Ohio is becoming an attractive location for IT companies

While California’s Bay Area is the birthplace of many technological innovations, Ohio is home to considerable innovation as well, just without as much of the fanfare.

Ted Griffith, managing director of information technology at JobsOhio, says with lower overall operating costs — as much as 70 percent lower than Silicon Valley — Ohio offers growing startups a sustainable operating environment. It’s also home to incredible tech talent, and its software engineers tend to command less pay. In that regard, the state’s low cost of living gives it a competitive advantage.

He says being close to customers is a real advantage, even for companies that operate digitally. Ohio’s proximity to customers is remarkable, with 55 Fortune 1000 companies headquartered in the state.

And because of its proximity to servers — Amazon Web Services has data centers in Ohio and are expanding them dramatically — which translates to reduced latency and greater speed of data.

Smart Business spoke with Griffith about the advantages Ohio offers tech companies.

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