Small and medium sized businesses (SMB) have been called the engine for our economy given their sheer numbers (more than 98% in Canada). It has also been observed that this constituency will be the leading edge of the economic recovery in large part due to their size and an ability to be more nimble and responsive to opportunities that a larger organization may not be able to react to. This sounds good in theory, but is it reflected in reality?

For the last 16 months, I’ve had the privilege of speaking directly with group of small business owners from varying industries across Canada. However, they should not be seen as representative of the “average” SMB. What potentially makes them unique is their conviction that strategic investments in technology have enabled their business success. As such, their experiences and insights have been enlightening.

The following (in no particular order) are key issues facing this group:

• Access to credit;
• Government stimulus programs which incent the wrong behaviours; and
• Stimulus programs which are more trouble to access than they are worth.

But while they acknowledge the challenging circumstances in which they are currently operating, almost all of them stated that the first 3 months of 2009 were incredibly healthy, in some cases their best ever quarter. It is through that lens that I give you this list of their suggestions (again, in random order) on how SMBs can best weather the current recession:

• Focus on becoming more efficient across the entire value chain, not simply making short term, knee-jerk cuts and changes;
• Manage costs and wrap services around your products where possible in order to extend your reach into the customer;
• Continue making investments in core competencies – now is not the time to let your quality slide; and
• Innovation = Survival.

So does this reflect what other smaller and mid-sized businesses are experiencing? Please share with us your thoughts, your current situation and most importanly your best practices on how to weather -- and thrive -- in this economic crisis.

As I go and talk to different SMBs across the country about different technologies, I always get the same question: “What technology is currently available that a lot of SMB companies in industry ‘X’ are using to provide a better customer experience.” Everyone knows that this is a loaded question and there is no silver bullet when it comes to exceeding your customer’s expectations. I try and have SMBs look at it from the end customer’s point of view.

First, what is the experience like when customers first interact with your company? If the process to learn about your company's product or service takes longer than 60 seconds to describe on the phone, SMBs will go to another provider. So ask the question, is my organization’s employees equipped to explain our companies product/service value to a new customer within 60 seconds. From a technology point of view that involves having the appropriate systems in place to support any questions the new customer might ask (i.e. making sure all pertinent data can be accessed by your customer support team). In addition, you need to make sure that your systems are fast enough to access this data very quickly. I have talked with numerous SMBs that have a great product & services information databases established for their employees to access however, the employees don’t use the system because it takes tool long for their system to bring up the needed information.

Second, do your employees have the needed resources to follow up on new customer requests? These resources not only revolved around data associated to customer inquires/needs, it also involves the needed time for your company representatives to follow up with the new customers. I have talked to some customers and they say that for every hour their computer systems are not available, they are losing at least 3 new customer opportunities. As a result, there are more companies making scheduled maintenance updates to the employee’s systems in off-ours. One customer specifically, Midwest Eye Consultants, is implementing new technology that is saving them 10 to 12 worker-hours a month on system maintenance and those extra hours are now being used by company employees to recruit new customers. Click here to see more information about the technology Midwest Eye Consultants have implemented: http://msp.intel.com/midwest-eyes-case-study.pdf

Lastly, does your internal team have the resources available to support existing customers? Most of the time the resources that matter the most for existing customers relate to past product/services they have received from your company. If this information is not readily available when your team is servicing an existing customer, it can mean keeping or losing a loyal customer. In the health care field it is even more critical. Northwest Newborn specialist relies on customer/patient data being available at all times of the day. Carolyn Kraus from Northwest Newborn Specialist says: “Our physicians can be impatient, and with good reason. They’re on 24/7 in a high-stress job where downtime can have serious consequences, and much of their work is done through technology. When a PC goes down, they can’t access patient records, look at an x-ray over the network, or pass on their notes to the next physician on-call. In this field, it’s critical to keep their stress level low and their PCs up and running.” Click here to find out more information  about the new technology Northwest Newborn Specialist is using: http://msp.intel.com/NW%20Newborn%20Specialists_final_318134-001US.pdf

In closing, when you think about what technology you need to provide a better customer experience, think about what you have implemented in your environment today. Do you have quick and efficient systems set up that enable your team to deal with first time customers and all the questions they may have about your company’s products & services? In addition, do your teams have up to date systems available any time during the work day to deal with follow up activities related to new customers? Also, do you have the right system managed infrastructure in place so that your desktops and notebooks will be available to support all existing customer requests during all hours of the work day? The answers to these three basic questions provide the best direction for your company to explore in order to provide a better overall customer experience.

