‘A great time to start this business’

John Alston spent most of his life and career in Atlanta, notably as the chief information officer for a medical services company and then for a bank.

Eventually Alston decided he didn’t want to limit his growth by doing the same thing just for one company. So, last August, just before the bottom fell out of the economy, Alston started ClubDrive Systems Inc., which has latched on to the concept of “cloud computing.” He has the servers to manage a company’s network and software, eliminating a company’s need for IT workers, software upgrades and power-hungry servers.

Alston pitches prospective clients by telling them they will save money —- thousands —- in employee, network and electricity costs. One model shows a client saving $50,000 on the first day.

The AJC sat down with Alston to talk about ClubDrive and what it means to have a “virtual desktop.”

Q: What is cloud computing?

A: It’s keeping your data somewhere else other than installing it on a local machine, which of course is prone to theft, hard drives crashing or some other event that could destroy that system. So it’s using other computers in other places to perform your computing task.

Q: How long has the concept been around?

A: I think the concept has been around since computing began.

Q: Oh.

A: When computers first came out, you had huge mainframes and terminals everywhere. Unfortunately, because of the lack of bandwidth, they were really slow, so they decided to process stuff locally. Now bandwidth is catching up with the processing power, and it makes sense to go back to the days of a terminal where all of the processing and heavy lifting is on the big, expensive computers.

Q: So how is that different from traditional servers?

A: You buy a traditional piece of hardware, and that server is only performing that one task. If that server fails, that task that is performing with it fails also.

Using [this concept], if it fails, the server has been virtualized, so it goes to another one that can accommodate its load. You don’t have to go out and buy these expensive servers, and you don’t have to go out and power these expensive servers, which could cost $450,000 a year, plus power.

Q: How does this work?

A: We have two different ways. A lot of cloud computing models … give you a Web portal, and you go to a URL and log on and everything runs from that Web page.

We certainly can give you the portal so you can travel around and use it at somebody’s computer, but we’ll also put the icons on your desktop so that we can give you the same look and feel of a locally loaded system.

Q: Help me say it another way.

A: Think of a time share. Instead of having to own the whole thing and manage the whole thing and only get to use a percentage of it … how many days are you actually going to spend there, like 30? A typical server is only being used to 20 percent. So you’ve bought all of this stuff, and you can’t use it. The cost of powering that server, if you have four, five servers it starts to add up. And you have to pay for licensing, the anti-virus programs, for some computer professional to come out. And when it’s down, you’re down —- all of your eggs are in one basket.

Q: Which types of companies would benefit the most from using this?

A: I think the biggest bang would be in the financial services industry and the health care industry because of their high regulations for the client. Our sweet spot is definitely the small business. I’m talking to a good-sized medical practice that has about 75 users and a financial service practice that has about 55, but I met with someone that has seven users. They are looking to get a lower cost over the long term.

Q: What’s it like starting a business in this economy?

A: I think it’s certainly a tough time to start a biz, but I think it’s a great time to start this business. Everybody I talk to says, “Wow, I bet everybody wants to talk to you if you can save them money right now.” So once I get past the barriers of “no, we don’t want to talk to anybody right now,” then they will take the meeting.

Q: OK, so your life story, business information and everything else is just sort of hanging out there in the sky, so to speak… . I bet that concept sits OK with 20-somethings but not with older generations.

A: Most people will feel comfortable with the technology when they find others are using it.

Q: They could be scattered across a bunch of different servers… . Isn’t that a little scary? Are you sure no one can get to it?

A: We feel very comfortable that using the best practices and policies that your data is not only secure but more secure than it would be if you had it locked up in your back closet or on your notebook computer, which is really not secure. That won’t happen in this model because the data isn’t on the device that can be stolen.

Q: So what if it’s 3 a.m., and I’m working on something, and my computer crashes, or I get an error message or something?

A: Call us.

Q: Even at 3 a.m.?

A: Right now we’re small enough so that it’s not warranted. When it is, we will staff it accordingly. I certainly hope to be there in the next few months.

Q: Given that companies would have to likely spend some money to set up for ClubDrive, how do you pitch the service to them?

A: Every customer is different. We like to sit down and determine what they are spending on IT and see if we can help them. In most cases we can —- in fact in every case I’ve seen thus far, I can save them money.

Q: Where did the name ClubDrive come from?

A: I wanted to come up with something that was easy to remember, and I wanted to treat our customers as members, and I was driving to the airport one day … and saw a sign that said “Club Drive.” It’s “join the club, let us drive your applications.”

THE JOHN ALSTON FILE

> Residence: Buckhead

> Family: Married 9 1/2 years to Terri, with 7-year-old and 2 1/2-year-old sons, Philip and Jack.

> Hobbies: Pilot —- recently flew family out to coast of South Carolina.

> Favorite book: “The Big Switch” by Nicholas Carr.

> Recent downloads: Songs by Death Cab for Cutie, Andrea Bocelli.