From automation software for airline reservation systems to a full managed IT and cybersecurity partner — here's how we got here.
Automated Data Systems started with two IT professionals working inside the technology department of an airline consolidator — building the automation software and interfaces that powered reservation and booking systems. That's where the name comes from: we built our business writing automation software, long before we built a business around IT support.
When airlines began cutting consolidators out of the picture, the market we'd built our software business around disappeared almost overnight. We pivoted — taking the technical skills we'd developed and turning them into networking support for a handful of local clients.
In 1994, we added something new: ISDN internet lines, website hosting, and email hosting for our clients. We saw the internet coming, and we got in early. That decision became the foundation of the data center we still run today. It also led us into wireless — we installed WiFi and T1 internet lines for several St. Louis-area hotel chains, giving their guests internet access that wasn't yet a standard hotel amenity.
By the early 2000s we were growing on two fronts — IT support and hosting — out of our own location. In 2005, we became the hosting provider for a large school information system that would eventually serve hundreds of school districts. That scale required more than we could run out of our own building, so we moved that hosting into a dedicated data center. We hosted that system until 2022, when the client's own project came to an end in 2025.
As ransomware started hitting businesses of every size, cybersecurity moved from a supporting service to a central focus. We built out dedicated security and firewall expertise, and we've kept building on it ever since — most recently with the addition of managed detection and response and zero trust endpoint protection across our client base.
We're still in Fenton, Missouri, with our data center infrastructure now running out of a dedicated facility in St. Louis. Today that's a full in-house team — general support technicians, a group focused specifically on firewalls and security, and the office manager holding it together. Most have been with us for fifteen to thirty years, with two new technicians joining this year to keep that experience growing.
You cannot stop every attack or every disaster. What you can control is what happens next. That's why we focus on recovery and data integrity above everything else — making sure that no matter what happens, there's always a way back to being fully restored, with all your data intact. We can't promise nothing will ever happen. We can promise you'll be able to recover completely when it does.
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