St. George is continuing to be a secret weapon and a hotspot for job growth in Utah’s tech industry. Two southern Utah technology firms, Cabosoft and busybusy.com, will join forces this month. The merger is poised to create more high-paying technology jobs in Utah’s Dixie.
Their new office will be located at 446 S. Mall Drive in St. George. An open house at the new headquarters is set for Thursday, January 23 from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Cabosoft, a custom software and mobile application development firm supported by SEED Dixie and USTAR South, will be acquired by busybusy.com, a project management software company that tracks business processes. The merger brings together two firms with a history of collaboration. Cabosoft was an early partner and investor in busybusy, building out its web and mobile platforms.
Cabosoft began as a small start-up company in southern Utah and was one of the first companies to work with SEED Dixie, a partner of Utah Science Technology and Resarch (USTAR) South. Together, Cabosoft, SEED Dixie and USTAR South have worked to grow the technology ecoysytem in Southern Utah.
SEED Dixie assisted Cabosoft in getting Phase One and Two USTAR Go-To-Market grants for RxTrax, a mobile tracking and delivery product for pharmacies. Development of RxTrax will continue with the merger.
“Supporting entrepreneurs in Southern Utah is vital to the growth of the local economy.” said Jill Elliss, Director of USTAR South and SEED Dixie. “Cabosoft is a prime example of how a small company can grow and develop in the tech community. We have enjoyed working with them and are excited to see how they continue to expand now as part of busybusy. It is always exciting to see a company expand and bring more jobs to Southern Utah.”
According to Isaac Barlow, founder of busybusy.com, the company is gaining significant traction across the U.S. and needs to expand its development staff to keep up with demand. Both busybusy and Cabosoft are expanding quickly.
Brad Campbell, one of three founders of Cabosoft, said that one of the firms’ goals has been to create quality jobs for southern Utah residents. Not just any jobs, but careers that pay above average wages and living conditions.
“busybusy.com provides this path for us,” Campbell said. “We expect to be one of the largest tech companies in the region, and hopefully the coolest place to work, not only for software developers, but for sales, marketing–you name it.”
The acquisition will allow Cabosoft to move from professional services to a product SAAS (software as a service) model. Early on, Cabosoft realized the value of having products verses contracts.
“We have worked hard to invest in and develop products that we believed would scale,” said Jason Madrid, a founder of Cabosoft and new chief technology officer for busybusy.com. “busybusy.com is the first effort that we have been involved with that is scaling as we projected.”
Though Cabosoft will be fully absorbed into busybusy.com, some Cabosoft signature products will remain in full development. These include RxTrax, a mobile tracking and delivery product for pharmacies, and Cabosoft Native, a framework for building and deploying mobile geographical tours and content-based apps. Campbell said existing clients of Cabosoft will be fully served during the transition, and their projects will be completed.
Cabosoft founder Jim Boyd says Cabosoft’s mission has been to develop great software and provide a wide variety of mobile app development including games, business tools, location-based and web-based applications.
“busybusy.com offers us the opportunity to develop better software than was possible as contract engineers, because a long term product-based effort affords greater attention to good development practices than most short term projects are willing to invest,” said Boyd.
busybusy.com is a multi-featured project management software designed to track various business processes such as collecting accurate time card data from the field to measure productivity against labor costs.
Both Cabosoft and busybusy.com founders believe that the increasing market demand for their products and its ability to scale will have a significant impact on the entire region, directly and indirectly as it continues to grow.
