Crowdsourcing

I recently had the opportunity to read Jeff Howe’s Crowdsourcing (Random House Business Books 2008). I was interested in this topic from reading Jeff’s initial thoughts on the subject in Wired Magazine in 2006. Crowdsourcing is the idea that digital interconnectivity gives businesses access to a wide range of amateur talent: talent that can perform the same work as a professional but at a substantially lower cost and potentially faster time frame. The amateur’s ability to compete on a professional level is possible through digital connectivity, the inexpensiveness of personal computers, and a generational affluence with digital media. In the book, Howe investigates through a myriad of examples how the means of production are shifting from the corporate megalopolises to the SOHO’s of small private entrepreneurs, and discusses how the crowd – electronic social communities – directs demand, can do knowledge-based work faster and more efficiently than monster organizations, and shapes innovation.

Howe’s book is a good read for two people: people who own businesses and people who are employees of those who own businesses. Put another way, this book is great for both parties to understand just one of the dynamics affecting the changing nature of work.  In one respect, the employer needs to be conscious of new ways to attract qualified labor at reduced cost, whereas in another respect, the employee should be conscious of their options in a digital marketplace of ideas; further, the employer should also be cognizant of the employee’s emerging options and motivations.  In Howe’s conclusion in chapter 11, his “Rules of Crowdsourcing”, he writes: “Another way of thinking about this is that successful crowdsourcing involves satisfying the uppermost tier on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. People are drawn to participate because some psychological, social, or emotional need is being met.” I think what he’s saying here is that the “wage-slave” is getting an opportunity to re-frame what constitutes “work” and “reward” – it doesn’t have to be entirely about the paycheck. No longer does work need to be about the corner office, or, the “Director”-level parking space. Work can be just as much about supporting a lifestyle as much as living an ideal, or, converting play and passtime into a means of financial support.  Work might not even pay very much. In fact, a majority of future “work” may even be done for free.

In my line of work, I’ve seen the small business owner tap into a ready-pool of laborers responding to a Craigslist ad. Instead of investing in long-term variable employee expenses, the business owner enters into contained-cost, short term contracts, gets the job done, and dismisses the labor. Naturally, I participate in this kind of activity myself when I’m asked to put a database together at the lowest possible bid on guru.com, and through my providing free content across my website. And I’ve seen consumers gain access to professional advice and services using the web that would normally be unattainable. There are boundless opportunities in the new economy and they are totally contrary to our rational line of thinking.

• What? There’s job security found in the insecurity of contract labor? Yes!
• There’s an ROI for offering professional services for practically free – and it may not even be measured in dollars? Yes!
• There’s more value in earning trust/interpersonal relationships than money?  Yes!

What books like Crowdsourcing do is that they force the reader to consider the world as it’s moving around them. You can look at these changes as catastrophic – the “end of work, the rise of socialism” as some might espouse, or, a remarkable time of reinvention that has the potential to totally redefine our understanding of living. Both the capitalist and the laborer, the manufacturer and the consumer, have new options, new motivations, and new instincts – Crowdsourcing reveals a world swirling around us that we may either embrace or ignore: to gain significant competitive and emotional advantage, or, to be at once the victim of broader macroeconomic change. It’s a great read for students and entrepreneurs alike.

R

MsAccess OutputTo Work Around

Seriously, one of the more boneheaded things that Microsoft did to Access 2007 was to remove the ability to output to an *.xls format using the docmd.outputto method. I’ve had to do a little digging to find a suitable replacement, and I came up with the following bit of code. Please: feel free to use it.

‘ Begin Code
‘ Find the path to the user’s desktop

Dim objWSHShell As Object
Dim strSpecialFolderPath
Set objWSHShell = CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)

specialfolderpath = objWSHShell.SpecialFolders(“Desktop”)
Set objWSHShell = Nothing

‘ Create a String for the Filename and Query User for Filename

Dim filename As String
filename = InputBox(“Please provide a filename – the file will be saved to your desktop…”, “Filename for Export”, “export.xls”)

‘ Validate Filename for a non-null

If filename = “” Then
MsgBox “WARNING: No filename provided. Cannot continue.”, vbOKOnly, “No Filename”
Exit Sub
End If

‘ Execute

DoCmd.TransferSpreadsheet acExport, acSpreadsheetTypeExcel9, queryname, specialfolderpath & “\” & filename, True

‘ End Code

What it does is capture the current path to the user’s Desktop, challenge the user for a filename with an Inputbox (inserting a default name for convenience), then it performs a TransferSpreadsheet. If the TransferSpreadsheet were performed on its own, then the only reliable place to put the export would have been the root of C:. Instead, this export always presumes the user’s Desktop without having to open a filesystem object to display a file dialog and capture the new path. It’s relatively easy to use;  maybe you’ll find it useful.

R

Controlling Expenses Through IT Spending

So you’re a small business owner. You’ve purchased some microcomputers – PC’s – and you’ve got them setup to use email and browse the web. Great: your employees are able to waste time faster and you’re probably wondering: okay, when do these things help me save money?

