In The News

Vermont becomes code word for software developers

An axiom of the Internet age holds that information workers can operate home-based businesses almost anywhere, including the backwoods of Vermont. Plenty of software developers are doing just that, but many have found that these generally satisfying situations do have one big drawback: a sense of isolation.

"Even though they work with highly sophisticated communications technology,- a lot of these people say they want more face-to-face contacts," says Wayne Fawbush, director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. And Fawbush's business-networking organization has helped the state's software developers bridge their separations by forming an alliance.

Don Schramm, general manager of Burlington-based Data Systems, came to the same conclusions and took a similar initiative 12 years ago. "I had the sense there were a number of software developers in Chittenden County who'd find they had a lot in common if they could get together," Schramm says. He suggested to state officials that they organize a conference of software writers, but "I didn't get a very encouraging response," recalls Schramm, whose company was formed in 1983.

Schramm persisted, however, and became another of the instigators of the Vermont Software Developers' Alliance, which was launched last October. In addition to serving as a social forum, this grouping of mostly small businesses, some consisting of a single person, provides its members with advice on legal, financial and human resource matters. And while the alliance does not offer instruction on how to write code, its participants do share insights into other aspects of the software business.

There's very little competition within the alliance," Schramm notes. "There's such a variety of things you can do in this realm that there really isn't much overlap."

The cooperative approach extends to procurement and fulfillment of contracts.

"The alliance makes it possible for small companies to respond to larger opportunities, especially contracts with government agencies or out-of-state companies," says Dave Parker, cochair of the alliance's board and director of informationtechnology partnerships at Vermont Hitec. This part of the alliance's mission is already being achieved. Green Mountain Software, a home-based business focused on hand-held computers, recently won a major contract with PalmOne and will carrying it out in conjunction with a few of the alliance's members, says company co-owner Ann Pettyjohn.

"We've seen this industry cross a threshold in the last six months," declares Bruce Seifer, a Burlington economic development specialist who arranged the initial meeting of what became the alliance. "Some big contracts are coming through now. It's really taking off."

One of the alliance's chief ambitions is to speed that ascent by attracting more software businesses to Vermont. It thus seeks to endow the state with a reputation as one of the industry's leading venues.

There's still a lot to be done in this regard, alliance members acknowledge.

"If you attend an industry conference in Las Vegas or Miami and say you run a software company in Vermont, everybody laughs at you," Parker recounts. "People don't think of Vermont as a hub of software development."

To some degree, that laughter is an expression of ignorance.

Perhaps the scoffers haven't heard of Par Springer-Miller Systems, a company that originated in Stowe in 1983 and has since installed its hospitality-industry software in more than 60 countries. And could those who mock Vermont be unfamiliar with IDX, the South Burlington firm that ranks as a world leader in software for health-care providers?

IDX alumni account for a significant number of the dozens of software startups in Vermont, notes Parker. But IDX has not joined the alliance, and Par SpringerMiller was sold last year to a company in New York City. What's more, John SpringerMiller, the firm's president, describes Vermont as "a very unattractive place to start a business."

Springer-Miller says he is unfamiliar with the alliance but wishes it well.

"I would have liked to have people to bounce ideas off of when I was getting started in software," says the company's founder, a former theater critic and actor. "I'm very dubious there will be a large influx of software entrepreneurs into the state," Springer-Miller adds. "I don't think an alliance of software developers will get rid of the obstacles that can cause someone who wants to start a business to look elsewhere."

Springer-Miller says he loves Vermont but recoils at what he describes as the "really awful attitudes" toward entrepreneurship on the part of many Vermonters. He cites a proposal in the Legislature, which did not advance, to impose a special tax on software. He also says state regulators made it impossible for his company to establish an on-site daycare center for employees' children.

But 135 other entrepreneurs have found Vermont a desirable place to launch or maintain a software company. That's the alliance's estimate of how many such businesses are located in the state.