Sharing the Risk

Windows 7 Phone vs iPhone

Well I thought I would try the Windows 7 Phone since I really do not like the "phone" part of the iPhone. I mean I really want to make phone calls and not get "Call Failed" or just random drops. But oh well.

So when I got the new Windows 7 Phone, I went with T-Mobile and the HTC HD7. I ordered it from the T-Mobile website and all went well. I received the phone relatively quick and off I went.

First impression, the screen is really big and nice! But first impression faded quickly as I worked on using the phone.

Speed Dial

Windows 7 Phone 

I wanted simply to add my favorites to the phone for calling people. Well the Windows 7 Phone design idea for that is to create a tile for each contact on the home screen. Ok this results in 12 different tiles and the screen that require a lot of work to scroll through. And even that is just a link to the contact, you still have to select the number you want to call. Overall takes too many steps.

So I thought let's look for an app in the MarketPlace for Speed Dial. I found a number of cool apps that have SpeedDial functionality but they all had one major flaw, you had to re-type each of your contacts!! UGG!

So I thought, that I would write my own app for SpeedDial and make millions on a SpeedDial app that would pull straight from the People in WinPhone7. Well another failure in that there is no API method to get to that data. I can understand the security concerns but they should leave that up to the end user not restrict the development of apps that can use contact data.

But I was willing to live with this lack of usability.

I cannot sync AND listen to music

So I use a Mac at home and Windows at work. It is intentional, I really like WIndows 7. And I really like OS X. But to be honest, it is all about the applications more that it is about the operating system. But that is a review for another time.

So I was excited to see that Microsoft has a Windows 7 Phone Connector for Mac. So I downloaded it and it works extremely well syncing my music for iTunes and also syncing photos from iPhoto. Which is really cool! It also charges the phone. Very cool.

But that is the end of the coolness. While it was charging I wanted to listen to some music on the phone. But NOPE, it will not let you. The phone tells you that you must disconnect the device first. Ok I will watch a video instead, no go there either. Seriously?

So I tried this on my iPhone and it let me play music, watch a video, etc. Now to be fair, it does cancel any sync that is happening but so. Again put the power in the hands of the end-user to make choices not cripple the device just because you do not see why would anyone use that.

Battery Life

Well this is not really Microsofts fault but rather HTC fault. Battery life is about 1/2 day for active use and 3/4 day of light use. By time I got home each day (6pm) it was alerting that the battery was critically low. My iPhone can go two days before getting the 20% warning.

Plugging into Car

Alright, next thing I want is to listen to music while in my car (Jeep Grand Cherokee). So I plugged in the Win7Phone and all was going well but I could barely hear anything. So I turned up the car stereo but it was still really quiet. So I turned up the volume on the phone to max and then I could actually hear the music. Now I am not going for super loud music or anything but just to be able to discern the words of the song. 

Seeing the screen

So I was outside and wanted to see what was on the phone. Not so good. I had the shield the screen to be able to see what the sections were.

Overall

Well I wanted to like the Windows 7 Phone. I really did. But I could find NO compelling reason to switch from my iPhone. In the last few days with my iPhone again, no failed calls,etc. So maybe the Verizon deal has made it where ATT's network can handle the traffic or maybe I have just been lucky!

If you are coming from a different non-smart phone, I think you would be happy with the Windows 7 Phone device. T-Mobile had a GREAT deal in that the phone did not cost anything and their plan was reasonable so it does make a great case for switching from a non-smart phone to the Windows 7 Phone.

Now to switch from the iPhone, no way. And the recent update that Microsoft only appears to address Copy/Paste and searching in the MarketPlace.

So if you have an iPhone, keep it! There is NO reason to switch.

Why I Sold eMonarch

At the end of 2010, I began to look at a number of things with respect to eMonarch. I began to ask myself, how far can I take this company and what will it take to get it there. Well I quickly came to realize I had three choices:

1) Run eMonarch at a steady pace and attempt to grow organically with the skills I had and the team I had. We would add 1 or 2 clients every now and then and continue to serve our customers. This would provide a nice living for my family as well as those team members that were at eMonarch. But this is what I refer to as being a "Lifestyle Entrepreneur". This is a business owner that has a good business and it provides him/her with the lifestyle he/she wants to live. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with being a lifestyle entrepreneur unless your name is Sean Fullerton! I did not want that as I am a very Type A person and like to push the envelope, so that leads us to option 2.

2) Aggressively hire staff with a special focus on sales team members. All small businesses need to become selling organizations to succeed. If you are not growing, you are dying. It really is that simple. But there was a number of problems with this scenario:

    a) I am not a sales manager! Sure I could hire a sales manager but not all good sales managers are good sales people and vice versa. And in a small company, you need to have sales people! 

    b) I do not understand sales people and therefore I am not good at hiring them. I have had some good sales people in the past but as they can probably attest, I did not provide them with the tools for success. I simply stuck them in an office with a phone and email and said "Go sell something!". Not really a good sales support structure for sure!

    c) Time. To begin to grow aggressively in a small company you have to commit a lot of time outside of normal hours. Well that is difficult for me as I have three small children and if success came at the price of my family then success is not worth it. 

    A number of years ago, I did an exercise with a group of fellow business owners where I ask them to write their "I AM" statement. This is a statement about who you are as a person and it really has nothing to do with business. Many of the folks came up with statements that had something to do with their work or business in it. But I told them "Nope, can not be about the business". Many of them shot back that it did! So I asked a very simple question, "If I could guarantee you business success as you define it, but it would mean you had to divorce your spouse and lose your kids, would you do it?" No one went for it. So the "I AM" statement really has nothing to do with business.

    So that long winded statement to say that the Time commitment it would take to get eMonarch to the next level was a cost I was not comfortable making.

    And there are a number of other reasons for option 2 really being difficult. Every business owner has a threshold. This threshold is just how far the owner can take the company. Some owners are able to grow beyond their threshold because they quickly realize their threshold and they go out and find that "one person" that can add enough to the business to help the owner get past their current threshold. But then that person has a threshold and the cycle continues.

    I believe I had reached my threshold as an owner. I have a lot of talents and had grown eMonarch into a wildly successful business that made a good amount of money and provided good jobs,etc. But the next level was going to be tough for me by myself. And that led to Option 3.

3) Sell eMonarch to a firm that wanted to grow Managed Services and had strong leadership that I could learn from and help grow the business with. The key there was really strong leadership that I would feel comfortable working with. You see I am convinced that I would make a horrible employee. But as I thought about selling, I came to realize that most of the companies that I had looked at as potential partners did not have the leadership that I would feel comfortable working under. It takes someone that has been there and been through the paces before I am willing to sit under them to learn from. I had to have confidence that the leadership could take me to the next level.

I found those things in Peak UpTime. I knew Gordon Martin from working with him on the Strategic Planning Committee at our church and had gotten to know him over about 1.5 years or so. It is funny as to me when I found out that Gordon was the President of Peak, I was like "he is the enemy, I cannot talk about what is going on with eMonarch or else he will get some valuable intel on us!" But nothing was farther from the truth. Gordon was a genuine guy that loves Jesus and has an amazing brain for business. Two very critical components for me. 

