It's a tale, but it's a fun tale! Since the end of our story is the most exciting part, we'll start there. After all, we are in the business of giving people the information they want, when and how they want it; to do so is power. So here you go.

As the late Steve Erwin would start a good story, so will we. "And there they were..." Two brothers are sitting in a basement office. They are brainstorming the perfect name for the company into which they are about to invest their lives. Well, one of them is brainstorming.

He works feverishly with his "mathematical formula" approach. With pocket protector and white board in place, he crunches his own numbers. He jots notes, tests acronyms, scratches his head, hypothesizes shortened names and charts availability for various URLs. Zealously working to establish the perfect company name, his near-frantic effort includes more research, chart making and testing. His focus is interrupted only by occasional outbursts intended to motivate his brother-turned-business-partner.

Where is his brother? He is there...in the basement...in the room calmy and quietly enjoying a healthy game of Age Mythology. Largely unfazed by the verbal prodding, he pauses his game only long enough to glance over and see his brother's hyper-focused state.

He smiles to himself and with a quiet laughing at his brother's "lathered-up" condition, he calmly redirects his attention to the game. While doing so, he recalls a game character based on a legendary god in Norse's Greek Mythology. He randomly offers, "Hey, what about the name Odin?"

Long pause.

Decision made. Odin Development was born.

The name Odin was the perfect fit because Odin (the god) believed "to see what others cannot is power." The character is fabled to have given his left eye in exchange for ominous wisdom and knowledge. The knowledge gave him increased perspective and made him wise beyond his counterparts. It doesn't hurt that for brothers Gary and Jerry Norton, Odin is often considered the god of wisdom and knowledge-that's the vision of what their company would enable.

Using its technical expertise Odin (the new company) would empower the same distinction for its clients. Odin would be an innovative, integration company that is strictly motivated by the data needs of individual business professionals. Odin's solutions would provide its clients with strategic insights into their own data and business processes. Odin's expertise was to streamline and simplifies your integration with virtually any system. So the name was the perfect fit.

"The company's new identity is consistent with our strategically re-focused emphasis on giving individuals their information in a way they want to see it," said older brother Gary. "We provide a single-page view of an individual's most essential information. It doesn't matter how many disparate systems or unique user logins we navigate on the back end."

Jerry, the younger of the game-playing brother, describes their business just a little differently.

"We empower people," said Jerry.

Care to fancy a guess which brother was playing the video game?

Jerry continued. "We build interfaces heavy with the strategic data professionals need to make better business decisions. No matter how many different places or how many disparate systems we have to draw from on the back end, Odin's integrated solutions give them a more educated perspective."

Although Jerry takes the more simplified approach, he comes by it naturally. Jerry, a perfect poster child candidate for Generation X, grew up watching (and in part assisting) the evolution of data architecting and networking. No stranger to getting disparate machines to communicate, his skills began evolving at a very young age. He had a front-row seat watching Gary link multiple computers in their home so the neighborhood kids could battle each other at Wolfenstein (an 80's pre-Doom favorite). This doesn't seem so significant in the post-Game Boy age, but these were the good old days when Atari's "Frogger" wasn't that far removed from cutting edge technology for home gamers.

Jerry took what was a common household interest in his youth and turned it into a career. He spent more than six years providing network support for more than 250 PC's for Novell employees as well as maintained file, print and e-mail servers. Oh yes, Jerry also helped his brother and his NCP team (Novell Connecting Points) win national awards while unknowingly pioneering technology that would eventually become an entire vertical industry. That's no small accomplishment; more on that later.

Jerry spent two years in the Northwest providing "light's out" administration of a 300+ node NetWare and NT/2000 server system. On the heels of architecting tradeshow-side NDS directory (including credentials and logins), he also was responsible for tradeshow support for eBay. His professional experience was further highlighted with his providing onsite support for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.

So when broadGap Technologies (the company Gary co-founded in 1998) had an opening for someone with strategic vision and technical savvy into server management, it was no surprise Jerry was a perfect fit. Brothers were once again co-workers.

With an accurate picture painted of Jerry's background, it's probably appropriate we come clean on the image we paint of Gary. Well, he doesn't always wear a pocket protector.

A self-proclaimed tech nerd, Gary recounts a childhood wherein he doesn't ever remember having a home computer with a cover on it.

"I was so busy altering and modifying machines that I never took the time to put the covers back on my machines," said Gary. It was little surprise to anyone who knew him when he chose to make technology his career-while still in high school.

He began a multiple year stint working as a LAN administrator for various district departments. Not too long after that he was working for Novell where he would spend the next nine years in various positions of technical responsibility. Most were technically steep positions he found fascinating, just not flashy or sexy-that is until he became the Lead Architect of Global Marketing for Novell's Technology Drive Marketing department.

It was in this position that he, Jerry and NCP (Novell Connecting Points) were unknowingly developing solutions that would eventually evolve into industry affecting verticals. While innocently (and innovatively) tending to their job specific tasks, they began the work of networking hundreds of different nodes from numerous different systems and locations.

Despite great success for NCP, new management perceived value in a different direction and the entire team was "downsized." With severance in hand, Gary pooled his resources and co-founded Odin's predecessor. In 2001 the only guarantee in business (change) brought to many in our economy a need to adapt in an effort to keep the doors open. Time eventually brought stability. Gary recently bought out the remaining founders, recruited Jerry to join him and together in business (for the third time), they refined the direction of the new company.

After accomplishing and getting his brother on board, only one challenge remained...the company needed a name.