Coding in 907 An open frontier for software developers.

• Author: Rhode, Scott
• Position: TELECOM & TECH

Garages were famously the birthplace of companies that dominate software development. Alaska has garages; therefore, nothing stands in the way of Alaska becoming the Silicon Slope. Nothing, that is, except that everywhere else has garages, too.

Undaunted, some Alaskans have grabbed at a slice of the silicon pie. MTA spun off its AlasConnect service as Ampersand, a tech solutions developer. Tech accelerator Launch Alaska is currently boosting startups like the Remora logistics app and Kartorium, an Anchorage company behind a 3D training tool. App shoppers can also find software tools for learning Alaska Native languages, designed and built in the state.

Among the diverse holdings of Alaska Native corporations, most have dipped a toe into the cyber pool. In particular, Koniag is positioning itself as a computer whiz, earlier this year adding Texas-based cloud services provider Stratum to its Open Systems Technologies subsidiary, with offices in Michigan, Minnesota, and London.

Anchorage is also the world headquarters of Tab King, a point-of-sale app for charitable gaming, yet the company's development team is located entirely out of state. Programmers living in Anchorage have a choice: either apply their skills as IT managers, join a large corporation that needs in-house custom software, or ply their trade in the loose ecosystem of local developers.

Cutting Steak with a Butter Knife

Coders can make a good living in Alaska, even if the software they develop isn't glamorous.

"I write business software; it's not sexy," Ariane Remien says with a laugh.

As a technical lead at Resource Data, Inc. (RDI) in Anchorage, Remien works under a project manager to guide a team of developers. Most recently, she spent about two months updating a crash reporting tool for the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles, whose mainframe RDI rebuilt about four years ago.

"If it has to do with information technology, we do it," says Cory Smith, another technical lead at RDI. The company's clients include the state government, oil companies, healthcare providers, and Alaska Native corporations. Teams might be asked to map oil pipelines or build a website or data warehouse. "Someone will come to us and say. 'We need a system built that does X,'" Smith says.

To see software developers at work, they look like anyone else tapping the keyboard of a laptop or cesktop computer. Instead of drafting memos (although that is part of the job, of course), they write instructions in...