Twenty years ago, George Lehmann co-founded Horizon Business Concepts of Broken Arrow, OK, at a time when using a computer for business in any capacity was considered cutting edge. Lehmann notes that, even into the mid-90s, new customers were switching from pencil-and-paper accounting to computerized records.
“Twenty years ago, the rise of the Internet was really unforeseen,” Lehmann says.
For any small business such as an independent FBO, maintaining technology without an IT specialist (much less, a department) is a challenge. So Horizon’s TotalFBO support became a de facto IT department for many of their customers, Lehmann says. Even when that means supporting the original, DOS-run version of the software — Lehmann says he still hears from FBOs running the program. It doesn’t mean, he says, that computers at those businesses are even that out of date.
“If you have an old program, it will often work on the newer operating system,” Lehmann says. “But if you have a new program, a lot of times it will not work on the older operating system.” He likens it to installing a GPS system on a Cessna 172 from the 1970s versus installing an older vacuum-style turn indicator on a Cessna 172 built last year.
“Having a newer platform and an older program is better than the other way around.”
It’s all a far cry from Microsoft, whose phasing out of Windows XP in favor of the more poorly received Vista caused ripples throughout the IT media. Lehmann agrees that Vista is an “unnecessary” change from XP. “There’s a general — and not unjustified — resistance to technology for technology’s sake,” Lehmann notes.
The industry is moving away from that, with more consolidation among FBOs.
“The capital market has decided that FBOs represent a good opportunity for investment,” Lehmann notes.
Still, he says, what stays or goes in technology is a Darwinian process — those larger companies are just in a position to become early adopters to the next new wave of technology. “Everything comes down to usefulness in a commercial marketplace,” Lehmann comments. The point, of course, is to allow people to do what they are already doing, albeit with less effort.
In IT right now, Lehmann says that translates into storing and easily accessing more data. For an FBO: “How many times have they been here? When was the last time they were here? What services did they have last time? Calling up all this information with less searching and fewer clicks is continual refinement for out software.”
Also important, he says, is getting software to integrate more smoothly. “The interconnection of software to other services is probably the forefront of development these days.” Lehmann cites automatically loading parts lists from manufacturers and connecting to other data services in charter scheduling or passenger management as examples.
Meanwhile, Horizon recently launched TotalFBOweb, a hosting service for GA businesses.
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While some programs strive to work better together, others are designed to be themselves unpredictable. A DHS-sponsored research project from the University of Southern California (USC) developed computer software to help security at Los Angeles International.
The software develops a model for police on where to go (and when), based on random decisions and calculated probabilities of a terrorist attack at certain locations, including suspicious activity and security breaches. Since most people have difficulty being truly random, the software helps make random security checks more unpredictable.
The software, called Assistant for Randomized Monitoring over Routes (ARMOR) recently completed a six-month trial at LAX, with approval for development. Given the attention it’s attracting, it may soon become more widely available.