So as I was walking through this in my mind, I spoke with Gordon briefly one day after a committee meeting and the process began. Peak has some great talent and I really saw how eMonarch and myself could fit into the business as well as bring some of our skills with regard to managed services. And it would be a GREAT win for our customers. We would not be as resource constrained as we had in the past and would be able to really do it even better than we had. Our values matched and I knew that I could trust Gordon.

So why did I sell eMonarch?

I want to provide a stable future for my family.

I want to grow as a leader.

I want to grow as a business leader.

I want to take Managed Services to a much broader market.

I want to give eMonarch customers the best service.

I want to learn.

I want to not do sales management (yet)!

But ultimately, because I felt God place Gordon and the Peak group in my path for a very distinct purpose.

So here is to a new future and even bigger things. It has been a remarkable ride and thank you to ALL the customers, employees and friends that have made eMonarch the success it grew to be.

 

Power of Facebook

Initially I thought Facebook was a complete waste of time, really I did. And I definitely thought there was absolutely no use for Facebook in the business place let alone an effective marketing tool. 

I was wrong. Let me give a little background as to how I discovered my mistake.

I started a hobby game store earlier this year called, Dragon Crown Games. This was and is my first experience with a retail business and to say I was clueless is a drastic understatement. To make matters worse, I did not go with a traditional retail location but instead decided to use the extra space I have in the eMonarch suite to house the store. Not a big deal but we are 51 floors up so drive-by traffic was going to a problem.

So I began trying to figure out how to really get the word out about the store and looking at inexpensive ways to market. Being a technology guy my first thoughts were of using various websites, etc to improve our exposure. I also began looking at how to advertise events that occurred in the store on a weekly basis. In the hobby game market, it is ALL about events. Events drive people to the store and then people (hopefully) buy product.

I look at numerous tools for managing events on line and even looked at software I could buy to use in our hosting environment at eMonarch but then I came across Facebook events and then the light bulb went off.

I also had been watching how other companies use Facebook and I thought let's give it a try. So I started listing events and using Facebook as a way of inviting others to attend the events. Facebook events keeps track of who will attend and who will not attend and even those that might be able to attend. This proved to be extremely valuable.

We have regular attendance to our Facebook page, people respond to our events and almost 100% of our attendance at events has come via Facebook and/or word-of-mouth.

Facebook is actually a strategic part of the game store business now. I am able to post pictures, videos and create a sense of community amongst my customers. In the hobby game environment, community is critical as it is really hard to play hobby games by yourself.

During my experience I learned another interesting idea for social media site, Twitter. Wizards of the Coast (makers of Dungeon and Dragons) has a weekly event run in hobby game stores like mine called DnD Encounters. But what is interesting is that they are using Twitter during the game times to change the dynamics of the game. So one minute the floor your group is on is a concrete floor and the next minute it can be covered in grease. This creates a  really interesting game session and the players really seem to enjoy the interaction

Still have a lot to learn about how to use social media for business but it definitely shows a lot of promise. Do you have a plan for using social media to grown your business? Would love to hear about it!

Twitter for Small Business

So today is not original content but a great article from eMyth regarding Twitter for Small Business.

http://www.e-myth.com/cs/user/print/post/twitter-for-small-businesses

Twitter has great potential and some businesses have already figured out how to really utilize it to generate REAL revenue. For example, Dell has generated $6.5 million in product sales since it has started using Twitter with respect to its Outlet sales. So essentially Dell is going to the customers instead of waiting for the customers to come to them.

For a quick lesson on how to use Twitter for business take a look at the following article from Twitter:

http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/

iPad Review

So here is my review of the iPad. I wanted to wait at least a week of using the device before I actually reviewed it so that I could give an actual review after real usage. So I am going to break this review into two parts as I see the iPad being used in a variety of places but mostly split between personal use and business use. And I am writing this post from the iPad as well to show that long things can be written on the iPad without much effort.

Overall the device gets an A in my book as I have found that I spend more time with it than i do my MacBook Air. But let me describe how I use it. First I use it to read websites followed by reading email. That is what I bought the device for but have found that after a week I use it for more than that. The absence of Flash is a tad annoying but I figure someone has to give. I doubt it will be Apple and so I except a lot of sites to begin to phase out Flash in favor of HTML5 but that will probably be a ways off.

I also find that not having tabs is a bit of a loss as I like to cross-reference sites quite a bit when browsing. But overall the browsing has been great.

For business I was a little skeptical at first because I was not sure how the iPad would fit. But I have discovered where eMonarch will be using it. Up until now when we make a call on a prospect we have never used a presentation as pulling out the laptop and a projector was just too cumbersome. Printing the slides also seemed a little low-tech for a technology company so we just did not use them. Even though I feel that a good presentation would make it a little easier to describe our services.

But here is where the iPad will shine for us. Now with Keynote for the iPad, we can open and start the presentation in less than 30 seconds and also get a little of a Wow factor for using the device. The orientation and the simple navigation will make going through a few slides a very effective tool.

Another place in business I see the iPad being a big win will be in the medical community. Up till now, battery life for laptops has been a real limiting factor as well as having this clunky laptop getting in the way. But now with a true 'slate' device, I think that medical professionals will feel more comfortable using the technology as this is no bigger than a notepad or legal pad to take notes.

One of the key things is that it will all come down to the apps though. So far the apps i have seen for business have been OK but not great as of yet. But it has been only a week. So as the apps come out, the iPad will probably become a staple in many business environments.

For personal use the iPad has lots of pluses. One the key things that gauges how successful a piece of technology will be is how it is received by my wife. If she embraces it then I know it is a winner. So I got her and iPad as well and shee took to it right away! We both took our iPads to church on Easter Sunday as our Bibles. It worked! I was a little nervous as to how it would go as I did not want the technology to get in the way of spending time worshipping God. And it didn't. My wife and I were actually able to both read from the Bible easily and even take notes.

Another very cool usage is in the kitchen. For years i have struggled trying to figure out how to have all the recipes we have in cookbooks readily available and use an electronic version while actually cooking. Having a laptop in kitchen could work but the iPad ended up being a much more elegant solution. We found a great app, Epicurious, that has a lot of great recipes and when in landscape mode makes it a viable electronic cookbook.

Watching movies on the iPad works as promised and provides a great experience using Netflix. I watched two separate movies and am going to watch another tonight after I finish this post.

So overall is the ipad worth it, I think so. I have decided to stick with just the wifi version and not get the 3G version. I figure any place that I am going to be at will have wifi. I am considering getting one of those mifi type devices to use with my existing data card. I just could not see paying for yet another data plan. This is where tethering would have been a great feature to have.

An often asked question so far has been will the iPad replace a laptop. I do not think so just as I do not think it was ever intended to do that. There are probably folks that could replace their laptops with the device but not me.

Battery life has been right on. I use it everyday and have had to charge it once. And I charged it when it had 30% left so I could have gone much farther.

A thing I do dislike is having to clean the screen every other day! I am looking forward to the OS upgrade that the iPad will get this fall with the addition of multitasking and a consolidated inbox. Those will be nice features for sure.

But back to to business use. So far - yeah apps are not there yet or if they are I have not seen them. So far I think we will end up sticking with the "presentation mode" for the iPad at work. However I do expect this to change in the near term as developers get going with creating rich business applications for the iPad.

