Interactive Intelligence to hire hundreds in growth plan

An Indianapolis-based tech company is set to announce plans for adding hundreds of jobs on Thursday afternoon, and possibly an expansion of its headquarters.

Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. has scheduled an announcement for 1:45 p.m. with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence at its headquarters on the northwest side. The Indiana Economic Development Corp., which is expected to offer financial incentives for the firm's growth plans, says the company will be announcing "hundreds of new jobs for Hoosiers."

In an interview with IBJ in December, CEO Don Brown said that the firm expected to hire in the neighborhood of 250 workers in 2014, and also was looking at constructing an additional building by its headquarters.

Interactive Intelligence provides automation software and service. About 1,200 of its 2,000 workers are in Indianapolis.

The publicly held firm has been on a tear in recent years. Over the last 30 months, its share price has risen from about $20 to $62.

The prosperous times stem from a bold decision the company made five years ago to take call center computing to the cloud. It sounds like a no-brainer now, given the popularity today of using remote servers to store, manage and process data. But back then, not everyone saw the trend as taking hold, especially for call center applications.

“To do it with real-time communications, the quality of voice is critical. The sensitivity of data is paramount. It was a lot less obvious customers were going to embrace that paradigm,” Brown told IBJ in December. “We felt it would happen, but we did not know what the pace would be.”

Interactive Intelligence hired about 250 workers in 2013. This month, it announced that it had signed a letter of intent to buy Durham, N.C.-based OrgSpan Inc., a software developer majority owned by Brown, and co-founded and led by former Interactive developer Jeff Swartz.

OrgSpan has 40 workers, according to the News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C.

This story will be updated.