{"id":26333,"date":"2024-09-01T20:30:05","date_gmt":"2024-09-01T20:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/108027320"},"modified":"2024-09-01T20:30:05","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T20:30:05","slug":"a-journey-inside-epic-systems-mythical-and-sprawling-campus-a-world-away-from-wall-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/a-journey-inside-epic-systems-mythical-and-sprawling-campus-a-world-away-from-wall-street\/","title":{"rendered":"A journey inside Epic Systems’ mythical and sprawling campus, a world away from Wall Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A sign that reads “Epic Intergalactic Headquarters” on campus.<\/p>\n

Epic Systems<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dorothy Gale was right \u2014 the Land of Oz is not in Kansas. Rather, it’s nestled within the rolling green fields of Verona, Wisconsin, a town of nearly 16,400 people located about 10 miles southwest of the capital city of Madison.<\/p>\n

Verona is home to the whimsical, sprawling 1,670-acre headquarters for Epic Systems, one of the biggest privately held U.S. tech companies. Epic’s software is seemingly ubiquitous across hospitals and clinics, storing the medical records of more than 280 million people in the U.S.<\/p>\n

While the company’s workforce is tasked with the hefty responsibility of building tools to support doctors and nurses as they provide care to patients, Epic employees spend their days milling in and out of offices that look as if they were plucked straight from the pages of a sci-fi novel or children’s book.<\/p>\n

A yellow brick road inspired by “The Wizard of Oz” winds through the hallways of a gleaming, emerald green building. Giant chocolate chips mark the entryway to the chocolate factory, and a mischievous cat grins through the window of a building guarded by life-sized playing cards.  <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Oz office building on Epic’s campus.<\/p>\n

Courtesy: Epic Systems<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Last week, thousands of health-care executives descended on Epic’s sprawling campus for the company’s annual Users Group Meeting<\/span>, in part to hear about new products and upcoming initiatives. This year’s theme was “storytime,” and Judy Faulkner<\/span>, the company’s 81-year-old CEO, took the stage dressed as a swan, complete with a plume of feathers in her hair.<\/p>\n

Faulkner, a reserved mathematician who founded Epic in a basement in 1979, told the crowd that the surrounding buildings and their upkeep account for 8% of the company’s total expenses. But she made the obvious point, that it’s a lot cheaper for Epic to buy land and build in Verona than it would be in a tech hub like San Francisco, Seattle or New York. And in this small midwestern town, the company is far from big city distractions.<\/p>\n

“Most of us in software development are active sci-fi readers,” Faulkner said during her keynote. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Wizards Academy Campus.<\/p>\n

Courtesy: Epic Systems<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For public market investors, Epic has always been somewhat of a fantasy.<\/p>\n

The company, with its 14,000-person workforce, doesn’t follow a preordained budget, has made zero acquisitions and never accepted any investment from venture capitalists. It abides by its own set of Ten Commandments, according to its website, the first of which is, “do not go public.”<\/p>\n

Epic generated revenue last year of $4.9 billion. Cerner, Epic’s top rival in the electronic medical records market, went public in 1986 and was acquired<\/span> by Oracle<\/span>