In my last blog, I briefly talked how small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) can contribute to the ‘Green IT' initiative that is gaining moment in the global market place. I had a couple questions sent to me to break down two topics: One, how is IT power being consumed by end users and secondly what type of impact can SMBs have as it relates to ‘Green IT'.

Think about how power is used in a business environment, yes there are the basic energy costs of lights in the building and the electricity for your heating and cooling system however there are also power needs for other workspaces in your building. If you walked into you company's breakroom/kitchen, you would probably be able to identify at least 3 items that use power (refrigerator, coffee pot, microwave, etc...).

Now think about your employees' work area. At someone's desk they can have several items that require power: a clock, a fan, a cell phone charger, maybe a singing Dilbert and likely a PC as well. When we think of that PC, there is a lot to consider. There are several studies publicly available that show how much power is being used by SMBs, and how important of an issue it is for their business. According to a 2007 Gallup survey (http://www.gallup.com/poll/tag/Americas.aspx), over 54% of small businesses rate rising energy costs as one of their top business concerns and 43% have already implemented energy saving strategies to control costs.

One of the top power consumption issues, one I have talked to many SMBs about, is the common practice of employees leaving their computers on 24 hours a day. US electricity costs of leaving PCs on (while unattended) reaches $1.7 billion a year. This equates to a lot of money taken directly away from the bottom line. Rakesh Kumar from Gartner states it in future looking terms for large business by saying, "By 2010, about half of the Forbes Global 2000 companies will spend more on energy than on hardware such as servers. Energy costs, now about 10% of the average IT budget, could rise to 50% in a matter of years." This type of energy cost for large businesses will have a similar effect on small businesses.

PC energy consumption has traditionally been a "hidden cost" receiving relatively little attention. Typically when we think power consumption, the large enterprise data centers with their rows and servers come to mind. But the reality is PC power consumption matters as well. Data presented by Gartner demonstrates that on a global basis, compared to servers, PC's actually generate more CO2 emissions as compared with Servers, including cooling. Gartner broke down power consumption in the IT space as follows:

• PCs & monitors (39%)

• Servers and storage (23%)

• Fixed-line telecommunications (15%)

• Mobile telecommunication (9%)

• LAN & office telecommunications (7%)

• Printers (6%)

Source Gartner Inc. "Tera-Architectures A Convergence of New Technologies" by Martin Reynolds July 26, 2007

Moreover, according to an EPA study (http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/revisions/downloads/computer/ComputerPowerMnmt.pdf) , up to 90% of PCs have power management disabled, so PCs left running often may remain at idle rather than going to lower power sleep state. Leaving an energy efficient PC running when not in use (night/weekends) is analogous to leaving a car running when it's not being driven.

Not surprising, the main areas that require focus are PCs and monitors. Servers have received a lot of attention because they are an obvious concentration of power consumption. They are power inefficient and offer the opportunity to remove significant amounts of visible costs (and usually, but somewhat more incidentally, CO2). However, the real area where the greatest overall effect can be made is at the desktop and with client devices. This is a harder challenge because of the behavioural issues (leaving systems on the entire day) that are involved in "fixing" the problem.

