Fredericksburg Leader

Smart Cities company Cocoflo Innovations to launch business in Virginia, fueling economic growth in the United States

 Cocoflo, a rapidly growing software as a service company that provides cloud-based city service solutions to governments around the world, announced its business expansion into the state of Virginia. The company’s official U.S. launch was commemorated at a ribbon cutting ceremony on November 30, 2022 at the Virginia Smart Community Testbed, where Cocoflo’s Virginia office will be headquartered. This business expansion will take place in collaboration with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC) and the Stafford County Department of Economic Development.

“We are very pleased to announce the expansion of our business operations to Stafford, Virginia,” said Jonathan Levitt, Vice President, Growth of Cocoflo. “This is a fantastic opportunity to partner with the VIPC, an organization whose commitment to entrepreneurship, innovation and startups is both admirable and impressive. We look forward to building our team in Virginia, further expanding throughout the state and region, and providing government software solutions that will benefit the entire community.”

Located within the DC, Maryland, Virginia (DMV) corridor and with a population of approximately 156,000, Stafford is one of the fastest-growing counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The region is a hub for technology and innovation, with document management company Small PDF recently listing Virginia as the best place for IT workers to gain employment. They analyzed data such as salaries, employment rates, and vacancies in the tech field across every US state. Virginia is also quickly becoming a sought after location for business expansion, with various tech companies establishing themselves in the area. In recent months, Cocoflo partner, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that they will be opening a new AWS Skills Center in Arlington, VA that will unlock training and new career opportunities in high-demand cloud tech jobs.

“Congratulations Cocoflo for opening your first US location here in Stafford. We are excited to welcome this international and innovative business to our growing smart tech economy.” said Monica Gary, Stafford County Aquia District Supervisor. Cocoflo will lead the “Commonwealth of Virginia SmartAlerts” initiative, a pilot project that will improve Stafford’s critically-identified flood zones. SmartAlerts will integrate with IoT devices across the region that supply valuable data to keep citizens safe in case of a flood emergency. The project will provide smart community and IoT flood sensor modelling that will be designed to notify area residents to prepare for flooded roads and provide alerts to use for emergency management, when fully developed. The objective of SmartAlerts is to use live data to quickly and clearly communicate information that will minimize harm to citizens, city infrastructure and the economy. SmartAlerts will act as a pilot project for the rest of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the entire country.

The Cocoflo team is proud to be spearheading this project that harnesses the power of technology to improve the lives of communities in Virginia and surrounding areas. Innovation is of growing importance for governments and public service organizations, allowing them to be more responsive to change, build more transparency and trust with citizens, and to attract the best professional talent into the area.

Original source can be found here