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The Fixed Price Services Conundrum

In my role as COO, I manage our sales team. We reach out to literally hundreds of prospects each week, and one question we are asked a lot (because it is a common practice in the IT services market) is whether we will do ‘fixed price services’.

Such a simple question, such a complex answer.

It seems on the surface to be a universally good thing- you fix a price with a vendor for a service so that you can control your expenses, and they can build recurring and predictable revenues to plan their staff around. And in many cases, it can work. Fixed pricing works best when the work is well understood, repeatable, and lacking significant outside variables. An example would be a cleaning service. In general, a cleaning service can use historical data based on the size of the space, the usage, and the number of people using it and determine with great accuracy how long they need to clean it. It is unlikely that at random, an entire football team is going to show up after a game in the mud and roll about on the carpets, it is unlikely that a food fight will break out in the kitchen. The variables are very small. If the vendor is super efficient, they finish a little early, and no one is the wiser, but they are a bit more profitable. All is good from both parties standpoint.

This means that the estimated hours they spend are going to just about equal the hours you expected them to spend. They put in what they expect to put in, you get back what you expect to get back, and everyone is happy. The key here is that the deliverable is also visible. You KNOW if your building is clean or if the work is substandard.

The problem with IT is that there are many variables. As much as we all wish it were not so, it is impossible to completely nail down risks around things like power spikes or outages, Internet slow downs and outages, random equipment failures, viruses, user issues, etc. These are all risk elements that can moderated, but not fully controlled. So, when a vendor fixes your price, how are they doing it?

Well, there are a few common approaches.

1. Pad the price based on some formula to account for these types of issue
2. Create extensive lists of ‘exclusions’ and put them in the small print
3. Use a combination of the above two (the most common)

Their is no Santa Clause in business. No one is fixing your price as a favor, but they are doing so because they believe they can most efficiently and profitably run their business this way. On average, some clients will overutilize their services, and some will underutilize, and the goal for the business is to achieve a state where they are making more money on these contracts in total than they would if they were time and materials. You serve more clients with less labor. That is the ‘insider secret’ of fixed price contracts. Well run fixed price shops can be EXTREMELY profitable.

And how does this work? Well, unlike your cleaning service, the deliverable is not easy to see. If nothing happens for a month in your IT infrastructure, and no labor is applied to you as a customer, you simply get the bill and are glad ‘things kept working’. It is all a black box. The vendor will use automated tools to do as much of the heavy lifting as possible, and apply least cost resourcing to minimize costs. It is not about providing bad service, to be fair, but about providing the least cost service over the long term to ensure that the fixed revenue model provides maximum profits, often to offset those others that are unprofitable (every fixed price portfolio has its huge overage accounts, and someone has to pay that bill).

This creates a ‘push/pull’ environment. The client is trying to pull as much resourcing as possible to ensure they get value. The vendor is trying to push the lowest cost resource and push automation and labor reduction. There is an inherent conflict that begins on the day the contract begins. The parties have different interests, and the vendor best protects their interests by keeping the situation a ‘black box’ and not creating visibility into actual expenditures on the account. In fact, its worse than it appears: The more you pull, the more likely the vendor will have to push lower cost resources on you to keep the profits in balance. In other words, the higher your needs compared to expected needs, the more likely you get less expensive and skilled resources to manage those needs and issues, often creating a downward spiral of dissatisfaction.

And then there is the whole flexibility thing. When you sign up for a fix price, and over the course of the contract (often 2 years) get more than you expected, you feel like you have won. Perhaps the exclusions did not capture some part of your growth and you did indeed get more than you bargained for. It seems like the optimal case. Well, it is, but most contracts have small print for upward price adjustments based on adding employees or changing your infrastructure. They exclude disasters and projects. It’s a tough game to win. Inversely, however, it is not a hard game to lose. With the recent economic downturn, an unexpected thing happened to many prospects we have spoken to – their business downsized. Many have stated that the contract for X dollars per month was great at 50 employees, but is not so great at 20 and the associated revenues of that level, and the contract did not allow for a cost float down!

Perhaps your business is cyclical, or seasonal? Fixing a support cost on a variable business model is not a good practice!

