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6 A PRIVATE COMPANIES, FEWER THAN 100 EMPLOYEES David Hansen Founder and President Hansen Networks David Hansen, founder and president of managed services provider Hansen Networks, is a self-confessed technology junkie who developed his addiction as a boy tinkering around with video games on the family's Commodore 64, the revolutionary 8-bit home computer introduced in 1982. Hansen, who hails from Utah, got his first job in high school providing technical support for Prodigy, and later went on to become a Nobel- certified administrator. While studying computer science in college, he landed a six-month internship with IBM which evolved into a two-year job, with two other interns and an additional full-time IBM employee working under him to further develop the tools he had created. In 2001, Hansen moved to Las Vegas, where he obtained a B.S. in computer science and a minor in mathematics from UNLV, and later began working for a small local software company. "But I always had the entrepreneurial spirit and mentality, so when some friends asked me if I could do IT for their new accounting company, it led to more and more referrals from there, so six months later I quit the software job and started Hansen Networks in 2003," says Hansen, who like many small-business owners originally launched the company out of his home. Eight years later, Hansen Networks is a successful information technology enterprise that provides managed services and project- based technology solutions with a focus on serving small and midsized businesses that may not have internal IT. "We provide help desk services—a virtual IT department—for small and medium business that can benefit from our resources and expertise," he says. "Our goal is to provide everything our clients need as far as IT." Besides managed services, which are designed to save clients time and money as well as the headache of in-house maintenance and support, and costly downtime, Hansen Networks also offers data protection, which includes back-up and recovery solutions; on-demand business IT support; hosting services; and vendor management. More than 90 percent of services offered can be performed off-site by Hansen's team of six dedicated IT professionals, engineers and support staff. "We are committed to providing excellent customer support, and our clients know they can count on us," Hansen says. "They are not an account number—we know them, and they know us, and we have a personal relationship. One thing everybody on our team really enjoys is being able to hear the appreciation in a client's voice when they fix their IT problem." Hansen, who founded Artery Networks in 2007 in order to offer a cost- effective solution for datacenter hosting, said Hansen Networks has been fortunate in weathering the economic downturn. "Our growth as far as revenue has been steadily increasing, and we have been able to put on some pretty substantial numbers," Hansen says. "We actually have more work than we can handle, because IT is a constant need, and something you really can't do without." — Danielle Birkin COX BUSINESS EXEMPLARY AWARD George Molnar Director of Engineering Vegas PBS Few people in the world can say they are prepared for a natural disaster, but George Molnar is one of them. The director of engineering for Vegas PBS, the nation's highest-rated PBS station, not only has his hand in assuring quality programming for the station's viewers, but harnessing some of the most sophisticated communications resources available today to help the city deal with the unthinkable also falls under his job description. Coming to the valley from Chicago's Univision station in 2008, Molnar was eyeing an opportunity to consult on probably the most technologically advanced building in the city. The Vegas PBS building, a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold-certified site, also serves as an information center for emergency response situations for anything from a school fire drill on up to a major natural disaster, the technology executive explains. Molnar himself is a FEMA Communications Unit leader and a member of the Clark County Local Emergency Planning Committee, the Nevada Emergency Alert System Committee and the Clark County Microwave Committee. The site also has a state-of-the-art data facility capable of storing up to one peta-byte of information with a reliability standard of 99.99 percent. "It's been a really great ride to help make this into something extraordinary. This building is one of a kind," he says. Opening in May 2010, the Vegas PBS building, located at 3050 E. Flamingo Road, has the capability to stay on air for over a week without power. In the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack, the center has access to all Clark County School District school records and each individual school's emergency response plan. The site can coordinate information to the public or select first responders in crisis situations through its digital television channels, closed-circuit video channels, satellite uplink and wireless networks if other communications resources break down. While overseeing an important site, Molnar stays on top of the latest and greatest television industry breakthroughs as well. He even participates in some industry firsts. In 2010, he demonstrated aggregated broadband video transmission from moving vehicles. That same year, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Molnar demonstrated the first 3D, over- the-air television broadcast to a mobile hand-held TV device designed by LG in cooperation with Harris Broadcast. He also led the development effort of Internet-to-video server systems, allowing Skype callers around the world to appear live on television, saving on transmission costs. Molnar and his staff of 11 is in the process of upgrading the valley's Black Mountain transmission site and is working with partners to install school emergency response software system upgrades. Being part of such a sophisticated enterprise, Molnar says technological advancement has put a focus on creating the best content for audiences. "The boxes, gizmos and gadgets are all secondary. It just puts content front and center," he adds. — Brian Sodoma