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Around casual dinners and drinks, three executives who met “in a past work life” brainstormed and designed a concept for a new information technology business that would meet the needs of small and medium-sized companies in Iowa.

“It was not a formal plan,” said Joe Shields, co-owner, co-founder and president of IP Pathways LLC. “We were discussing, ‘What’s the customer base in Central and Eastern Iowa wanting, and why isn’t it happening?'”

IP Pathways, the brainchild of three men who worked at LightEdge Solutions Inc., opened its doors at 2550 73rd St. in Urbandale on Nov. 5.

“We provide information technology solutions and services to clients in Central and Eastern Iowa,” said Wade Brower, co-owner, co-founder and executive vice president of sales and marketing for the company. “We architect, implement, integrate and support technology for our customers, making technology easy to understand and use.”

Expertise of three

The three founders of IP Pathways, each of whom has at least 15 years of experience in different niches of the technology field, want to provide quality services to local businesses that cannot compete with larger companies for top IT services.

“We have taken three disparate experiences and turned them into one best-in-class service,” Shields said.

Shields’ expertise ranges from enterprise technology to working with the “smallest of the small” companies in application space (specializing in networks and computers) and senior systems architecture (designing and building tech solutions), and he has owned and worked with independent software vendor companies.

Jim Strong, the company’s co-owner, co-founder and executive vice president of technology and operations, has worked with a number of consulting companies, including owning two businesses. He specializes in integration (customer networks, servers and routers), from implementing to integrating and handling the day-to-day, break-and-fix problems for small to medium-sized businesses.

Brower has accumulated around 20 years of sales experience, including management and operations, with the majority of his time spent in the technology field.

“Starting up a business is not easy, but we have experiences from the past and we are bringing them together for the success we have seen and the success we want to see,” Brower said.

The number of clients and employees are two successes for IP Pathways. The company already has seven employees and “large engagements” with clients, and further growth is anticipated.

“We estimate that by the end of 2008 we will have roughly 25 employees and service north of 100 to 150 companies, based on our baseline production,” Shields said.

Some concern did arise when the partners were deciding whether to “bootstrap it” and run the company on their own or to hire employees. Finding workers with sufficient technological expertise originally looked difficult due to Iowa’s “brain drain,” but Brower said they have had luck in finding employees for IP Pathways so far.

“There are local people that are looking to take their careers to the next level,” he said.

Shields added: “We want to build a strong organization and corporate culture and add people who want to succeed and be enabled with resources to provide (technology) services. The key to success is the ability to identify and recruit capable talent, (keep up with new technology) and build a fun and challenging work environment.”

IP Pathways’ founders have attracted employees without the use of recruiters or job postings. “People are coming to us because of the referral network we have built,” Brower said. “People recognize the opportunity.”

The only thing holding the company back from hiring even more workers is the lack of office furniture.

“Our growth limiting factor is our furniture, how fast we can get furniture in,” Shields said.

What’s to offer?

“Microsoft Corp. info-structure, messaging and collaboration,” along with storage technology and “green IT services,” are the three general categories of technology solutions and services that IP Pathways offers.

“A great (portion) of the market integrates and implements those technologies,” Shields said. “We are not exactly ahead of the curve, but we are bringing those technologies to our customer base.”

Small and medium-sized companies will have access to current technology and improved data storage, which will allow for fewer servers and ultimately less energy to be used.

“This means leveraging what clients get out of a single computer,” Shields said.

With IP Pathways’ solutions and services, small local businesses, not just larger companies, have the opportunity to receive “best in class” service.

“Especially in Des Moines there are great enterprise businesses, like Wells Fargo & Co. and EMC (Insurance Group Inc.), that swallow the high-caliber technology resources,” Shields said. “The small and medium-tier businesses are competing for them and they do not have the opportunity or the capital to do that.”

IP Pathways will work with clients on everything from a project-to-project basis to consulting for an IT department.

The company also architects IT solutions, assists with vendor selection, installs business software, installs and configures hardware and platform software, manages IT implementation projects, provides IT strategy consulting and provides post-implementation services.

When working with clients, IP Pathways will first consider the customers’ needs, second, decide how to architect their solutions, third, look at a variety of vendors and then, Brower said, when relevant, help the customer and vendor develop a lasting relationship.

Brower said IP Pathways’ staff will consult “on the C-level” to help owners of businesses that are too small to afford an in-house chief information officer, to make strategic IT decisions that work with the clients’ budget.

“There are promising tech professionals that we can guide through our experience, train and mentor them and provide a best-in-class service,” Shields said.