Tech trends: easier Web sites, more services

Technology for 2008: Web development to become more user-friendly
Isaac Bonnell

On Friday Jan. 18, more than 100 people crowded into the Squalicum Boathouse to have lunch and to see Mark Anderson. Usually such a Bellingham crowd only amasses for a controversial public meeting or a big name musical act. But Anderson doesn’t do music or local issues.
Rather, Anderson is a renowned futurist. He owns and operates Strategic News Service, a newsletter about technology and investing. His business is the business of tomorrow. And on that sunny day in Zuanich Point Park, he spoke about his predictions for 2008 as they pertain to technology.
The event marked Anderson’s fourth appearance in Bellingham as a guest speaker for the Technology Alliance Group, a local advocacy group that hosted the event. Though much of his presentation focused on the big picture — from climate crisis to the world economy — his predictions for this year touched on things that affect everyday life.
For example, he predicted that cell phones and the Internet will continue to merge into one device. The Web will become so commonplace that people will stop referring to it as the Web. Small personal computers, similar to the iPhone, will catch on. He also predicted that the United States will expand its Internet bandwidth, and streaming television will come with that expansion.
Inspired by Anderson’s predictions, the BBJ asked two local companies what predictions they have for the technology sector this year.




Web sites will be easier to build
Patrice Valentine, who owns Net Solutions North America, said she expects 2008 to be the year that businesses take Web development into their own hands.
“It’s becoming cheaper and cheaper,” she said. “It used to be that we didn’t do a Web site for less that $12,000. Now you need less than $1,000 and it can be done in a week or two.”
Not only is launching a Web site cheaper, but it is also easier to do nowadays. Rather than hiring out a Web developer to run a company Web site, many companies are already taking the initiative to run their Web site in-house, Valentine said.
“The biggest complaint I hear in this industry is that their Web developer disappeared and is holding their Web site hostage,” Valentine said. “The other complaint is that they don’t know how to use [the software].”
Designing a Web site doesn’t have to be scary, Valentine said. An increasing amount of Web development software is starting to mimic programs that users are already familiar with, such as Microsoft Office. In turn, people are less scared to learn the programs and venture out on their own.
“Anyone can call themselves a Web developer,” Valentine said. “Plus, I think consumers are getting a little smarter about Web design.”
Net Solutions, which is headquartered in Bellingham, offers several Web development products aimed at getting people familiar with the creation and upkeep of Web sites. The logic behind such products is that the more people within a business who know how to operate the program, the less likely the Web site is to suffer if the one person who runs the site is not there. Plus, the site will be a more organic product if more staff are involved in its creation and upkeep.
“We give people control of their Web site,” Valentine said, “which isn’t always good. Some people can make some really ugly Web sites.”
Aesthetics aside, Valentine said many businesses these days are looking beyond designing a pretty Web site and more toward entering the world of e-commerce. Purchasing goods and services off of the Internet is no longer a neat alternative to normal shopping; it’s becoming commonplace.
In an age where digital documents often outnumber physical documents in the workplace, incorporating e-commerce will also make work more efficient, Valentine said. For example, Net Solutions is currently working with a local candy distributor to add e-commerce to their Web site.
“Even though they do mostly wholesale, they’re trying to train their wholesale clients to go online and order,” she said. “It streamlines their orders.”
Though 2008 may be the year in which more people venture into the realm of Web design and e-commerce on their own, Valentine said there is still a market for custom Web developers.
“More and more people are looking for that one person or one company who can solve all of their problems,” she said.

Remote computer repair will catch on
Northwest Computer is one such company that is looking to solve all of your computer problems. And thanks to the spread of high-speed Internet and advances in networking software, company vice president Ethan D’Ononfrio said he predicts this year to be the year people change the way they think about the computer service industry.
But in order to know where the industry is going, it’s important to know where it’s been. D’Ononfrio calls the old model of computer support the “break-fix” model. It’s related to the motto “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“It’s like not changing your oil [in your car],” he said. “After five years of not changing your oil, you’re going to really wish you had changed your oil.”
The new model D’Onofrio expects to catch on is called managed services and it operates much like preventative maintenance or the insurance industry. For a flat monthly rate, the staff at Northwest Computer will remotely monitor your computer to make sure that you have the most up-to-date security patches and will also be on hand to address any problems, if (and when) they occur.
This overrides the old model, where businesses often had to hire out for a technician once problems have already occurred. That technician would then have to drive to their office and spend several hours diagnosing and fixing the problem. All of that can now be done from within one location.
“We can even go so far as to put a little icon in where an end user can submit a trouble ticket,” D’Onofrio said. “They click the little icon saying ‘I can’t access my e-mail’ and it comes into our ticket counter. We basically become their IT staff. We’ve got a whole team of engineers waiting to solve these problems.”
For D’Onofrio, switching to a managed services model does more than speed up the process of tech support. It also saves the company gas money by keeping more staff in the office and off of the roads.
“I get to sign the reimbursement checks for people driving around the county all week,” he said. “It’s just not cost effective anymore.”
With fuel prices consistently rising and the retail market for technology changing due to Internet sales, D’Onofrio said the whole company is shifting toward the computer service industry.
“Two years ago it was maybe 10 percent of our business and a year from now I expect that it will be 75 percent of our business,” he said.
No matter what shifts occur in the technology sector this year — be it in Web development or repair services — you can almost be sure that the trends will shift again. Such is the manner of technology.

