Tech Air Connections has encountered new opportunities.    These opportunities revolve around cloud computing, marrying up local businesses with various cloud solutions.  In particular, we are interested in aviation businesses and their developing relationships with education.  Tech Air is also working with a number of small business, helping them improve their critical business functions with both premised based and cloud based solutions.

Cloud computing has become a major focus for Tech Air.  While Tech Air is committed to IT in general and aviation, we are now actively assisting local businesses to decide if they should make the switch to cloud services.  It is a big decision.  Over the past year, I’ve learned that if a company does not consider IT to be a critical part of their business, then they will probably not want to make the investment into purchasing cloud services.

For example, most web hosting companies provide “free” e-mail services with their hosting plan.  But, those plans tend not to be as reliable as the commercial g-mail offering.  However, Google charges $50 per user per year, for its commercial e-mail services, if a company has more than 10 e-mail addresses.  While I might think $600 per year for 12 e-mail boxes is not a huge IT expense, an owner of a small, low margin company may look at it as another expense that he doesn’t want to deal with.  The question then becomes, how critical is a reliable e-mail system to the company.

I’ve also learned that basic IT management is ignored by far too many small businesses.  This includes basic virus protection, perimeter protection with an adequate firewall, a backup system, application training, documentation, a password strategy, disaster recovery, the list is long.  Again, owners of small businesses often can’t keep up with their own daily business needs.  Unfortunately, too often, the owner’s attempt to computerize was haphazard, the result was far from reliable.  In addition, no benefits or efficiencies were obtained. The owner spent money on IT, but still manages the business with paper, because there is no trust in their IT system.

Many companies would benefit by developing an IT strategy, one that contains costs as much as possible, but improves the critical business functions, such as accounting, customer relationship management, communications (both internal and external). This investment in IT to improve the efficiency of the company must be sold to the owner.  I think it comes down to this decision:  does an owner want to stick with the status-quo or does she want to take the risk and invest in suitable IT (premise or cloud based) to grow her business.

Tech Air continues to support clients with website development; however, that will now be a sideline.  Many clients want to learn more about social media, so I am looking for partners who can help in this arena.  However, those partners need to understand the limitation of some of my clients.

In addition, Tech Air continues to provide aerial photography services.  We can cover all of central Maine, from Biddeford to Bar Harbor and as far west as Bethel.

An example of my aerial photography work over Brunswick, Maine:

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