German tech company opens first U.S. office at Ann Arbor SPARK

Eric Gallippo | Wednesday, August 17, 2016

A German tech company specializing in streamlining business apps and digital processes says opening its first U.S. office in Ann Arbor was a simple decision.

iTiZZiMO, creator of a tool called the Simplifier, recently expanded its operations into the United States, setting up shop in Ann Arbor SPARK's business incubator.

"Ann Arbor really is the next hot spot when it comes to high tech," says Anne Prokopp, a spokeswoman for iTiZZiMO. "People are highly educated and talented. In addition, Ann Arbor is a great place to live."

Having a nonprofit business development organization like SPARK as a resource to get started here also helped.

"The mix of great support, family-like attitude and great potential of the Ann Arbor area convinced us," Prokopp says.

So what is the Simplifier? Prokopp describes it as a tool for bringing together the different systems and data a company uses and builds up over time, without having to program code to make them talk to each other, so to speak. She says conventional programming requires hundreds of hard-coded interfaces between those systems that are difficult to change.

"With the Simplifier, you connect all systems to the platform itself, so you can use all data from every source you want," Prokopp says. "This can be systems, but also machine sensors, geodata from mobile devices, and everything else."

Today the company's U.S. presence is modest, with one employee in Ann Arbor and a CIO in Germany charged with establishing the company's operations here. Once settled in, the company hopes to eventually hire more staff – sales and account management to start, and eventually a small team of developers – from the Ann Arbor area.