I run across these stories all the time, sometimes from the client's perspective, sometimes from the prospective of the consultant (almost always, actually, the former consultant), so this recent entry from MIT's Tech from an alum who worked for Boston Consulting Group isn't exactly a shocker. It is, though, one of the clearest and best written articles I have found in the leitmotif, so if you were still wondering why choosing a big consulting company is usually a mistake, it's worth a read.
Although some see these recurring themes in consulting engagements as a curse against consultants everywhere, in fact it is more an indictment of employees who didn't realize the game they were getting into and clients that didn't do their homework about the businesses they chose to rely on for vital business advice and guidance. Good advice is out there, and it's got great value; don't expect you're going to get it just because you are asking a firm with a lot of people on the payroll.
So, I read this morning that new startups are starting up with fewer and fewer staff over time. Apart from the implications that this might have for job growth in our already shaky economy, it also suggests that, just perhaps, the much-vaunted efficiency of technology in business operations is finally being realized.
The advantages of technology were posited long ago, in the sixties and seventies as big business began to invest in information technology with the goal of making their operations more efficient. It didn't. Throughout the eighties and nineties, studies of the relationship between technology investment and productivity failed to show any significant improvements in efficiency associated with technology. Only in the late nineties and the early part of this century have researchers began to uncover subtle gains in efficiencies coming from IT investment.
With those early failures to improve efficiency came a sort of solace to those who had worried that new, hyper-efficient computers would result in massive unemployment, as us poor, pokey old human beings couldn't keep up and would necessarily be kicked out on the streets by our heartless corporate masters. Computers were everywhere, but job growth still boomed, fueled in no small part by the failures of the computers themselves... the support burden of keeping IT systems up and running was no small factor in its failure to introduce real productivity improvements.
But, as it does, technology has evolved, and IT systems today are faster, more stable, and easier to use than ever. As they start to fulfill their original promise, it looks like the original threat, that jobs would disappear, may also be starting to emerge.
This isn't great for the national economy or job-seekers, of course, but for the small business owner or IT manager, it has another set of threats. It means that your competitors are figuring out how to use IT to run a more lean operation, and if you want to stay in the game, you are going to have to do so as well. Years of cruising along with the blanket understanding that IT was difficult, expensive, and ultimately dysfunctional have led to a sort of complacency with the status quo that may now be fatal to small businesses. Technology that breaks, costs inordinate amounts, or does not actually improve your business processes in the ways that it should, can no longer be tolerated. The excuses are disappearing... it's time to make technology, make good.
Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite has made available the bundled products of Exchange, Sharepoint, and Live Meeting, hosted by Microsoft itself, for more than a year now. The $120 per year, per user fee has seemed a little steep, though, considering those same solutions have been available from third parties who have much more experience and for much less money than Microsoft itself. The target market of BPOS, and most of its uptake, has been with larger organizations (many of which were probably able to negotiate much better deals in private, anyway).
The market most open to the hosted services offering, though, and representing the larger total number of seats, is the SMB market. Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley reports that Redmond is finally getting around to rolling out the SMB version of BPOS, due sometime in the second half of 2010.
Pricing isn't available yet, nor is a better long-term perspective on where Microsoft is going with the whole concept. Despite Steve Ballmer's assertion that the company is "all in" on cloud computing, it's not clear that Microsoft really realizes this may be where their bread is buttered for the foreseeable future... and if they don't, then despite their apparently privileged position as the designer of the software in question, you may still be better off buying the same services from smaller third-party hosting companies who have enough skin in the Software as a Service game to encourage stability and reliability.
This is the question posed on Small Business Technology last week. To be fair, the actual question is both a statement and a question: "Google Apps (Cheaper and More Features): Is it time to stop using MSFT Exchange?"
As with most such questions posed without any articulation of the desired end-state of the arrangement, there's no one right answer, of course. But the initial assumptions are a little worrisome and I would suggest if you pose the question while holding them, you're almost certainly going to come up with the wrong answer.