Oh forgot, I have had NO issues with the wireless connection issues that others have commented on. Does not mean those issues do not exist but with the wireless routers I use, no issues here.

So go out take a look at one or if you are in Tulsa and want to have some coffee and discuss what it can do, give me a buzz and I will be more than happy to meet you and show you how I use it. You just have to buy the coffee!

Outsource v2

Just read an articlefrom David Bellini, the President of Connectwise, that discussed outsourcing the help desk if you are an IT provider. He mentioned some benefits and also outlined the reasons why he keeps it internal.

I agree with the internal point of view for eMonarch. We staff our own help desk, we offer our own backup service, we provide hosted Exchange,Sharepoint, OCS, and even soon MS CRM. Why? Because I do not want to be like every other IT provider out there just reselling other peoples stuff. eMonarch is an IT Provider not an IT Reseller.

Could eMonarch make more money in the short term if we just resold all these other services? Oh you bet! But I think they are just short term gains. Instead I believe the long term strategy for eMonarch is to innovate our own solutions for customers and to be the provider of those services where we can.

But perhaps one of the most important part of what David mentioned in the article is the discussion around relationship. Small Business customers want to talk to someone they know. They want to be able and come see your team if they wanted to. Even with our remote backup service, I can say to my clients "You are more than welcome to come see where your data is being kept safe at". Now to be honest are they likely to take me up on that offer, no. But often times it is the fact that the option exists.

So in the end, outsourcing makes sense for some things. But I go back to an earlier post on this topic and I feel that outsourcing your core business is a bad idea.

But the real question many should ask is "What is your core business". Find that out and it makes determining what to keep internal vs. external a lot easier discussion.

iPad - Long 60 days!

First off I am excited about the upcoming iPad from Apple. You can view the press event here. And to be honest I was not going to blog about it as I did not have that much to add to the content that has already been published about it. But then there was this article at CRN about MS partners not feeling the tablet love.

Now as it would have it, I have had two (2) Microsoft Tablet PC's. They were both Toshiba and good laptops but they were terrible tablets. Too cumbersome and nothing overly special about them other than you could write on the screen with a stylus. I REALLY wanted the Tablet PC to be my only mobile computing device but it was nothing more than a laptop that I could turn landscape and write on the screen. Battery life was marginal. So I eventually abandoned both of them as there was nothing that special about them. I found that I type faster than I can write and it is more legible.

Now I have seen some great implementations of Tablet PC's. The best was when our company signed up with PayChex. The sales guy whipped out his tablet with a InfoPath application that allowed for me to fill out the form and sign it with out any paper. Then when the sales guy got back to his office, he could just dock his tablet and then it would automatically submit the application and sync everything to the backend. So definitely a great use of a Tablet.

But the iPad will rule the tablet space and not because it will have limited exposure. The iPad pricing is perfect for widespread adoption and has a lot of great potential. It was interesting to hear that some believe this to be niche product when I have talked to many a non-technical person who is excited about the iPad. 

Steve Jobs said it best when he discussed their vision for the iPad in that it had to be better than anything already out there. It could not just be a better Netbook because he was right, NetBooks are terrible! They are limited in everything except that they are cheap. Seriously what does a NetBook do that a decent small laptop does not?

So what needs to happen for MS to compete in the tablet space? They need to work with one hardware vendor extremely close and develop something completely innovative that is NOT tied to Windows 7 or anything else they have devised to date. They need to look at how to integrate it with the upcoming Office 2010 Web version and integrate with some Cloud Storage service but have some options for it to integrate into other web services. Make it work fantastically with hosted CRM and Hosted Exchange. Not to mention Sharepoint. 

Me, I will be standing in line the day that the iPad is available and trying to think about what I am going to use my MacBook Air for now!

NOTE: eMonarch (my company) is a Microsoft Gold Partner and make a great living working with Microsoft products. I love what MS does in the business space and the XBox 360 is the best consumer device I have ever seen!

The Cloud Continues . . .

Could not sleep so was reading some news and came across a piece that IBM has now signed the largest cloud deployment with the move by Panasonic with 100,000 users initially and then moving to 300,000. Panasonic will be replacing MS Exchange with IBM's LotusLive.

So the Cloud continues to get adoption as more and more companies realize there is a better way to manage the technology instead of deploying it internally and managing it internally. What I find fascinating about this is that technology is finally becoming just a tool as it was originally intended. 

No one goes out and makes their own hammers or saws these days. We just go to Home Depot and pick up hammer so we can do whatever job we are doing. And the same will continue to happen with technology. Instead of making or managing our own infrastructure, business will continue to look for ways to outsource those tools and reduce their costs by not having huge teams to manage the environment.

Values vs Revenue - Google Choose Values!

Yesterday Google did a remarkable thing, they announced (read the blog post here) that they are going to be stop censoring their search results on google.cn. 

This is great news and here is why I believe so. Companies have values and sometimes those values do always line up with the values of the increasing revenue and bottom line. In fact often times there are decisions that have to be made based on the values of a company that actually cause revenue to decline.

Seeing a company as big as Google decide to not bow to the absurd rules and horrible actions of the Chinese government is fantastic. NOTE: I am specifically mentioning the laws and actions of the government of China and not the Chinese people.

China continues to violate human-rights on a regular basis but US companies and consumers continue to look the other way because it is cheaper to do business there and therefore they are able to increase their profits. Well of course labor is cheaper in China, they operate horrendous labor practices. In this article from the New York Times, there a reports of people making $150 dollars a MONTH and working 12 hours a day for 6 days a week! The site ChinaLaborWatch is full of reports of human rights violations that are stunning to say the least.

Ok did not mean to turn this into a human-rights post but what is really important here is that in life (and business is a part of life albeit for some business is the life) there are more things important that increasing profits or revenue. So when the values of a company conflict with an opportunity to increase revenue, what will you do? Violate the value or sacrifice the money?

So way to go Google! In fact because of their stance, I will look for more ways to do business with Google.

The Coming Cloud ‘Catastrophe’ – FUD Alert!

Mark Anderson is the CEO of Strategic News Service and he provides annual predictions with respect to technology. To be honest, I have never even heard of this guy until three days ago when someone sent me a link to an article in BusinessWeek with respect to his prediction with regard to a "Coming Cloud 'Catastrophe'". So I read the article and I had to find out more.

In a nutshell, Mark Anderson predicts as the #6 item on his top ten list for 2010 that there will be a "Cloud Catastrophe" where "something" will happen in the Cloud that will erode the trust of CIO's with respect to the Cloud. Mark has NO idea what this will be and even says so in his speech which you can listen to here. But he believes it will be something along the lines of an outage or a security breach that will slow down the adoption of the Cloud.

Ok and your point is . . .

I am calling this Hog Wash!!! I do not doubt there will be some event that someone will be able to point to that will say "See, Mark was right!!!" But this kind of thing has already happened without the dire results that many are trying to push. This very year (2009) T-Mobile lost a LOT of customers data when they LOST data for users of the SideKick. But crazy thing happened, people still keep using SmartPhones and T-Mobile even resumed selling the Sidekick with a month!

Google had an outage on February 2, 2009 and then again on September 1, 2009 but another crazy thing happened also – The City of Los Angeles moved their email platform to Google in December to the tune of 30,000 users! Another company MWV moved 12,000 users to Google Apps as has Delta Hotels and Resorts and MANY other companies all since the outages have occurred. Hmmm, does not sound like a "Catastrophe" to me!

