The Life and Times of Seattle’s Small Business Systems Consultant. Articles and advice on small business phone systems, phone and internet services, VoIP, and all things technology related.
Selkowitz Technology | Seattle’s small business network and telecom consultant
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Happy new year everyone! As this year begins I wanted to share my ever refining outlook on small business technology. I realized there are really only four ways technology is done in the small business, not surprisingly I prefer some over others.
1) The de-facto standard implementation
In the technology business certain products and techniques have reached de-facto standard status. However the question is who’s setting the standard? The tech industry as a whole is only discovering the tremendous opportunity and need for small business technologies, most of their focus has been largely
on bigger business or consumers.
As the “small business” technology market emerges I’m seeing many enterprise products repackaged and claiming to be designed for small businesses. While its great to have the same power as big business - those businesses also keep full time staff to maintain these systems. Some people dedicate their careers to just one component of a computer network (exchange, firewall, backup, etc). But small businesses can’t afford full time staff or specialists for each component of their systems…which often leads to option two…
2) Blow it
Its not a technology option we consciously choose, but sometimes by under or overdeveloping our systems we end up putting ourselves at risk. Too simple of systems leave us open to being hacked, wasting time, or losing data and too complex of systems put us at risk of having what one can only call a boondoggle. If only there was something just right…
3) Pick a simpler system
Ask yourself “what do I really need out of technology” and use the products that provide just what you need without the frills. Ultimately a limited, simpler system that always does what its supposed to is far better than a system that can do anything but can’t seem to do anything easily or reliably. A few technology companies have dedicated themselves to making products specifically for small businesses - and those products really work better and cost less.
4) Use managed/hosted services
Instead of investing in equipment, let external services “host” the functionality you need. In other terms if owning your own equipment is like having a kitchen and cooking dinner, hosted services are like dinner delivery. This is particularly appealing for services that require a significant amount of regular tweaking, monitoring, or maintenance - like spam filters. Hosted services sometimes can save money, but sometimes can cost a lot more - if you need more bandwidth (internet speed) to utilize hosted services the TCO will be higher than in-house options as serious bandwidth costs serious money (though selling it makes me seriously happy).
For most small businesses the best options usually are simpler systems and managed/hosted services as these will provide the necessary functionality with the lowest total cost of ownership. These two fields will increasingly be our focus this year as I think the greatest value we can offer small businesses are unique, smarter options for their technology needs.
The Author: Kevin Selkowitz
About: Kevin Selkowitz is the founder and lead consultant for Selkowitz Technology, a Seattle-area small business systems consulting company. We focus on the four major technology needs of small businesses - phone systems, phone and internet service, servers/network infrastructure, and business applications.
This entry was posted by Kevin Selkowitz, on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 10:49 am and is filed under Phone Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response on the right, or trackback from your own site.
