Small Business Trends

Virtualization: A Two-Edged Sword for SMBs

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by Kevin Rowney

Virtualization is revolutionizing IT, and small businesses are sitting up to take notice. Whereas in the past it was viewed as a luxury only available to large enterprises with extensive resources, virtualization is now a viable option for businesses of all sizes. A recent study commissioned by Symantec aimed to measure the attitude of small businesses toward virtualization, and to what extent they are taking advantage of it.

The Appeal of Virtualization

The survey found that small businesses are very interested in virtualization technology, and that they can see a wide range of potential benefits. Among the key findings are the following:

  • A full 70 percent of small businesses are at least considering virtualization.
  • Their reasons are:
  1. Reduced capital expense (cited by 70 percent)
  2. Reduced operational expense (68 percent)
  3. Improving scalability (68 percent)

Two-thirds of the organizations surveyed expressed a desire to reduce the number of servers while maintaining their applications, increasing their efficiency. Making the most of their existing infrastructure will also help keep costs down. Virtualization also makes disaster recovery easier, through the ability to create a full mirror of critical systems without the need for additional hardware.

Adoption Challenges

While the majority of small businesses have shown an interest in virtualization technology, they are still in the early stages of adoption. Consider:

  • Only ten percent have already implemented virtualization
  • 17 percent currently in trials or the implementation process.

In a related finding, businesses are far more comfortable with web and database management applications than with more critical applications such as accounting, ERP and CRM software. This indicates that while organizations are eager to see the benefits of virtualization, they are still reluctant to risk placing business-critical apps into a virtualized framework.

What is causing this reluctance? Businesses stated that the three most significant challenges to virtualization are:

  • Performance
  • Backup
  • Security and patch management.

Additionally, nearly one-third of respondents reported a lack of experience in virtualization, which sheds further light on their reluctance to virtualize more vital applications.

Data Protection Woes

Despite the enthusiasm small businesses are showing, however, many of them are failing to sufficiently protect the information they place into the virtualized environment.

  • Only 15 percent perform regular backups on virtualized servers.
  • 23 percent back up infrequently or not at all.

More than half of organizations (61 percent) cited budgetary issues as the reason for not performing regular backups, with 20 percent blaming staffing issues.

In addition to insufficiently backing up data, securing servers is another challenge faced by small businesses. On average, they have completely secured only 40 percent of their virtualized servers. Moreover, 78 percent have no antivirus software installed. Once again, the primary reason cited by businesses is budgetary problems, with staffing issues also mentioned.

Recommendations for SMBs

While the market matures there are potential security risks associated with virtualization. In order to minimize risks while still enjoying the benefits virtualization has to offer, SMBs should consider the following recommendations  to protect themselves in the virtual environment.

Recommendation 1: It’s important that organizations understand the increased complexity that comes with implementing a virtualized IT environment. Taking advantage of new techniques that allow virtualization of hard-to-virtualize multi-tier applications may provide a route through this complexity.  Symantec’s AppHA framework allows us to provide this kind of help to people virtualizing complex workloads and we think there’s an interesting path ahead, despite the complexity, using these new techniques.

Recommendation 2: An integrated approach to backup and security in both physical and virtual environments can improve overall IT efficiency. Implementing data deduplication solutions can help save space on servers while also saving time for IT management.

Finally, recommendation 3: One of the most important steps SMBs can take is to create a comprehensive security plan that is specifically tailored to the virtual environment. By ensuring that security is managed centrally, software can be more easily deployed. And, by establishing consistent policies and practices, administrators and end users will be able to effectively contribute to a secure IT environment.  At this point, it appears most of these virtualized systems have minimal protection from targeted attacks tailored to invade them and we are watching this trend with some concern.  We hope to influence the community of practitioners of virtualization to realize that this relatively unprotected state is a significant risk that requires attention soon.

Kevin Rowney

Director, Breach Response, Symantec

Kevin Rowney is a data loss prevention visionary who joined Symantec in 2007 as part of the Vontu acquisition, a company which he founded.

Rowney currently serves as Director of Breach Response at Symantec and is focused on helping customer address data breach incidents. Rowney coaches account teams on how to help customers respond to data breach incidents. By mobilizing teams across Symantec to deploy resources, Rowney helps customers get current breach incidents under control and identify risks of future breaches.

For the past 14 years, Rowney served in a variety of security roles at software startups in Silicon Valley. At Vontu, Rowney conceived the original value proposition, designed the system architecture and wrote the patent-pending search algorithms used in their award-winning product.