But there is more . . . In the US there were 34,017 FATAL car crashes for the year 2008 (around 93 a day!) but we all keep driving our cars to work every day and making cross country trips during the summer. AT&T is DEAD LAST in customer service but people are still buying the iPhone.

So while I will agree that there will be an "event" that occurs in 2010, I strongly disagree with all the coverage this prediction is getting. In fact it is the typical FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) that many like to spread around so that they can continue to operate in the status quo. The concept of Cloud Computing/Utility Computing is a fundamental shift in the implementation of technology that will require a significant portion of the IT community to rethink how they do business. I have a question that I have been rolling around for most of 2009 - "What will we manage when there is nothing left to manage?". As an IT provider, I better be thinking about that change in the IT space or else I am going to be out of business. It will not be enough to be "the trusted advisor", we will have to be the provider.

IT providers will not be safe enough to just "resell" other people's stuff under their own brand or outsource their core offering to someone else. Instead IT providers will have to change how they do business. We will have to "provide" something of tangible value to the customer.

We must adapt and change!

FUD will only keep us around long enough to go bankrupt!

Outsourcing your core business

Would you do that?

If you are a legal firm, would you outsource litigation?
What about a medical doctor, would you outsource your patient care?

Probably not but this is quickly becoming the trend in IT service firms. I am seeing what I perceive to be a troubling trend amongst my peers to outsource the very thing they are supposed to be doing for their clients, managing the IT environment of their customers.

I can understand the desire as most IT providers are small companies that the biggest cost is payroll and when someone says you can lower that cost, then they jump all over it. But is this the best thing for the customer?

I tend to think not! I believe that you should NOT outsource your core business. Some may make the argument that "Our core business is being the trusted adviser to our customers with respect to technology." But I would challenge those folks to go ask their customers what they believe the core business of the IT provider is. I bet they would hear something very different.

Providing IT support is not a glamorous business on the surface but with technology becoming such a vital part of the business landscape, it is an important business.

There are lots of examples of successful outsourcing for sure. If your firm is a marketing company, then outsource the coffee, the IT support, the cleaning of the office and probably even accounting functions. But I bet they won't outsource their marketing! Doctors typical outsource transcription and billing services and this has proven to be successful.

Outsourcing can provide a lot of benefits to a company (it better as that is what we do!) but be careful of what you outsource.

Windows 7 Update

Alright this one took a little longer than I thought it would take to get ready for. But I have upgraded/installed Windows 7 on both my main office workstation and also my work laptop.

First Impressions: Not bad at all. Overall very nice.

But let's put this all in context for a minute. I am coming from Windows Vista not XP so to be honest the changes have not been that drastic for me.

Install goes extremely well and I have had no problems with any of the applications I am running. There have been some really nice features that have saved me some time. One of the most notable for me is when you click the Start button you will see the typical menu of applications but the Word, Excel and even Remote Desktops icon will have a submenu with all of the recent documents that you have worked with. This has proven to be quite a helpful option for me.

Performance is good but my desktop is not really a fair comparison to what others will probably be using. My laptop on the other hand is pretty typical and it works well.

Overall Windows 7 is good and I would even go so far as saying really good. It will be worth the money from XP and ok from Vista.

Windows 7 - Let the games begin!

Today is the start of the Windows 7 experience! Some may argue that the experience has been going on for some time with the beta builds and RC (Release Candidates) and they are right but today is the real start as IT Professionals that subscribe to TechNet will have access to the final release.

I am starting my test today as soon as the code is available for download but considering at the time I type this the folks in Redmond are probably just rolling into the office, it may be a few more hours before it is available.

I will start by doing a fresh install on my laptop. As I do each of my machines, I will post my results and overall experience to keep everyone posted.

So stay tuned . . .

Internet in the Air!

Writing my first blog post from 26K feet while flying back home from Canada on American Airlines. It is about time! For those that travel extensively, the technology enabling Internet wireless while on the plane is a long time coming.

It not only allows a lot of stuff to get done but it also makes the flight go very quickly. The overall performance has been great and very acceptable without any noticeable delays.

American Airlines has this on different planes and utilizing GoGo Inflight. I am not sure what routes that the service will be on but the current plane I am on is a Super 80.

Cost? 9.95 for the flight. Not bad.

Overall a great experience and a big thank you to AA for getting this technology in place. Now if we can just fix the rest of the travel experience!!

Motivate Employees - Can it be done?

For those that have read my blog before, you know that I am a member of a peer group that meets to discuss different issues that affect us business owners. Well on of the regular topics that comes up is how to motivate employees.

This time our group really got into a great discuss or else I am just paying closer attention due to it being a big issue at our office. When you start to have to motivate employee discussion, the "more money" is often the default answer. This can come in the form of bonuses, raises, etc. But I have a default stance that I should not have to pay employees more just to do their job. But I also typically have led with a stick and not with a carrot as many of my employees will attest to.

But I really struggle with trying how to motivate employees to go the extra mile. And it appears I am not the only one as many in our group this week had the same question.

There are a thousand different ideas on how to motivate employees floating around on the Internet. Just google "how to motivate employees" and you will get lots of articles on how to do that very thing.

One of the often concepts is to pay more, give more bonuses or something else that involves more money. I think those things should be as a result of already seeing a motivated employee. When the extra effort has ALREADY been done, then reward the behavior. Not the other way around of "Here I am going to give you more money in hopes of them doing a great job". That I think is a bad idea.

But in our discussions it is often brought up that money is NOT a great motivator. I found a good article on line that said the same thing and had some other great ideas as well here at the Free Management Library. The article was written by Carter McNamara, PhD of Authenticity Consulting.

One the key points that stood out to me was the concept that we the employer cannot really motivate the employee but rather the employee has to motivate themselves. Wow! I think this is a key concept that we as employers often miss.

One of the most important strategies is getting the right people on the bus and Forbes had an article where Dr. Lynda Dahlke said "First, you try to avoid bad employees by hiring carefully". You cannot make a good apple pie with bad apples! That has been a hard lesson to learn of the course of the years.

When I queried my staff about what motivates them, it was all over the board. Some did say money, some said time off and others want to know they are doing a good job. But also I think it is important to make sure that the employee knows what is expected of them and to understand that the expectations are not negotiables.

I often hear people say to get employees to think like owners. Well I tend to disagree with that because if they thought like owners they would be owners! I know there is probably a lot of heated commentary that could be said about this last statement.

Trying to find out how to motivate is still hard though. How honest is your staff going to be? If they do not answer money then are they really being honest or just trying to not appear greedy? And even if you do all the things that they have said motivates them, are they going to go the extra mile or just come to expect that as what is "due" them.

So can we as employers truly motivate employees? Can it be done? Someone has to get it because I see evidence of great employee loyalty and employees going way above the call of duty and so something has to be driving that.

So what are we going to do about it? Great question! We are working on it and look for ways to evaluate employees and reward good behavior. I do not think we will be able to create one system for all but rather have to take a look at our staff and figure out what each one wants and develop a single system with various rewards that are more personalized for each individual.

