I run a small company. Every dollar counts. Small company proprietors much like me state that we simply purchase technology when we are certain it is going to increase our profitability. This is a lie. We throw money lower the bathroom . on useless tech constantly.
However this year’s likely to be different! Sure, there are numerous good technologies available. But there are many technologies that do not seem sensible for a small company owner much like me to purchase this year. Which year I am likely to have a stand. I am not purchasing the following technologies.
Internet Search Engine Optimization. Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand and Ben Stiller in a single movie? My God, just how can this ‘t be a work of art? If I have learned everything from “Little Fockers” it’s if something sounds too good to be real it probably is. Same for internet search engine optimization. In the last six years I have most likely spent $20K on so-known as Search engine optimization “experts” who guaranteed to boost my website to the first page of Yahoo or google. Along with a couple of of these been successful…for around five seconds. There’s no easily method to beat google’s ranking system. Anybody who informs you that’s laying. Internet search engine technology does not work. Internet search engine optimization services, however, does. However this is not cheap. The people I understand who’ve been successful with Search engine optimization recognize that it is service and also have managed to get a lynchpin of the marketing efforts. Which means they have spent in a major way money (like tens or thousands and thousands of dollars) to really make it work. I haven’t got that sort of cash. I’ll make certain my website is “enhanced” with the proper key phrases, meta-tags along with other nonsense. But that is all I am going to get this done year.
Virtualization. I recieve it. Rather of managing a server farm, fraxel treatments, produced by the likes of VMware and Microsoft, allows us to create “virtual machines” on only one server. You are able to eliminate everything other hardware as well as save money on power. My opportunity operates on just two low-level servers relaxing in my basement. Probably the most power utilized in the house originates from my kids’ Xbox, which appears like it’s running Halo 24 hrs each day. Contrary, I am thinking about tossing out my two servers (plus a handful of my children) and moving something to a cloud based service. Virtualization software programs are meaningless to some company my size, or any organization with under 4 or 5 servers. So I am not by using their technology this year either.
Office 2010. Microsoft is much like my mother…”God forbid you need to call me every now and then and appearance to make certain I’ve not died in the center of the night time. Is the fact that a lot to inquire about from my boy?” Personally i think exactly the same guilt about upgrading my Office system. I did not even wish to upgrade to Office 2007 to begin with. And today I am feeling shameful that I am not running Office 2010 too? We gone to live in Office 2007 a year ago for the similar reason I asked my mother over for supper a week ago…simply because we felt guilty. Despite the fact that it is extremely pretty we are not really seeing anymore advantages of it than Office 2003. Or Office 1997 for instance. Contrary, we might look harder at Microsoft’s online form of Office this season or perhaps take another stab at Google Docs. Or we might stop fiddling around with new ways to write a stupid letter and rather concentrate on some thing productive this year – like getting in additional business.
Smartphone Apps. Oh look…I simply discovered that a twitter user using the surname of “Marks” reaches exactly the same McDonalds as me! Hooray…I simply altered my TV funnel using my phone! And just how impressive, that new application I downloaded for $2.99 just explained that you have a Starbucks within the airport terminal I am likely to. Today’s smartphone apps are enjoyable and entertaining. A number of them help us become more personally productive. But typically these applications are toys. I’ve not found just one downloadable “application” that will alter the way my company operates or perhaps be a great tool to apply across my opportunity. That is because smartphone apps, such as the phones they operate on, continue to be within their infancy. I probably have that within the next couple of years some interesting technologies will emerge that can help my entire business run more profitably. But unless of course I wish to hire some kid within the Ukraine to build up a personalized application I do not be prepared to implement any smartphone technologies this year.
Netbooks or iPads. Are we able to all agree that the netbook is simply an affordable, underperforming device that’s they canrrrt really use effectively in business and just exists to entice people too cheap to invest the additional handful of hundred dollars on the decent laptop? And may we agree that, as the iPad is awesome and that i wouldn’t wish to be caught travelling La Mission or SoHo with out them, almost all that simple to use for business purposes like typing documents, doing data entry and running most business applications? These units are toys. Have them for your children. Acquire one since you still wish to be a child. Try not to purchase these things for the employees. You will find a lot of affordable laptops available, running Home windows 7 (which incidentally works fine and fast) where the employees can perform non-awesome, united nations-hip such things as invoices, estimates, proposals and spreadsheet analysis.