Are You An IT Hostage?
Whether a business flies or flops depends on how well critical core functions are performed, and small business owner/managers are particularly adept at role multitasking. However, unless the business is computer related, or the owner/manager has a special interest in computer and networking technology, stick-handling IT issues almost never makes it onto the "Top 10 Things I Can't Wait To Do Today" list. With good reason. Over the past 25 years, increasingly complex processes and applications have migrated from large to medium to small enterprises. To keep these apps running (many of which require bloated and costly to support desktop clients), many small organizations maintain a sickly, bonsai-sized version of a corporate data center. Sometimes the gear is in an actual room with a locking door; more often it's relegated to a dingy corner or closet somewhere in the office, replete with a rack of old blinking CPUs, spaghetti-cabled routers and hubs, dusty modems, and a bushel or two of manuals and disks that no one can bring themselves to toss in the trash. This is the domain of the "IT Person"; nothing good can come from entering.
The skills, cost and value of a small business IT person (whether on staff or contracted/outsourced) can range from minimal to massive, but there is one trait they all share: they speak in a derivative, English-like dialect peppered with acronyms and initialisms that is foreign to non-IT people. It's unlikely that the average small business owner truly understands what "configuring the RAID array" or "renewing SSL keys" or "sorting out the Port 25 problem" means, and is thus disinclined to engage with the IT Person around how long the "configuring" "renewing" and "sorting" should take, and what value it brings to the operation. This effectively leaves the owner/manager in the position of needing to rely on someone who speaks a different language and lives in a different world to manage key processes that affect the health of the business.
How can a non-technical small business owner/manager bring IT out of the closet and turn what may be financial and productivity liabilities into something that has a positive effect on the business? Start asking questions. Such as what's the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of the processes running in-house? The answer should include all hardware (including ancillary processes such as backup), server and desktop licensing, realistic staff/support costs, and some formula for assigning a dollar value to application downtime. Next, ask yourself (OK, ask the IT Person, too, but recognize they may have a vested interest in maintaining the staus quo) what impact achieving higher levels of service at lower cost by switching to a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution would have on the organization. Press your IT Person to think about what's right for the business, and ask them if there's something they'd rather be doing than the busy-work of keeping servers running, installing patches and doing backups.
You'll know you're on the right track if your IT Person comes back with the point of view that a highly specialized networked application, such as CAD/CAM, may not be viable today as SaaS, but it's time to seriously consider shutting down Microsoft Exchange, the file server and any custom contact manager or other shared database. If they suggest that SaaS is a powerful model that moves both application and server onto the Web and replaces clunky desktop clients with a browser, simply nod knowingly and consider that person a keeper. Then have your IT Person contact us; we have a solution that's going to make both your lives better.
Any answers that suggest your current self-hosted situation is OK, or that your bonsai data center really doesn't cost much, or that this SaaS thing is just a fad, should be treated with deep suspicion. In that case, we suggest you close your office door and call us directly yourself.