Because I think that most employers want to treat their employees well and I know that is true in my case. Being an employer is a HUGE responsibility and many feel like their staff is just an extension of their families. 

So can we as employers truly motivate employees? Can it be done? Someone has to get it because I see evidence of great employee loyalty and employees going way above the call of duty and so something has to be driving that.

I will keep you posted with what we come up with and hopeful some feedback from our team as to its effectiveness but for now just remember use the carrot!

Future of the Desktop - Part 2

Back in April of last year, I wrote about the future of the desktop with respect to a battle between Apple, Microsoft and Linux for the desktop operating system that seemed to be brewing as more folks were not happy with Vista and Apple was becoming more common in both the home and the business community.

Well it appears I was sleeping on the job as I never considered a fourth alternative, Google! I remember talking to many of my peers that Google would not create OS as it did not make much sense to me. Boy was I wrong on that one.

On 7/7/2009 Google announce Google Chrome OS (Announcement from Google). That was a surprise to me but really it should not be as the future of computing really appears to be where applications are offered via the Internet (or Cloud) especially for the consumer space. 

So what is interesting about Chrome OS?

Google is targeting it for a very specific use, Netbook computers and for people who spend the majority of their time on the web. So for example, users of applications like Google Apps, Zoho, Salesforce, and NetSuite to name just a few of web-based applications. This is really compelling even if you agree with Steve Ballmer from Microsoft who last week said "There’s good data that says 50 percent of the time that someone’s on their PC, they’re not doing something with the Web browser" at the MS annual partner conference.

Ok but what about the other 50% of the time where we are using the browser? What was that percentage two years ago - 25%? So maybe in two more years that number will change again to 75% and then who knows where the future will go with it.

I think back in the days of the browser wars between Microsoft and the others, that Bill Gates was worried that the browser would replace Windows as the platform and so they invested so much in IE and other web technologies.

Regardless of the posturing of the technology companies, the Internet is not a fad (I had a friend once refer the Internet as the CB of the 90's) and Software as a Service is not a fad. 

There are a lot of other factors that I am beginning to see even in our neck of the woods with respect to businesses becoming more comfortable with the idea of data living in the Cloud and not having servers,etc. 

Citrix is doing some interesting stuff with their Service Provider program that will enable technology firms to provide traditional applications via the web as well as seeing more and more applications being written solely for the web.

The Google Chrome OS is not done yet and so we will have to take a wait and see approach but I believe that the Google Chrome OS will find its place and also drive a heck of a lot of innovation that will determine the future of the desktop OS.

The real question will be what is MS going to do in response if anything and what will the next OS out of Redmond have for us? Windows 7 is right around the corner (September for business customers under a MS licensing program) and it holds some promise as well.

So what does the future of the desktop hold for us? No answers here but it will be an interesting ride for sure.

A Vision Transformed to Reality

Ten years ago, I wrote a vision document for eMonarch that outlined my vision for eMonarch and what I believed the future of technology would hold for small business. It revolved around a concept/business model called Application Service Provider (ASP), whereby  a small business would no longer buy servers, software, and other applications but would rather "rent" them from an ASP.

The first attempt at this vision is what got eMonarch going and I still remember sitting in my living room with a lot of HP servers with my little brother trying to get it all put together so we could make it real. But eMonarch was not ready nor was the market. So eMonarch ventured down other paths but I strove to keep the vision going in my mind as I developed our offerings.

This vision became a reality this month at eMonarch with the signing of our first hosting infrastructure client and the actual turn-up of that customer. It was a big day for me to see a vision that I had outlined 10 years ago to finally come to fruition. And nice to know that I was not crazy but just a little early.

Our offering is based on a business being able to get almost all of the software they need to run their business (MS Office, Email, IM, CRM, etc) all without buying the hardware or even the software to run it. Instead, we host the infrastructure in our data center and the customer accesses everything via a remote terminal session.

What makes this really exciting for me is that our transition to a managed service model was a step along the way to the hosted infrastructure that we are know offering.  We package it all together to create a rich environment for our customers.

Another great part about this solution, is that when a customer tells us they want to go hosted, we can typically have them up and running in under 2 hours. Everything ready to go!

But to be honest, the major story here is that for every business to not give up! As a business owner, we are often thought to be crazy with our ideas and visions. But sometimes you just may be early or the market you are in has not caught on to the idea. Stick with it and look at ways to take baby steps to lead to the realization of your dream. In my case, it took many years to watch the market change and to carefully plot the course along the way to make sure I never lost sight of my vision.

Sure there were weeks,months and even a year or so when I thought "That vision is dead, need to come up with a new one" but I worked to kick that thought out of my head and drive forward always looking to see if the technology and the market was ready.

It has and exciting times are ahead as eMonarch drives this vision into the market and also looks at how to further develop the solution.

Evolution - New Service

Background

eMonarch is a managed service provider that has made its mark in the flat-fee managed IT space for small business. Our services differ greatly from the typical break-fix IT provider as we assume the majority of the risk associated with managing the IT infrastructure of a company. We are the IT department!

Here is how I typically have looked at the break-fix model:

The only person that wins is the IT provider. When a server is down, the customer is loosing money on both fronts. The customer is paying the IT provider an hourly rate and the customer is also loosing productivity (aka money) during the down time.

In a flat-rate model, the person that is losing is the IT provider but really this is the opportunity for the managed service provider to shine by preventing the downtime to begin with. You see in a flat-fee model, the managed service provider is paid to keep things running smoothly.

Roadblock

In our model, we have run across businesses that are not quite ready for managed services as we define it. They really wanted to do business with us as they liked our philosophy and talent but could not afford the full services that we provide.

These businesses were typically under 10 desktops and had only 1 server.

Solution

So we developed - Evolution! Evolution is a cross between a fully managed IT environment and a on-demand IT service. We realized that some businesses need to ease into managed services and so we developed that solution for just those customers. As the name implies, Evolution will provide a path to managed services that all small businesses can work with as they transform their business.

For $299 per month, Evolution provides a small business with a program that will enable their systems to be monitored and a number of maintenance tasks to be taken care of without additional fees. This program will be for 10 desktops and 1 server initially and available for an 18 month term. 

The business will have access to our help desk, CIO services, On-site services, and all other aspects of eMonarch services at an hourly rate.

Each month eMonarch will monitor the usage and work with the business to determine if moving to our fully managed suite, Chrysalis IT, is right for them.

I am excited about this new opportunity to add to our customer base but also to be able to provide an offering that provides some great value to the small business community.

Importance of Vendor Relationships

In business today, it is impossible to over emphasize the importance of building and maintaining relationships with your customers and vendors.

I am going to outline an example that have been specific to our business that I think probably do a better job describing the impact of relationships.

Vendor Relationships

eMonarch is a Cisco SMB Select partner who has sold very little Cisco gear in the last 24 months. I mean less that 5K worth of their products. However there are three folks at Cisco in the local office who NEVER fail to answer my questions, work with me to understand what Cisco has to offer me and never treat me or eMonarch like a tiny partner.

Now we have a "relationship" with another security vendor who is in the small business space. We sold a lot of their gear when we first became a partner and we got a lot of attention. But once we converted our current customer base to their solution, our sales dropped off and they dropped off the planet! Now no phone calls, no emails, nothing!

