Excella launches spin-off company for tech apprenticeships at corporations

To help meet Virginia’s growing tech talent demand, Excella has launched spin-off company NextUp Solutions Inc. to help corporations and nonprofits develop their own tech talent pipeline.

Launched in 2002, Arlington, Virginia-based Excella is an agile tech firm helping organizations transform their ideas into tech solutions. Its Extension Center internship program, managed at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, enables students to gain hands-on experience under the mentorship of Excella’s technologists. The Extension Center program was recently ranked #3 in the nation on Vault.com’s “2020 Best Tech & Engineering Internships” list.

This corporate restructuring will move Excella’s growing training and internship division to NextUp Solutions, a new entity that will provide services for agile/scrum training and university-based tech apprenticeships.

Former Excella CEO Steve Cooper will now serve as the NextUp Solutions CEO while cofounder and Managing Partner Burton White will serve as Excella’s CEO. Excella cofounder Jeff Gallimore will continue to serve as the company’s chief technology and innovation officer.

“The spin-off of our training and internship businesses is exactly the kind of success Excella was founded to create,” said White in a statement. “This spin-off lets these businesses focus on their learning-centered missions while our consulting business sharpens its focus: delivering bold solutions for our clients seeking to transform the world around them through technology.”

Excella previously announced that it would be relaunching its Extension Center as the Exelaration Center in 2020, with plans to expand to more campuses outside of Virginia Tech. The program partners with corporations and nonprofits to allow students to work on real-world software development projects. NextUp Solutions will now manage the Exeleration Centers, and each center will be university-based and offered year-round.

“We saw the potential to share our mentor-based internship model by evolving to Exelaration Centers,” Cooper said. “Through our tech apprenticeship model, companies who are looking for a world-class internship program can now partner with an Exelaration Center to build their future workforce. We can use any company’s software development projects as the launch pad to create a job-ready, tech talent pipeline for any organization.”

The first Exeleration Center will launch at Virginia Tech’s Corporate Research Center at the beginning of 2020. This center will serve as the program’s headquarters, with instructors teaching classes on various tech topics.

Through this transition, Excella will continue to support its clients, with plans to increase its focus on agile and development and operations solutions, grow its artificial intelligence offerings and expand to new markets. The two companies will collaborate on trainings in the future as the program develops.