Monday, July 6, 2009

As first noted in the January 2009 issue of Strategic Technology Horizons, Allen Falcon, President of Horizon Information Group, encourages small and mid-size businesses to seriously explore the use of four key, maturing technologies. Rather than asking "how much", companies should ask themselves "how are" they spending. The latter focuses on the value of investment and expense to the overall health of the business.

Small businesses need to break their tendency to "spend to stay current", states Falcon. "Emerging trends that offer the potential to increase efficiency and lower costs are rapidly maturing in ways that work for SMBs." In recent strategy presentations with executives from small and mid-size businesses, Falcon identified four key technologies and trends.

1) Server Virtualization: The concept is simple: run many servers in a virtual environment while sharing the resources of a single, larger computer. While businesses incur capital cost to get started, they save in hardware, maintenance, and facilities costs over time. Properly trained network administration resources are critical to success.

2) Software-as-a-Service: Often known as SaaS, businesses pay a monthly or annual fee to use software running on the vendor's systems. SaaS eliminates capital expenditures related to hardware, software, and systems administration overhead costs. Vendors charge monthly or annual fees on a pay-as-you-go basis. Salesforce.com, Google Apps, and Constant Contact are a few examples from a selection of thousands of solutions.

3) Unified Communications: Combine telephone, fax, voicemail, and email into a single, streamlined service. Properly implemented, "UC" will reduce overhead and "admin" time for and lower the total cost of communications. UC can run on internal systems, as part of the network, or as a hosted service with no up-front capital.

4) Conferencing: With High-Def capabilities and dropping prices, web and video conferencing services can offset regional and long-distance travel. Combined with a telecommuting policy, these services can deliver "more time" by eliminating commutes and regional travel.

According to Falcon, "All four trends hold the potential for improving the bottom line through expanded features and lower costs over time. SaaS, and other cloud computing solutions in particular, have the additional advantages of avoiding capital spending and dramatically reducing up front cash outlays."

Falcon further recommends that small and midsize businesses seek independent advice, noting that many IT service providers will avoid recommending solutions that they do not sell.

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Horizon Information Group provides information technology and service leadership for small and mid-size enterprises. Beyond improving day-to-day operations, Horizon helps clients align information technology and services with business goals and objectives, following through to manage change and ensure successful implementation.  Horizon assist clients with strategic planning, pragmatic solutions to business problems, applied best practices, operational oversight, vendor management, project management, systems integration, and technical expertise.