So our response? Cisco is getting all of our networking, telephony and security business. Both companies make great products but because of the steady work of the local Cisco channel team, we will sell Cisco gear. Cisco has earned the opportunity for me to put them in front of our customers. And it is not because of the Cisco name but simple because of the investment these people put into developing a relationship with eMonarch.

What is remarkable about this example is that here is a very large company (Cisco) that is putting the effort into building a relationship with a small company in Tulsa, OK. Now to be really honest, I know all the credit goes to the three gentlemen here in the local office. But I see the effort and commitment to helping eMonarch be a success and it will pay off.

Vendors can play a critical part in your business success and it does not have to be just vendors where you source product. The office supply company (Admiral Express), the office building, the CPA, and the list goes on.

But where I think the real key is, is that the relationship has to be a win-win. It cannot be a "what can we get out of them" relationship but rather "How can we help them achieve their goals" kind of relationship. The local office supply company should not be getting beat up on price but rather I should commit our business to pushing all our office supply purchases to them. I want them to be successful because I know they will be around to help me. If I am only out for the lowest price then I should not be surprised by poor service and no commitment from them to help me out.

As the customer, we need to focus on making sure our vendors get what they need from us. How can we help them grow their business? Ask them! Find out how you can help them get more customers. If you really like what they do, then offer to send a letter to your customer base introducing them.

As small businesses we should be partnering with our vendors and not just "doing business" with them.

Proximity, Proximity, Proximity!

Does proximity matter?

Do you have to be within 30 minutes of a customer to provide great customer service?

Great question! In our line of work, we get asked that more and more as we expand our market reach into other cities and even other states. It provides some definitely interesting conversations.

I was looking through our logs today and realizing that even for our local customers (within 10 miles) we still perform 90% of our work remotely and I bet that number would be even higher if the customer was not 10 miles down the road.

Today's technology allows IT providers instant access to their customers systems in an extremely secure manner and 99% of the time much faster than getting in the car and wasting time behind the windshield. But proximity does not guarantee better customer service for sure. You can get just as bad service right next door as you can remotely!

But where proximity starts to get really interesting is in the area of hosting services and I am not talking about hosting a web site. 

If you have read some of my previous posts, you will know that I am a believer in Cloud Computing as it relates to small businesses. But does proximity matter at that point? Some think so which makes it very interesting.

Last year I spoke to a group of accountants about Cloud/Utility Computing and I had a few come up to me after the talk and tell me that I was dead wrong. We would never be putting our data out on the Internet! I just kinda smiled and thought to myself, "If you only knew!"

Some small business owners want to "hug" that server! If you cannot see it, touch it, caress it or smell it, it is not real and they want nothing to do with it. And there is no explaining it either. 

We already hear it when describing our data protection solutions. I get asked "where is my data?" to which I explain "hosted in our data center". Usually no problems but every now and I then I get "I want to see it!" I say sure, come on down and we can give you a tour of the data center and show you the hard drives your data is stored on. But usually they do not take me up on it.

Over the next few months as we finalize our hosting infrastructure it will be interesting to have those "proximity" discussions when we are talking about moving all our customers infrastructure out of their office and into our data center. I wonder how many "I want to see it" comments will I get.

Web Meetings - No Travel Required

Often in today's marketplace, someone is sending you an invite to attend a webinar or some other presentation via the web.

Hosting your own webinars or internal meetings can be a great communication tool for your customers and employees while saving you money by not having to shell out travel expenses. There are a number of ideas for how this kind of technology can be used and here are just some examples:

• Host a product education webinar for customers
• Host a sales training session with your sales team from all locations about a new product launch. 
• Deliver a lunch-n-learn for customers about your solution. 
• Show a client the product design via the web and a web camera in real-time. 
• Have a brain-storm session with a business consultant with a whiteboard and audio as well as video. 
• Record any of the above for future reference by your team or clients.
• Bring branch offices into your home office for mentoring with senior staff. 

There are a number of great solutions out there ranging for Microsoft's Live Meeting to Cisco's WebEx. But there are also some other solutions that are worth taking a look at, most notably DimDim. Now the first thing people ask is "What kind of name is that?" and they are right, it has to be the craziest name for a product I have run across but then again what exactly is google or yahoo for that matter.

DimDim comes in four flavors, Free, Pro, Enterprise and Open Source. The first three are hosted and the main differences (details here) are the number of attendees that can be in a given meeting and the cost. The Free edition well is Free and allows up to 20 attendees and the Pro edition costs $19 per month and can host up to 50 attendees. The Open Source is one that can be downloaded and installed in your own infrastructure if you want. But I am pretty sure the infrastructure needed to host it your self will cost more than the $19 per month for the Pro edition.

One of the most compelling cases for DimDim is that there is nothing that the presenter nor the attendee has to download to attend a meeting/presentation. This is absolutely critical as I have attended numerous webinars where you have to download and install something just to attend the webinar.

We use DimDim to host customer training sessions and even to present vendor information. So I highly recommend taking a look at DimDim.

With live audio and video as well as digital whiteboards, screen sharing and a host of other features web conferencing is really come of age and is definitely something that every small business should be evaluating and more importantly executing on to better connect with your customers and employees.

Peer Group - Are You Involved?

In business, you need all the help you can get! Especially in todays volatile and interesting market place. And one way to get that help is to belong to a peer group.

Well in my case, I need so much help I belong to two peer groups. The first being HTG or Heartland Technology Groups. HTG is a collection of over 200 companies that are all from the technology space that meet on a quarterly basis to share ideas, hold each other accountable for execution of those shared ideas, and provide a much needed sounding board for business owners. HTG has been an invaluable part of our business and the folks in my peer group (HTG4) are top notch. We hold each other to task and generally try to work as a board of directors for each of the companies represented in the group.

The other group I belong to is The Alternative Board or TAB. TAB is different than HTG in that it is not vertically specific. Instead, there are 12 members of a given board that are from non-competing industries but are very broad in expertise. For example, my board has companies from chemical companies to training companies and a variety of others.  TAB has been remarkable to our company as not only do I get the perspective of 12 members outside of the technology industry but also a monthly coaching session by a top notch facilitator. 

But regardless of what kind of business you are in today, you need to be involved with a peer group or a board or something! This goes beyond getting together to shoot the bull but instead gives you as the business owner a direct group of folks that are willing to hold you accountable.

In most small businesses, the owner does not have to answer to anyone for the decisions he/she makes. Sure the customers and employees are there and they could exact some sense of accountability but at the end of the day if the business owner wants to make a make decision, he rarely has to answer to anyone for it.

Peer groups give you that kind of accountability and also give you a great place to voice your ideas before they become blazing failures in the marketplace. But not only do you get a lot, but you get the opportunity to share a lot as well. You are expected to engage and be involved. I regularly talk to members of both of my groups outside of my meetings to get their input on ideas or thoughts I may be having about how to handle some aspect of my business.

Peer groups take effort for sure but the effort is well worth it. I encourage you to find a group and get involved.

Thomas Edison has a great line:

"Vision without execution is hallucination"

And today, it still rings true. And that is what peer groups are there for, to help you execute!

