The Critical Facility & Data Infrastructure Specialists

Maicom
Written by Stacey McCarthy

Data: it’s the lifeblood of any company. Without information, business decisions can’t be properly made – they just become educated guesses.
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Before information was stored electronically, things like customer order history, financial statements, and staff information were all maintained on paper and held in filing cabinets or warehouses, making them susceptible to loss from fire, flood, and human error.

Now, information can be preserved indefinitely in an electronic format, but that information is also susceptible to nature, accidents and error. That’s where companies like Maicom LLC come into play.

Maicom LLC is a construction, installation and maintenance company that provides data infrastructure servicing to the telecommunications industry. In lay terms, the company constructs the buildings and implements the technology that transports and stores its customers’ valuable data, and it ensures that their customers’ facilities have everything that is needed to safeguard them against natural elements such as wind, fire and flood, power loss, and human error.

Maicom was founded in 1988 by Paul Maiuri, a field electrician by trade. Over the past 30 years under his leadership, Maicom has grown to employ 175 people in nine offices across the U.S., and manages several hundred facilities in its maintenance program. The company has become recognized as the leader in the design, build, and servicing of networking facilities and data centers in North America and today, over 400 network facilities/data centers are under its management.

Maicom has earned this recognition based on the extensive experience, processes and best practices it has put into place to successfully build robust, cost-effective, and extremely efficient network facilities, headends, data centers, and hubs throughout the United States, and its mission reflects this: “To be the trusted partner to our customers by delivering the four pillars of our services: the best quality of work, consistently, safely and in a cost-conscious manner.”

These services focus around three lines of business: power and critical infrastructure systems integration; inside plant deployment services; and preventative maintenance and emergency response.

“We know what these facilities should look like in this day and age,” said President Paul Maiuri. “We design them, we build them, we maintain them, and we are the critical facility specialists in terms of these services.”

The company’s clients are multiple service operators, data center operators, wireless, mobile switching centers, and Internet service providers, which means there is an expectation on the part of clients for high standards, tight timelines, and comprehensive specifications.

As a result of its service offerings being so unique and specialized, the company stands out from its competition. There are some competitors who manufacture power equipment for these clients, but Maicom stands out by providing a full turnkey solution. Maicom’s senior management combine hundreds of years of experience in building and managing critical facilities. “We have worked on data centers, headends and hubs of all shapes and sizes. We know how to upgrade those sites in the most efficient manner possible. There is no one like Maicom when it comes to our understanding and ability to improve critical facilities,” said John Lavin, VP of Customer Development.

Maicom’s customers mainly come from the U.S., but it also services clients in the Caribbean, and it maintains a few large telecommunications customers on both the east and west coasts of Canada.

“Our customers are increasingly looking to work with fewer parties across larger geographies,” said Alex Pfyffer, who runs business development. “We have open jobs in 35 states today and have the ability to work nationwide. We also have office locations from Boston to Seattle, so we have a big footprint.”

Given its unique competitive advantage, it may seem that a company like Maicom could get complacent, but complacency is not what has kept them in business so long. “We know how to serve Fortune 500 customers,” said Maiuri. “We serve eight of them contractually; we’ve done this for 30 years and we’ve gone through different technological architectures.”

Maiuri explains that Maicom’s competitive edge comes from understanding what its customers need and how their needs change when a new technological architecture comes across. “Traditionally, there was a lot of copper going into sheds in rural America,” he said. “Today we’re a lot more advanced. It’s all fiber, and it’s all much more efficient buildings and nodes that are much closer to the customer, so we know how those changes work for our customers and we’re equipped to be a partner in those new technological architectures.”

Maicom also has the advantage of having employees who have enjoyed long careers with the company.

One of these employees is John Miller, VP of Power, Facility and Systems Integration who has been with the company for almost a decade. He knew that the company had a strong business model and it was something he wanted to be a part of.

“Maicom has defined its competitive advantage by offering a complete turnkey solution to our customers,” said Miller. “When we developed this business model, I knew that’s where the industry was heading and that Maicom would end up becoming the leading partner in the telco space.”

For VP of Operations, Northeast, Paul DeLucia, who has been with the company from the beginning, he feels the team has been successful in striking the right balance. “Maicom is a family-oriented company,” he shared. “Throughout my 30-year tenure, Maicom has always been very supportive of both my family and professional needs.”

Since the company’s field of work is so specialized, and because its services are in such high demand, it is hard to have enough qualified staff to meet customer needs at all times. “Our biggest challenge is the time it takes to get people trained to do what we do,” said Pfyffer. “We hire people from the construction industry, the electrical industry, the AC industry, and we have to get them up to speed on what we’re doing – and that takes time.”

Maicom places great importance on the training aspect of its work, so much so that the company has designed its own training programs, and all of this training takes place at a school it operates in New Jersey. The curriculum has been designed specifically for its staff and is taught by 30 veterans from the telecom industry, and by safety and quality control professionals. Training is ongoing in a mentorship environment as well.

“Our technicians undergo rigorous safety training in order to maintain our strong safety and outage record,” explained Maiuri. “Maicom’s technical staff are heavily trained and incentivized for outage prevention.”

Demand for the team’s protected, consistent and stable data transmission will only continue to grow as customers continue to demand faster speeds and agile network environments. That means for Maicom, there will never be a shortage of opportunities. Its services are needed in order for its clients to keep serving their customers, which means Maicom will need to keep expanding and upgrading its own capacity.

“Data consumption is growing between 40 and 70 percent a year, depending on who you ask,” said Maiuri. “So our biggest opportunity is continuing to service that growing need for efficient data processing facilities.”

In a world where protecting information is of vital importance, Maicom knows that it is the trusted partner to turn to. Storing data with cheaper, less experienced providers or turning to a cloud-based communications platform may be an option for some businesses, but for most, putting their company’s most precious asset into the hands of a completely virtual world is not a path they are willing to venture down.

“More and more, our customers want to work with sophisticated, secure, safe partners like ourselves and less with the mom and pop, 10-person company in their regional town,” said Maiuri.

For now, Maicom will continue doing what it does best, and when business practices change and technologies evolve, it will be right there, evolving with them and providing the service that has kept the company number one for decades.

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