WILSONVILLE, Ore. (KOIN) — This week Microsoft announced it will begin manufacturing large screen surface tablets right here in Oregon at a Wilsonville assembly plant. KOIN 6 News spoke to city leaders Thursday who said the area is becoming a hot spot for these types of facilities.
“It’s got rail, it’s got water, it’s got a lot of electricity you can tap into,” engineer Bill Hamilton said. “It’s just an excellent place to live.”
Hamilton said he grew up in Wilsonville and has watched technology companies like Microsoft come to the area for a variety of reasons.
City Economic Development Manager Kristen Retherford said the town of more than 22,000 is now home to a tech cluster: Xerox Office Group, Rockwell Collins, Flir, and now Microsoft have hubs in the city.
“Once you start attracting these companies, they have a certain type of workforce which is a very specialized workforce,” Retherford said. “Other companies want to locate near that workforce.”
Retherford said Microsoft purchased Perceptive Pixel in 2012 to break into surface tablet production. The Wilsonville plant will produce a giant screen that can be used for video conferencing and digital whiteboards among other things.
“Microsoft Surface Hub is a new, complete, large-screen device to help teams in the workplace share, ideate and create together,” Microsoft said in a press release. “Hardware innovations in multi-touch and digital inking, along with built in cameras, sensors and mics allow the Microsoft Surface Hub to take advantage of Windows 10, a customized version of Skype for Business and OneNote to deliver a custom experienced designed to make every person — remote or onsite — feel like they’re in the same collaborative space.”
In a press release, Microsoft said it chose Wilsonville after determining the Portland-metro area met the criteria it was looking for in both innovation and financial aspects. Additional teams in Redmond will focus on the software and services experience.
“More like something you might see in the CNN War Room, or on the CSI program where it’s an interactive touch interface,” Retherford said. “They went from a facility that had zero jobs to more than 200 jobs that are very well educated and paid positions.”
Wilsonville Mayor Tim Knapp said he also hopes to attract more of these companies, perhaps some from California, where water has been an issue. Whether or not Wilsonville will be the next city to have a large tech boom like Hillsboro remains to be seen.
“Whether we will have another Intel in Oregon is very hard to say, but we are certainly growing our own high tech industrial sector within Wilsonville,” Retherford said.
The surface hub technology can range from $7,000-$20,000. It will be available for businesses to order in 24 markets starting July 1 and will begin shipping internationally in September.
source:koin6
