• VERMILLION, S.D. (AP) -- A Minnesota company will bring 1,000 information technology consultant jobs to South Dakota as part of an effort to keep high-tech positions from being shipped overseas, Gov. Dennis Daugaard planned to announce Wednesday.
• Eagle Creek Software Services, which provides tech support to large health care, financial services and other companies, plans to build a new 200-employee office in Vermillion and partner with the University of South Dakota to help train its potential hires, Chief Executive Ken Behrendt told The Associated Press ahead of the public announcement.
• Daugaard was expected to join company and local officials in Vermillion for a formal announcement on Wednesday afternoon.
• It's an expansion of Eagle Creek's Dakota model, which uses U.S.-based project centers in lower-cost areas such as South Dakota and North Dakota as an alternative to providing IT support from India or other overseas locations, Behrendt said.
• The company says it can competitively provide consulting services out of South Dakota as opposed to an overseas location because it's a business-friendly state with no corporate or income tax.
• In addition to avoiding language, cultural and time-zone issues that arise with overseas support teams, U.S.-based project centers work better when a company needs continuous interaction with their consultants or want techs to speak to their customers, he said.
• "They've tried it, or they know just through past experience that it's not working, and that's creating the demand that's out there," Behrendt said.
• Eagle Creek has wanted to expand in the Dakotas, but the company had been having trouble finding qualified people to fill consultant positions. So it called the state Governor's Office of Economic Development for help.
• Officials worked with the state Board of Regents to create a four-course certificate at the University of South Dakota geared to the software skills Eagle Creek was seeking, allowing the company to spend less time on in-house training, said Mel Ustad, the office's director of commercialization.
• "We see this as a great opportunity to create the quality jobs for college graduates and to continue to increase the number of grads who stay in South Dakota," Ustad said.
• Students opting for the IT Consultant Academy certificate will take two software

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