Ed LaFrance - Datacate

Ed began his career working in industrial models and design in the late 1980's, fabricating prototypes and scale representations for government and private industries. In the early 1990's, Ed moved into manufacturing and industrial equipment, working as a production designer and manager in a factory setting. In the latter part of the 1990s, Ed served as VP of sales for a manufacturer of industrial printing and automation equipment, at a pivotal time when sales and marketing were beginning to move into the online arena. In 1997, Ed started New Media, an Internet services company offering web hosting, colocation, e-Commerce programming and payment processing services as a part-time effort. As the business evolved it became a full-time endeavor, with colocation and carrier services becoming a major focus. Eventually New Media was transformed into Connex Internet Services Inc, a colocation and Internet transit provider serving five regional US markets and beyond, utilizing the skills of dozens of engineers and technical staff. In January of 2014, Datacate and Connex merged into one company, with Ed taking on full-time sales and marketing duties. The new Datacate gained a more diverse client base and multi-site capability. While continuing to serve the needs of the colocation marketplace, Ed and his colleagues at Datacate are forging ahead into the decentralized future of a virtual and cloud-based computing universe. In November of 2016, Ed added business development for BlueDAG LLC to his responsibilities. BlueDAG's flagship ADA assessment software, delivered via the cloud to desktop and mobile devices, is a revolutionary development in the ADA compliance industry, with the power to reduce the time required to complete an accessibility audit by as much as 75%. Ed oversees the direct marketing and awareness initiatives to bring BlueDAG to the ADA compliance industry. For more information about Datacate go to https://www.datacate.net/