Envision Technology Advisors LLC, an information technology company in Providence, takes a brainy approach to IT services.

Businesses that contact Envision for help with an Internet project or computer-network challenge are likely to work with experts in a variety of fields. In addition to computer programmers and network engineers, Envision’s team includes professionals trained as accountants and actuarial mathematicians. The head of its Web-development division has a degree in psychology from Princeton University.

“We prefer to refer to ourselves as business consultants that specialize in technology,” said Todd Knapp, the company’s founder and president. “We’re not really computer guys. We focus a lot of our time on understanding our accounts – what they do, why they do it – and trying to bring them technologies that give them some kind of significant competitive advantage, rather than just employing technology for the sake of technology.”

The approach has served Envision well. The 10-year-old firm has grown to become one of the larger IT consulting practices in Rhode Island, with more than 400 accounts throughout New England.

Envision’s offices include an in-house data center, and Knapp said his company is the only consulting firm he’s aware of in the state that offers networking services, Web development, e-commerce and Web hosting under one roof.

Knapp founded the firm when he was 21 years old, while working as a technology consultant out of his home in Narragansett during a break from coursework at the University of Rhode Island, where he had spent two years pursuing a degree in ocean engineering.

His plan was to make enough money to transfer to the University of New Hampshire. But in 1998, the accounting firm today known as Kahn, Litwin, Renza & Co., was looking to form a strategic alliance with an independent technology consultant, and approached Knapp.

“They started asking around their client base, and we had half-a-dozen to a dozen clients in common, and fortunately people said very nice things about me to them,” Knapp said. “They called me out of the blue and said, ‘Hey, we’d really like to partner with you.’”

Bolstered by its relationship with KLR – today the state’s largest independent CPA firm – Envision quickly established itself in the local business community. The company’s solid growth in its first two years was driven largely by work to protect clients’ computer networks against possible ‘Y2K’ glitches, Knapp said.

But Envision subsequently struggled along with the rest of the technology community through the burst of the dot-com investment bubble, the terrorist attacks of 911 and the subsequent economic downturn.

“If you know anything about technology in Rhode Island – or even in New England – you’ll hear people say, ‘Well, I’ve been in business since ’99, but I’ve been doing business since 2003,’” Knapp said. “A lot of our competitors disappeared in that time. But Envision was strong and we’ve always been strong and we got through that, and since 2003 we’ve just been going gangbusters, getting bigger and bigger every year.”

Envision still works closely with KLR, working out of the same office building on Providence’s East Side. Envision is hiring several new employees this year and is on track to have 20 employees by year’s end, Knapp said.

Envision offers a core set of services that include network-security consulting, Web development and Internet marketing. But the company has recently put a strong focus on growing its new VMware Virtualization practice, Knapp said.

Envision is one of the only resellers in Rhode Island of VMware’s virtual server and desktop technology, which Knapp predicts will revolutionize the IT landscape. Virtualization enables one computer to do the job of many, by sharing a single computer’s resources across multiple environments and hosting numerous operating systems and applications locally and in remote locations.

“Virtualization is an incredibly powerful technology,” Knapp said. “It reduces IT costs, it lowers your carbon footprint [and] it makes you eligible for a number of green credits throughout Rhode Island.” •

company profile

Envision Technology

Advisors LLC

OWNER: Todd Knapp

TYPE OF BUSINESS: Information

technology services and consulting firm

LOCATION: 951 North Main St.,

Providence.

EMPLOYEES: 17

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1998

ANNUAL SALES: WND