Business 2.0: Agility through Technology

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1 Business Services Report Series Business 2.0: Agility through Technology White Paper Produced by Stewart Schley, Founder and Principal of Stewart Schley Content, LLC, a Denver-based research and writing firm specializing in business and technology subjects.

2 Business Services Reports are designed to demonstrate how technologies help business owners and managers address key challenges, solve problems and achieve mission critical objectives.

3 Business 2.0: Agility through Technology By Stewart Schley, Founder, Stewart Schley Content, LLC Employees of the city of Beckley, W. Va. once ordered office products and supplies the old-fashioned way: by scouring printed catalogs, scribbling down product ID numbers, faxing out order forms and waiting for confirmations. No more. Today, when a worker for the 17,000-population city needs to replace an aging network card or order a filing cabinet, the transaction happens in minutes over a web-based collaborative commerce platform that displays approved vendors, affirms spending authorization and asks how quickly an item needs to be shipped. It s basically like buying something on Amazon, says IT director William Kelly. Chalk up another satisfied customer for Business 2.0: a new approach to managing tasks better, faster and more efficiently with the use of powerful data tools tied to equally powerful broadband communications networks. The convergence of bandwidth, applications and highly economical ways of storing and accessing computing solutions are redefining the boundaries of the possible for mid-sized businesses and organizations that are no longer shackled to cumbersome legacy platforms. The Beckley example is just one among thousands that are made possible by a new era of business telecommunications enabled by cable companies. To the cloud An instrumental player in the drive toward more agile business processes is the so-called cloud computing movement. The catch-all term describes a fast-growing approach to computing in which technology and applications are stored and made accessible from remote data centers, Nobody wants to maintain a server array in a closet anymore. - Brooks Borcherding, NaviSite rather than locally within business offices and facilities. Not only does cloud computing typically reduce technology spending demands, it frees businesses from the need to maintain complicated software and hardware environments and the IT staffs or contractors that must tend to them. Nobody wants to maintain a server array in a closet anymore, says Brooks Borcherding, the CEO of NaviSite, a Time Warner Cable company that provides cloud computing resources.

4 But if that s the case, why has it taken until now for cloud computing to take off for small and mid-size businesses? The answer, or at least a big part of the answer, is connectivity. The unwieldy T1 data lines that businesses have long depended on for sending and retrieving data are quickly being replaced by much faster and more affordable bandwidth provided by cable companies, in the form of high-speed Internet lines and direct-to-the-business optical fiber connections. The advent of fiber has really changed the game, because of its reliability and because of the ability to turn up the speed, says Peter Farley, Vice President of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., business technology company Tech II, which works with Time Warner Cable. These speedy networks make it possible to conduct intensive computing operations and share data among workers as if there were still servers blinking away in the basement. But instead, data and applications are stored, served and secured in a remote environment one where redundant storage and constant monitoring make it extremely unlikely businesses will ever experience downtime. It s that combination the pairing of high-performance data networks with remote computing resources that is giving businesses newfound flexibility to improve the way they operate. Hosted services and mobile access This flexibility advantage involves mobility giving workers access to the data and applications they need across multiple devices, regardless of location. For tech-centric business like Not Rocket Science, a Louisiana IT systems consultant, mobility is a critical ingredient in getting things done. That slogan from Sun Microsystems the network is the computer is really true today, says Not Rocket Science co-founder Darron Goodgion. You can get just about anything from your organization anywhere, from any device. Goodgion, whose company relies on the cable company Charter Communications for high-capacity data lines, also points to video conferencing with multiple locations as a key benefit of improved business communication tools. The ability to connect in a virtualmeeting setting with customers in remote locations has helped Not Rocket Science expand its customer base geographically. This is why everybody needs bandwidth, he says. You can get just about anything from your organization anywhere, from any device. - Darron Goodgion, Not Rocket Science

5 Video is also creeping more deeply into the communications equation for the City of Beckley. A new phone system paid for partly out of savings realized from moving to a fiber-optic network from the city s cable provider Suddenlink Communications features the ability to conduct real-time video phone calls from a small handset with a screen about the size of an index card. I m looking at mine now, says IT director Kelly. It s a beautiful picture. Beckley also plans to outfit a new municipal transportation center with security cameras that will deliver round-the-clock video streams over the same reliable fiber network. Old-school applications, too, are benefitting from the migration to hosted computing connected by high-speed data lines. Peter Avery, a co-founder of the IT networking company AP Sites in Michigan, says the availability of affordable bandwidth has made it possible for numerous companies he works with to get out of the business of hosting and managing their own servers by moving to shared platforms that feature common directories, secured access and business-class performance. Remote data backup and remote hosting, similarly, are rapidly supplanting homespun approaches that have long sapped money and resources for lots of mid-sized business. AP Sites manages access to these services through a 100 Mbps Internet pipeline provided by a local cable company. In the past, achieving that sort of connectivity would have been economically impossible because of high costs tied to stringing together multiple DS3 lines. We haven t been able to do this until now, Avery says. The cable company wasn t my first choice... but they were the right choice. - William Kelly, City of Beckley, W. Va. Service is key Cost savings and improved business agility are welcome outcomes of the hosted, cloud business environment, to be sure. But cable s inroads into the mid-sized business market also stem from recognition that in a missioncritical business marketplace, service is paramount. Kelly notes that the telecommunications market is more volatile now than it used to be, with a variety of providers joining large incumbent telcos and cable companies in competing for customers. Within that environment, he says Suddenlink won his business after demonstrating a willingness to help find inventive solutions to the city s telecom needs. Suddenlink wasn t my first choice, he says. But they were the right choice. They seemed to have a different business approach: find out what we wanted to do, and figure out a way to get it done. For IT veterans like Kelly, Not Rocket Science s Darron Goodgion and others, the ability to improve collaboration and agility by moving computing and collaboration to the cloud with the help of high-capacity cable connections represents a revolution in business IT that has been long in the making. It s a fun time, says Goodgion. This is what we ve all been waiting for.