Made in Oklahoma: Telogical Systems

Published: August 12, 2008

•Address: 710 Asp Ave., Norman (Oklahoma office; corporate headquarters is in the Washington, D.C., area).

•Web site: www.telogical.com.

•Employees: 10 software engineers, 10 paid interns at the Norman office.

•Key personnel: Ken Archer and Gray Somerville, co-founders; Andrew Woessner, chief executive officer.

•Founded: 2000; Norman office opened 2004.

•Key service: Business "intelligence” for clients in the telecommunications industry.

•Background: A University of Oklahoma football game and a restaurant in the Washington area brought two OU fans together in a chance meeting that paid dividends for both.

Tulsa native Ken Archer is co-founder of a northern Virginia-based high-tech company called Telogical Systems that provides telecommunications industry "business intelligence” to industry clients.

Don Wood is executive director of the Norman Economic Development Coalition who happened to be in Washington on an OU football Saturday in 2000. Someone told him that the OU game was available at a certain Washington establishment where the local OU alumni association chapter gathered each week.

So Wood showed up to watch the game and met Archer, one of the Oklahoma expatriates living in the Washington area.

"We were talking about what he did, and the next thing you know we are talking about setting up a small office in Norman,” Wood said.

Things moved quickly from there.

Leon Price, then director of the management information systems division at OU's Price College of Business, called virtually the next day to offer information on local software engineering talent.

Another Washington-area software company with Norman connections called to vouch for the location.

"It was nice to feel wanted,” Archer said. "(Wood) said ‘you are having a tough time in D.C.; we could definitely set you up in Norman. So we set up the office; it's been five years now. It's been wonderful.”

Today, Telogical employs 10 software engineers at the Norman location along with 10 interns from OU. The company sponsored a scholarship at OU last year and may expand that to three scholarships this year.

"The relationship with the university and working in the state of Oklahoma has been great,” Archer said.

"We are real bullish on it.”

Telogical opened its first office in the Norman Economic Development Coalition's business incubator on Asp Ave. but quickly outgrew it.

Now the Telogical office is in the old Boomer Theater on Asp Ave., which was former location of Harold's Stores corporate headquarters before it relocated to Dallas.

"They are a great addition,” Wood said. "They pay good salaries, they've got interns, but they pay those interns. Then when they graduate, many of them are staying here instead of moving to Dallas or another state.”

The Oklahoma connection for Archer is expanding. A spin-off company called Agora Data Systems also has located an office in Norman. Agora recently won a $100,000 OCAST Technology Business Finance Program award from i2E, the not-for-profit company that mentors many of the state's technology-based startups.

Business Writer Jim Stafford

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