Location makes Hudson a perfect high-tech hub

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
By N. CLARK JUDD
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

With easy access to Manhattan by public transportation and multiple road and rail links from elsewhere in the metropolitan area, technology and Internet-centered businesses have flocked to Hudson County.

Whether selling hardware, online content or support services for the county's burgeoning stable of high-profile business, these technology powerhouses are becoming an increasingly important part of the county's economy.

"There are an awful lot of Internet content businesses that have chosen to settle here, and as the growth of Hudson County continues, I'm sure we're just going to see many more businesses pick this as a place to settle," said David Blomquist, editor of nj.com.

Managed out of the same Journal Square office building as its parent company, Advance Internet - itself owned by Advance Publications, which also owns The Jersey Journal, the Newark Star-Ledger, and other newspapers around the country - nj.com is one of the county's largest Internet content businesses.

For Telargo, an international mobile technology company based at Harborside Financial Center on the Jersey City waterfront, its location steps from the PATH and Light Rail makes perfect sense: It sells products centered on keeping track of large vehicle and public transportation fleets.

Rajan Mathews, Telargo's chief financial officer, explained that its core product is basically a global positioning system that can interface with a vehicle's diagnostic computer and transmit all the information it collects to a server via a wireless Internet link.

"You can see anything that's on the dashboard, you can read remotely anything that's on the odometer," Vice President Roger Hill said. "You know an awful lot about what's going on in the vehicle."

Telargo's service has such diverse uses as monitoring temperature in a nationwide fleet of food-delivery tractor-trailers, the efficiency of a Texas utilities firm's electric and gas repair trucks, and the conditions in the trailers of a live animal supply company, Mathews explained.

It has 22 employees at its Jersey City location, and more than 5,000 units in the field, he said.

In addition to the jobs such companies bring, the ripple effect on the service industry is another way they help the local economy.

For example, Aline Administrative Services - working out of an office in an Audubon Avenue home in Jersey City - has been a resource for Telargo since August 2006.

The Aline sisters, Michelle and Maria, do the same type of work that a secretary would - "except instead of going to the office, we work from home," Michelle said.

The Alines currently correspond with their six or seven clients via e-mail and fax, but are looking to expand by using Internet technology that will allow them to share documents and resources without transferring them from computer to computer.