Rowney has architected a range of security systems including credit card transaction processing systems and one of the first PKI Certificate Authorities operating on the Internet. Additionally, Rowney served on the Visa/Mastercard Secure Electronic Transactions standards committee as the representative of Verifone/EIT.

Small Business Influencer Award Given to Verizon Wireless

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Verizon Wireless logoVerizon Wireless has just received the Small Business Influencer Champion for 2011 Award from Small Business Trends and SmallBizTechnology.com. The wireless company was recognized for its continued support of small businesses, as well as their owners, and accepted the award at a ceremony which took place on September 13, 2011.

According to Executive Director of Verizon Wireless Michael Schaefer, “One of the value propositions from Verizon Wireless is deep expertise in the SMB area, and we understand the vertical markets in which they are competing. We have always been focused on supporting this specialized customer base by not only providing stellar services, but also educating on how to best leverage smartphones, tablets and 4GLTE to increase efficiency and reduce operating costs. Receiving this award is a validation of our business vision.”

The Small Business Influencer Award is a joint initiative by Small Business Trends, which is an online magazine that serves over 2,000,000 small business owners, stakeholders and entrepreneurs every year, and Small Biz Technology, a media company that educates growing businesses on strategically using technology as a tool to grow their business.

The award recognizes any person, organization or company, like Verizon, who has made a meaningful and lasting impact on the North American  small business market. Verizon Wireless was selected as one of one hundred winners from more than 520 nominees.

Roman Ray, founder of SmallBizTechnology.com, added, “In this day and age, it is almost impossible to run a business without utilizing technology on a certain level. We’ve worked with Verizon Wireless for several years and we’ve seen firsthand how much they influence the small business communities by bringing great services and taking the time to educate SMB owners on how to use them.”

However, Verizon Wireless doesn’t stop at supporting small businesses across the country. The company is also committed to preventing and raising awareness about domestic violence via community efforts. HopeLine from Verizon collects used cell phones, recycles them and donates the proceeds in the form of cash grants and pre-paid wireless phones to advocacy groups for use by survivors.

Source: Market Watch – Verizon Wireless Receives Small Business Influencer Award

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3 Trends Currently Driving New SMBs

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3 Trends Currently Driving New SMBs

Let’s face it, the American economy is still far from perfect. Even so, people are still starting small- and medium-sized businesses and some of those businesses are still thriving. Why? Simply because there are some business trends that are hot right now, even in this economy. The reasons vary, so let’s take a look at a few of them.

1. Going Green. Going green is big business right now. Many companies now include some kind of environmentally friendly incentives in their sales pitch for their products and services. What can this be attributed to? Government incentives are one reason companies are clamoring to be green. From automakers to the electric industry companies are receiving millions of stimulus dollars that revolve around creating and using renewable energy. Also, people are now understanding the importance of clean energy. Overall, the public sentiment about saving the environment has changed over the last decade or so.

2. Senior Citizens. Our population is getting older. Baby boomers are becoming senior citizens. Right now there are over 37 million seniors and in twenty years they’ll make up 20% of the United States population. They’ll also be looking to spend over $1 trillion. If that’s not incentive enough to get into the business of seniors, I don’t know what is. From anti-aging cosmetics and senior dating services to nursing homes and technical assistance if you’re thinking of starting a business, you may want to turn to your elders for guidance. As a matter of fact, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says aging-services – home health care, elderly and disabled services, and community care facilities – make up three of the top ten fastest growing businesses.

3. Buying Local. There’s a desire to buy locally grown and made products sweeping the nation. That means more mom-and-pop stores. Farmers’ markets seem to be at the heart of this movement; there are currently about 5,000 across the United States and over the past five years that number has been growing at a 5% rate. Almost 60% of consumers say they try to shop locally. National chain stores like Wal-mart have tried to gain more business by adding “locally grown” sections to their grocery departments. The USDA has launched a program called “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food,” which encourages people to buy locally, and several cities, such as Orlando, Florida have been starting “buy local” campaigns.

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America’s Return to Financial Greatness-some straight talk

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Ford Motor company in the early 80’s came up with the slogan “Quality is job one.” This statement really evolved out of its production manual called total quality management. It was implemented to combat the foreign car invasion of America as American’s were increasingly put off by the poor quality and highly plasticized cars coming out of Detroit in that time period.

