Cleveland's Tech Industry: A City Working Smarter AND Harder

You’re at the ATM withdrawing some money from your checking account, but instead of showing a debit of the $500 you took, your bank receipt shows a withdrawal of $5000 instead. Or maybe you’re going in for knee replacement surgery, but right before the procedure starts, your surgeon said he hasn’t had enough training for this particular surgery. Right before you go under, you say a prayer and hope for the best.

These miserable scenarios are ones you hopefully won’t ever have to face. The reason why you don’t face them is because of the technology (“tech”) companies located in one magical place: Cleveland.

You can’t go anywhere without bumping into tech--it’s horizontally integrated with any and every kind of business. You may think of the apps on your phone or communication tools you use for work or any other kind of front-end software, but underneath all of that is vital back-end infrastructure that makes all that tech go.

That’s where Cleveland comes in.

Blue Collars Under White Lab Coats

Consistent with the city’s rich history as a blue-collar town, Cleveland takes a lunch pail approach to the way it handles technology. In particular, tech companies in Cleveland, working in tandem with the city’s two main economic sectors, healthcare and manufacturing, are helping to modernize older systems and carve out leading edge roles in others. For instance, the technology and manufacturing sectors are working together to update production systems, creating, as a by-product, a smarter, more technically skilled workforce.

On the ground, Cleveland’s got a little bit of everything as far as tech goes, but stands out with businesses involved in cybersecurity, healthcare and data centers (the cloud).

Cybersecurity Leaders

Now growing in our awareness as more U.S.-based companies are being targeted by bad actors (none of whom you’ll find at Playhouse Square), state and federal government bodies, along with local and national corporations, are turning to one of many Cleveland-based or located companies to manage their cybersecurity.

Companies like Binary Defense and TCDI are securing data, providing endpoint (laptops, cell phones and other smart devices) management and offering 24/7, head-on-a-swivel vigilance to keep their clients safe from digital threats.

Healthcare is King in The Land

With healthcare as the center of Cleveland’s economic universe, it’s no wonder that a burgeoning collection of ancillary and spin-off ventures in healthcare have taken hold. This grab bag of companies covers everything from imaging (MIM Software) to medical devices (Prince & Izant Medical) to the use of virtual reality in the operating room (Surgical Theater).

The union of healthcare and data also has its own niche in Cleveland. Explorys, once a part of Cleveland Clinic that was spun off and acquired by IBM, made its mark by drawing meaningful conclusions from electronic health record (EHR) data and sits atop one of the largest clinical data sets in the world.

Data Center Central

Whether it’s Explorys, Amazon or any other company in the world, really, you’ve got to find a place to store your data in the cloud, which takes energy. A simple equation explains why data centers are being drawn to Cleveland:

Cheap, available power (natural gas) + abundant fiber-optic cable (largest fiber trunk in the nation) + safe storing options = Cloud Computing Central.

Companies like Cabot Solutions, ASMGi and Onix Networking are just a few examples of the thriving cloud computing companies in Cleveland who support name brands all over the world.

It can be dizzying to think about all the ways technology cuts through our daily lives, whether as individuals or the companies for which we work. But the next time you send an encrypted email from work, access your EHR before or after a doctor’s appointment or throw your download of Season 4 of “Downton Abbey” on the cloud, make sure you take a moment and think of Cleveland.