As a SME business specialist we have been providing outsourced IT support services to SMEs and growing businesses in APAC since 1996.
Over this time we regularly come across the same, repeated concerns facing SME management. Regardless of business sector, the same challenges continue to crop up.
Here, in priority order, is my list of the 8 biggest issues together with the impacts on the SME management.
How many of the following do you grapple with?
So we hear that our beloved Facebook had a little problem today and went offline for a whole 30 mins. The end of the world is upon us! Armageddon is around the corner. Oh horror of horrors, I can’t post a picture of my noodle lunch and accompanying nutritious beverage!
But why does a respectable news site (Channel New Asia reporting off the AFP wire) suggest that Facebook has become a vital tool for countless businesses and organisations?
Come on! Get real! There is no doubt that the many and varied social media sites have made a huge impact on how we communicate socially – I love being able to catch up with old friends and contacts from prior lifetimes, BUT: a Vital tool, a Key Forum ?? I think not.
I’ve struggled for a long time to figure out how social media (read Facebook and similar) can assist me in promoting my business and services. I’ve gone with the public opinion – hype – and created my business page on Facebook. You can even find this post on Facebook! But I still cannot see the value in building sales in my business-to-business environment. Perhaps if my market was consumers (B2C) it might be different. Or perhaps I’m just a dinosaur scheduled for extinction during the next outage……………
So tell me:
I’d really like to know your views, ‘cos I just can’t see it.
PASR Technologies has been providing SME business owners with a level of service and support to the SME business owner that is typically only directly available in very large organisations.
Everyone is talking about the ‘Cloud’ – which seems to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, and everyone thinks they should be making use of it, but how and for what?
Among the many possible usages of Cloud services, those that come most easily to mind are storage, backup, information sharing and email correspondence, but there are many more.
All of these share a common denominator – the storage of our own personal, corporate and/or proprietary information on some other organisation’s resources – located ‘somewhere out there’ – in the Cloud.
So just how secure, and how private, is the information we store in this pervasive Cloud? Do we know where it might be, or who might have access to it, or how it might be disclosed or made available to further third parties over which we have no control?
While I’ve always been concerned about the overall security of cloud services, a particular blog post a few weeks back highlighted how available our cloud data can be. This particular post refers to Microsoft’s host email solutions Hotmail & Outlook.com, but this is not just about Microsoft – all cloud providers require the same concerns raised – and rather than reproduce this post, I encourage you to read it plus a number of the links provided.
Regardless of which cloud vendor you use, or are considering, I recommend you read carefully their provisions for security & privacy for your data. Below I’ve provided links to some to the major cloud vendors’ current statements – but do note that these are subject to regular revision.
Google: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en-GB/trust/data_protection.html
Amazon: https://aws.amazon.com/security/
Azure: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/privacy-statement/
Before you go and put your private, business confidential or client confidential data out there in the Cloud, be sure you understand:
PASR Technologies has been providing SME business owners with a level of service and support to the SME business owner that is typically only directly available in very large organisations.