One approach that many small businesses could do to help conserve energy consumption is to focus on what you can do during non-business hours. For example, if you have PCs (Desktops or Mobile) and monitors that are not turned off on Friday night and run the entire weekend - well, there are 2+ days of wasted power with no business benefit. If you look at a small business environment where there are more than several desktops, notebooks, and servers () (as you've just said that servers shouldn't be the only focus wrt power consumption...), the energy saved by having all machines shut off for the weekend can make a real difference in energy costs. In addition, make sure you purchase Energy Star ^TM (a system-level specification including components such as processor, chipset, power supply, HDD, graphics controller and memory monitors and computers) products. These products are made up of energy efficient components that will help save power when in use.

So how can SMBs start becoming more Green? Start looking at where you are using energy throughout your company workspaces. If you are not using a piece of equipment on the weekends whether it is a microwave or a monitor make sure the power is turned off to it. I recommend you start by looking look at which PCs and servers are still on when you are leaving the office this Friday. This will give you a good idea of the initial impact your company could provide by reducing your power consumption. In addition, if you are already using a manage service provider (MSP) to manage your network, ask them if they have a power savings plan that you could implement.

I would be very interested to hear what other ‘Green IT' ideas are out there. As mentioned previously ‘Green IT' does not just effect large enterprises. Energy consumption is something that not only impacts the status of our current physical environment but it also directly affects the financial bottom line for today's small and medium sized businesses.

In a previous post, Virtual Service Oriented Grids: Scalable Enterprise Computing, I mentioned how the convergence of three old technologies is facilitating large scale computing in the enterprise. It is no coincidence that there are historical drivers for this transformation. In the IT world in the mid to late 1990s, you may recall that this was the era of eCommerce where most business activities under the sun became "Webified" and even the craziest ideas became capitalized. It as a boom which led to the inevitable bust. Some say it was triggered because work on the Millennium Bug stopped once the issue was "solved". No matter the reason, the momentum was unsustainable.

There was a lot of soul searching after the bust. Only a few survivors remain today, the most remarkable examples being Amazon.com, Google, Ebay and Yahoo. If there is one lesson coming from this period is that an essential element for sustainability is that Information Technology and Business need to be aligned.

The increasing adoption of Service Oriented Architectures or SOA represents the increasing recognition by IT organizations of the need for business and technology alignment. In fact, under SOA there is no difference between the two. The unit of delivery for SOA is a service, which is usually defined in business terms. In other words, SOA represents the up-leveling if IT, empowering IT organizations to meet the business needs of the community it serves. This up-leveling creates a gap, because for IT, eventually business requirements need to be translated into technology based solutions.

Our research indicates that this gap is being fulfilled by the resurgence of two very old technologies, namely virtualization and grid computing. To begin with, SOA allowed the de-coupling of data from applications through the magic of XML.

A lot of work that used to be done by application developers and integrators now gets done by computers. When most data centers run at 5 to 10 percent utilization, growing and deploying more data centers is not a good solution. Virtualization technology came very handy to address this situation, allowing the de-coupling of applications from the platforms in which they run. It acts as the gearbox in a car ensuring efficient transmission of power from the engine to the wheels.

The net effect of virtualization is that it allows utilization factors to go up in the 60 to 70%. The technique has been applied to mainframes for decades. Deploying virtualization to tens of thousands of servers has not been easy.

Finally, grid technology has allowed very fast, on the fly resource management, where resources are allocated not when a physical server is provisioned, but for each instance that a program is run.

Virtual service oriented grids represents the maturation of the three underlying technologies. The coming of age for a technology takes place whenever business, process and standardization become overriding considerations. Virtual service oriented grids rely heavily on standardization to attain interoperability, it is guided by governance at the corporate level, and are very much policy based and SLA driven. The underlying technologies become black boxes, their behavior defined by service level agreements (SLAs).

For any application, the management of the components is centralized, but the components ("servicelets") are assumed to be distributed. The servicelets are fungible and can be integrated in real time by design to allow applications to scale up and down, to be assembled and torn down as business conditions dictate.

In the next few entries we will go through a few examples. The subject is rich enough for a book, which indeed we have written. The book is scheduled for publication in September 2008 through Intel Press. Here is the book preface as a preview: New Book Excerpt from Intel Press: The Business Value of Service Oriented Grids.