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Rapid City Journal Staff Writer - Dan Daly Tech Company in new building Comuniq Inc. visited by local business, government officials. Comuniq, Inc is an economic developer's dream: a small, fast growing technology firm with international connections, a world-wide market and a fondness for small-town life. And it's a company that hasn't asked for grants, loans or other financial incentives. Local government and business officials turned out in force Monday morning to welcom Comuniq to its new facilities off Deadwood Avenue. The new building is the product-development center for the far-flung Norway-based company. The company set up shop here in July 1998 with seven software developers and a small basement office on Jackson Boulevard. It now has 21 full-time workers, nine part-time students and a suite of offices. Comuniq makes circuit boards and related software for the fast-growing personal computer based telecommunications market. Its boards are used for everything from Internet-based telephony to call-center switching equipment. "We're looking at some milestones-if we reach them, it might result in more employment," said J. Arthur Olafsen, board chairman and a major investor in Comuniq. He traveled from the company's corporate headquarters in Oslo for Monday's ribbon-cutting ceremony. "The market feedback has been positive." Olafsen was involved in a similar venture that began in the 1980s. Through that experience, he learned an important lesson: If you want to sell your products to U.S. corporations, you must have a U.S. presence. Also, Comuniq will use it U.S. base to market in Asia and the Pacific Rim. The company recently opened its North American headquarters in San Diego. Other offices are in Paris, Boston, Oslo and Sola, Norway. This year Comuniq will open offices in the United Kingdom, Germany and San Jose, Calif. Why Rapid City? Jan Bjerke, Comuniq president and chief executive officer, said Rapid City offers qualified engineers and designers, the academic resources of South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, a good business climate and a long-standing relationship between Tech and Norwegian engineering community. For generations, Norway has sent its engineering students to Tech. "In 50 years, we have had a great relationship with Norway", Tech President Richard Gowen said. He said Comuniq's Rapid City office is the latest in a series of links between Tech and Norway. And Gowen said the company allows some Tech graduates to do something that was not always possible - stay in South Dakota. "These are the types of jobs our graduates had to leave the state for," he said. Bjerke also praise Black Hills FiberCom for its new fiber-optic infrastructure, which gives companies like Comuniq the high-speed internet access they need. It's the same technology, he noted, that is driving the market for Comuniq's products. Trends that bode well for Comuniq include product delivery over the internet, virtual corporations and the convergence of voice, data and video into one communications pipeline. Internet protocol (IP) telephony was a $20 million industry in 1996, Bjerk said. By 2002, it is expected to be a $1.9 billion industry. |