IPR Secure’s new prez talks Mid-Atlantic tech and high-speed infrastructure

Wilmington hybrid cloud service provider IPR Secure found a new president and COO in Mark Cochran, who most recently served as head of Cloudamize business operations for Cloudreach.

A longtime resident of the Mid-Atlantic, Cochran has worked on both sides of the coast over the years: He got his start in tech shortly after earning an MBA from The College of William and Mary, when he then went to work for a San Francisco IT startup, which eventually led him to biomedical services for a period.

Mark Cochran. (Courtesy photo)

“I ended up on a very large assignment with the American Red Cross Biomedical Services Division — a billion dollar pharmaceutical operation,” said Cochran. “It was heavily regulated and very critical, and there I was responsible for all of the computers and all of their blood centers across the country.

“We were making some major, major changes in the way that organization worked in IT — they were in a tremendous crisis at the time with AIDS and the blood supply and they really needed to move fast, so they asked me to come on full time for them as their head of IT after I had done several consulting engagements for them.”

From there, he moved to southeastern Pennsylvania and took on more leadership positions, including at SCT Corporation (now Ellucian), and SVP Services, where he directed P&L, sales, marketing and delivery for the $250 million professional and technology services business within the Global Education Solutions division.

IPR Secure (that’s Information, Protection, Recovery) started in Conshohocken 20 years ago before eventually settling in Wilmington, where it runs a data center out of 1201 N. Market St., as well as centers in Reading and Boca Raton, Floria. The company manages data for mid-size companies in public and private cloud data networks, as well as hybrid cloud networks managed by its Wrklōdz product.

The biggest advantages Cochran sees with the state’s high-speed broadband infrastructure?

“Just getting that backbone built and installed gives companies in the area a lot of advantages,” he said. “It’s tremendously important, because you’re sending the data out somewhere and the security of that data is critical. The stronger your backbone, the stronger your infrastructure, the more you can offer clients from a business perspective.”

The business community, especially, benefits from it, he said.

“The IT guys get excited about it because it’s faster and more secure and it’s technologically advanced, but it’s the business guys and the clients who are getting tremendous benefits from it. They’re getting advantages in the security of their data and the speed of their operations and cost control. And they’re getting a wide variety of disaster recovery, protection and security services that are better delivered. It’s been a tremendous boost, I think, from a technology standpoint.”