Well, here is what my point is really all about. As an IT provider, I can fix a price. If prospects insist, we will do it. We use the same model as bullet pointed above. However, despite this, 95% of my business is regular time and materials. Contrary to popular opinion, that does not indicate open season for billing! We work within budget requirements and partner with our clients. We are a non contractual vendor, so the ONLY reason we have our customers come back month in and month out is based on the quality of our deliverables and the integrity of our consultants and our business. Time and materials is not about spending more but about spending CONTROL!

It is also about visibility and accountability. You should know what you are spending your hard earned money on. You should have full visibility into those costs and the ability to manage those in a pro-active manner. When your IT vendor plans with you and develops your infrastructure plan, you should expect that your costs become more managable and your infrastructure becomes more stable and less costly. Therefore costs are driven down on average, and when you have a low usage month, you get a low bill. You should expect an invoice with full details of activities and reserve the right to understand and question those activities. THAT is what openness and integrity is about.

The reality is that no one can promise you a true long term fixed price for IT services. The exclusions alone will put that myth to bed. Or, if they try, then you are paying an escalated rate every month to cover the expected difference when something happens, and perhaps paying too much overall. I believe in simplicity and openness. I believe that there are aspects of pricing that bear fixing (like remote desktop support, or server monitoring) and there are other aspects that are best served under a time and materials model. I believe that a budget should be agreed upon and worked to by both parties in coordination. WE SHARE the goal of getting to that budget. I also believe (because my client base has shown this) that most small business is susceptible to a certain amount of variability, be it seasonal, or due to economic cycles, and your service vendors should be easily able to adjust to those changes with you and keep your spending in alignment with your business size and needs.

Finally, I believe that the services industry has done a great job of marketing the ‘fixed price’ model and done a great job of making this interchangeable with ‘managed services’, and that the primary reason behind this is that this model benefits the business! It is very profitable. If you can service more customers with less labor, that is a win for the business.

This is a topic that is very near and dear to my belief system, and one that I believe really requires that you do your research. Ask yourself ‘what is in this for me, and what is in this for them’. If something seems to good to be true, question why, and look for the small print. I believe if you ask the hard questions, and do your homework, you may indeed find that there is much more to the question of ‘to fix price or not’ than most vendors want you to see.

Make your selections with your eyes wide open!

And you will continue to have

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

BPOS is Dead. Long Live Microsoft Office 365!

Microsoft has decided to kill off its poorly named BPOS (business productivity online suite) product and re-brand it under the name Microsoft Office 365. However, they have not reduced the product complexity at all, and continue a long trend of creating purchasing nightmares for anyone who does not have a PHD in Microsoft Product Configuration.

The first key point is that the full client version of Office will NOT be available in the cloud with Office 365. Office Professional Plus desktop version will run on a PC and not in the cloud, but will be packaged in Office 365 enterprise version which runs for an expected $24 per user per month. The cloud portion of the bundle will include online versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Lync (office communicator) and Live Meetings.

Following so far? Basically, Office 365 is combining and repackaging the existing BPOS offering along with the existing offline Office product suite and bundling it up for a monthly fee. So, the Office product is not really in the cloud in any way yet, but is bundled with the apps that are in the cloud.

Makes perfect sense.

Now, on to the more arcade details.

There will be a small business version for companies up to 50 employees. This will run an estimated $6 per user per month and will come with the following functionality:

• Office Web Apps for viewing, editing and sharing documents
• Exchange Online
• SharePoint Online
• Lync Online
• 24×7 moderated community based support (peer support)

The Enterprise version will run $10 per user per month and will add 24×7 direct support from Microsoft over the phone, web, or email.

The Super Duper Enterprise + Plan (my name, since I can’t find an actual product name yet) will run $24 per user per month and will include the desktop full version of office (as mentioned above).

And of course there will be a version for Education, but I’m not even delving into that one.

I suppose the real story here is that Microsoft is driving forward on its initiative to be a leader in cloud computing, but again, much of the real functionality of these bundles still sits on the desktop. Until the full office suite is available via the cloud, I don’t think it is really there. Bundling and per user per month pricing is great, but just adds more complexity for IT manager to sort through in figuring out what their Microsoft licensing approach and budgets should be.

