Small Business Shares Big Business' Tech Issues

I had a revelation last week when I was in Austin, Texas, to moderate a panel at Dell World, the technology giant's inaugural gathering of IT professionals. Most of the attendees were CIOs from mid-size and large businesses. But after two days of talking with them, listening to company chairman and CEO Michael Dell, attending sessions, interviewing Dell management, and moderating a workshop, I realized that businesses of all sizes are essentially struggling with the same issues.

At a press conference before Dell World officially kicked off, Michael Dell said the company's goal was to "give our customers a path to the future." This road is harder for small businesses to navigate since most don't have IT experts on staff to guide them, noted Steve Felice, Dell SVP and President of Global Consumer & SMB.

Everyone just wants solutions

But the IT experts I talked to expressed the same frustrations I often hear from owners of small companies -- and we all just want solutions. Erik Dithmer, Dell's VP and general manager of SMB Americas, said, "Small business owners are getting smarter. They know more about technology and are looking for scalable solutions. And they want them fast." One of those solutions: cloud computing.

Paulette Altmaier, Dell VP of SMB Solutions, said that the power and sophistication of SaaS (software-as-a-service) business applications found in the cloud are "hugely compelling" for SMBs, and up until now, something they have had to do without. The cloud helps small businesses to afford solutions that were previously too expensive, and "run as efficiently as larger companies," she said.

Altmaier acknowledged that the transition to the cloud can difficult for small businesses because they lack IT leadership. Entrepreneurs are saying, "We don't need more hype, we need more help."

(To promote its vision, Dell is offering a free ebook, Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth, written by small-business expert Rhonda Abrams.)

This focus on the cloud was reiterated by Michael Dell himself in his keynote address: "The cloud changes the line between what business and IT does," he said.

Shared Stress Points: Social Media and Security

Social media is a perfect example of the change in the role of technology at companies large and small. At my panel, Dell SVP and CMO Karen Quintos and VP of IT Strategy and Architecture Rhonda Gass discussed how social media implementation affected Dell itself. Marketing lobbied for broad adoption of social media, but that scared IT with fears of additional bandwidth usage and vulnerability to cyber-attacks and viruses. (Dell says 50 percent of its bandwidth is consumed by employees using social media.)

The panel's attendees were primarily CIOs at larger businesses (one was from a Fortune 14 company), and many had yet to allow their employees to participate in social media. According to Felice, more than half the world's workers are not allowed to participate in social media -- on the job at least. (At Dell, the two sides eventually joined forces, understanding both the importance of social media to their marketing efforts, and the need to keep the company safe.)

Of course, security is a concern for businesses of all sizes. Michael Dell said, "Security is the biggest hurdle to cloud adoption, and quoted estimates of "100,000 new threats every day."

Dithmer cited security as one of the top three concerns for SMB owners. He added that SMBs lost more than $1 billion last year due to security issues such as malware, viruses, and phishing attacks.

Blurring the lines

The trend toward increased mobility and the blurring line between business and work makes these issues even more important. "The typical 9-to-5 workday is no more," said Felice. Everyone "expects access to information. Half of all employees use work technology while on vacation."

Security concerns make many larger companies reluctant to allow their employees to use their personal tech devices to access work files and applications. (Dell, in fact, just recently allowed its employees to receive work email on their personal devices.) And these businesses are also concerned when employees use their company-issued technology at home, fearing malware and virus attacks because the environment is less secure -- especially when employees' kids "share" the computer.

Many small businesses ignore the security issues, attracted by lower costs and increased features of consumer technology. There are benefits to that approach, as small businesses can adopt new technologies more quickly than their larger competitors. But Preston James, Dell's director, Enterprise Technologists for Global Small & Medium Business, warned that the "false sense of security entrepreneurs have because they have a firewall is mind-boggling. In fact, 99 percent of business owners don't know how vulnerable they are."

The challenge, no matter how big your company is or whether you're worried about bandwidth, competitiveness, security, or other factors, is to find a way to take advantage of technology while mitigating the risks. Michael Dell believes embracing technology is essential to remaining competitive in today's challenging global economy -- and that's only the beginning. Technology, Dell said, has the "power to enable human potential. It's what ignites the possibilities that will change the world." And who better to change the world than small business owners?

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Follow Rieva on Twitter @Rieva and read more of her insights on SmallBizDaily.com.