Executive Chairman Tyler Beecher said the company’s Legends skills-building program for cloud and cybersecurity started out internally to turn out “Black Belt” experts, and quickly spread to clients once the word got out.
“We’re probably somewhere between 150 and 200 internal Trace3 employees that have gone through these tracks, and certified and received their Legends certs,” the Trace3 executive told the Business Journal on May 13.
He adds: “As soon as we extended it out to clients, it felt like we had 500 people sign up in 10 minutes.”
The certification program is aimed at narrowing the “talent gap’’ in computer services.
“I would say in the next 12 months I expect us to probably have about 1,500 individuals that are at our clients that have gone through these tracks and certified on it,” according to Beecher.
Trace3 is a provider of consultation services and advanced technical solutions. The fast-growing company, located at 7565 Irvine Center Drive, ranked No. 17 last year on the Business Journal’s list of largest private companies by revenue. It has 25 offices, all in the U.S., and counts 900 employees companywide.
Sharpening Skills
Beecher says keeping skills sharp is essential in the constantly changing tech world, and he fondly quotes a saying attributed to former President Abraham Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
That provides some good guidance in the tech world as well.
“Too many people are out there with their blunt instruments. They’re grinding though,” Beecher said. “But if they would sharpen themselves a little bit, then they could cut down the tree much, much faster.”
He says: “There’s a massive benefit for us as well. To the degree that we can get them to that level, candidly we can go after higher business initiatives with them.”
The Legends “talent and mentorship program” consists of three phases designed to create and broaden talent across the industry with enhanced cloud and security engineering skills with partners such as Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and NetApp.
The bulk of Trace3’s approximately 3,800 clients is made up of “very large enterprises,” according to Beecher.
Advanced Technology
Founded in 2002, Trace3 is one of the local area’s largest IT solutions firms, providing a variety of operations analytics, cloud computing, cybersecurity, machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data intelligence, and other offerings.
The company’s clients include many Fortune 500 companies. Its customer base has historically been strong in finance, securities, healthcare, entertainment and manufacturing. It is a portfolio company of H.I.G. Capital, a Miami-based global private equity and alternative assets investment firm.
The company currently has about 170 employees in Orange County.
