technology industry mandates the highest level of innovation to support growing business both locally and globally,” MEDCO President Nick Glew stated in a press release announcing the award. “Involta regularly introduces game-changing tools to support the highest data needs that drive innovation both within their own company and inside the companies they serve.”

The latest example of that approach to innovation comes in the form of Involta’s PULSE Platform, which launched last May. PULSE offers health care clients a flexible array of infrastructure, storage, network, computing power, and backup and recovery services, all of which are fully compatible with electronic health record systems and hosted in Involta’s secure data centers.

“It’s really helping our customers have a secure platform to which they can move, instead of going to the old model where everybody owns and controls their own infrastructure,” CEO Bruce Lehrman said in an interview. “It’s been a big opportunity for our clients to not have to worry about having servers, storage and networks, and still have a scalable environment.”

About 40 percent of Involta’s business is now health care-related. The PULSE platform is part of a larger effort to develop products and services specifically for health care.

Involta has been busy managing its rapid growth as well. In June 2015, the company acquired Data Recovery Services LLC, a managed-services and IT consulting firm operating in Ohio and Pennsylvania, doubling the company’s size and adding three data centers to its portfolio. With that acquisition and the opening of a second Involta data center in Boise last year, the company now counts 13 facilities across the country, along with more than 5,500 miles of fiber optic cable and nearly 200 employees.

The year ahead looks to be equally busy, with work beginning on new data center projects in some new geographic territories, according to Mr. Lehrman. More information about those projects is expected later this spring.

The company has been named to Inc. magazine’s Inc. 5000 list of America’s Fastest Growing Companies four times, and to the Corridor Business Journal’s fastest growing list five times.

“Involta is honored to win the Innovator of the Year award,” Mr. Lehrman said in a release. “We have a great team of people working every day to help our clients achieve their goals. We continue to succeed due to our commitment to being thought leaders and following it up with execution.”

 

Tip of the CAPS

MEDCO’s luncheon event also included a keynote by Sandy Henshaw of the Northland Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS), an educational program outside of Kansas City, Missouri, that aims to immerse students in professional environments and prepare them for a range of advanced occupations.

Juniors and seniors across seven school districts can participate in the program, which offers five tracks, or ‘strands,’ including engineering and advanced manufacturing, global business and entrepreneurship, logistics and transportation, medicine and health care, technology solutions, and digital media and design.

Students team up to solve problems for partner businesses in their first semester, and are then placed into half-day internships in the following semesters where they work side-by-side with employees at their partner companies. Northland CAPS’ curriculum is driven by the program’s more than 400 partner businesses, and focuses around the skills needed in the Kansas City area.

“What students learn each year could be very different, depending on what the businesses bring to the table,” Ms. Henshaw said. “It’s something that a traditional classroom cannot replicate.”

Ms. Henshaw described the program as an opportunity for the community to better train its high school students, and a step toward getting young professionals to stay in the area after college – both issues of importance for the Corridor’s business community.

“We’re just trying to plant the seeds here today to show how businesses and educators can partner to create success,” Nick Glew said following Ms. Henshaw’s remarks. He encouraged those in attendance to host a high school intern if they don’t already.

“It’s an easy first step in equipping tomorrow’s workforce,” he added.

Nearly 400 attended the MEDCO luncheon, held at the Cedar Rapids Marriott.