Does Google Apps have more features? On a bullet-point list, obviously, yes; you have a spreadsheet, word processor, and collaboration site together with Gmail and Google Calendar software, so it's as if you got Exchange plus Microsoft Office together. Sort of. Because if you actually break down each of those products and compare it to the opposite feature by feature, you'd find that in fact, Microsoft offers a lot more features. And between Exchange/Outlook and Gmail, an awfullot more. Features are, in fact, the one big reason to stay with Exchange for most companies, because Gmail doesn't yet come close to implementing many of the business and collaboration features Exchange offers. Mind you, I am not suggesting that bundles of features are necessarily a plus; that's another unquestioned assumption from the original. But both are wrong.
Next, is it really cheaper? The original article compares the $60 a month the author pays for Exchange hosting with the $50 a year Apps charges. I don't dispute either of those numbers, but I will say you're getting taken for a ride if you are paying $60 a month for a single user Exchange host. Ten dollars a month is closer to the market rates. While that is still twice as expensive as the $5 a month that Apps breaks down to (both rates being per user), it's not nearly as expensive as the comparison being made... and in some cases, well worth it for those extra features Exchange offers that Apps does not.
On the whole, I am an Apps fan, because I actually believe that most of the features offered by Exchange and Outlook are under-utilized and rarely worth the money. But I don't think it's an option that should be ignored based on erroneous assumptions.
Because pretty soon, it's going to be the only smartphone!
I've been one of the few people that have bothered to defend Apple in their recent patent infringement lawsuit against Google-heavy handset maker HTC, but their legitimate right to defend whatever efforts were required to create such an innovative product is starting to get stretched a little thin in light of recent information. It's been clear that the HTC suit was aimed more broadly than at just HTC, but while many observers have interpreted the goal as being the eventual establishment of various cross-licensing agreements, the reactions detailed in the various posts on Techmeme from other handset makers reveal panic and frenzied efforts to remove disputed features from their own products. It doesn't sound as though licensing has been put on the table as a viable option.
Critics of software patent law and practice have been having a field day with the Apple suit and the chilling effect that those patents have had on the smartphone field in general. It's an old and accepted argument that patents can stifle evolutionary innovation, and the system has made that trade-off to encourage revolutionary innovation, ensuring that individuals and businesses can invest in research and development to bring new ideas to market without being immediately copied and squashed by others with more resources. It's accepted that in the long term the benefit to society is greater even with the limited grant of monopoly to the original innovator.
Software patents and the greater pace of advance in the industry have called that assumption into question, and Apple is apparently going to great lengths to demonstrate just how bad for consumers this state of affairs might be.
It's an oddity that I often find unintentionally related threads of stories on the front page of Techmeme and other tech news sites, and today has been no exception. Together with the news of Apple's strong-arm techniques against other handset makers, today finds an analysis of the invasive and restrictive license agreement required to develop applications for the iPhone (which, unlike competitors, tightly governs all applications that can run on the device). So not only will Apple be your only phone, but Apple will also okay your only Apps, and you better not want porn or bikinis or anything else that might offend Apple or AT&T.
And as if to point out the idiocy of the original patents that all this restriction is based on, another article points out a new patent application from the company, one that covers the use of the phone as an electronic key. So, pretty soon all you Prius owners are going to have to report back in to have your cars retrofitted to use old-school physical keys instead of fobs, I guess.
It's strange and a little sad that a genuinely innovative company like Apple, not one of the leech-like patent trolls that accumulate and sue as their primary business function, but a company that has created truly new and interesting technology, might be the company to finally push the system hard enough to make it obvious to everyone that so much power for so long a span is absolutely a detriment to consumers. Because when you combine the suppression of competing platforms with vice-like control over the content on your own platform, you are unquestionably hurting consumers. It may not be long before the issue inflames passions as much as abortion or gun rights. You can have our Android handsets when you pry them from our cold, dead fingers.
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