Arlington grows technology base with Trend Micro move

Though downtown Arlington – conceived in 1876 as a railroad stop for cotton shipments – has never enjoyed a high tech brand, that image may be changing rapidly.

This week, Trend Micro opens a new 85-person operation in downtown Arlington that will function as the Tokyo-based company’s North American Sales, Channel and Field Marketing Operations Center. The company will occupy about 21,000 square feet on the seventh floor of the Chase Bank Building, 500 E. Border St., as well as other areas in the building.

Trend Micro Inc. makes about 40 products, all related to Internet security concerns, the clientele ranging from giant corporations and mid-size businesses to individual consumers. World-wide the company has about 4,000 employees.

More on Trend Micro momentarily but note the downtown Arlington trend:

There is, for example, the University of Texas at Arlington’s Nanotechnology Research, Development and Teaching Facility.

Add to that the Center for Innovation in Arlington. That’s the Chamber of Commerce-owned and Arlington Technology Incubator, Center for Entrepreneurship and UT-Arlington’s Office of Technology Commercialization.

Trend Micro, the Nano Center and the Center for Innovation are all located in Arlington’s downtown area, Trend Micro being the new kid on the block. And, possibly the most intriguing.

The company recently observed its 20th anniversary since being created in a makeshift California office in an evolving computerized world that at the time had only five known computer viruses. But company founders Steve Chang, Jenny Chang and Eva Chen – now Trend Micro’s CEO – rightly calculated that as the information age unfolded, massive security problems would follow. They were right.

“A small group of us realized the potential harm that could be caused by something not well understood at the time: a computer virus,” Chen said. “While no one could predict the impact it would have, we made it our mission to build the best solution to the problem.”

“There are probably millions of viruses now, new Web threats, and a lot of potential for data stealing,” said Trend Micro spokesperson Michael Sweeny. “Our company is built on the need for Internet security, first anti-virus, then anti-span, than anti-spyware, and now anti-Web threats.”

Those kinds of problems, Sweeny said, have no doubt contributed to the fact that Trend Micro continues to grow and expand, of which Arlington is the most recent beneficiary.

Why the Arlington location?

Sweeny said there were a number of business factors in the location decision.

“Arlington seemed to be the best location to access D-FW clients, plus there was proximity to [the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport],” Sweeny said. “And there were other factors.”

One of those factors was likely the proximity to UT-Arlington. Some Trend Micro officials have reportedly already expressed an interest in involving the university in future Internet security research projects.

And though early reports about Trend Micro indicated that the company might transfer more of its operation to Arlington and eventually have as many as 250 employees at the Downtown site, Sweeny declined to comment on that possibility.

“We’re simply not going to project what we’ll be doing there,” Sweeny said. “Right now all we’re prepared to say is that the Arlington office will be functioning as our North American Sales, Channel and Field Marketing Operations Center, nothing more. We’re happy to be there, and happy to be growing in today's business environment.”

Sweeny said the new operation should be fully functional by the end of this week.

Downtown Arlington advocates, of course, are no doubt thrilled about the Trend Micro appearance. And they’re no doubt hopeful that the company’s presence will serve as a kind of tipping point – a cluster effect – that will attract more high tech endeavors to the area.

okcarter@bizpress.net