Arizona is working hard to reposition itself as an innovative player in today’s highly competitive high-tech world. But the goal is not merely to create jobs and commerce for a state that has been recently criticised for falling short on its past record in high-paid technology jobs, despite the recession. Government representatives want to push next generation technologies – such as bioscience, wireless broadband telecommunications and nanotechnology – to acquire a position as a global high tech centre.
No doubt, Arizona has been hurt by corporate downsizing and the fact chipmaking jobs, one of its strongholds, are moving offshore to Asia. Yet Arizona still ranks third behind San Jose, California, and Austin, Texas, for producing high-end chips.

Mid-size achievement

Government officials see Arizona’s mid-size corporations as paving the way to its future.
Three-Five Systems Inc (TFS) of Tempe, for example, designs and produces monochrome and full-color display and display subsystems. The company also offers integrated systems solutions and has experience in input and output devices, hardware, software, housings, and industrial design. TFS, a spin-off from National Semiconductor Corp’s optoelectronics division, operates its headquarters in Phoenix.
“Several of the company’s founders had homes in the Phoenix area. Certainly this was a tremendously less expensive area to found a company at the time, compared with San Jose,” recalls Jack Saltich, TFS president and CEO. “In addition, the quality of life in Phoenix is and was a positive factor.”
Since its beginnings, TFS has had great success finding talent in Phoenix, particularly as Silicon Valley grew in size and number of companies.
“When the economy has been strong in the past, competition for talent can be a factor here, particularly for companies that do business internationally and are looking for that expertise,” Mr Saltich says.
Like many high tech companies in Arizona, TFS has partnered with Arizona State University (ASU) on several fronts over the years, including recruiting, internships, scholarships and other general projects in the engineering fields. The company is also a good corporate citizen involved with a statewide competition for school-aged students in the technical field  called First Robotics.

Education adds value

Alan Steinberg, CEO and president of Tempe-based Axon Technologies Corp, emphasises the importance education centres such as ASU have on the future of mid-sized high tech companies in Arizona.
“There is a lot of competition coming from other countries and states to attract high technology, especially in new technologies such as nanotechnology,” comments
Mr Steinberg. “ASU has been involved in materials research for nanotechnology for a long time so it already has the momentum that many other locations have yet to achieve.”
Axon Technologies, founded in 1996, grew out of advanced semiconductor material research being done at ASU. Its business is advanced semiconductor memory cells. Axon is a technology creation and licensing company that develops and commercialises its revolutionary and proprietary technology, the Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC). PMC is the cornerstone of Integrated Ionics, a new and exciting field being pioneered by Axon and one that has generated applications from solid-state data storage to optoelectronics.
“The technology qualifies as a nanotechnology given its sub 100 nanometer memory cell geometry,” Mr Steinberg explains. “We are now in the development phase, to prove out high volume manfacturability, with a larger memory array test chip.”
The Phoenix area proves to be a natural home for Axon. “ASU’s research capabilities are world class in advance semiconductor materials. There is a lot of expertise available for a semiconductor validation effort like ours. The only other state that comes close is Texas,” says Mr Steinberg. Axon’s research team is composed primarily of PhD candidates. “It’s a very efficient way to get good research done on our base materials,” he adds.

Reaching out

Vincent Sollitto, president and CEO of Brillian Corp, plans to increase his contacts with Arizona universities.
“We have not recently been involved in using universities for research and development, but plan to,” he says.
Brillian Corp has already achieved many industry firsts to earn a reputation as the leader in the microdisplay industry. The company was the first to offer a complete microdisplay solution, as well as being the first, and only, provider of high contrast, LCOS® Gen II microdisplay panels. Much of its business revolves around transforming television into a more sophisticated device due to the global move to digital television (DTV) formats; the convergence of computing, high-speed communications and home entertainment, and the growing demand for larger screen sizes and better image quality.
Mr Sollitto explains he has only recently moved to Phoenix from Silicon Valley, where the costs of doing business are much higher compared with Arizona.
“Arizona is more business friendly from a cost standpoint,” he says. He points to attributes such as Arizona’s quality of life, reasonable cost of living, and substantial availability of talent. “Overall, it’s a good situation,” he says.
While Mr Sollitto is a newcomer to the company, Brillian itself has its roots in Arizona as a recent spin-off of Three-Five Systems.

Look ahead

Inter-Tel concentrates its efforts on targeting technologically-advanced communications for small and medium-sized enterprises. This commitment enables it to provide customers with solutions for today and tomorrow’s needs.
Steven Mihaylo, Inter-Tel CEO and president, points to ASU as a key advantage to the company’s Arizona location.
“We have some 200 to 300 engineers on our payroll that have come out of ASU,” he says. “We work very closely with the university for job recruitment. They know exactly what our needs are.”
While Inter-Tel has operations all over the US, Japan and the UK, Mr Mihaylo points to Arizona’s quality of life as the state’s major plus. “Arizona has more going for it than it has not going for it,” he says. Among his criticism is the state’s tax incentive programme, but he praises the co-operation between business and government.

Engineering base

Founded in 1998, Mesa-headquartered Acoustic Technologies finds Arizona’s strengths in its engineering base.
“The large high tech companies that are located here, such as Motorola, Intel, Honeywell and General Dynamics, allow us to grow to get the technical expertise we need,” says Samuel Thomasson, Acoustic Technologies’ CEO and president.
Acoustic Technologies designs and develops integrated solutions – semiconductors and DSP software – for the telecommunications industry. Marketed as SoundClear®, its brand of full-duplex communication and echo cancellation solutions enable natural bi-directional communication in business speakerphones, mobile phones, VoIP telephones and consumer telephony products.
But Mr Thomasson points to other attributes, especially the ease with which its corporate executives can travel to other cities like Chicago or Austin to call on major clients. He also sees the universities, such as ASU and University of Arizona in Tucson, playing a key role in attracting talent, yet commends Arizona’s junior college system. “The community college network is superb and lays a good foundation for recruitment. Plus, many of the students go on to study engineering,” he says.

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