Platform Lab may be flying under the average person's radar, but within Ohio's information technology world, the "the nation's only state-funded IT test and training facility" seems to have come of age.
Formed in 2001 as a partnership between the Ohio Supercomputer Center and the Columbus-based Business Technology Center (now known as TechColumbus), the center's client list has grown to more than 240 companies ranging in size from startups to established giants like Victoria's Secret Catalog.
The non-profit organization, located with parent TechColumbus, was launched with a $250,000 state grant to give companies an economical place to test IT solutions, says lab Director Steve Gruetter.
"They put together a focus group with 43 consulting companies, and what they decided to do was to create a facility where companies could go to test solutions to get to market quicker," he says.
Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the dot-com implosion. Platform Lab needed to remake itself quickly. The answer: disaster recovery plan validation, a decision that led to a number of big clients like Wendy's and BMW Financial.
A $1.164-million Ohio Third Frontier grant in 2005 allowed the lab to create a statewide network that interconnected with the Third Frontier network and offered clients a way to use the system on a test-test-only basis to validate high-bandwidth applications.
First came load and stress testing, then the Expertise Partner Program, an initiative that links clients with Ohio-based IT consultants and which has resulted in 71 sales opportunities for consultant partners.
Most recently, Platform Lab built a "private cloud" that allows clients to connect into its resources to do testing using "virtual machines" that mimic what a client would see if he or she were physically present in the lab.
Source: Steve Gruetter, Platform Lab
Writer: Gene Monteith