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Problem Solved – Money Saved: Welcome to the Managed Network

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. “
-Bill Gates

Well it’s once again a new year and as usual much has changed in technology over the last twelve months. If you’re like most businesses and rely on technology to keep you competitive in your market than it makes sense to keep abreast of what’s going on in the industry. Technology can either give businesses their competitive advantage or be the curse that sinks the ship depending on how it’s utilized. With this in mind, it seems wise to take advantage of the tools available to the best of one’s ability. The biggest new trend I’ve seen emerge in this last year is really more of a concept, a mindset shift if you will, and this tool is called Managed Services.




With modern technology, companies now have a choice of having their network truly managed by another company. This means that companies specializing in network management can run dozens, even hundreds of networks at the same time – perhaps even yours. This is done through new tool sets that allow a managed service provider (or MSP) to view all the details of a company’s network remotely – I mean ALL the details; who’s virus detection is up to date, who’s is not, which computers have all their Windows critical updates and security patches installed, which do not, whether or not the daily backup is working, who on the network is using the most network bandwidth (and slowing everyone else down), who is playing games on work time, who’s hard drive is almost full, who is constantly waiting on their computer because it doesn’t have enough memory. I’m talking everything – anything you could possibly determine while actually sitting in front of a computer (and then some) can now be done remotely – and holistically. What I mean by that is rather than looking at every single computer individually it is now possible to get an executive overview on the entire health of a network and pinpoint individual trouble areas from there. Imagine looking at a map of the world then being able to zoom in all the way to your own house – and indeed to be able to see what you’re cooking for dinner - this is what can be done with a network today; complete macro to complete micro vision. This means a network can be managed from the top down – proactively. Why wait for someone to complain because their computer has stopped working when you can just ensure all the Windows patches are being done for them eliminating technology problems before they become business problems? Why wait for someone to run out of hard drive space to then take their computer down to upgrade the drive – might as well start planning an upgrade when you know that hard drive is going to be full soon, not already full.

So why is this new business model so important? Total cost of ownership. When you can properly manage a network and take care of problems before they occur you save money – lots of money. Think about the cost of downtime in your workplace – if someone gets a virus and can’t use their computer for a day what does that cost? No really – have you figured this out? Well if you’ve got more than a few computer users you really need to know this – downtime costs more than most people tend to want to think about when translated into dollars and cents. It’s expensive. According to Gartner, “PC hardware and operating system choices are no longer the greatest determinants of PC total cost of ownership (TCO). The most effective way for an enterprise to reduce the total cost of ownership of its PCs is through the implementation of management best practices across all phases of the PC life cycle. Use of tools and technologies to automate and speed up PC deployments can yield significant savings that represent a surprisingly high proportion of total deployment costs. Our model shows that automating these processes can reduce deployment costs by up to $578 per PC. However, many organizations have not made significant changes to their processes in this area for several years.” Total cost of ownership goes down when you’re not paying a technician $100+ an hour to come fix a problem that has already occurred. If you can pay less up front to ensure you don’t have problems in the first place you’re going to come out way ahead – proactive vs. reactive. The key is this – you pay for the service in general – not per instance of repair. In other words, it’s network insurance – pay a flat rate per month per computer to be managed. This means you have a team of technicians (“owned” by the MSP) that constantly monitors your network to keep it running. This can now be done relatively inexpensively because a good MSP is going to utilize automation tools that alert them when something is out of line. And because they have that macro-to-micro view I spoke of earlier, management becomes much more cost effective. In this model it’s in the best interest of the MSP to keep your network running smoothly because now it costs them when there’s an incident because they’re responsible for fixing the issue. This is the alignment many companies have been waiting for for a long time. In the past, when an IT support company “managed” a network under some sort of hourly plan it really didn’t make any difference to them if your network went down – they charged to get it up and running again. In this new model it’s in their best interest to keep the network up because they’re on the hook to fix it at their expense if something goes wrong. This is very good news for small business indeed!

Managed services is without question the biggest buzz phrase in the industry right now, and it’s easy to see why. “Gartner’s Desktop PC TCO model confirms once more that well-managed PCs can be significantly less expensive to operate than unmanaged systems. Such environments can have a TCO that is more than 40 percent lower than the TCO for an environment that 's not managed at all. “Any additional investment in manageability still leads to cost savings. “

The wisdom of this model is easy to see because it makes so much sense for so many people and it’s profitable for the MSP because now they can focus on what they do best – and with the new tools now available, managing many networks concurrently is quite doable. I foresee huge shifts over the coming year to this type of model as businesses finally get fed up with cousin Ned once and for all and tire of paying hundreds per visit to fix problems that just seem to keep happening. This is the year of proactive network management, true visibility into the information systems your company relies on, IT best practices realized and implemented. This is the competitive advantage many small businesses have been looking for – big company management, small company costs. If you haven’t looked into managed services yet, now may be the time – be proactive, not reactive.

Want to learn more about how managed services work? Find out about it on our website or contact me (734-3400 x150 or edonofrio@nwcomputer.us) and I’ll send you information that will help you determine whether this revolutionary technology makes sense for your business.

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