The Kansas City area’s central location, robust telecommunications infrastructure, superior energy capabilities and deep IT talent pool make it ideally suited to host data intensive operations.

TELECOM
As home to Sprint’s world headquarters and major SBC and AT&T regional facilities, Greater Kansas City enjoys the benefit of one of the world’s most advanced telecommunications networks. It is a focal point both for long-haul fiber and transcontinental fiber networks.

In addition to its extensive fiber network, Kansas City benefits from the technological innovations of its telecom providers. For example, Sprint has deployed a set of four MAN (Major Area Network) rings throughout the KC area. The MAN ring architecture is designed to provide self-healing capabilities during two major causes of telecom route failures — fiber cuts and electronic outages. In addition to Sprint, SBC Communications is committed to technological innovation that benefits its customers, such as its new Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) capability.

ENERGY
An energy environment unmatched anywhere within the 48 contiguous states energizes the thriving Kansas City area economic climate. It’s an environment as rich in supply as it is affordable in price — an infrastructure prepared to support your company’s expansion, growth and visions for the future.

Like Kansas City’s telecom providers, local energy companies are industry leaders in both power reliability and customer service.

Kansas City Power & Light consistently ranks among the best at providing constant, uninterrupted electric service. The company annually invests in improvements that contribute to power quality and delivery throughout its own system and the successful Southwest Power Pool, our area’s regional transmission coordinator. With a commitment to ongoing generation supply, line clearance, cable replacement and transmission line upgrades, the company has earned impressive gains in customer satisfaction as measured by J.D. Power and Associates.

Operational efficiencies have allowed the company to actually reduce prices four times since 1987, making Kansas City one of the most competitively priced energy markets in the country. And, recent advances in customer care and billing systems have made the customer experience as simple and seamless as possible.

Aquila provides electricity to more than a third of greater Kansas City, Missouri, which includes the Kansas City International Airport employment corridor and suburban communities such as Blue Springs, Grandview, Lee’s Summit, and Liberty. Aquila also serves many other growing communities in northwest Missouri, including St. Joseph.

Several major data centers have recently relocated to Aquila’s Kansas City service area. These include: MasterCard International, CitiCards, Ameritrade, Cerner Corp., Liberty Mutual Group, and the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. These industry leaders and others benefit from Aquila’s proven ability to deliver reliable, affordable, quality power. The Aquila system provides ample capacity to serve current customers plus additional reserve capacity to meet the needs of new growth.

The Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU), a municipal electric and water utility, began operation in 1909. Today, BPU is an industry leader locally and nationally with the largest municipal utility in the state of Kansas.

BPU serves a large area of Wyandotte County. BPU also wholesales considerable electricity to cities in Kansas and Missouri.

HUMAN RESOURCES
The Kansas City area offers one of the deepest IT talent pools in the central U.S.

The pool of available labor in IT professions (over 34,000) is strong due to the concentration of financial services, telecommunications, data processing, software, and engineering firms in the Kansas City area:

•	The presence in telcom includes the world headquarters of Sprint, plus significant AT&T and SBC operations.
•	American Century, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, H&R Block, State Street, and Citi Cards are just a few of our major financial services employers.
•	Major banking headquarters also make up this sector.
•	DST Systems melds financial services and data processing in a business with a local workforce of over 6,000.
•	Cerner is an information systems company with nearly 3,000 local associates and extraordinary announced expansion plans.
•	High tech companies like Honeywell, Garmin, Bayer, Quintiles, and Aventis, together with engineering firms such as Black and Veatch, Burns and McDonnell, and George Butler Associates also bolster the IT workforce.

While notable large IT employers in the Kansas City area have sustained or even increased their workforce over the past few years difficult economic conditions, some sectors have released substantial numbers of workers. For example, telecommunications employs 4,500 fewer workers in Kansas City than it did one year ago. Many of these are well-qualified IT workers formerly employed at Sprint’s world headquarters. Click here for a detailed listing of major layoff announcements in the Kansas City area.

Major IT degree programs at the metro's colleges and universities graduate new workforce entrants in significant numbers. Fifteen institutions award bachelor's degrees, approximately 430 annually, in computer and information sciences. The two largest universities (University of Kansas and University of Missouri-Kansas City) also award graduate degrees in the field. Associate's degrees awarded annually exceed 200; and certificates awarded in computer science by area vo-tech, career, and community colleges exceed 4,400 annually.

Additionally, computing-related engineering programs in the metro (at four institutions) award about 130 bachelor's degrees annually. Graduate programs are also offered by KU. Annual associate's degrees awarded in computing-related engineering technology programs exceed 275.

Note that Kansas City is an employment destination for new graduates from major institutions in a multi-state region, so the recruitment pool of recent IT grads is in reality much larger than our own numbers imply.