About
Eighteen years of software that had to work.
KZN builds AI systems for research centers, government agencies, and companies putting AI to work. We started in 2008 doing software for state and federal government, spent a decade inside NSF research centers, and over the last two years rebuilt the firm on the same AI stack we now sell.
01
How we got here
- 2008
- KZN incorporated in Maryland. Government and enterprise software.
- 2010
- A public school system. Student case management under FERPA, and the oldest thing we built that is still running.
- 2012
- A travel insurance commerce platform, built from nothing. Eight countries, five currencies, still selling.
- 2016
- First NSF research center. The start of a decade in the Division of Materials Research.
- 2016
- DC Department of Public Works. The enterprise service bus and data warehouse, still running ten years later.
- 2017
- The service alerting platform that is now a product gets written, one author, one summer.
- 2020
- Prime contractor on two state pandemic responses. 750,000 people vaccinated.
- 2023
- SimplyScholar ships. The research-center platform that became a product.
- 2024
- SOC 2 Type II. The internal agent stack starts running the firm.
- 2026
- AI implementation is the practice. This is the pivot, in public.
02
How we think
The oldest thing we built is sixteen years old.
A case management system for a public school system, built in 2010 and running under FERPA, still in service as far as we know. The one after it, a travel insurance commerce platform from 2012, is definitely still selling: eight countries, five currencies, three continents. And the oldest system we still operate ourselves is a decade-old service bus for a city department. Anyone can ship something that demos. Keeping it alive while every administration, dependency and vendor underneath it changes is a different skill, and it is the one this firm is built around.
- A senior practitioner on every engagement
- No bench, and no handoff to a delivery team you have not met. The person who scopes your work is the person who builds it, and is still there when it goes to review.
- Every engagement ends
- Every engagement has a defined end, and your team is trained and the runbook written before it arrives. A system nobody on staff can change is a system that quietly stops being used, so handover is part of the build rather than the last thing on the plan.
- We will tell you if we are the wrong fit
- If what you need is a roadmap, or the work really wants a standing team of ten, we would rather say so on the first call than take it and hope. It is a better outcome for both of us than a project that quietly underdelivers.
03
What we can show you
- SOC 2 Type II
- Report dated 2024, available on request. See the FAQ for the honest version.
- Both sides of an audit
- We have been through SOC 2 Type II ourselves, and taken a client through theirs: the penetration testing, and the evidence responses to the auditors. They got their report.
- Regulated data, in production
- HIPAA infrastructure holding live patient records for a state health department, hardened to CIS Level 1 and through a state security review. FERPA-covered case management for a public school system.
- Systems that outlived their vendors
- A case management system from 2010 still in service, a 2012 commerce platform still selling across eight countries, and ten unbroken years for a city public works department.
Organizations we have built for: the National Science Foundation and its research centers, the DC Department of Public Works, the State of Maryland, the State of Delaware, Penn State, UT Austin, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Missouri, NC A&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, Autodesk, and Phone2Action.
Want to know if we are the right firm?
Ask us on a call. Thirty minutes, no deck, and a straight answer either way.