They do state that 99.9% uptime is guaranteed. I suppose I should be comforted knowing that in a 52 week year of 8 hour days, I will only be unable to process email and use my collaboration tools for a couple of hours. There was an outage of several hours a month or two back, so I wonder if that means the rest of the next year is guaranteed at 100% now? I would guess it does not work that way.

I am happy to see progress on these products, and do indeed think that cloud computing is the future, but again, the key applications need to be all cloud based, and SOMEONE needs to help me understand how these apps will integrate with my line of business applications like they do today!

Well, I’ll keep waiting for that answer, but for now -

Happy Computing

Richard Brunke

iPhone Rises, BlackBerry Cracks

Interesting bit of news today: Apple has come out with a statement that 80 of the Fortune 100 companies are testing or supporting iPhones.

Perhaps more interesting is that banks, the hallmark of conservatism, are starting to make moves towards the iPhone (and perhaps droid devices) and away from the long term champ BlackBerry. Credit Suisse, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase are three major examples of Wall Street Banks that are experimenting with, or phasing in iPhones.

Why is this? For an answer, think about the Oldsmobile. Why? Simple, what happens when a beloved brand loses its ability to target a younger demographic, or becomes viewed as ’stodgy’ or ‘old school’? Simple, it dies (though death can happen slowly). Apple has managed to get their sleek devices in the hands of young professionals in huge numbers. In fact, many BlackBerry users (their work phone) also have iPhones for personal use. Over time, these users start wanting to consolidate devices, and want that device to be the cool, sleek, device, not the one that the company gives away for free that looks like a piece of tile with keys on it.

Does this mean anything to small business owners? Well, no, not really. It is just a signal that change is coming, and that IT managers and professionals need to not push back on these changes, but embrace them and ensure that best practices are upheld in areas of control and security.

And, as I’ve said before, put the customer first, put the employee second, and put process and routine IT policy somewhere way, way back in the background. Be flexible, and keep up with productivity and employee satisfaction opportunities.

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

Boggled by Google

Have you Googled something today?

If not, you should. Google rolled out instant search this week, and I am not sure that my brain is ready for it. As you type, Google guesses where you are going and results stream along as you go. So, as you type in your keyword, things keep moving around. Want to check on the most recent Seattle Seahawk news? Be prepared for a dizzying array of ever shifting links about Seattle, Seattle news, Seattle Weather, then finally Seattle Sounders and at the end, the Seattle Seahawks to appear.

It seems clever, and Google says it will save me 2 to 5 seconds per search. That may be true, but in a world where we are already inundated with information, it feels like they are simply begging me to get distracted. I save 2 seconds and then spend 5 minutes looking at the weather, and the news of the day, and yes, I even checked on the Seattle Sounders. It’s like they are screaming ‘LOOK AT ALL THIS STUFF YOU ARE MISSING!’

Enough already. Stop helping me. I’m getting a headache. It’s like they turned the internet on high. Let’s go back to low, it was enough for me. For the nautically inclined, it is no longer safe to search the word sextant. The destination is fine, the journey was a little X rated.

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

Compliance and the Cloud

I’ve talked a LOT about cloud computing, mostly pointing out the issues that are not yet resolved. Sometimes I feel like a contrarian, but the fact is, the mainstream media is focused on presenting the ‘next big thing’ and little things like facts and concerns are not going to get in the way.

To be sure, cloud computing is here to stay, and is destined to be large part of the future for IT, but it is certainly not the whole picture.  And, as I have stated, there are still issues to resolve (read prior posts). What I want to talk about today, however, is one key topic that there may be confusion (or just lacking information) about: Data Compliance.

There seems to be some belief that cloud computing will solve compliance isssues. Just move your data to the cloud, and those pesky, expensive compliance issues are someone else’s problem, right? Well, no, they  are not. And worse yet, they are not yet managable problems. There are two key points with regards to data compliance that you should consider if you are thinking of a cloud computing initiative:

1. You really won’t know where your data is, and in many cases with large providers, they won’t either. Data laws may differ regionally, and the fact is, where the data itself resides may have legal consequences. Most laws are written with the assumption that the data ‘owner’ has control over the location of, and decisions around, their data. This is a fundamental flaw in thinking when it comes to cloud computing, where even the provider may not be able to tell you where your data is, or even what region it is hosted in.

