About Us
Cloud-Aid History:
Cloud-Aid was formed out of frustration and opportunity. Founder Rick Gierke spent a large part of the last three years working and traveling in East Asia. Both are former employees of Gerrity International, which specialized in International Retail Development in China (Hong Kong, Shenzhen,
and Shanghai) and India (Bangalore).
As Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer for Gerrity International, he was among the first in the company to be deployed to East Asia. He was instrumental in the system design, product procurement, system configuration, project management, system administration, governmental compliances, system consolidation, datacenter evaluation, APS solutions, business outsourcing and staffing management.
The international expansion was daunting on all fronts, especially dealing with the different business cultures. This extremely challenging situation was overcome with creativity ingenuity; the ability to think outside the box became a necessity. Call it an epiphany or the enlightenment, but the ability to transcend technology, distance, language and culture were the ingredients for becoming successful technology integrators. This epiphany, along with the different business experiences within the field here in the United States, were the catalyst for launching Cloud-Aid. Cloud-Aid is in a unique position to provide real life solutions with high-quality local service at affordable rates tailored to meet financial obligations.
Even though Cloud-Aid is a young company, the co-founders have a combined 25 years of practical experience in enterprise-level to small to midsize business managed IT solution.
Bios:
Rick Gierke (Cloud-Aid Founder) - Rick Gierke is Chief Technology Officer for Gerrity International. He joined the team in 2007 with more than a decade of professional experience in the Information Technology field. In his capacity as CTO, Gierke is primarily responsible for the development and implementation of Gerrity’s overall global IT Strategy,including business system development and integration, global network infrastructure design, and the management of operations for each of Gerrity’s national IT teams in Asia and the
United States.
Prior to joining Gerrity International, Rick Gierke was the IT Director and a member of the executive team at Pan Pacific Retail Properties, Inc. in Vista, California. A publicly traded REIT,PPRP grew to 138 shopping center properties and $2 billion in assets during his tenure. One specific accomplishment during this tenure includes the implementation of several key business systems that positioned Pan Pacific to perform the mergers of Western Property Trust and CenterTrust, allowing Pan Pacific to triple the size of its portfolio without the need of increased human
capital. This achievement led to Pan Pacific being recognized within the top 10 list of “100
Smartest Companies” in the April 2006 edition of Baseline Magazine.
From 1998 to 2001, Gierke spent four years as a Senior Systems Engineer for Systems Integrator Peterbuilt Technology in San Diego, where he was responsible for all system integrations of Peterbuilt’s Real Estate clientele. This included HG Fenton, GMS Realty, Pan Pacific Retail Properties and Excel Realty. Prior to Peterbuilt Technology Gierke spent 3 years as anInformation Systems Engineer working for the Naval Space and Warfare Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego integrating Information Systems with Navy and Marine communication systems.
Rick Gierke also currently holds the following industry certifications: MCSE, CCNA, and CCSA.
 Rick |
Why do you need Public Technology Services?
- Save money
- Conserve valuable resources
- Less downtime means more productivity
- No IT employees to manage (We take care of everything)
- Security
- Safety
- Growth management
- 24/7 monitoring
- Peace of mind
