UTI expands focus

CHESTER SPRINGS, Pa.—Known for its expertise with critical infrastructure, Unlimited Technology Inc., a systems integrator based here with offices in Houston and Valhalla, N.Y., has expanded in the past couple of years to other vertical markets.

“Critical infrastructure, including utilities, water, chemical, and nuclear facilities, are still a high percentage of the work we do,” said Brent Franklin, president of UTI.

“We opened an office in Valhalla [outside of New York City in January 2010] to focus on other verticals, healthcare, colleges and universities as well as large national corporations,” he said.

UTI counts Sony, United Nations Federal Credit Union, and CA Technologies among its large corporate customers.

The growth and diversification plan has served the company well, and UTI is currently looking for additional office space in Manhattan.

UTI did about $11.5 million in sales in 2008. Sales dipped to about $9.5 million when the economy tanked in 2009. Since that time the company has “regained its momentum,” and did $13 million in sales in 2010, Franklin said.

With more than 50 employees, 15 of whom are in the New York City area, Franklin said the company does not aspire “to be huge ... we're a smart, well-run company that has decent margins and doesn't chase the bid opportunities as a lot of integrators do to survive.”

He expects the company to sustain 10 percent to 12 percent annual growth, however, and his goal is for the New York metro region and national reach to generate as much revenue as the headquarters office within 18-24 months.

The company's strength is its engineering and design expertise. “Every project gets an engineered set of drawing, whether the customer wants it or not ... We think that's the key to standardization, support and maintenance, follow up and servicing in the future,” he said. “We do things differently.” He said the company has a “huge training budget” and its employees “are experts on the products we use.” UTI, which is a Software House Enterprise dealer, “doesn't sell everything under the sun,” but it does work with manufacturers and customers on custom projects. It does factory acceptance tests for some customers including a recent pilot project for a municipality in New York.

“We set up a test bed, where we brought all the pieces together [situational command and control, access control, intrusion detection and video], and programmed it ... so before we install it [the customer] knows it works.”

An important element of UTI's operation today, Franklin said, is its 4-year-old, six-person IT department. “It's one facet that's more important than anything else,” he said. “More and more customers depend on us for IT [know-how],” he said.