Small Biz technology i’m no longer buying in 2011

I run a small enterprise. every dollar counts. Small commercial enterprise owners like me say that we most effective invest in era when we are virtually certain it’ll increase our profitability. that’s a lie. We throw cash down the rest room on worthless tech all the time.however this 12 months’s going to be exclusive! sure, there are plenty of good technologies available. however there are lots of technologies that don’t make experience for a small business proprietor like me to shop for in 2011. And this 12 months i am going to take a stand. i’m now not shopping for the following technology.seo. Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand and Ben Stiller in a single movie? My God, how can this no longer be a masterpiece? If i’ve discovered whatever from “Little Fockers” it’s if some thing sounds too excellent to be genuine it maximum probably is. identical for search engine optimization. during the last six years i’ve probable spent $20K on so-known as seo “specialists” who promised to elevate my web site to page one of Google or Yahoo. And a few of them succeeded…for about five seconds. there is no fast and clean manner to overcome the Google ranking machine. every body who tells you this is mendacity. seek engine technology doesn’t work. search engine optimization services, however, does. but this isn’t always cheap. The men I recognize who have succeeded with seo recognize that it is a provider and feature made it a lynchpin in their advertising efforts. which means they have got spent large time money (like tens or loads of lots of dollars) to make it paintings. I don’t have that sort of money. i’ll make sure my web site is “optimized” with the proper key phrases, meta-tags and other nonsense. however that is all i’m going to do this 12 months.Virtualization. i am getting it. rather than going for walks a server farm, this era, made by means of organizations like VMware and Microsoft, shall we us create “virtual machines” on simply one server. you could cast off all that different hardware and even save on energy. My employer runs on just two low degree servers sitting in my basement. The maximum electricity used in my residence comes from my youngsters’ Xbox, which looks like it is jogging Halo 24 hours an afternoon. If something, i’m considering throwing out my servers (along with more than one my youngsters) and moving the whole thing to a cloud primarily based carrier. Virtualization software program is meaningless to a corporation my length, or any enterprise with less than 4 or five servers. So i’m no longer the use of that technology in 2011 either.office 2010. Microsoft is like my mother…”God forbid you ought to call me sometimes and test to make certain i have never died in the midnight. Is that a lot to invite from my son?” I feel the equal guilt about upgrading my office system. I did not even want to improve to workplace 2007 in the first location. And now i am feeling shameful that i am not jogging workplace 2010 too? We moved to workplace 2007 this beyond yr for the equal reason I invited my mom over for dinner ultimate week…due to the fact we felt responsible. And though it is very quite we’re virtually not seeing any more benefits from it than office 2003. Or office 1997 for that count number. If some thing, we may additionally appearance harder at Microsoft’s online model of workplace this 12 months or maybe take another stab at Google docs. Or we might also stop fiddling round with specific methods to write a silly letter and as a substitute awareness on some thing extra productive in 2011 – like bringing in greater business.phone Apps. Oh appearance…I just located that a twitter person with the last name of “Marks” is on the same McDonalds as me! Hooray…I simply changed my television channel the use of my smartphone! and how awesome, that new app I downloaded for $2.ninety nine just instructed me that there’s a Starbucks within the airport i’m going to. brand new phone apps are amusing and exciting. a number of them even assist us be extra in my opinion effective. however for the most element those packages are toys. i haven’t located a single downloadable “app” that could change the way my business is run or be a terrific tool to put in force across my organization. it is due to the fact telephone apps, like the phones they run on, are nonetheless in their infancy. I don’t have any doubt that in the following couple of years some exciting technologies will emerge in an effort to help my entire enterprise run more profitably. however except I want to lease some child inside the Ukraine to broaden a customized software I don’t assume to implement any clever cellphone technologies in 2011.Netbooks or iPads. can we all agree that a netbook is just an less expensive, underperforming device that’s too small to sincerely use correctly in a enterprise and only exists to trap in humans too reasonably-priced to spend the greater couple of hundred dollars on a decent computer? And can we additionally agree that, even as the iPad is cool and i wouldn’t want to be stuck strolling around l. a. project or SoHo without one, it’s simply no longer that easy to use for enterprise functions like typing files, doing records access and jogging most enterprise programs? these devices are toys. Get them to your kids. Get one because you continue to need to be a child. however don’t purchase these items on your employees. There are too many low-priced laptops available, going for walks home windows 7 (which by means of the way works quality and rapid) in which your employees can do non-cool, un-hip things like invoices, estimates, proposals and spreadsheet analysis.some thing That Synchronizes. through the years, i’ve tried synching my programs to smartphones, laptops and every other. The excellent synchronization apps work about ninety five% of the time. Thank God software companies do not build airplanes. i’m no longer synching anything in 2011. until i can get entry to the facts over the net it is just going to must wait.commercial enterprise Intelligence software program. that is just a code word for reporting software program. There are masses of business “intelligence” software program packages and consultants to help us “run our agencies.” those applications are overpriced and so are the specialists who paintings with them. i’ve only got ten human beings in my agency which (fortunate for me) manner I do not should be that intelligent. as a substitute of buying commercial enterprise intelligence software in 2011 i am going to learn how to use the reporting skills of my current software better or buy an cheaper reporting tool like Crystal reports or maybe Microsoft get admission to and rent a person much less costly to attract the statistics out that I need.i will be careful how I spend my business enterprise’s money on era in 2011. And i will actually be cautious to avoid any destiny movies starring both De Niro and Hoffman too.