Cloud Technologies entrepreneurs in Hoover provide an information technology department

The two friends spent near a decade at the same time running the information research systems department for a home and garden products manufacturing division based in Birmingham. Immediately, the door slammed shut.

Then another door opened. When presented with the possibility to buy much of their former employer's servers and data center equipment at what McLean called "a very reasonable price," the two men formed Cloud Technologies Inc. The firm provides computer innovation services for businesses that don't have an in-house information research department.

The country

Cloud Technologies already works with 30 small businesses across the country. Over the past year, the firm has added several new customers, including Birmingham-based Brownell Travel, the state's oldest travel agency, and Rush Wines, a Birmingham contributor of limited production wines from independent wineries around the world.

Freeman and McLean have a combined 41 years of large enterprise information research experience. Jager spent more than 25 years in senior management and entrepreneurship in the manufacturing and financial industries.

McLean said he and Freeman have extensive IT backgrounds, during Jager has strengths in new business start-ups and venture capital negotiations, making them perfect partners to forge the new venture.

"Very few had heard of cloud computing and even fewer envisioned taking large-scale computing capabilities to the small- to medium-scale business sector," McLean said.

"Cloud computing," a buzz word these days, refers to relying on off-site computers for back-up data storage and other functions that used to handled in-house.

After buying much of their former company's servers and data center equipment, McLean, Freeman and Jager came up with the idea of providing large enterprise class IT services to small to medium sized businesses that didn't have computer departments on staff.

The United States

Cloud Technologies targets small businesses throughout the United States. Services offered include hosted Voice over Internet Protocol phone systems, server co-location, email hosting, spam filtering, high-speed Internet, virtualization, remote computing, network management, private and public "cloud," and more.

"We wanted to build a structure where small businesses would be able to move their servers from their offices into Cloud Technologies' data center and not have to worry what happens when the power is out or they have a remote work force," Freeman said. "Their servers and systems would be available from anywhere that had Internet access."

McLean said their biggest challenge as a upstart company is to convince business owners that they don't have to be content with the status quo, "that making a small change can make a huge difference in their business, and how easy a transition to cloud computing can be."

"Once they begin to adjust, they are able to exploit the benefits and their business is able to take advantage of those benefits," McLean said. "By providing the highest level of customer service and working with our customers while the periods of transition allows customer to in effect get comfortable with the changes knowing that they have a team always available to help them along the way."

Another challenge: Cloud computing services are being offered to varying degrees by many of the biggest names in research.

Industry ruled

In an industry ruled by giants just as Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, the fledgling Hoover firm wants to be able to provide a personal level of customer support.

"For anyone that has tried to get help from those large Internet companies you know how hard it is to talk with a live person," Freeman said. "Clients do not have that problem with us. Since we are a small business ourselves in what is a high capital investment business, we are totally focused on our costs and those of our customer."

"We have been in this industry for a long time and we are continually keeping our skills current and we pass those capabilities onto our clients," he said. "They are able take advantage of the most current research as we upgrade our systems."