Ozarks Profile: Jim Davidson

What is your job?

President, CorpraNet Business Internet Solutions, 720 W. Center Circle Dr., Nixa.

Tell us

about your organization.

CorpraNet began offering services to businesses in the Springfield area in January. The company provides dial-up, hosting, Web design, frame relay, ISDN, Internet marketing and network consulting. |quot|We are currently in the testing phase of wireless T1 Internet service for the Springfield/Nixa area,|quot| Davidson said.

What is your educational background?

Davidson attended Central and Parkview high schools, and graduated from Mount Vernon High School in 1969.

What jobs led you to your current one?

After graduating from high school, Davidson served a tour of duty in Vietnam for the Army before becoming a partner in a Springfield insurance brokerage company in the late '70s. He got into the technology sector by accident, he said. |quot|We were a wholesale brokerage outfit, one of two in town we were independent, and the other was tied to a major company which had bought an Apple computer and loaded their rates on it. It took us three or four days to be able to give people their rates, so we decided to get a computer to make us more competitive.|quot| Davidson said he was given the task of writing and installing the software for the brokerage's computer, which made him the company's computer guru. |quot|The word got around, and I began spending more time taking care of people's computers than doing insurance work, so I sold my stock to my partners and went out on my own as a computer consultant.|quot| In 1986, Davidson became a partner in an Independence, Kan., company called The Computer Generation, which comprises a computer store and two Radio Shacks. Davidson was living in Independence when he co-founded MoCom Corporation, CorpraNet's predecessor, in Springfield in 1997. MoCom was later acquired by another company, which closed its Springfield office, and Davidson formed CorpraNet early this year. |quot|As soon as my noncompete agreement ran out, I started CorpraNet, and most of my former business customers came back to me because they were not getting the service they needed.|quot| He returned to the Ozarks to run CorpraNet and to get married in July 1999.

What is a challenge you face in your industry, and how do you overcome it?

|quot|The technology changes so fast that you've got to be right on top of it ... with DSL, cable and broadband, traditional dial-up is going to go away soon and we have to make sure we have the capabilities for that. In addition to the trade publications, I keep up on the market through the Web.|quot|

Give us some personal information.

Davidson will be 50 in January and is married to Dianne, who owns her own advertising agency. They have three children. He enjoys playing golf, and still makes weekly trips to Independence to The Computer Generation.

by Melissa Wilson