The City of Miami is already widely known as the gateway to Latin America.  Local business leaders are now looking to leverage that position to build on Miami’s role as a technology hub.

InfoWorld, a leading source of information on emerging enterprise technologies, recently included Florida as #3 in its list of U.S. states with the highest number of IT firms, noting that Florida is becoming a technology hot spot.

According to NewGeography.com, Jacksonville leads the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan areas in growth of tech jobs with 83.5% growth from 2001 to 2013. While the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area experienced only 2.6% growth in tech jobs during that same period, there has been increasing interest in South Florida by technology firms, including Microsoft, which recently expressed interest in establishing a Microsoft Innovation Center in South Florida.