How One Tech Startup Is Solving a Common Headache for Today's Disruptive Business Model

By Neil Hare

There is no more disruptive force in our economy right now than the rise of the shared office industry. What Uber did for one sector—taxi services—shared offices can potentially do to multiple industries, if not all professional services companies.

Once upon a time, having space in a shared office suite was a sign of not having made it, or worse, an indicator of a declining business that couldn’t afford office space and administrative staff. Now it is a sign of being a savvy business person and a badge of a honor.

Why sign a long-term lease when you can rent a desk by the month or even the hour? Why hire developers, designers, marketers, or salespeople when you can collaborate in a shared office environment? And, of course, why buy coffee and beer when you get that for free along with networking with your office mates?

The barrier to entry in starting a business in America has never been lower. All you need is a desk in a shared office, a laptop (although this is becoming optional), and a smartphone, and you are in business. Entrepreneurs can launch an e-commerce, tech, or professional services company overnight for little more than a few thousand dollars. This low overhead also means these business are all profit and can afford to undercut traditional companies by a wide margin.

Can You Say Disruption?

About the only issue that can disrupt this disruptive force, however, is the lack of fast and reliable Internet. Along with collaborating with frenemies comes dealing with video streaming, Skype calls, and massive downloads that come with a shared office setting. Some tenants have found themselves rushing out to Starbucks to get emails out, because some bandwidth hogs slowed the Internet to a crawl.

One startup is addressing this issue and recently announced a new partnership with shared office leader UberOffices. CirrusWorks, based in the Northern Virginia tech corridor, is the brainchild of CEO David Gianinni, an entrepreneur who has been dealing with providing fast, reliable Internet since the late 1990s. His first company, Core Communications, provided Internet access to hotels and convention centers during the first Internet boom. He later sold the company to multinational tech giant Swisscomm.

“Our device, called The Governor™, takes a novel approach to Internet traffic congestion,” says Giannini. “Through some very clever and effective mathematical algorithms, The Governor dynamically allocates bandwidth in microseconds based on the relative needs of the entire population of users. It's sort of a real time, automated 'Net Neutrality' for the local area network, boosting performance and making bandwidth more cost-efficient,” he adds.

UberOffices caters to tech-savvy entrepreneurs who depend on seamless connections to the Internet, and it sought out tools to manage the volatile, uncontrollable data streams. "We needed technology that could keep up with the explosive demand for bandwidth generated from BYOD, web migration, and streaming apps," says Ryan Macaulay, CTO of UberOffices.

CirrusWorks is expanding throughout the shared office industry and other sectors that also cater to a community of users that consume vast quantities of data such as hospitality, education, and health care.

It is hard to predict what the ultimate impact of shared offices will be on traditional companies and the economy as a whole. However, one thing is for certain: As the industry grows, its bandwidth needs will skyrocket. It remains to be seen whether companies like CirrusWorks and others will meet the demand and keep data flowing.