Michael Colapietro, cofounder and CEO of InQuest Technologies, says the company was “pleasantly surprised by what Providence had to offer.”

The Providence Journal Kathy Borchers

PROVIDENCE — Michael Colapietro found something unexpected in Rhode Island when he started searching for a place to move his software company.

With the success of the latest version of its Web-based business platform last year, InQuest Technologies was looking to expand its work force and needed a larger office than the one it had in Southboro, Mass. But that wasn’t the only thing that Colapietro, the chief executive officer of the 12-year-old company, wanted.

It was important to him that the firm be among other innovative technology companies. That was why Colapietro, a native Rhode Islander, and cofounder Jeremy Carr started the company in 1997 in Massachusetts, where high-tech companies have flourished. And it was why last year they were planning on opening a new headquarters in Worcester.

But then an employee suggested taking a look at Providence, and company executives started meeting with officials from the state Economic Development Corporation.

“We were pleasantly surprised by what Providence had to offer,” Colapietro said. “We were pretty excited that there was a tech movement starting here.”

So excited that in July 2007 they decided to move InQuest to Providence and take over a former mill building on West Exchange Street that had previously been occupied by several different small companies.

Yesterday, the firm held a grand opening of its new corporate headquarters in that refurbished brick building near Route 95, celebrating with Governor Carcieri and Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline.

In remarks to InQuest’s employees and clients, Carcieri made passing reference to the weak economy in Rhode Island, where unemployment has reached 10 percent, and said that attracting more technology firms to the state offers a way out of recession.

“This is what the future of our state is all about,” Carcieri announced at the event. “We need to do more of this.”

Despite the problems in most other industries, the state’s technology sector is on the right track, according to several studies. A state-by-state analysis, released in November, placed Rhode Island 11th in states that are making science and technology the driving forces of their economies. The rankings were compiled by the Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

The Milken Institute, of California, ranked Rhode Island 10th in its State Science and Technology Index last June.

And the American Electronics Association’s 2008 Cybercities report ranked the Providence metropolitan area as one of the nation’s top cities in terms of wages in the technology industry.

According to the EDC, the state’s information-technology and digital-media companies employ more than 15,000 workers and pay more than $1 billion in annual wages.

Last spring, as part of an accelerated effort to attract new businesses to the state, the EDC started a campaign to identify expansion and relocation opportunities within the information-technology sector among other growing industries.

InQuest’s expansion received a significant boost from the EDC, which loaned the company $750,000 from a small business loan fund. The funding, said Colapietro, gave the firm the capital to begin hiring immediately upon starting its move last fall.

“It allowed us to expand in a controlled, yet aggressive, fashion,” he said.

Over the past four months, InQuest has hired 15 new employees, all from Rhode Island, to bring its total work force in Providence to 35. The company also has a small branch office in Newport and a wholly owned subsidiary in Bangalore, India. In all, the company employs about 70 people worldwide.

Colapietro founded the company with Carr when they were both working at Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, an engineering firm based in Watertown, Mass. Carr is now the chief technology officer at InQuest.

The company’s clients include several national companies, such as NBC, Verizon, National Grid and Staples, and works locally with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, in Newport, and Providence-based Gilbane Inc.

Colapietro said the move to Providence places the company in a good position in proximity to Boston and New York, which have rich talent pools for the technology industry. The local high-tech business environment is also “starting to flourish.”

“Things are going really well,” Colapietro said. “We hope it continues.”

akuffner@projo.com