M2M Communications Adds Staff, Office Space

9/9/2010
by Brad Carlson
Idaho Business Review

M2M Communications Corp. is expanding its west Boise headquarters for a second time this year.

The designer and provider of remote monitoring equipment is remodeling 4,500 square feet of space at 5771 Discovery Way in Boise Research Center. After M2M expands into the space, by about November, the company will occupy 12,000 square feet overall, founder and President Steve Hodges said. M2M moved to its current office from a smaller space in the Boise Research Center in February.

M2M employs 42, including 18 people hired this year. The company is adding two to three new employees each month, Hodges said. Many of the new hires are engineers, particularly software developers.

The company’s primary business is energy management, Hodges said. Customers such as utilities and irrigators use M2M’s equipment to monitor and control energy usage remotely from a computer or smart phone. Reducing power usage during times of peak demand is among the equipment’s applications.

M2M last March received $2.1 million economic-stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to build an irrigation load-control system, compatible with smart grids, in California’s agriculture-rich central valley.

“We projected to the Department of Energy that we would employ more than 100 over the next three years,” Hodges said.

About half those employees would be in California, half in Idaho, he said. The Idaho staff would do engineering and design work, and much of the management.

News tag(s): Business Technology Project_60 M2M_Communications