Desktops at many small and midsize companies have evolved, and for once it's the enterprise that will need to scramble to keep up.
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Growing companies face all the same pressures that challenge big organizations, but with a few special opportunities thrown in. First, most smaller outfits lack deep technological resources. But at the same time, they often don't have to worry about legacy anchors weighing them down and may be less constrained by rigorous compliance requirements. Having fewer employees also can give them the freedom to avoid the one-size-fits-all approach and address individual needs. Implementing individualized solutions for 100 employees can be difficult, sure, but it's obviously a lot easier than doing the same for 50,000 employees.
According to Govind Davis, solutions designer at Cleveland-based software integrator MCF Technology Solutions, new technologies like platform as a service make it much easier to program custom solutions for a small company, or even for small groups within a company. With PaaS, Govind says, "we are able to give them a solution that fits their needs even down to the naming of the fields in a database ... with just a few hours work." Happy customers, Govind adds, think MCF is building the apps for them from scratch!
As software as a service adoption among SMBs doubles (according to AMI Partners' 2008 U.S. Small and Medium Business Applications & Solutions Market Overview), we're seeing a growing number of smaller firms running their businesses completely from the cloud, using all Web-based applications. For example, San Francisco-based health care HR vendor Jobscience has a robust technology infrastructure, covering everything from software development to human resources. But by relying on the cloud, the 20-person company doesn't need an IT department, servers, or software. Sometimes that's done for productivity reasons, other times because they simply don't have the capital to invest in software.
A few intrepid organizations -- typically early-stage startups or companies on the very small end of the SMB scale -- are even going beyond SaaS to run their businesses using only free and/or open source software -- for example: Gmail for e-mail, AOL for IM; Zoho or Open Office for business applications. They build Web sites using free blogging tools, and run it all under Linux. Says Ryan Nichols, VP of marketing and product management for Appirio in San Mateo, Calif., "We think that if you were starting out today, you'd have to be a little nuts to go out and buy a server and a database and hire DBAs." (Of course, Appirio doesn't just rely on cloud computing, it also sells on-demand applications.)
Not surprisingly, this kind of laissez-faire approach scares the bejeezus out of enterprise CIOs, and for good reason. Security and reliability remain major concerns, just as they are in traditional computing environments. But you can't stop the race to cheaper and better, and in this case, SMBs are getting there first.
Additional reporting by Mathew Schwartz
See more columns by Fredric Paul
Fredric Paul is publisher/editor-in-chief of bMighty.com and SmallBizResource.com.
