EVOLVE Business and Professional Magazine November 2016 | Page 16

COVER STORY

SKY’S
The

the Limit for CompuSys
by Carrie B. Chambers

I

t’s hard to imagine our world without personal computers,
smartphones, tablets, or the internet. But when Mahyar
Okhovatian, owner and CEO of Compu Systems, Inc.

seemed, was providing the consulting and training users needed
to fulfill its true potential.

(CompuSys), started computer consulting in the late 1970s,

Pilot Program

business with a fax machine was considered “high tech.” For

started CompuSys in his garage, manufacturing IBM compatible

transformed business, all while building his own one-man

computing world up to smaller businesses, users faced a

people still sent mail via the US Postal Service, and a small

almost four decades Okhovatian has watched as technology

operation into a full service information technology (IT) firm.

What is his secret to success? Keeping a flexible business model

and a strong, intellectually nimble team whose number one focus
is customer service.

Ready for Take-Off
Iranian-born Okhovatian’s first love was aviation, and he

came to Daytona Beach in the 1970s with a scholarship to pursue

In quintessential high-tech pioneer fashion, Okhovatian

personal computers (PCs). Although the PC opened the

steep learning curve. Unlike today’s computers, the PC of the
1980s lacked the graphical user interfaces of Windows® and

Apple® operating systems; learning MS-DOS or Linux was like
learning a foreign language. Without properly trained users,
businesses would not reap technological benefits, and
IT investments could quickly become cost centers
built on frustrated promises.

It was 1982, and while many others in

a degree at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). It was

the computer business were focused on

of computer technologies, telling him he was gifted. Through his

on the other side of the technology

an ERAU professor who first noticed Okhovatian’s ready grasp

professor’s connections, Okhovatian soon had a lot of side work
developing custom software for area businesses. Unfortunately,

political unrest in Iran led to a loss of funding for his scholarship,
and Okhovatian had to drop out of the ERAU program. “I was
left to figure out how to support myself,” he says.

The turning point for him was when a Daytona Beach-based

business contacted ERAU in a panic. The troubled company

had invested heavily in a computer system, but, more than a

year later, they were still struggling to make it work for their

business. They hired Okhovatian to help. Within a couple years
the company completely automated their systems, and, as a

result, became very successful. When the business was later sold,
Okhovatian was again out of a job, but he had a revelation. The

world was on the cusp of a technology revolution, and no one, it

| 16 | EVOLVE BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE

making a sale, Okhovatian focused
equation—the users. “I refused

to sell computers as standalone
merchandise. Instead, I offered
only customized hardware,
software, and training

packages—everything that
my customers needed to
successfully integrate
technology in their

businesses.” Okhovatian
and his wife, Shirley, a
CPA, met with every
customer, probing to
find ou t how they