2. Cloud providers are not able to provide for your compliance because the simple fact is, they don’t know what data they are hosting, or how it is used. They are only looking at providing a medium to store and retrieve at this point. They can’t possibly know (and deal with) and legal compliance issues surround that data.

I believe that these can be real deal breakers. In time, providers are going to have to start understanding this need, and dealing with it. Providers will start ‘productizing’ their offerings to include specific compliance packages for specific uses. Costs will go up, and some of the ROI of cloud computing will be watered down relative to the costs of hosting internally. In fact, depending on the complexity and importance of various data compliance issues (take HIPAA as an example) I believe it will prove more cost effective to retain control and ensure compliance, and a quick risk/reward analysis will show the cost of a major compliance breach.

The problem with new technology advances is that the capability of technology to solve issues surpasses our ability to really think through the unintended consequences. A small medical office goes to hosted exchange only, knowing that hosting their medical records may not be the right answer for them. They attach documents through emails and… oops, now they have a HIPPA compliance issue as they can no longer assure that those records are secure, in fact, they don’t even know who can access those files, and where they are stored.

Many things to think about, and many things to talk to an IT pro about!

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

Employees Asking For iPad’s?

Since it’s inception, the iPad has garnered no shortage of attention. It most certainly is a fantastic device with broad appeal and a wide variety of useful functions.

The question is, is this a business device worthy of investment? Will it increase productivity for your employees?

I’m going to start off with my answer right off the top instead of keeping you waiting. No, the iPad is not a natural laptop replacement, and it is not likely a smart investment for most businesses at this time.

Not to say it is not a great device, but it is a device pointed at the consumer market for mobile entertainment, and social networking. The following is a list of the issues I see in using this as core business device:

1. No built in printing capability. You need to buy an app to print. Granted, that is a reasonable workaround, but integrated printing would be a primary feature of any device that is intended for business.
2. Availability and compatibility of business applications. The vast majority of applications for the iPad are for personal use, not business. Key line of business applications are most likely not compatible.
3. Device is not designed for heavy typing. Business use would require adding an external keyboard, which then becomes awkward for moving about and storing. Multiple unattached devices are not convenient. Better to use a small notebook computer at that point.
4. No flash support. Many websites and other presentation type materials use flash.
5. Wireless only, no wired office support. Not a huge deal, but if your office is not wireless, it will be.
6. Not file centric, but document centric. The way we think about computing in the office is at the document level. PC’s are setup around documents that then launch the application. This allows us to focus on the content, not the application. Mobile devices are application centric, which means you open the application to get at the files. While subtle, this becomes an issue when dealing with multitudes of files and file types during the course of a day.

Is this to say that an iPad is not worthy of purchase for business use? No, of course not. It can be a great addition to the tool set of any employee, as long as you understand it is not going to replace other workplace tools such as the laptop, but will be in addition to them. One of my employees purchased on for personal use and says that it is very handy for showing diagrams and brief presentations with clients. Could also be done on a laptop screen, but the flat device is easy to sit around and look at for quick presentations with small groups. He also admits that it is not a great business tool for him beyond that.

So, the final call for me is to hold off on iPad purchases for business as an investment, unless it is an investment in employee satisfaction, as surely your employees would enjoy having such a device. Just don’t expect productivity to increase, or other equipment costs to decrease. Considering that the tablet is just coming into its own, it is a certainty that most, or all of the above issues will be resolved by one product or another in the years to come, and that tablet devices will become a routine and required part of business in the future… but not yet.

Until that time,

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

Who’s on First?

I was reading an article this morning entitled Rogue SaaS Is Alive and Kicking, IT Leaders and I found a few things very disturbing. The basic tenet of the article is that IT has become a bottle neck to line of business decision makers, who are, therefore, simply striking out on their own and making decisions to implement one-off solutions on their own.

I admit, my inner IT manager cringes at the long term implications of the addition of random computer applications being added across an organization without thought of data integration, security, and application interoperability. But, that isn’t really what I want to talk about.

No, the thing that really struck me was that IT is gaining a reputation for not being responsive, for being overly insular and not understanding the needs of the business. I can see how it happens… IT management often finds it easier to simply say ‘you don’t understand’ or ‘its not that simple’ and then moves on with their well planned approach to managing the technology bed of the company. You see, the day IT becomes ABOUT technology, it stops being about business, and we end up with this disconnect.

It is imperative that IT managers and departmental members keep one simple thing in mind -technology is a tool to enable business, nothing more. When running IT becomes about the tool, not the use of the tool and the satisfaction of the business users, it is time for a shake up. If IT departments don’t understand the business, and the users needs, they can’t design IT systems to serve these users and maximize the success of the business. IT best practices based on technical specs and industry standards may be well off the mark when it comes to what you want for your business, and how those systems support it.

As a business person, I try to never lose sight of what the role of IT is. It is critical that those systems provide the support my employees need to get their job done, and all IT plans should work backwards from business requirements. Any IT plan that does not have a direct tie to the business needs, or any plan that simply does not start with an assessment of the business and an understanding of the needs of the business managers and employees is doomed to long term failure.

Time to let go of the ‘its hard’ or ‘you don’t understand’ and embrace a business centric approach to IT. To have the right tools for the job, you must first know what that job is. Sounds simple, and yet, clearly, IT must continue to adjust and understand its role in the function of business. The days of servers and applications being the central hub around which business best practices are built are over.

So, go and spend some time talking to your IT team/provider today, and start evaluating if you truly have alignment between your business goals and your IT infrastructure. Otherwise, you may find yourself with business managers simply making decisions, and IT chasing around issues and cleaning up messes.

At the end of the day, IT is about ensuring users are happy and supported and that businesses are productive.

Happy Computing -

Richard Brunke

What Do You Need to Know About Software as a Service (Saas)?

Every now and again I get questions about my companies position on SaaS, or for opinions regarding how it relates to our clients needs and how we will deliver services. I have long held that SaaS will not bring about a fundamental shift in services rendered by IT service companies, and won’t be a market dominating concept for some time.

First of all, from a services standpoint, SaaS moves software from on premise to off premise, but, it does not remove the need to administer that software and to support the users of that software. Many SaaS providers will try to capture those services by bundling them with their offering, but to be honest, that model is likely to involve a lot of off shore labor, and it is my belief that few companies will manage to deliver quality support services, and really will end up focusing on running their hosted applications and data centers. So, when folks ask how our business will be impacted by SaaS, the answer is, we will still do much of what we do today.

Beyond this, however, is the deeper question, and the more interesting side of this conversation: Is SaaS right for me?

Well, I have argued for some time, and wrote a white paper on this over two years ago, that SaaS has limited utility at this point. For very small companies with very simplistic computing needs, SaaS may provide a low cost of entry method to deliver basic applications to your employees. Very large enterprises are also seemingly fascinated with the thought of reducing hardware ownership costs and increasing flexibility by using SaaS for certain applications. However, at the end of the day, there are challenges with SaaS that limit adoption, and they are real, and significant.

And they are the same issues people were talking about when SaaS was just coming to gain visibility a few years back.

1. Security
2. Application Integration
3. Data Migration

From a security standpoint (and more broadly a compliance standpoint), there are unresolved issues around everything from physical security of data centers to a lack of industry standards that companies can develop internal controls and security plans around. Data security is a hot button for most companies, and of course for the clients of those companies. As applications and the data they use is moved off premise and the control of physical security is lost, as is the ability to control the methods by which data is protected from a logical security standpoint, risks increase and business owners are faced with uncertainty regarding their ability to protect their intellectual property, as well as their client data.

Integration is perhaps one of the most troubling issues in my opinion. Many applications provide the most value when they integrate to other applications. When you log into your CRM, you expect it to be integrated with your Outlook Calendar. Microsoft Office software is integrated into many other applications, and many companies even have customizations that integrate with key applications to provide competitive advantage. All of these integrations become highly complex when dealing with SaaS, and expensive. When we consider that the entire purpose of our applications and data are so that we can execute our jobs effectively and efficiently, the thought of reducing our ability to integrate key applications and reduce efficiency and productivity seems pointless, and the savings associated with moving to a SaaS model may not be as robust as originally thought.

Finally comes data migration issues. This is a similar issue to application integration. If you are attempting to move to SaaS solutions for your financial applications and back office functionality (ERP) or your client and sales management software (CRM) you may find that cost and complexity of a SaaS implementation goes way up due to the complexity of migrating data. Additionally, data may be coming from data wharehouses served by multiple applications, and this adds another integration and data migration issue that is far more complex in a SaaS environment.

The pitch sounds so simple: don’t buy hardware, just pay a simple low monthly fee per user to get the applications you need delivered. It is a great idea, and it may indeed become part of the normal operating fabric of businesses in the next decade. However, there is much to be resolved before this comes true. Keep in mind also that hardware and storage manufacturers are always working to drive down costs and as those costs come down, the argument for savings by ‘renting computing space’ will be reduced.

At the end of the day, it is a balance between cost, control, and required functionality. Today, with relatively cheap storage and computing costs, coupled with unresolved issues regarding some pretty common issues around security, integration, and data migration, I’m of the mind that SaaS is not yet a viable solution for the majority of SMB’s. Perhaps if you simply recieve email and want your folks to be able to do simple spreadsheeting and simple use of word processing, then it makes sense, but even then, if these applications are delivered through the cloud, what happens when you can’t access the internet? Can any of us say we have 100% uptime with our local internet provider, or that we are confident that if there were downtime, we would be able to function and be fully productive without our key applications available? Just another thing to ponder.

Observe and educate would be my two key thoughts in regards to SaaS. There is value there, but today, there are also a lot of unanswered questions, and when it comes to our businesses and ensuring that we can run them, unanswered questions are not good.

I am optomistic that SaaS will bring value to the market as these issues are resolved, but not convinced that it will  replace on premise computing in the majority of businesses any time soon.

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

Social Networking Services and the Workplace

For a long time, online social networking sites were considered taboo at work. IT departments blocked sites and management considered it a termination offense for employees to waste valuable company time perusing such sites, posting to them, etc.

Over the last several years, there has been a gradual change in attitudes as the reality that this is the new telephone and new water cooler combined. Employers have come to realize that these social media sites enable people to connect very efficiently, and are part of the framework of how people interact now, no different than hallway conversations or phone calls. Banning employees from all access to such sites is not only challenging (you control the computers, but what about that smart phone they have), but is also perhaps as lacking in sense as telling employees to not talk in the hallway, at the water cooler, or over the phone.

In many cases, not only social interaction happens on these sites, but actual business networking and communications is enabled. I am a user of Linked In as an example, and find it a handy place to track my ‘business cards’. All of my work contacts can live there, and I can let them know what I am doing, and what my business is doing. I find this very useful, and productive when I need a candidate for an open position, want to talk about ideas I have for my business, or just want to keep relationships healthy with my business network. Others use facebook  or other such sites in much the same way.

With these realities sinking in, it has become more common to see employers not only look the other way, but encourage employees to contribute to company groups or accounts on such sites, which broadens the companies visibility as well as having positive impact on their search engine optimization (SEO).

But then came a new set of concerns; virus propagation and data security. We all know that viruses are the bane of modern computing civilization. And we know that viruses come from countless sources. But now we are learning that the developers of viruses are using the wide open lane into your computer known as the social networking site. Our favorite social networking site feels like home, we are off our guard and chatting with friends. We don’t think about the same precautions we take in opening emails. And we pay for it.

Perhaps worse are the uses our data is being put to. I’m not an activist, nor do I worry if someone knows that visit Amazon.com 10 times per week. But, when you consider the types of data we put into networking sites about ourselves, our habits, our homes, our families, our likes wants and needs… and then realize that these sites can collect this data and sell it aggregated or as individual details in some cases, it is a ‘whoa’ moment. After all, who would take all of their personal data and thoughts and simply put it on a billboard on the side of a busy freeway? Well, that is basically what tens of millions of people are doing.

So back to the original question/issue. What should you do as an employer? My opinion is that shutting down all such sites is foolish and will simply chase them to their portable devices, which are slower, but get the job done. In other words, keeping them off the PC at work just causes them to get their social networking done more slowly on your dime! It is a reality, and it is time to address it and set some parameters. Talk about the moose on the table! Set policies about such sites and their use that would be at the same level as policies around personal phone calls or social time at work. Help people set boundaries and hold them accountable for their productivity. If usage of certain sites is causing issues with internet throughput then discuss appropriate times to use such sites or sites which cause issues. Times are changing, and it is hopeless to stand against the current. Perhaps you may even find some benefits to such sites, and having employees use sites in a way that can also promote your business! Create a group on Linked In for your company and post articles and discussions! Link this to a facebook page for your business.

