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An embedded computer for industrial control applications. This is the market where we started our technological journey in 1987. |
| About Us | ||
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The Full Story... Early Days We got into computers when we were about 10-15 years old. We've stayed with them ever since (that was 10-30 years ago, depending on who you ask at QHI). For the founders of QHI, the early days meant assembly language and BASIC on old favorites, like the TRS-80 and Apple II. We grew up learning as much about bits and bytes as we did about soldering irons and home-made circuit boards. Those were great days to be nerds... long before Internet wealth and The Matrix made it cool :-). Early- and Mid-1990s During the early and mid-90s, we developed a couple of companies in niche hardware/software markets. One of those companies is still around today and makes some very cool tiny embedded computers and microcontroller chips. That company is called Parallax. Late-1990s In the late-90s, several of us moved to San Francisco (about 90 miles west of Sacramento, our home base). We went to work for Quios.com in the SOMA neighborhood of SF. Quios was a VC-funded startup in the web-to-SMS messaging market and still operates today. It was a lot of fun and we learned many new things at Quios, such as building large-scale web and database infrastructure with Perl, Linux, Oracle, etc., as well as non-technical (but very useful) things, like venture capital funding and the enjoyment and advantages of big city living. 2002: When QHI Began After the dot-com bust in 2000-01, most of us returned to our home areas and found new jobs or consulting. That's when Lance Walley started QHI (originally called "PerlUSA" to reflect a focus on Perl). He found a couple of very nice, small clients that were close by. One was in the mortgage industry, which was just starting to really pick up with the refinance boom in 2002. 2003: First Staffing Client The world's largest ecommerce company called in 2003 and needed on-site Perl consultants/employees. That taught us all about finding good people and "deploying" them to a client site. We found and provided four great Perl developers, all of whom were later offered jobs and two of whom are still there in 2006. 2004: First Recruiting Client Accenture called in 2004 and needed Perl employees for Morgan Stanley in Toronto. This was the first time we did straight recruiting (no consulting, just straight to a salaried job with the client). Late-2004: Working with Government Clients Later in 2004, we started a relationship with Serena Software, a mid-size maker of Software Configuration Management, Business Process Management, and other systems for large businesses and government agencies. We trained a handful of our consultants on these products and then deployed them for weeks, months, and nearly years around the USA. Our relationship with Serena taught us a lot about working with really large clients on long contracts. It was also our first exposure to working inside Federal agencies, from USDA and the US Postal Service, to the Army, Navy, and various parts of the Department of Defense at the Pentagon. For those of you familiar with Washington, DC, we had an apartment in NW DC for all of 2005 and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience! Our Serena relationship has since faded, but one of our partners is a very strong TeamTrack expert who lives in Alexandria, Virginia. His name is Loren and he works with a number of great clients in the DC area. 2005: Started GSA Schedule We learned a lot of great lessons with our two-year Serena experience and now we're working on getting our GSA Schedule, which should allow us to work directly with government clients in the future. 2005: Started Learning about Ruby on Rails In the middle of 2005, one of our partners, Tom, noticed something somewhat new, called Ruby on Rails. It appeared to be the next big thing in web app development, and his belief in that was bolstered by the fact that the whole Rails community seemed to be populated by very smart people. We decided to purse Rails development, staffing, and recruiting, just as we had for Perl for many years. 2006: A Large Client Comes Back, and Rails Grows Quickly In early-2006, we got a call from the world's largest ecommerce company. They needed Perl people again. This time, we became an official vendor (we hadn't been in 2003) and started looking for great Perl people from around the country. Rails also started to really grow for us around Springtime. We recruited the first Rails employee for a client in May, and our first on-site Rails consultant started at Looksmart in San Francisco in June. We also have a number of Rails projects underway for distant clients, in places like New York City and Nashville. 2006: Engine Yard... Business-Critical Rails App Deployment As our experience with Rails clients increased, Tom saw something else coming: the need for really serious deployment. If you have a Rails app that employees depend on, or that customers depend on, you can't have down time. You might also need on-the-fly scalability if you receive some great press or your business has high seasonal sales, etc. So, we spun off a new development, called Engine Yard. Engine Yard is a fully redundant, scalable, easy-to-manage clustered deployment service. It should be ready around August. We have several clients waiting, and several others are interested in having us implement custom clusters in their data centers. Looking Forward We're very optimistic about the future, and we'd enjoy the opportunity to work with you. |
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