Hardwired

Software Firm WebEKG Looks for Partners in Business and Its Adopted Community

by Michael Barrett

When Paul Schweikert III reached that stage of life when he had to make a decision on what to do with it, his uncle told him, “Get into computers!” So he did. Today, he’s president and chair of one of Skagit County’s fastest-growing companies and a partner in a scheme to help bring more computer-based businesses to the area.

WebEKG is Schweikert’s sixth high-tech company, all of them successful, but the first he’s started outside the Bay Area of California. He moved to Skagit Valley early last year because it’s where his family is, and because “it’s beautiful here — I really like it.” More recently, he became an equal partner with John Ellis and Dan Mitzel in buying and developing property, across from Mount Vernon’s new police and court campus, into a “smart park” for a wide range of electronic-oriented businesses, including WebEKG, which serves as the anchor.

“We started off as a service-based company and we’re moving into monitoring, looking at workflow and wireless communications, tools that help you develop, test and monitor distributed applications to key businesses,” Schweikert says of WebEKG, which he started in March 2000. “Now we’re also a traditional software company. We make a product to sell. We’re engineers.”

WebEKG’s clients are the information-technology departments of a number of the nation’s larger firms, responsible for the daily operations of their companies’ systems. Using tools the software manufacturer has developed, engineers identify risks within a company’s systems — performance problems in large, multi-tiered eBusiness applications especially — correct them and then monitor them. The results “add major value to companies,” Schweikert explains, by increasing revenues, reducing operating costs and improving customer experiences.

“We’re not a dot-com company,” he says. “Dot-com companies make their money selling products or services from their Web sites. We’re a traditional software company where we sell services and products to Fortune 1000 companies,” most of which, with the exception of Boeing, are in the New York and California areas.

 

Looking for a niche

Schweikert found college technology classes full when he first got the high-tech bug, so he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps where he became a computer operations manager, processing data on large IBM mainframes. After his stint, he went to work for a San Francisco consulting-accounting firm, which was in the process of installing a complex computer-sharing system among seven offices.

“The consultants they hired couldn’t make it work, so I wrote a program and it did work,” Schweikert explains about his first civilian job experience. “I figured, these consultant guys were making $100 an hour and they couldn’t do what I did, so I started my own consulting firm.”

A couple of years ago, he sold his San Francisco-based company ProcessWorks to Versata and negotiated a service retainer to start a new business in Skagit Valley. He opened the doors of WebEKG the first day of spring last year. The company has grown steadily since, registering revenues of $350,000 or more each month since this year began. In its first quarter of 2000, it made $1 million, Schweikert says. It now employs 55 people, many of them software engineers and the majority of them recruited from the immediate area.

On June 14, 2001, WebEKG moved to a newly renovated facility at 1800 Continental Place in Mount Vernon, the first of three buildings planned for the new eTech Center owned by Ellis, Mitzel and Schweikert as EMS Corp. At the same time, it’s also moved beyond the consulting stage into actual software development.

“Our software monitors transactions from a Microsoft browser all the way to the Web and applications server to the data base and back again and identifies where the problems are and gives the information to the end user,” he says. “Then it allows you to solve the problems. This can be a big company that takes Website orders or keeps track of large inventories. We test the software, then we employ monitoring equipment to make sure it stays up and running and operating correctly.”

He says WebEKG is beginning to roll out the products. “By the end of the year, we want to have our monitoring tools on the market and our software sales revved up,” he predicts.

Recently, the company invested in two companies that will enhance its capabilities. They are PreferSoft, Inc. of Calgary, Alberta, and Scouts Valley, Calif., and SonicMobility, a software-development firm also based in Calgary, which will allow WebEKG to extend its work-flow software to include wireless technology.

The company’s stated goal is to make customers successful. But Schweikert also hopes to bring value to his adopted community through other partnerships and job offerings. Indeed, the eTech Center is designed to attract high-tech companies to Mount Vernon and, when fully implemented, could be home to as many as 1,000 higher-paid employees. In Web-site documents, Schweikert points out that bucks spent for his products and services by businesses outside this area filter back to the local economy, as well as profits and wages from other high-tech firms situated at the eTech Center. “Local businesses, schools and community organizations will benefit from its presence,” he states. He and his wife, Stacey, have a big stake in that. They and their three children — Robert, 13, Cynthia, 11, and Jennifer, 10 — have built a home on Bacus Hill near Sedro-Woolley since coming here.

Another change in WebEKG’s makeup is a plan to draw in investors, Schweikert remarks. “Our company is a privately held corporation but is in its first round of stock offerings,” he continues. “It’s going to grow fast here, and we want to partner with others.”

(For more information on the technical attributes of WebEKG and the eTech Center, see the cover story on page 26, or call 404-5600.)