Even small businesses need business technology

Keeping technology infrastructure updated and functioning as intended is a fairly challenging task for most corporate IT departments.

But, due to their general lack of dedicated IT resources and limited technology budgets, it's a task that's exponentially more difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to get right.

“We see it all the time,” says Marius Vermeulen, Cisco product and pre-sales manager at Tarsus Technologies.

“Because the business owner is generally also the IT manager, small and medium-sized businesses are prone to making the wrong technology decisions, both when it comes to buying the distinct elements that comprise their technology strategies, and when it comes to making the configuration choices for their environment.

“Unfortunately,” he continues, “there's very little we can do to influence the latter, since these companies really should be relying more heavily on our SMB-focused reseller base to assist them with various configuration decisions, or entrusting these tasks to an experienced individual.

“However, we can act as a channel to do something about encouraging smaller businesses to choose products and solutions that are suited to business needs - albeit for a limited number of users,” he says.

“Time and again, smaller companies opt for consumer products for example, to act as the backbone for their network,” he says.

“And unfortunately, it's only once the money has been spent that they discover their new router or switch is prone to spotty coverage, unreliable throughput and, worst of all, begins behaving unpredictably the moment it's called on to service more than five client computers simultaneously,” Vermeulen says.

In reality, Vermeulen says small businesses are better off with something like Cisco's range of universal services routers (that cater universally for all the services a user needs), which combine many of the features one would expect from higher-end enterprise-style routers, but have a small enough footprint and aggressive enough price points to compete with the consumer-grade equipment smaller businesses are generally drawn to.

And, he says, the difference is quite noticeable.

“Often it takes nothing more than replacing a consumer-grade piece of networking gear with a universal services router to make a small business' problems go away,” he adds.

“And as a bonus, they gain access to better security features, stronger transmission capabilities and - should they feel the need to begin experimenting with potential cost-savings - voice over IP capabilities,” he says.

Vermeulen says vendors and resellers must begin making concerted efforts to convince small businesses that products designed for business are necessary - even in small, uncomplicated environments.

“It gives our entire industry a bad name when technology doesn't work and pointing fingers at the customer for making the wrong decision doesn't absolve us of anything.

“We must begin doing a better job of educating the market and driving sales towards products that delight our customers,” he says.

“After all, isn't that the reason we have successful businesses in the first place?” he concludes.