Starkville tech firm wants to reach the world
Gary Butler returned to his home state of Mississippi in 2006 to start his own business, to apply the lessons he learned while working for a technology company in Cambridge, Mass.
Eight years later, Butler’s technology-solutions company, Starkville’s Camgian Microsystems, has established itself as one of the state’s most notable tech firms, but Butler says the launch of a product this fall could bring a new, global customer base to Camgian’s doorstep.
The company plans to launch “Egburt,” a secure, cloud-based service aimed at combining localized, real-time analytics with high-level information processing, at the Internet of Things Global Summit in Washington, D.C., Oct. 27-28. The company plans to open a Jackson marketing office in advance of the debut.
Butler, Camgian’s CEO, sees Egburt as the next logical step in providing connectivity through the “Internet of Things,” an online world connected, he says, not only through desktop computers and other traditional setups but through mobile devices and even automobiles and other machinery that runs to any extent on computerized power.
“We’ve gone from thousands of (technology) connections in the 1970s and 1980s to more than 1 billion connections now,” Butler said.
With that broadening of connectivity comes the chance to expand Camgian’s customer base. Until now, much of the client base has been in the defense industry, but Butler says Egburt could bring customers from the retail sector that are looking for real-time information on customer-traffic patterns or energy usage as well as cities developing “smart” systems to track air-quality levels or daily traffic flow.
“Camgian is doing cutting-edge things in the fields where they’re working,” says Tony Jeff, CEO of Innovate Mississippi, a nonprofit promoting the growth of Mississippi businesses that utilize technology and innovation. “The technologies they’ve developed are really important.”
And products Camgian already has developed have garnered attention from the company’s peers.
M2M Evolution Magazine gave the firm its 2014 Product of the Year award for Quantus, a network of low-power, cellular pressure sensors that report on-site liquid information from places like oil/gas terminals to cloud-based software. The system, Butler says, allows for more efficient drop-off and pickup of fuel, since drivers will have a greater sense of which stops on their routes have the most fuel at a given time.
A Pearl High School graduate, Butler decided to base Camgian in Starkville to draw on what he says is a talented pool of engineers and other scientifically oriented talent associated with Mississippi State University. The company employs 33 and does business in 14 states. Jeff says more fledgling tech companies can experience Camgian’s kind of success by establishing such partnerships.
Contact Jeff Ayres at (601) 961-7050 or jeff.ayres@jackson. gannett.com. Follow @jeffayres71 on Twitter.
ON THE WEB
www.egburt.com