Building on the successes of 2017, Opus Consulting today announced the opening of their first U.S. office in Bellingham, Washington state.
“The proximity of Vancouver to the American Border has always meant an added plus to our American clientele in the Pacific Northwest.”, said Founder Richard Brown, “The short distance and identical Time Zone means that businesses in all verticals can partner with OPUS in many cases more easily than Managed Service Providers in their own country but in a different area.” The new office’s address is: 2219 Rimland Dr Suite 301, Bellingham, WA 98226, USA, and can be reached by phone at (360) 639-4046, or Toll-Free at 1-866-800-OPUS (6787).
“We have long been discussing opening a physical presence in the U.S. Northwest due to the explosive growth of interest in Managed Business Solutions in that area,” he continued,” and Bellingham appears to be the best local hub between us and the Business centres of Seattle, Portland and other major corporate centres along the Cascadia Innovation corridor.”
The Cascadia Innovation Corridor is an agreement signed by British Columbia and Washington state in 2017 that aims to grow high-tech industries and strengthen collaboration across the region. For many businesses, the border has long been just a line between the U.S. and Canada, with many citizens, organisations and companies sharing not only economics, jobs and trade, but also culture and a sense of concern about their neighbours. Microsoft opened its Microsoft Canada Excellence Centre in downtown Vancouver in June 2016 to considerable fanfare, and other well-known tech-based businesses are based in the Canadian west-coast city: Vancouver’s PlentyofFish, the popular dating website, was purchased by Match Group in 2015 for US $575 Million, and the city is home to OMER Ventures-backed Hootsuite — valued at more than US$1 billion — as well as everyone’s favorite, Slack. In the hopes of fostering more unicorns like Slack and PlentyofFish and fastening BC’s start-up scene on the world map, the provincial government set up a $100 Million fund for early-stage funding in December 2015. Since then, there have been about 14,000 new tech jobs in the province. Being on the same coast as start-up hubs in San Francisco also has its advantages such as attracting a lot of outside attention from Silicon Valley stalwarts. In February of this year, Vancouver-based TIO Networks, which offers online and mobile solutions for bill payments, and processed more than US$7 billion in fiscal 2016, was acquired by PayPal for $304 million, and Kickstarter opened its first Non-US office in the same month, after acquiring Vancouver-based start-up Huzza. The entire province of BC now boasts more than 100,000 people working in the tech sector. Employment in the industry rose 2.9 percent in 2016 and employs more people than the ‘traditional’ Vancouver industries of mining, oil, gas and forestry industries combined.
The Innovation Corridor agreement promises to grow high-tech, life sciences, clean technology and data analytics industries across borders and foster ties throughout the region with joint action in research, education, workforce development and transportation and investment. Some of the progress that has already been made include memoranda of understanding between three cancer centres and a cross-university urban analytics research program. Washington has also allotted US$1 million toward a feasibility study for a high-speed rail link between Seattle and Vancouver. Launched late last year, the Seattle-Vancouver Financial Innovation Network (FIN) brings together leading Cascadia Corridor financial services and technology companies and relevant U.S. and Canadian regulatory authorities to establish an integrated international financial center (IFC). Initial FIN programs will include promotion of coordinated digital economy cross-border investments with an emphasis on fintech, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, intelligent apps and quantum computing. The long-term FIN strategic objective is the creation of an integrated financial services cluster that competes directly with other similar-sized IFCs, such as Boston, Dublin, Shenzhen, Munich and Melbourne.
Like the more well-known Canadian tech hubs such as Toronto and Waterloo, Vancouver boasts world-class universities in the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. SFU Innovates is a program from the latter, which has contributed $1.3 billion to BC’s economy. Vancouver allows founders to remove all the noise that you would get from the Valley and to focus on building products. In the past couple of years, the number of early-stage tech-biz start-ups have significantly grown thanks to government grants and communities such as Launch Academy and The Next Big Thing. These innovative indicators mean that forward looking Tech and Business management services, such as OPUS Consulting’s OPUSCare Business Management Solution package have both a firm footing, and a solid local history of success, and are now an attraction in proximity, professionalism and success that U.S. companies in all verticals will find attractive.
OPUSCare ensures that every business’ infrastructure and systems of any vertical and size help the business grow and provide reliable, utility-like access to the resources and applications that end users work with, daily. We build a robust, reliable, scalable infrastructure to provide that provides support, management and strategic guidance in many areas: PC Management, Server Management, Network and End Point Security and Management, Data Backup and Disaster Recovery. OPUSCare Managed IT Services support plans are customized to meet individual businesses’ specific needs, and can include Remote Only, Full Time On-Site, Custom On-Site or any combination of IT support.
“The move to Cloud Computing has benefited every business, regardless of size or vertical, we have worked with in British Columbia and Western Canada,” continued Brown. “The current growth in technical cross-border partnerships will grow both MSP opportunities, and the entire geographic area, as more companies become more streamlined, communicative, and efficient. The Cascadia Innovation Corridor promises to be part of our home.”
Opus Consulting Group Ltd. has been helping companies look at IT strategically since 2002, with the core objective of improving business results by providing solutions that reduce cost, simplify management and deliver appropriate products from our deep relationships with award-winning partners. Our team of multi-disciplinary certified technical consultants and engineers provide an independent perspective of how your IT is deployed today and help you gain the full potential of your IT resources, investments and assets. At OPUS it is all about total client satisfaction.