[dl_sledding]

My grandmother was born and raised in the hills around Parthenon. She married and moved to Chicago, where she raised my mother and her brothers and sisters. Our family moved further north, to get out of the city and back to where my father's family was from, though we were never very close with them.

Most of my family on Grandma's side now lives in the Harrison area. I have been back to the Harrison/Branson/Eureka Springs areas quite a few times on vacations to visit my family, and my wife (who is from up north here) and I really would like to relocate to that area, maybe in 5 years or so.

However, we won't be ready to retire at that point... My wife works for WalMart, so she will probably be able to transfer to a position there, but I may have more trouble.

I have been a network/system administrator for an ISP for 14 years now, and have an extremely solid base in service provider IT, enterprise IT, internet services/servers, wireless and wired networking, digital TV, etc. However, northern Arkansas / southern Missouri isn't a big tech area, without migrating west to the Bentonville/Lowell areas. And I really have never been in that part of the state, so I don't know if I want to live there.

So, I am wondering if there is a viability to an IT consulting service in this area of Arkansas and Missouri. This type of need is very difficult to research from across the country, so I am asking for any advice or input that some of the locals could provide, as to whether this is something that I should consider pursuing, or if there is already a well-liked and respected company already providing services like this in the area. It seems to me that there are a *lot* of small businesses in the area, and that there may be a need for this type of service in the area...

Thanks for any information that you could provide!