Commitment and Effort

Have you watched The Haney Project? It is a funny show about Hank Haney trying to help Charles Barkley fix his golf swing. It is a lot of fun to watch but that is not what is the most interesting part of what I saw. I recorded a couple episodes and so finally sat down to watch them last night after the Masters. And what struck me the most was what Hank Haney described as a "Tiger Day". This came up when Hank asked Charles how hard he was going to work to fix his swing and Hank went on to describe a "Tiger Day" as something like the following (NOTE: This is not an exact quote but just my remembrance of what Hank said.)

0600-0730 Gym
0900-1100 Practice Tee
1100-1130 Putt
1130-1230 Play 9
1230-1300 Lunch
1300-1500 Practice Tee
1500-1600 Short Game
1600-1700 Play 9
1700-1730 Practice tee
1730-1800 Putt

And then Charles says to Hank "I guess that is why he is so good!"

But here is my spin on this, WOW! Talk about commitment and effort! How many of us put that much dedicated effort into being the best we can, whether it is for business or personal life? If we truly want to be GREAT at anything, that is the kind of effort and execution that is required.

So what does this have to do with Small Business and technology? Not much with respect to technology but when it comes to being a small business owner, EVERYTHING! We pour a great amount of effort and commitment into our businesses on a daily basis in an attempt to be successful. So in order to do that, we have to put in a "Tiger Day" but we also have to make sure we are focused on the right things.

Notice that each item on the schedule is all about being a better golfer. In researching this post, I also found the method that Hank Haney uses for teaching. They have a Player Development Program that is outlined as "Great Play is the Result of a Great Plan and a Great Plan requires a road-map for improvement."

There are measurable items for putting, pitching, chipping, etc. Here is an example of the putting improvement plan for me:

"Select 4 spots on the practice putting green, each 9 feet from the hole. Hit 20 putts in total. 5 balls from each designated starting point. After completing 20 putts, multiply the total number of putts you made by 5 to get your score. This is your putting percentage."

Very precise actions with very precise measurements. That is the key to success in any small business. A very precise plan that is comprised of very precise actions with very precise measurements to determine where are we in the execution of our plan.

And that plan requires a significant amount of commitment and effort.

So get after it! Are you willing to put in a "Tiger Day"?

Customer Service Epiphany

After a rough Monday, I came to a realization I should have had back in 2006 after reading this post from Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun. 

eMonarch's customers should be able to get a hold of me on my cell and even at home if they have a critical issue! Period!

In the early days of eMonarch, the company was built around my technical skills and so almost all of our customers and their staff talked to me to get their issues resolved. And that was everything from designing their Active Directory infrastructure to helping them with an Outlook issue. And as we grew, this did not scale very well nor did it allow me to work on growing the business to be more than just a one man show.

And so I began to spend a good portion of time trying to build systems and put processes in place so that my team could handle any and all issues without getting me involved. But that is not always the right thing for the customer that is paying my company to take care of them. 

The bottom line is that I am always the one to sit across from the owner as he/she signs our contract and I tell them that eMonarch will take care of them. So when we drop the ball, that executive should be able to get a hold of me no matter what!

After this past experience, I also came to a realization about our purpose as a company which is "To Transform Lives Through Excellence and Innovation". 

Many people have a hard time understanding how a managed IT provider can "transform lives" and so I have to launch into an explanation that goes something like this:

"Our customers are small businesses. Those small businesses are owned by men and women who typically have families and are building their business to be able to provide a better life for their families and to be able to spend more time with them. Our job is to make that a reality through the use of technology. We should be making the technology tools working for the business owner instead of against him. We can do this by providing "excellent" service and "innovative" solutions. Then we are able to effectively realize our purpose by transforming the life of that owner!"

I think this is critical to any business especially those outside of the retail space. On one hand how many customers of a McDonalds even know who the owner of that store is or who is the owner of the local Starbucks. But I bet that they know the owner of the law firm they do business with and the owner of the CPA firm or even the owner of their main supplier. 

So our customers will have my cell number and home number so just in case they feel the need or desire, they can reach me or any member of the management team at eMonarch so that we can make sure we are fulfilling our purpose as a company for that business owner.

Cloud Computing - Is Ellison Right?

Recently at Oracle OpenWorld, Larry Ellison made the following comment:

"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"

The technology media has since jumped on the comment and some are starting to call Cloud Computing just a bunch of hype.

Well I tend to disagree. Cloud Computing is not a bunch of hype. Is it a realized technology today? No. But it is coming! But let me define what I believe to be the core of Cloud Computing and where I see it going.

Cloud Computing is when businesses no longer spend vast amounts of money buying servers, application servers, database servers, file servers and other types of servers but instead sign up for these services under a subscription model that is delivered over the Internet. Nicholas Carr states pretty much the same in his book "The Big Switch" where he discusses the concept of Utility Computing. I believe the two are the same concept. It could be argued that they are different concepts and the argument would be fun to sit in on but the two are similar.

We see it happening all around us. NetSuite, SalesForce, Hosted Exchange, etc are all great examples of what I would refer to as Cloud Computing 0.5. I have begun to see folks that I would never had suspected of using Cloud resources, ie CPA's begin to sign up for services where their data is no longer stored on their own physical servers but instead hosted by a firm that specializes in CPA (GoFileRoom by Thomson Reuters) and other applications that move more and more of the data and the applications that businesses today need out as subscription based services.

Take for example a small services business. They can get (right now and today) a full accounting package (NetSuite), a CRM package (SalesForce, SugarCRM, Microsoft CRM), Email (Hosted Exchange), Intranet and Document Management (Hosted Sharepoint) without buying a SINGLE server! So what do they buy? They buy a desktop PC, some printers, a good firewall (can also be rented from their ISP), and they are about done. Oh even the phone system no longer has to be an in-house PBX.

But what about applications on the desktop? Well they could use Microsoft Office but they could also use Zoho which has a number of applications that would compete and do great up against Microsoft Office.

But what about virtualization? How does that play into the concept of Cloud Computing? Imagine even the desktop in the Cloud! What if the desktop I buy is really nothing more than a connection to a virtual desktop somewhere in the Cloud? Take a look at companies like VMWare with their VDI initiative or companies like PanoLogic that are really taking the desktop to a new level.

I do not have any answers and this is a very sensitive topic as it directly impacts my company. Because what do we manage when there is nothing left to manage? Well you can bet I am not going to sit still and let it happen without me thinking about how eMonarch plays into the new world.

So Ellison may be right today, is he still right tomorrow? I do not think so.

Does the Desktop have a Future?

Does the desktop have a future or is the day of the desktop operating system as we know it coming to an end?

Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald (both from Gartner) describe Windows as "collapsing" in their presentation last week that was titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve". This all comes on the heals of a very slow adoption rate of Vista on business desktops. Now there are a lot of reasons for this that may or may not be the fault of Microsoft. (For more on this take a look at this article)

Another interesting article came from BusinessWeek with regard to Apple and it's recent gains on the desktop space in the business world (article can be found here). The article talks about how easy it is to switch between Apple and Microsoft by using Apple OS X and the new version of it's OS with the release of Leopard. The article talks about an application called Spaces but what is really at the core of the interoperability is some virtualization technology. Either running Windows on Parallels or Windows on VMWare Fusion.

But the meat of the article brought me to really start to think more about what is the desktop really about. Why do we buy a computer? To get a job done! Period. We buy a tool to do a job but is the desktop operating system the tool? Nope, the tool is the application running on the desktop.

