Background Story – David Levin
It all started with this simple premise, “All I want to do is make a difference in a company from an IT standpoint.”
This is a common theme throughout David Levin’s 29 years in the Information Technology (IT) industry. Levin, Founder and President of Cloudspace , explains further, “IT is about doing something in business – that’s all IT is about.”
He started his career working with a Fortune 500 company, but he knew it would be difficult to make a difference in that setting, so he moved onto smaller networking companies.
He figured out quickly he didn’t just want to sell hardware, install networks, and fix things. He wanted the real deal. What was the real deal, according to Levin? What do you need in IT to make your company work better?
About 20 years ago, Levin started a full service IT Company in Houston, Texas and over time he perfected the concept of the boutique IT business.
Eventually he had around 30-35 customers, five employees, and was working out of his house. It was a small but efficient organization, very flexible, everything was monitored remotely, and he was delivering results to his clients. He was making a difference.
The Beginning of Cloud Services
In the ever changing world of technology, Levin soon found out he would have to get his head in the cloud.
Five years ago he was working on a job for a mortgage broker client and was introduced to VMware and virtualization. He understood the concept but had never worked with the technology before. He hired a VMware guy to assist him on the job and to teach him the ropes.
He quickly learned this is the wave of the future. But, to his surprise, the small business market was clueless about this software, and that’s when Levin’s wheels started turning.
His server room was an area in his garage, so he virtualized what he had in there first. And, it worked. He had three severs running on $150 motherboard. He recognized it was all portable because it was not tied to any hardware, and the process only took him about 15 minutes.
A whole new world was born. Then, he started virtualizing his clients’ servers.
About a year into that he started hearing about desktop virtualization, which was almost non-existent at the time.
“How am I going to use this?” He kept asking himself. He finally realized he could add more RAM to the server, which in turn would allow him to add 10 workstations to it, and they could all be easily managed from a central location.
Eventually he had three servers and 10 workstations on a $5000 server. And, with one stroke of a button, he could update all the workstations at one time.
From the Garage Sale to Next Generation Internet Computing
A year ago in December, Levin meets a gentleman at a neighborhood garage sale who works for a major rural phone company provider. They get to talking and the man extends an offer for Levin to visit his company. The gentleman also says they may refer some of their smaller clients to him.
About a week later, much to Levin’s surprise, the garage sale man calls him with a customer referral. Levin now decides he’ll take the guy up on his offer to tour the phone company’s facilities.
One thing leads to another and he and the phone company start working on a deal. Basically Levin would use their facility to house his whole virtual desktop environment and he would be a re-seller for them.
They spent six months planning and organizing everything, unfortunately at the end of that time, the phone company backed out.
Initially Levin felt like they had wasted his time, however, he quickly realized he had the whole plan all laid out. He had the entire strategy and structure that he needed.
He thought, “What if I took out a loan and bought the hardware myself? What would be my cost difference?” He laid out all the costs and it ended up being 10% cheaper than the phone company. “This is it!” he exclaimed.
In the beginning of October 2013, he ordered all the equipment and started building the network. After three months of hard work, he completed it and Cloudspace was born.
Helping the Bottom Line
He now has an enterprise network – a 2000 user virtual network. He can put 400 servers on the network in a matter of days. And, it is highly versatile. “Every day I’m starting to see new things,” Levin explains. “All these resources are starting to float around in ways I never thought they would,” he continues.
His goal is the same as it was many years ago when he first started in the IT business – wanting to make a difference. For David Levin, it is all about helping the bottom line of the small business guy.
