Alan Erdley and David Gibbons were recent college graduates working full-time in information technology in Central PA when they decided to start their own business.
Two years later that venture, Flashpoint Informatics, has a total of three employees and about a dozen clients. They provide services including cloud-based hosting of information on the Internet, custom software design, and technology consulting. Flashpoint’s main business is storing information on the cloud. To that end, last month it opened a data center in State College, where its Web servers are stored. Flashpoint also maintains a backup site in Philadelphia to keep customers from losing their information. Opening the data center in State College enables Flashpoint to offer its clients more services, Erdley says.
“It’s really about customer service for us,” says CEO Erdley, who graduated from Penn State in 2009. “We can offer solutions that are comparable to the big players in the industry at a much lower cost.” Making use of this service is crucial in today’s world, especially when you have a small business.
While people across the globe already take advantage of Flashpoint’s services, one of its next goals is to give customers all over the world the ability to use space on its servers. Clients would just have to log onto the company’s website and buy server space on a month-to-month basis.
Flashpoint is also developing Web-based software for businesses, with applications like document control and employee attendance tracking.
Source: Alan Erdley, Flashpoint Informatics
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen