Binary Business

The offers have been piling up on your desk for months. Cheaper Internet, cheaper phone service, and dirt cheap new computers all only a phone call away. Every time you see them you get suspicious remembering what Grandpa used to always say, "If something looks to good to be true, it probably is." Then the inevitable happens your sales have hit a low cycle and profitability is down. You instinctively go searching for ways to reduce your overhead. Suddenly the ads sound convincing and the next thing you know you have called them up and placed an order.

The sales person assured you. Your IT person swore it wouldn't be a problem. And yet, one year later your server is telling you that it is out of space. I have seen it far too many times. Rather that spend an extra couple hundred dollars when the server is purchased, the smaller hard drive is choosen. Both the sales person and your IT specialist repeat the mantra "You will never fill that hard drive!" Any time someone uses the words "never" or "always" you should immediately be suspicious, particularly when used in the context of Information Systems.

A weekend of relaxing with the family recharged your batteries. Refreshed and ready to go you sit down at your desk and fire up the computer. Minutes pass and all that appears on screen is a blinking cursor. Your great mood turns sour and suddenly your replenished energy dissipates into panic. With shaky fingers you dial your trusty computer specialist. The technician hears the panic in your voice and quickly assuages your fears by calmly stating, "Don't worry we can just run a data recovery and get your data back."

The first time your computer crashed you learned your lesson. You lost all of your data including your Quickbooks files and you almost lost your business. One year later you spent countless hours of overtime this week preparing for the biggest sales pitch of your career Monday afternoon. This time you were careful you saved your files to the server and the server has a backup tape so you must be protected. A phone call wakes you at 4 AM Monday morning."Mr Smith" the officer says, "are you the owner of the business located at 1337 Front Street?." Your stomach hits the floor.

A crucial part of the solution set that I recommend to my clients is Google Apps. For those who have no idea what Google Apps is, please let me explain. Google Apps provides email, calendaring, chat, web site hosting and document services. These services are all online and allow for interactivity via the ability to share all of the services with whomever you want. Of course you are also able to limit access in many of the same ways that you can with a server sites in your office.

Read enough technology magazines and you are bound to come across the phrase "Total Cost of Ownership" or TCO. The term has become a buzzword within the technology industry and unfortunately typically used to invoke FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). However the concept of TCO is really very simple. Aside from the cost of purchase many products that we acquire have an ongoing cost associated with their use. Total cost of ownership is a measure of these ongoing costs.