CentraComm celebrates 25 years in tech

When CentraComm signed its first client on Sept. 1, 2001, dial-up was still the default in Findlay and the national carriers had made clear they were not coming. Ten days after that first contract, the towers came down.

Twenty-five years later, the Findlay-based managed service provider marked the anniversary with an outdoor celebration that drew more than 100 clients, employees and public officials, along with proclamations from state and county offices.

"It was a grand success," said Lynn R. Child, president and an owner of CentraComm. "We were really blessed."

By the numbers

• 25 years in business, founded in Findlay in 2001
• More than 100 clients, employees and public officials at the anniversary celebration
• 19-mile fiber ring connecting local schools and businesses
• 11 consecutive years ranked the country's top micropolitan community by Site Selection magazine, with a second-place finish in the most recent ranking
• 6 or 7 reinventions of the business, by Child's estimate
• 2005 purchase of a decommissioned Department of Defense voice bunker, converted into a data center
• 4 core partners

A company the community built

The company first started as a vital community project. Child explained that the large telecommunications companies of that era were putting their infrastructure dollars into Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, where a bigger base of businesses and residents promised a faster return. Findlay and Hancock County were not on the list.

So the community built its own solution. The chamber of commerce, local economic development officials, the city, the county, area universities and large employers including Cooper and Marathon came together around a shared concern about being left behind. That group still meets 25 years later, though it has since been renamed from the telecommunications infrastructure committee to the technology infrastructure committee.

Child, who spent a decade teaching at a local technical community college before buying a small multimedia company with her husband in 1996, leveraged that company and the couple's own finances to launch CentraComm in 2001. Angel investment followed over the next two to three years.

"We did not want to be left behind," she said.

The infrastructure argument has held up. Child pointed to a 19-mile fiber ring connecting local schools and businesses, and to Site Selection magazine's recognition of Findlay and Hancock County as the top micropolitan community in the country for 11 consecutive years, with a second-place finish in the most recent ranking. She was careful to note the fiber is one factor among many.

Six or seven reinventions

Staying relevant has required regular reinvention. Child estimated the company has remade itself six or seven times, and described another repositioning underway now.

"If you don't, when you're in tech, you won't exist," she said. "It's just that simple."

David Kroske, director of technical services, agreed.

"We have to change as technology changes," Kroske said. "CentraComm started as a dial-up company. You're hard-pressed to find a telephone line to hook a modem to these days."

The company today centers on cybersecurity and network engineering, a distinction Nick Eastby, director of operations, considers meaningful in a regional market crowded with break-fix support providers.

"We don't just provide help desk services," Eastby observed, describing an engineering team that supports small, midsize and large businesses across northwest Ohio.

One turning point came in 2005, when CentraComm bought a decommissioned Department of Defense voice bunker in Bluffton and converted it into a data center. The facility now provides disaster recovery and colocation services for clients that include two global anchor customers, and gives the company a physical asset most managed service providers do not own.

Customers who became employees

Both Eastby and Kroske came to CentraComm as customers first. Kroske was customer number four and spent roughly 15 years as a client before joining the staff nearly 12 years ago. Eastby was working for a Toledo company around 2009 when it moved its network and server infrastructure to Bluffton to stop chronic outages; he joined CentraComm in 2015 after his employer was acquired and downsized.

"If you want to go work for somebody that provides services for you, and then you stay with that company for a dozen years, I think that speaks pretty highly of the company," Kroske added.

Child credited the retention to culture and to a hiring process that puts candidates in front of employees without her in the room. Engineers are also expected to bring ideas up rather than wait for direction. Kroske described a recent monitoring software change that originated entirely with the engineering team and ended up cutting costs. In another case, after a vendor was acquired and changed its pricing and functionality, the team found a replacement, learned it, and began reselling it as a service.

A measured position on AI

On artificial intelligence, the company is taking a measured position. Internally, CentraComm sent key staff through TechCred-funded training in January and uses tools such as Microsoft Copilot for marketing work. Externally, Eastby said the bigger role is as a channel for the AI capabilities its partners are already embedding in their products.

Kroske framed it in simpler terms. "We survived the dot bomb. We survived the financial crunch in '08. We survived all those things, and we're still here."

Looking ahead, Child said the company is in the midst of strategy planning, with no changes expected among its four core partners. Growth will continue as it always has: organically, driven by client retention.