News of the region's renaissance has been heralded by newspapers as far away as San Francisco and Seattle. And the area received further national attention last fall when it was chosen as the site for a National Governor's Association conference on the new economy. One consequence is that résumés have been coming into the e-Coast Web site from all over the U.S. and Canada. "People start by being interested, in many cases, in moving to New Hampshire," Welch says. "They have been working in California, Austin, New York City or Boston, and they've seen the growth of the high-tech community here."

Last year the Technology Roundtable commissioned a study by the Taylor Research & Consulting Group of Portsmouth and Norwalk, Conn., to find out which aspects of the e-Coast are most attractive to high-tech business executives and the talented work force they need to spin their ideas into gold. The resulting Taylor Report, issued in December, said that the single biggest draw is the fact that people don't have to spend a lot of time commuting.

"People look at the Big Dig in Boston, and they don't want to deal with it," says Jim Jewell '88, who was one of the first employees at Bottomline Technologies when it was founded in 1991, and retired from the company when it went public in 1999. Now a consultant for high-tech firms, Jewell points out that commuting can be stressful and time-consuming in other areas where e-businesses have concentrated. "Typically, professionals in high technology have to commute at least a half-hour to an hour each way every day," he says.

Of course, there are other attractions. The executives from 14 e-Coast companies who were interviewed for the Taylor Report also listed the following reasons for locating in New Hampshire: familiarity with the area and its business practices (often because executives had vacationed here); the relatively low cost of doing business in New Hampshire; and the distinctive quality of life. An additional reason, many high-tech executives interviewed for this story said, is proximity to UNH. For the same reasons, as well as the absence of a state income or sales tax, most of those businesses have had no trouble persuading workers to move to the Seacoast.

Now that hundreds of companies have settled in the e-Coast, Welch believes the area is achieving the critical mass necessary to sustain growth in the high-tech sector. As he sees it, "We have a lot of competition in town, but we have a lot of business partners as well." The Taylor Report cited the need for such a critical mass, but many of the executives who were interviewed questioned whether it had been reached. They said companies would benefit from a wider pool of potential employees, more education and training resources and an enhanced infrastructure, particularly for communications bandwidth.

Already the 3,000-plus acres of Pease Air Force Base -- now reinvented as the Pease International Tradeport -- are being targeted as prime space for a technology campus. Some company executives say that a shared campus would allow businesses to get communications and other infrastructure support more efficiently and cost-effectively. Concentrating high-tech businesses at the tradeport would also reduce pressure on Portsmouth's downtown, helping to preserve the character that attracted companies in the first place.

One business that has already moved out of downtown is PixelMedia Inc., which helps clients to use the Internet and other types of media to introduce products and services worldwide. Based in downtown Portsmouth since 1994, the company moved to the tradeport in March. Erik Dodier '92, president and chief executive officer, says PixelMedia needed to expand, and he and his partner liked being able to design their own 7,500-square-foot facility there.