SOUTHFIELD ? In 2001, two German SAP specialists moved from California to Michigan and decided if they could land three clients in three months, they could make a go of a hosting business. Nine years later, Secure-24 has more than 100 clients, including a dozen that individually generate revenues of more than $1.5 billion annually.

Matthias Horch, the Chief Executive Officer, co-founded Secure-24 with friend Volker Straub, now the Chief Operating Officer. Secure-24 provides managed hosting, disaster recovery, and managed services for the mission-critical IT applications of industry and government. Secure-24 was named 2010 SAP Pinnacle Award Finalist for IT Outsourcing Partner of the Year, the only US based partner to receive the nomination. What’s more, the company just hired Inga Bredehoeft as the SAP Sales Director in Silicon Valley.

“We were here in Michigan,” Straub said. “The only thing we knew was hosting. Matthias is a pretty analytical guy. He said if we get three clients in three months, let’s start a hosting business. We tried to sell something we didn?t have. We talked to a lot of people. We landed our three clients, and decided we needed to do it. We worked all day selling, worked all night on the computer. We didn’t see our families for the first three or four months.”

Straub said his business gradually grew. The burn-out hours forced the friends to hire their first employee, then another and another. Now the company employs about 140 people, with another 47 open positions available. George Surface, Secure-24 Vice President of SAP Solutions, said the company is projecting growth of more than 50 percent over the next five years.

But Secure-24 still hasn’t lost its small company charm, said Surface.

“We’re small enough that we’re still on a first-name basis.”

Surface said Secure-24 remains passionate about its family-oriented culture. The company typically hosts summer barbecues, as well as elaborate holiday parties, for all its employees.

“We also have bring-your-children to work days,” Surface said. “We get a tremendous turn out. It makes us an extended family.”

The Secure-24 extended family went to bat for one of its own recently when the house of one of its employees burned down. Within 24 hours, Surface said, employees had raised $6,000 for the employee’s family, and donated a lot of clothes.

Another family-friendly wrinkle at Secure-24 is an internal training program, Surface said. Specially screened employees get access to cutting-edge technology in a training lab. When they’re ready, they move into more senior teams to gain on-the-job work experience.

“If you get the right person, you can give them the right skills,” he said.

The skills of Secure-24 personnel certainly have impressed customers, like Niche Retail, a Sylvan Lake e-tailer of upscale products sold for brand names. Niche Retail Director of Operations Jeff Grice said Secure-24 has become a trusted partner over the years.

“We’ve grown together,” Grice said. “We’ve become increasingly reliant on Secure-24 as a hosting platform. We don?t have to worry about bandwidth, servers, load balancing, or disk space.”

Going the extra mile on customer service is what has helped Secure-24 grow, co founder Straub said.

“We are very proud that we have maintained most of our clients from the beginning,” he said. “We’ve lost a few start ups along the way. But we?ve never lost a client because they weren?t happy with us.”

For available job openings at Secure-24, click on Secure-24.Com

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