Small Business In-House IT - A Classic Sucker's Bet

If You Are Not Using SaaS Yet, You're Falling Behind, Fast.... Software as a Service and the Social Web Two of the most important trends in Information Technology are the burgeoning ranks of mature web based hosted software applications and the Social Web or Web 2.0. Truthfully, and while a whole host of consultants would maintain otherwise, there is really nothing truly *New* about either of these things (this is true for most things in Information Technology BTW). Today's Web 2.0 is yesterday's Usenet, Chat or BBS. Yesterday's Mainframe, ASP and AOL is today's SaaS. Facebook, LinkedIn and My Space are merely more mature than earlier social collaboration and communications tools. As a small business owner, you are probably fixated on trying to figure out what you SHOULD be doing in the Social Web, and that's a good thing. Information wants to be free and tools want to be used. But don't loose sight of the forest for the trees More...In the rush to join the ranks of the twitterati and partake of the blogophoria, you're missing what I consider the most critical lesson and aspect of the whole Web 2.0 thing, and that is that these social web apps represent the first real consumerization of modern SaaS (putting aside search and e-mail). Facebook is a huge, complex and rich SaaS offering and you use it everyday without a second thought ! What happened to the traditional excuses given by IT Depts and Business Owners for not moving to hosted or open source software? Sensitive Data? Facebook knows all about you, your family and friends. Security ? Do you honestly think you or your IT Dept can do security better than Google? But I need technical support ! No you don't, you only think you do - after all how helpful and responsive was the last call center you called, chances are you'll get better help from the web anyway. Dump MS Office, Sharepoint, IIS and above all Access and then put the servers on E-bay next to Sarah Palin's plane. Loose the distraction, cost and limits of all your office productivity suites and small business software, it's holding you back. Photo by Alecani on Flickr