Lucky for him, he's a local boy. His company motto – "ohana, laulima, ho'okipa, koa, lokahi" – worked in the most literal way when his brother, Al, a union official, found himself at a luncheon sitting next to Larry Johnson, the then head of Bank of Hawaii.

The conversion, condensed, went something like, "Why can't my little brother get the attention of local bankers?" and "I'll look into that."

And soon enough, Vasconcellos had his business backing. He also was fortunate to have the support of Sen. Daniel Inouye and a business plan that fit right into Inouye's sponsorship of the Maui Economic Development Board and the Maui Research & Technology Park.

Vasconcellos reviewed his career recently at a meeting of Maui TechOhana at The Dunes.

He is from Molokai, where he was hanai to his grandparents.

"My roots play a big part in my business in terms of values," he said. The values, embodied in his motto, are family (ohana), cooperation (laulima), generosity (ho'okipa), courage of leadership (koa) and harmony (lokahi).

After graduating from Kamehameha Schools on Oahu, he joined the Army National Guard, looking for a way to finance more education. His family was large and "kala (money) was a hard thing."

Vasconcellos won an appointment to the Military Academy at West Point and made a career "jumping out of perfectly good airplanes" – he was an Airborne Ranger.

After retiring from the Army, he worked in Boston until he found himself scraping four inches of ice off his windshield and headed for the islands.

First working as an independent contractor, he got involved in programming for a telemedicine project – another Inouye-supported tech development – at Tripler Army Medical Center providing links for medical specialists on Oahu to advise practitioners in remotes sites.

"That was how we really got started," he said.

His Hawaiian (plus Dutch and Portuguese) ancestry allowed him to qualify as a Native Hawaiian minority-owned government contractor, a certified small disadvantaged business and a service-disabled (all those parachute jumps) veteran-owned business.

All that, and a higher than top secret security clearance, needed both to work with confidential military medical records and also because part of Akimeka's work is to meld systems from the various services at a high level.

Getting the services to share information is never easy, he says, but he believes they are beginning to see the value in the kind of integrating work Akimeka does.

The two main contracts are for a systemwide tracking program for all military medical assets (from bandages on up) and for personnel medical records. Veterans are included.

More than 10 million records are to be made paperless and instantly accessible at military bases around the world.

More than 40 percent of Akimeka's employees have secret clearances, 24 percent have top secret clearances and 6 percent have even higher clearances.

Typically, Akimeka obtains clearances after hiring people locally, rather than hiring people who already have been through the scrutiny. Vasconcellos said he has not had difficulty getting clearances.

For the 41 positions on Maui and Oahu, he looks for people with local ties, and he likes to hire them "right after college."

"We need more of that."

One of his difficulties in operating a technology-intensive business is hiring on Maui, he said. Whether it is cost of living, being away from the bright lights or difficulty in finding housing, he said he has to do a selling job even to get people to transfer from Oahu.

Other Akimeka locations are in San Antonio; Alexandria, Va.; Fort Detrick, Md.; and Maitland, Fla.

Corporate headquarters are in Honolulu, but Akimeka's local home is the shiny, new Joint Information Technology Center at the R&T Park. It is the largest tenant.

This nearly $10 million venture is another Inouye-sponsored project, aimed at creating an enduring entity in Hawaii to develop and support enterprise solutions for government agencies.

One of Vasconcellos' goals is to get the projects he does for Defense out of "the congressional budget" (where Sens. Inouye and Daniel Akaka can influence things) and into "the presidential budget" – that is, to make them part of the continuing government establishment.

Although Akimeka is a government contractor – it does not seek private work – it does spin off some of its work product.

One example involves providing software for Hamakua Medical Center, which faces some of the same geographical challenges that make telemedicine important to the military.

Now the largest Hawaiian-owned business, Akimeka needed the boost from the Maui R&T Center's incubator when it began.

"It was not easy," says Vasconcellos. "It was very tough going at the start."