To handle growth, Riegelsberger said the sales-and-use tax vendor built a West Coast data center that opened last year and is scheduled to open an East Coast facility this month. Avalara has also been ramping up its marketing department with money fueled by last year’s $21-million round of venture funding. The company continues to add connectors for accounting software, ecommerce and other applications. Avalara builds connectors so that AvaTax, its sales tax engine, can integrate with the other packages. It has nearly 200 OEM agreements and intends to add connectors for 50 more OEMs this year, many in specialized ERP or ecommerce. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of endusers connect to AvaTax for use with software products from a few companies, including Epicor, Intacct, Infor, Microsoft, NetSuite and Sage in the financial software arena, along with one pure ecommerce player, Magento. In addition, Avalara plans to have more OEMs privately label the tax engine, in addition to NetSuite and Epicor, which already doing so. The company has also hired Jeff Cohen, who worked at Thomson Reuters from January 2008 through December 2010, as VP of compliance. Cohen, a CPA, was most recently senior manager of indirect tax for KPMG from January through December 2011.