By Tara Bozick - Work It, SoVa
Web Parts LLC moved from Guatemala to Danville to develop software add-ons and operate a data center.
The company will start with 10 employees and plans to employ 260 people within three years, said owner and founder Brad Mainland. One-third of those positions would be programmers and two-thirds would be various support staff. Overall, Mainland estimates an average employee salary of around $65,000.
Web Parts is currently seeking anyone with proven Java or PHP computer programming skills as the company makes "parts" or add-ons for free downloadable software that may not offer everything a customer needs, Mainland explained.
"We're really just enhancing the free stuff," he said.
The firm's primary clients are website developers, yet Mainland would like to develop add-ons for software used by academic institutions in the long term. Web Parts also plans to do web hosting and other services with the data center to provide its clients more flexibility in saving their work or website "frameworks" for future website projects.
Web Parts, which formed three years ago in Guatemala where Mainland met wife Priscila Del Cid, had considered growing in Michigan, Florida, West Virginia and Hawaii, but chose to invest $10 million in Danville because of the city's high-speed broadband fiber network, which is connected to Washington D.C and Atlanta through Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative infrastructure.
A $1 million grant from the Virginia Tobacco Commission will help Web Parts buy necessary equipment to get started. The company is currently housed in the former Masonic Temple on Union Street for one year as it considers a permanent location.
Danville Mayor Sherman Saunders and Delegate Danny Marshall, a tobacco commission member, noted the region is becoming a technology hub for information technology companies. Danville has also attracted EcomNets' data center operations and a supercomputer.
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