In my last article, I reviewed Stanley C. Allyns extraordinary booklet about his life in Dayton and work career at NCR, rising to be president and CEO. In his booklet, Allyn gave his 4 big jobs for management teams. I would like to look at point number three: Earn the enthusiastic support of all employees. Sounds good right, but the problem is that many companies today have fallen victim to employing Temporaries, Contractors, Casual Hires, and Short term hires, and then expecting that they are gong to get the same attention to quality as the company would receive from an employee. This is pure fantasy!

Let me define each of the categories: Temporary (or temp) a person who comes in to substitute for a permanent employee. These people usually work 8-12 weeks, but some times as much as 6 months. Usually they do grunt work (although many these days are highly skilled and impressively experienced). A casual hire is much like a temp except he or she works directly for the company. A casual hire is not offered benefits or company perks and usually does routine work. Sometimes retirees fill out their income as casual hires. A short term employee does not usually know that they are what they are. These people are fully benefited and work for the company, but the company management knows that they are hired to work a certain project and then layed off or terminated. Sometimes working conditions become so bad that they leave of their own accord (and this is fine with the company). Contractor’s either can work for themselves or a contracting company (you will find Contractors in engineering and accounting very often).

The problem with this group is that they probably are being under paid and looking for the minimum they can do and then go home. The second is that these people are looking for another, better full time gig. If they figure out that this greener pasture is not with your firm, then you only have this employee’s partial attention, and they might leave at ANY time, some times not giving any or little notice. Some temporary agencies, try to tell temps that this job is “temp to perm” but experienced temps know that this is generally “the agency sales pitch to do a good jab and maybe you will get hired (but is rarely true).” Finally some companies still in down sizing mode (or their ridiculous term “right sizing”) even encourage employees to search on monster job or some related site! You will never have what Mr. Allyn states as point three: earn the enthusiastic support of all employees!

If in your small business, quality is job one, then you can not populate your work force with Temps, Casual Hires, Contractors, and short term hires. What you need from your employees is that they do everything that is both explicit and intrinsic to “doing a good job!” Your small business needs people who want to work for your success (and their own).

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Timeless Advice-Book Review My 50 years in Dayton

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Book Review: My 50 years in Dayton by Stanley C. Allyn

You probably won’t find this in Google search, I didn’t. It is in booklet form, not perfect bound, and is only 31 pages long, but the business advice from it is timeless. I think the Carillon Park book store still has copies. It is My First 50 years in Dayton by Stanley C. Allyn (former CEO of NCR corporation).

In chapter 4 Mr. Allyn gives his 4 big jobs for management teams (These ideas were written in 1963! They are timeless and far seeing):

1) See to it that the company makes a satisfactory profit.
2) Keep the company’s products up to date, whether they are material goods or services.
3) Earn the enthusiastic support of all employees.
4) Make certain that the company is good citizen of the community in which it operates.

Point one is very obvious, a company that can not make a satisfactory profit will not last, and Mr. Allyn states that managers do not have to be defensive about this goal. Frankly, at the end of things, if the company can not make a profit then all members of the company are looking for new work!

Point two is also almost taken for granted and it is given lip service in about every company that is in existence, but far seeing companies never taken this for granted they change and evolve over time, no matter what their form of business endeavor.

Point three is rarely found is today’s business, frankly I have had more than one manager tell me “who cares what the front line employee thinks. If I can get buy off from other managers, so be it, they have to keep their employees in line not me.” Companies that regard their employees this way are doomed to fail. Here is a bit of my own advice, call if prophecy if you wish: “America will not return to economic greatness without 2 important components of American business: One, America will not return to economic prominence as long as its businesses employ in its labor force: temporaries, short term hires, casual hires (throw away employees) and contractors. I will address this more in my next article.

The second is that America needs another technological innovation like the internet or personnel computer.

Point four, doesn’t BP wish they had followed this advice? How many American companies wish they had followed this advice (they are legion!)?

In all, if you are a small to medium business owner spend the $4.00 and 30 minutes of your valuable time and buy the book. It is an interesting read and the business advice is wonderful from a guy that definitely succeeded!

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SMBs are Hiring

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Are SMBs Hiring

New data suggests the smallest businesses in the country are beginning to add new jobs and some experts say that’s a great sign for bigger companies. This info comes despite a March 5th report from the Labor Department that suggests the United States is still losing jobs.

Intuit released some information on March 1st that suggests companies with less than 20 employees have been adding new jobs since June 2009. That’s based on the 50,000 customers using their online payroll service. Also, after two years of decline, the average paycheck amount for someone working for a company of less than 100 employees is beginning to stabilize over the last three months, and in some cases, is increasing. This includes data from salary, hourly, and contract workers. That information came out on March 3rd from a company called SurePayroll.

