The technologists amongst us get excited about new trends and, inevitably, we want to see, touch and play with these new products and services. For business people, it’s less about features and functions, but more about solving business problems.
For the myriad small businesses out there, technology has to be an enabler – a tool that helps us run our businesses more accurately, more efficiently and, most importantly, it needs to work, allowing us to focus on what we do best, running our businesses.
But while we are dependent on technology, we don’t want to be beholden to it – we don’t want or need the distraction that increasingly complex software solutions can provide. In these tough times, every hour we spend thinking about running technology is an hour we’re not selling to our customers, or giving them great customer service.
The evolution of delivering software that is hosted elsewhere is not new, but it has transformed the software industry in recent years for a wide range of reasons. For the typical business this model is attractive because this not only allows us to not worry about running software, but the software is always on – it’s there. Like water and electricity, we can now use technology as a utility.
During May we’re running a series of seminars in Auckland and Christchurch that look at online services and what value they can deliver organisations. Well-known local analyst and commentator Ben Kepes [www.diversity.net.nz] is joined by our own Chris Auld who will be looking at how organisations of all sizes can benefit from this model and how Microsoft’s Online Services provide a range of market-leading solutions which it comes to hosted email and collaboration.
If this sounds of interest, go to our Events section now and secure your place at one of these locations.