Heck, you may even want to set up a twitter account and tweet (though for the life of me I can’t post anything under 140 characters (I think my blog entries validate my desired level of verbosity).

Also remind employees (and yourself) that any data posted to social networking sites is likely to be public information. Also remind everyone to use ’safe computing’ practices and not randomly open links or download files if they don’t know what they are getting. The Internet is like a busy city – basically safe if you know the rules and behave responsibly, yet rife with potential dangers if you are unprepared or incautious.

Just watch young workers and teenagers and you will see a deep attachment to ‘being connected’ and using social media sites. This is the future, and they are the workers and buyers of the future. Isn’t that enough motivation to start the process of embracing rather than controlling social media sites and employee connectedness to them? After all, it is all about reaching out and being in touch and in contact. Isn’t that sort of a key component of doing business?

As always,

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

5 Things I’ve Been Thinking About

A lot bouncing about in the head today, and I wanted to touch briefly on a few topics that may be worthy of looking into and thinking about for all of you SMB owners/managers out there.

1. Mobile enabled websites. I have heard surprisingly little talk about preparation from SMB’s to have mobile enabled web sites. Sure, Amazon has it, Ebay has it, but what about you? As more users search from a mobile device, you are going to be losing customers if they can’t display your website properly on their device of choice. I’m not going into options here, just do a web search for options… but the point is, have SMB business owners realized the criticality of mobile search and web display?
2. All in one mobile devices versus specialty devices. This is a personal one for me (iPad versus Kindle) as well as a question of maximizing mobile productivity for workers. Multiple use devices do many things fairly well, making them convenient for users who want to limit the number of devices they have to haul around… but, are we losing out on productivity and the benefits of specializations. I fall into the camp of wanting my device to be really good at a few things. The important thing is to know what are your have to haves, and your nice to haves. Buy to meet the have to haves, and don’t let sexy, but unimportant bells and whistles take you off task!
3. Data management. Data is being created at levels that will double itself every three years I’ve read. Amazing if you think about it. Wait, no, terrifying if you think about what it means and how we can get at that data. Traditional indexing and searching methods just won’t cut it over time. Fortunately for most of us, we don’t have to worry about worldwide data creation and storage, but we should worry about our own data proliferation and how easily we will be able to access that data and use it in the future. Have a data plan! If you don’t, or don’t know where to start, do some research and make sure that you are planning long term when thinking about database architecture and discussing data warehousing with your IT department. It just looks like a train wreck coming to me… but we have a little bit of time to correct this one.
4. The costs of IT spending cut backs. What? That sentence seemed to not make sense, I know, but what I am referring to is the looming costs of hardware replacements and software upgrades that have built up due to continued putting off of IT spend due to economic fears. I know we are seeing an increase in complete failures of old servers, and maintenance costs of the same. Now is a good time to get a read out on where you are with your infrastructure – how old is it, what are the risks? Some investment now may save more dollars later, and more importantly, it may save downtime, and the one thing most companies can’t afford now is productivity loss. Just think on this – that four year old server that made IT nervous before the economy dropped out is now coming up on 6 years old. Sadly, unlike wine, IT infrastructure does not improve with age.
5. What about green IT for SMB’s? There is lots of talk about green initiatives for large corporations, where green IT initiatives can convert to large dollar savings, but what about those SMB’s who simply want to do the right thing, even though they may not save those big bucks? Do a web search, and you will find surprisingly little relevant information. Despite this, there are some simple things we can all do and be thinking about to be more eco-friendly. Think about ways to reduce printing – this is a huge opportunity, as it’s not just about the paper, but about the printer, the consumables, the paper, the electricity, and the entire downstream creation and shipping process of all of these things.  Find ways to reduce travel through the use of web meetings technology. There are dozens of little common sense approaches to being eco-friendly. Maybe we don’t need anyone to tell us how to save the world. We likely have many of the answers, but we have to implement them!

Well, there is my brain dump for the day. Five snippets to think about and talk about with your IT department. The world is shifting under us in so many ways, it is easy to miss things. Now I have to go and think a bit more about how some of these issues impact my business (does that website render well on a mobile device? Ugh… I don’t think so). Well, we all have things to work on!

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

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