Area Development
A Texas-based company, SolarWinds, will establish an operations hub to Salt Lake City, Utah, with plans to create 1,040 jobs in the region during the next two decades.

“It’s an intuitive fit for the Forbes’ Best Small Company in America to come to the Forbes’ Best State for Business,” Governor Gary R. Herbert said. “I am confident the partnership between Utah and SolarWinds will continue to advance Utah’s rapidly growing IT sector.” The GOED Board of Directors has approved a $32,864,576 Economic Development Tax Increment Finance post-performance refundable tax credit, or 30 percent of the new taxes paid by the company over the lifetime of the incentive.

“Utah’s Information & Technology strategic industry cluster has shown great strength through the recession and is showing considerable growth as Utah leads the nation in its economic recovery”, Spencer Eccles, Executive Director of GOED said. “SolarWinds is a great addition to that market sector and they will find our Utah workforce second to none.”

“We are very excited about the opportunity to establish our strategic, western location in Utah,” said Kevin Thompson, president and CEO of SolarWinds. “While our corporate headquarters will remain in Austin, we plan to make Utah an important hub from which we plan to drive significant future growth. The commitment and cooperation shown by GOED, along with the available deep and talented technology employment base, have been important indicators not only of the strength of the area, but also the potential of a meaningful, long-term relationship between SolarWinds and the State of Utah. ”

SolarWinds builds IT management software products that are designed to make IT professionals’ jobs easier. Their software addresses a broad range of IT management problems, from basic network availability and performance monitoring to emerging challenges such as cloud computing, BYOD and Big Data. Over the lifetime of the agreement, SolarWinds expects to pay approximately $109 million in new state taxes and stimulate over $50 million in capital expansion at the site.

“We congratulate SolarWinds on its decision to expand their rapidly growing operations to Utah,” said Jeff Edwards, president and CEO of Economic Development Corporation of Utah. “This major investment in Utah reflects our strong commitment to the IT community and is a result of the cooperative effort of Utah’s economic development community.”