Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Tech duo staying ahead of curve

Their Tampa firm thrives by providing security for devices like handhelds.

By Kris Hundley, Times Staff Writer
Published March 16, 2007

When Charlotte Baker left her Treo in a Hertz rental van last year, it only reinforced her belief that the tech industry's obsession with protecting data on lost laptops was just addressing the tip of the iceberg.

Sure, stolen laptops create a security problem. But what about when a handheld computer goes missing?

"They're equally dangerous because they're a door-opener to your corporate network," said Baker, chief executive of Digital Hands, a tech-support company in Tampa. "And they're more easily stolen because of their size."

That's why Baker's company rolled out a service last year that can remotely erase the data on a handheld and restore it to a new device. Cost for the high-tech safeguard: about $14 a month.

"We've gone from providing remote computer support to providing security and compliance," said Baker, who co-founded Digital Hands in 2001 with Vince Rocca, the company's chief technology officer. "Tomorrow the crisis will be all about mobility devices."

Baker and Rocca, who met a decade ago when both were executives at Tampa's Intermedia Communications, have a knack for seeing what's ahead on the technology curve. After leaving Intermedia in 1998, they co-founded 2nd Century Inc. to sell low-cost telecom service to small and mid-sized businesses. The pair raised $155-million within 18 months and were poised to go public when Baker and Rocca realized their product would soon be rendered obsolete by newer technology. Unable to persuade the other executives to change direction, the two resigned in mid-2000.

"It was like leaving your baby," Baker, 41, said of the duo's decision to leave 2nd Century, which later collapsed during the tech bust. "But it was the right thing to do."

With a noncompete provision keeping Baker and Rocca out of the market for a year, the two worked on building the systems behind Digital Hands. Six years after starting the business, their company has 25 full-time employees who support applications, servers, desktops, laptops and handhelds at nearly 3,700 locations worldwide. Profitable and self-funded, Digital Hands deals with up to 1,200 customer issues every day, with problems resolved in an average of less than 20 minutes.

"Visitors are always expecting to see more butts in the seats here," said Baker, whose company occupies about one-third of the 20th floor of a downtown skyscraper. "But the human element is the most costly. When you minimize the human time and fortify those humans with intelligence, you can speed things up."

Baker said Digital Hands' customers range from two-person offices to corporations with 15,000 employees. One common denominator and a reason customers stick around? "We don't make customers feel stupid," Baker said.

Jim Miller contracted with Digital Hands when he ran the property management operations of William R. Hough in Tampa. In 2004, when he became chief financial officer of Landmark Residential Real Estate, a property-management company with headquarters in Tampa, Miller signed on again, for management of the information-technology needs of about 300 employees in six states.

"They support about 250 computers, servers and handhelds here for about one-quarter what it would cost for me to handle it in-house," said Miller, who recently had Digital Hands download an antivirus patch to his handheld while he was between flights in an airport. "It's the one thing in my job that runs smoothly."

Kris Hundley can be reached at hundley@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2996.

[Last modified March 15, 2007, 23:07:04]