The numbers look like this: since June, employment at small businesses as been growing at 1.1% annual rate. With that information, Intuit suggests 150,000 jobs have been created by companies with fewer than 20 employees since June. That includes 40,000 last month alone. Granted that’s a long way from re-employing the 8.4 million who have lost jobs since December 2007, but it’s still a start and it’s left some people pretty hopeful.

Brian Headd, an economist at the Small Business Administration says this is a potentially good sign. He says that in 2002, recovery began when small businesses began hiring before larger companies did and in some cases when larger companies were still losing jobs. According to census data from 2006, companies of 20 or less employees make up 89% of all businesses and 18% of the private workforce.

Meanwhile, Congress is working on a number of different bills in an effort to put people back to work and one way they’re trying to do that is tax incentives. Last week, the House passed a bill that gives employers who hire people who have been out of work for two months a year free from paying the Social Security payroll tax. John Bishop of Cornell University has proposed a hiring tax credit that he says could will encourage about two million jobs in the next year. But a lot small businesses don’t wait on the government to pass bills before they hire and don’t sit around, waiting for incentives.

For example, Michael McKean, the CEO of the Knowland Group in McLean, VA told Business Week he has already hired ten people this year and hopes to hire about six more. The company makes sales, marketing, and lead generation products to help hotels attract conferences and events. He says he believes the industry is due to pick up soon and knows he can increase his credit line

Official data from the Labor Department about hiring won’t be available for several months, but if history is any indication, this data is good news. Companies with less than 500 employees have made up 64% of new jobs created between 1993 and 2008 and it looks like that trend will continue.

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Best Small Business Books of 2009

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Best Small Business Books of 2009
The editors at Small Business Trends, along with a 27-member advisory panel have put together a list of the Best Small Business Books of 2009. According to the website, the decisions were difficult to make due to the “quality of this year’s business book releases.” Here is a look at the books they chose.

  • Anatomy of Buzz Revisited by Emmanuel Rosen: Learn how to build “buzz” into your marketing strategy with this sequel to Rosen’s best-seller. According to Small Business Trends, you can use this book to “build a community of experts and then let them speak freely about the advantages and disadvantages of your product or service.”
  • Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim: This guide for aspiring entrepreneurs helps get you out of the corporate world and into your own business. This proves that you have to make the change to be successful. If you aren’t happy in the corporate world, chances are you never will be.
  • Greening Your Small Business by Jennifer Kaplan: According to this book, being isn’t just trendy, it also saves you money. This book shows you how to become “green” and proves that consumer are going to see eco-friendliness as a reason to purchase your service or product.
  • Me 2.0 by Dan Schawbel: This book is all about personal branding and how your brand will determine your ultimate success. Here, you’ll get ideas, resources, tips and on how to find your personal brand and use it for new opportunities, from registering your own website to finding a field to become a known expert in!
  • The New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg: Everyone is using social media these days and it can be a great tool to help you build and grow your business. This book, written by a social media consultant, will help you use various social media to market your business online. The best thing is this book doesn’t just teach you how to use the general Facebook and Twitter, it shows you the way to other, lesser known tools, as well.
  • Outrageous Advertising by Bill Glazer: This book points you in the direction of tons of direct marketing and advertising campaigns that will help you grow your business and build a larger customer base. The website calls it an encyclopedia of how-to and advertising ideas and tips.
  • Talk Less, Say More by Connie Dieken: There can be many ways to communicate with customers but this book shows you how to cut to the chase and eliminate the excess. Get your message across and get things done with lots of tips and tricks.
  • Super Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner: Small Business Trends describes this book as “fun and engaging.” It shows how the world works and proves there is a solution for more than you think, unconventional as it may be.
  • Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith: Another social media-oriented book, this one helps you learn social media quickly and use it to help with your brand.
  • Upstarts by Donna Fenn: This book looks at 150 different businesses started by Generation Y’ers. Get inspired as you read how a younger generation overcame challenges to make something of themselves.
  • Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg: This book tells the story of some of the most successful viral marketing campaigns and then shows you how to implement some of it into your own company!
  • You are What You Choose by Scott de Marchi and James T. Hamilton: Make decisions based on more than just demographics, such as time, risk, altruism, getting information, meToo status and stickiness or loyalty with this book. Once you understand how to do this, you can implement it into your own business.