BETHEL – Jeremy Stark and his wife, Lucia Colombaro, steadfastly believe that people can solve their own problems if given the tools.

That reasoning is one facet of Deximer, their free range computing technology business, which they began in 2002. The business sputtered until four months ago when the couple followed their business philosophy and added former American Skiing Co. sales and marketing head George Driscoll.

Stark said that Driscoll takes Stark’s technology language and makes it user-friendly when pitching the business to prospective clients. Deximer, they say, can provide small businesses, nonprofits, educational institutions and municipalities with a technological advantage through fiscal advantage.

“We help businesses and organizations to grow and evolve technologically in ways that meet their organizational goals and objectives,” Colombaro said.

Essentially, Stark, 33, and Colombaro, 30, replace Microsoft computer operating systems with Linux and Open Source Solutions, nonproprietary software that is freely available and fully customizable.

“If you run an organization with 50 computers and are about to undergo an upgrade, don’t. Instead, give us a call, and we’ll come in and use that old hardware, and make it work for you,” Stark said.

“You may or may not realize this, but you are on the disposable computer treadmill.”
Providing alternatives
Free range computing, Stark said, is the alternative to the Microsoft PC model, which is to have every desktop loaded with its own operating system and software; to pay licensing fees for those applications; and when new operating systems or more powerful applications are developed, the computer is then disposable.

Instead of continuing to dump money down the Microsoft drain and its disposable computer treadmill, Driscoll said, “We’re opening the eyes of people who open Windows, and telling them, Close your Windows – you’re letting your money out. Stop paying for isolation. There are alternatives to the Big M.'”

Driscoll, 46, said that when he started marketing Deximer’s technology solutions, he found that people and organizations were struggling within the confines of a disposable computer society.

“They’d buy a new computer and find that Microsoft was incompatible with itself. But that’s the business strategy of Microsoft, to not be compatible with themselves,” he added.

Deximer, on the other hand, which is “remixed” spelled in reverse, seeks to restore compatibility in computers and the organizations that rely on them to work efficiently.

Stark, a computer programmer, was born in Boston and got into technology in 1988. He has business experience from working with dot com startups in the 1990s.

Colombaro said the core of her experience is nonprofits. She is a board member on many nonprofit organizations, including the Rape Education and Crisis Hotline in Norway.
Pinpointing inefficiencies
Driscoll, who has worked in sales and marketing in Maine for the past 20 years, sees work at Deximer as a refreshing change.

“I didn’t want to just go to work anymore. I want to have a purpose. At Deximer, we’re not chasing a profit, we’re chasing a mission. We can help communities, schools, businesses and even the state of Maine help themselves,” Driscoll said.

Deximer, he said, finds inefficiencies and redundancies, and then shows organizations how to “get off the Microsoft technology treadmill, which is a waste of resources – time, money and staff – and then reallocate those resources” to serving their cause.

“We can lay down the groundwork for regionalization to take place. Right now, we’re implementing the various things that Gov. John Baldacci is talking about.

“You don’t have to give every kid a laptop, just access to a computer,” Driscoll added.
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