So if I want to communicate with my customers do I buy Vista or a Mac? Who cares! What I really want to know is what application helps me communicate the best with my clients. The desktop OS is really irrelevant and will continue to become less of a consideration as more and more of the applications (tools) we use begin to be pushed out "The Cloud". Applications like Google Apps or Salesforce.com or any number of other web-based tools will really make the decision of which desktop operating system less of decision point.

Adobe recently further blurred the lines of the desktop by releasingPhotoshop Express. Photoshop has dominated the image editing world for years and this new application moves the job of editing photos off of the desktop and onto the web.

Companies like Zoho have an entire offering of web-based applications that any small business could almost do everything without every "installing" an application other than a web browser. Zoho has everything from a Word Processor to a Project Management solution all delivered via your friendly web browser.

In one of my earlier posts I wrote about cloud computing and how I really believe that it will be the biggest game changer for business and technology. But this expands even beyond the desktop to the server. What will happen when the IT investment of a business is in a device to connect their office to The Cloud, some printers, and thin clients that essentially have a web browser? One of the stumbling blocks will be connectivity issues and how to maintain the connection to the Internet but even today if the connectivity is compromised, the productivity of the business goes down.

So who is going to rule the desktop? Will it be Microsoft, Apple or maybe even Linux? No answers here but it will be an interesting path to travel on for the next few years.

More Switching

So we are now up to four (4) Macs at this point. I have since added an iMac and a Mac Mini to our growing collection of Apple hardware and that is not including the iPhone that I recently picked up.

The Mac Mini is running the Apple OS X Server product and I am going to be working on a comparison between it and the new MS Small Business Server (Cougar) product that is due out this summer. I want to see just where the two meet at and what they can really offer the small business with a special eye towards features that businesses use (key point) and the price for those features. But that will be coming in the weeks ahead as we start our testing. I will post the results here on the blog and on our upcoming new site dedicated to running a small business on the Mac platform. Can't tell you the url just yet but it will be coming soon.

So the iPhone - WOW! I was perhaps one of the most anti-iPhone folks you could find due to just being biased. No other reason really. But I watched the announcement about the upcoming iPhone 2.0 (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/iphoneroadmap/) and was really excited about the potential. So much so that I made the announcement to our customer base that eMonarch would be officially supporting the iPhone on corporate networks for integration with MS Exchange. I even got the iPhone that same day.

But what was even more exciting was the phone itself. It is simple to use, works extremely well, very responsive, and the most important part is that it works great as a phone. Crazy thought that a cell phone is actually used to call people and used as a phone but it does! It is easy to dial with and make calls.

It does not stop there though. One of the things that I have always thought was just plain stupid was to have a camera on your phone that was taking absolutely ugly pictures. The iPhone takes remarkable pictures!! Seriously it really does. I have taken a number of pictures with it and they are great! So now I am taking way more pictures than I should but oh well.

There are so many other great things the phone has, Google Maps (you gotta use that feature) and Weather (my wife loves that one as she is constantly asking me about the weather and now I so go grab my phone).

All in all a very good experience. The iMac was simple to setup as well. What amazed me was that essentially I took it out of the box and hooked up one cable - the power cable and I was up and running! Try that on a PC!

Well the switch is on now to see what we can make the server do.

The Big Switch

Yesterday Apple posted a news item to their website that I found interesting about a company switching from Windows to Apple for its platform (Article can be found here).

What makes this so interesting is that we are considering the same thing. Two weeks ago I bought a MacBook Air. This came as a major surprise to all of my staff and my family. I am/was a big Microsoft fan and even considered myself a Microsoft evangelist.

I am very compelled with the Apple story for the small business and am looking into its potential. I have since bought another MacBook for one of our staff to use to see how it works for his day to day work. So far so good since we can still run Windows on the MacBook using BootCamp and VMWare Fusion.

There seems to be a lot of interest in the Apple with their iPhone, iPod and other innovations and it appears that MS is stumbling a little with Vista. When in the Apple Store it is almost always busy. I was in there the other day getting Microsoft Office for Mac and it was the first time that there was less than a full crowd in there.

But what was really interesting about my experience is that is was an experience. It was not just buy the Mac and have a nice day. Apple has done a fantastic job of creating a culture around their platform and it is very similar to the culture surrounding the Mini Cooper. When I bought my Mac, I also bought their OneToOne service which is 52 sessions of training on everything related to the Mac. I sit down one to one with a Apple trainer and they go over different items from Mac 101 to creating a Podcast using GarageBand. All for $99!

So all in all a very positive experience. More to come on the switch!

How many watts do you need?

When was the last time you picked the phone and talked to your electric company about how much power you needed at your house? Probably never. But yet we ask that question all the time of our computing resources. I have begun to find it really interesting that we typically know how much memory we have in our PC or even how fast the processor is in our PC. Why?

I have been reading a book "The Big Switch" by Nicholar Carr about the future of Utility Computing and have been thinking a lot about how this will apply to small businesses around the world. Right now I think most of the conversations are around big computing needs and not so much focused on small computing but that is where I really think we are going to see some interesting developments.

Last week I spoke to the Tulsa Engineering Foundation on Utility Computing and what it means for business and it was pretty well received and what was most exciting for me is that the folks there were really interested and could see the potential.

Imagine opening small business and ordering your computing needs just like you order phone lines or get power run to your new building. The conversation might go something like this:

"Hello, I need to order computing resources for my new business. I have 5 employees."

"Great, we can get that ready for you. Tell me what each of the employees will be doing"

"Sure, I will have two sales people, one accounting, one marketing and one production person."

"Perfect, I will have their systems configured and ready for you in about an hour. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Not at this moment, thanks"

"I will call you back as soon as we have your service provisioned and ready for you"

Then behind the scenes all the services, software, and hardware is provisioned. Internet is ordered, phone service is turned on, CRM software is created, email accounts are setup, and a special portal is created for the business that enables e-commerce and other services that the specific business will need. All without having the business owner know how much memory will be in his/her PC.

We will get there and it will be interesting to watch as we begin to progress from using computers for the sake of computers but instead as just another tool in our business.

How does it still happen . . .

On occasion, I get contacted to work with a "small business IT consultant" who seems to have some technical difficulties helping one of his/her clients. I am constantly amazed at how in todays marketplace there are still folks who pass themselves off as "consultants" when in reality they are not much more than PC Technicians. I won't go into the details but it does lead me to a point I feel is really important.

We all had to start somewhere but the truly amazing part is that business owners still accept this kind of "expertise". Business owners need to demand true expertise of their "IT Consultants" and not look at technology as just something only "geeks" understand. Technology is nothing more than a tool by which it enables your business to be more successful. BUT the tool will not fix a broken business model either! So many times I see businesses focus on the tools so much and believe that if "they just buy this software" then all their problems will go away and they will be hugely successful. So far I have not seen that. The technology has to have solid business drivers and solid business processes to be backing up the technology or at the end of the day you just have a really cool piece of software.

So my message to business owners is demand that your IT consultant focus on helping your business be more successful, keeping your information safe and secure, and ultimately being a partner at the table with you in your business. If the IT consultant is just a "geek", then I would recommend look elsewhere for the right expertise to help your business grow.