The Challenges of Providing Parts and Services in Alaska.

• Author: SMITH, DAWNELL

The Great Land is a place where service calls can take days instead of hours, where getting there may mean airplane hops and all-terrain vehicles.

In the Lower 48, a computer hardware specialist might glance at a work invoice, toss a few parts in the company Taurus and grab a hazelnut latte on the way to the client's office. Things work a little differently for people in Alaska's high-tech industry.

For Michael Insalaco of Lewis & Lewis Computer Store in Anchorage, a simple service call can take days instead of hours and require an arduous road trip, boat ride or Super Cub puddle jump into bone-chilling cold. For better or worse, the Last Frontier poses challenges unheard of in the rest of the country.

Since Insalaco can't pop back into the office for a part or wait days for an order to show up, he imagines every possible need ahead of time.

"I once carried an entire (Hewlett Packard) plotter in my truck on a road trip to Red Dog Mine," he recounted. "I had one shot to fix it, so I brought an entire plotter with me, just in case."

L&L has provided computer repairs and networking services to clients like oil, engineering and architecture companies for 15 years. Insalaco has encountered plenty of grunge and cramped quarters in his day.

"I have to plan for things that the factory has never seen before. We have the dirtiest, driest and overworked machines anywhere. The remote equipment I have to work on is usually placed in some small makeshift or portable building and they use it much harder than the factory rated it for."

Getting There is Half the Battle

Like L&L, every high-tech business knows the hazards of providing services and parts to locations spread across some of the harshest wilderness in the world.

"Alaska is a small market in a vast space," noted Michael Braddock, marketing manager for Alaska Computer Brokers. "There is a lack of uniform business and population distribution, yet goods and services can be concentrated in some of the most remote portions of the state."

In other words, things can get dicey and pricey. Though ACB does most of its business in Anchorage, it provides network support and services to customers throughout the state, including corporations like BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., governments, schools, small businesses and individuals. It opened in 1986, employs 40 people and is the largest independent value-added computer seller in the state.

Just getting parts and people where they need to go takes a measure of...