Texans make a tech buy in Eugene.

Byline: Sherri Buri McDonald The Register-Guard

InfoGroup Northwest Inc., a Eugene-based systems integrator and technical staffing firm, recently sold most of the business to a Texas-based company.

I-Sector Corp., headquartered in Houston, bought InfoGroup's network solutions business on Wednesday for $1.9 million in cash and 63,500 shares of I-Sector stock, valued at $500,000.

If the acquired company meets certain performance goals over the next year, I-Sector will pay an additional $1 million, half in cash and half in stock, said Brian Fontana, I-Sector's chief financial officer.

InfoGroup's president and owner Duane Daggett, 58, said he wasn't looking to sell, but I-Sector "liked our model and made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

The acquired business, with annual revenues of $10 million and 45 employees in Eugene, Portland and Seattle, will be part of I-Sector's InterNetwork Experts Inc. subsidiary, Fontana said.

"There's not going to be any wholesale changes other than the name," he said. "All employees will remain in place, doing what they're doing."

I-Sector is a 300-employee publicly traded information and communication technologies provider. It focuses on IP telephony, or technologies enabling voice to be transmitted in data format over the existing Internet framework.

That market is growing at 40 percent to 50 percent a year, Fontana said.

I-Sector has been growing 50 percent a year over the past four years, he added.

"I-Sector will give the solutions group the resources and focus they need to be successful and to take them to the next level," Daggett said. The company also will provide broader career opportunities to the employees who made InfoGroup successful, he said.

Daggett will continue to own and run InfoGroup Northwest's staffing business, which places technical contract labor, such as project managers. The Eugene-based staffing business has about seven employees handling sales, recruiting and advertising. It generates annual revenues of about $3 million, Daggett said.

Daggett aims to boost revenues to $10 million to $20 million in the next two years and to open offices in Portland and Seattle.

InfoGroup will soon vacate the 15,000 square feet of space it leases in the former KEZI offices at 2225 Coburg Road, Daggett said.

Even with ambitious plans to grow the staffing business, Daggett said his workload will drop considerably.

"I can really back off," he said. " I can work a lot less hours and change my lifestyle."

But don't take that as any indicator that he's easing his way into retirement. "I don't believe in retirement," he said, "but I do believe in cutting back, working part time."

Daggett entered the technology business 22 years ago when he paid $5,000 for a two-employee software store in downtown Eugene called Computer Tutor. The idea was that he'd be an absentee owner, but that idea fell by the wayside after only two days, Daggett said.

The company morphed and grew over the years, and after the technology "Gold Rush" in the 1990s, Daggett said he realized that the business couldn't survive by selling software. So he changed course and set up several self-sustaining business units that specialized in specific technologies.

About seven years ago, InfoGroup opened offices in Portland and Seattle. InfoGroup's network solutions business is I-Sector's second recent acquisition. The firm bought Network Architechs, based in Albuquerque, N.M., on May 26.

"We're looking to expand our business nationally," Fontana said.

I-Sector is based in Houston, with offices in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and El Paso, Texas; Albuquerque; Eugene; Portland; Seattle and Washington, D.C.

I-Sector reported a profit of $1.5 million on sales of $93 million last year.