To answer that, there are two tech strategies that I’d like to tell you about: expense reduction and cost containment.

Reducing expenses is the quickest return you can earn from technology investments. Through deploying tech, you can automate a business process to improve its speed, accuracy, and reliability. That improves its efficiency, reduces the expense to conduct that process, and increases your operating margin. Profit is higher and you’re making a stronger return.

Cost containment appeals more to saving costs associated with your growth as a business. You may look at your business model and see that a business process is highly supported by labor. To sell more volume, you need more people; to build more houses, you need more people; to process more paper, you need more people. People (labor) represents a variable cost that accelerates quickly and erodes your profitability. If you invest a little in tech today, then you can spend less on labor tomorrow by hiring one, two, or three less people.

The first strategy, expense reduction, is the low-hanging fruit; this is the first strategy you would want to concentrate on. The second strategy, cost containment, is more complicated in that it weighs a capital expenditure today against the labor expenses you’ll have tomorrow. Let me run through some examples on expense reduction.

Expense Reduction:

• Within manufacturing processes, bar codes and work flow management software can help track product and reduce overheads, and usually manage your inventory at the same time. Think of all of the time needed to cycle-count bins, move inventory through puts and pulls, and manage paper tickets that need to be fed to a Purchasing function. Much of this can be automated very inexpensively. Reduce touch points and convert to electronic processing as much as possible.
• HR is a traditional administrative function with lots of paper and high overhead. The deployment of an HRIS (Human Resource Information System) would allow you to transition that paper into bits and manage every employee transaction faster and more accurately. Modern HR software even allows for electronic integration with insurance carriers, payroll companies, and accounting software.
• Administrative paper is another area of opportunity. Do you have stacks and stacks of paper in cabinets that requires shuffling, maintenance… you require labor to put paper in and take paper out? Move to an electronic document management strategy so those documents can be scanned at the photocopier and added to an electronic database from your desktop.
• Customer relationship – often, the small business has information about their customers scattered across electronic and paper resources. Consolidate them into one electronic resource so that 90-percent of the information you need to handle a customer issue is in one place. We call this a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Think about how, with one phone call to one person, the customer can get all of their questions answered. No transfers, no waiting on hold while you look up information. Fast, easy, efficient, and excellent service.
• Spreadsheets are the bane of my existence as a technology consultant because they’re so heavily over-used. Why? Because people “get” spreadsheets and don’t “get” databases. Over time, companies create these huge, complex, linked spreadsheets that are cumbersome and labor-intensive to fill in new data to calc a result, and then people leave the company and nobody knows how they work, and usually that data is being manually accumulated from other pieces of the information system. Yadda yadda. Spreadsheets are a decision-support tool – not an information system. Reduce or eliminate as many spreadsheets as possible. Move to database solutions. Press a button, get a report. That’s a lot easier and faster and more accurate.

.

Cost Containment:

Remember that multi-function photocopier (MFC) idea? Maybe you don’t have one that scans and integrates into an electronic document management system. So, you need to make a capital investment today or enter into a lease to acquire one. In order to estimate a return, you’ll need to calculate the time your people spend on touching and accessing paper records; you might come up with figures like 30-hours/week, or, 3 hours a person/week. And, over time, with every new customer or month that goes by, that metric is probably increasing; you need to know that growth rate. Now multiply the rate of growth over the duration of the lease for the MFC. If it’s 2 hours/month for a 60-month term, you now have a basis of comparison: 120-hours of labor will be needed in the future based on the current growth in business and manual paper processing requirements. You now have a basis of dollar comparison against the cost of the lease to the cost of that labor over 5 years, believing that a portion of that labor cost (perhaps up to 80-percent) will go away. See? I told you cost containment is a little more tricky!

Another idea is a website that employs self-service features.  Out of all of the calls you receive in a month from your customers, what portion of them are routine requests? How much time does it take to respond to a typical request? What’s your customer acquisition rate and what does that look like over three years? Multiply the acquision rate by the number of calls and the time – you now have an estimate of the cost of that growth in your business. Eek! That labor cost is a tax on your growth! Now, what if they could find out that routine stuff on the web and not have to call you? After a long chat with a web guy, you come to a dollar figure for that self-service capability. The cost of the website capability is compared to a potential 3-year return on the investment by reducing the labor expense. Self-service through your website isn’t just cool and what your customers want – it’s a money-saver! You spend a little money today and contain your future labor expense.

Application:

It’s advisable that the business first reduce expenses until they reach a point of diminishing return. That is, for every dollar they spend on tech – over time – the return gets smaller, because they’ve already automated what they could; they’ve already eaten the low-hanging fruit. Then they’ve got to do something different with their strategy, and that’s where cost containment comes in.

Think about these ideas the next time your company is considering an investment in tech. Specifically: how will it help reduce expenses, or, contain expenses?  Right on – now you’re thinking strategically about tech!

R

Q: Kindle is to Book as ___ is to Music

Is it:

a. Record
b. iPod
c. Computer
d. Headphones 

Well, Gizmodo is reporting that Amazon’s Kindle may rake in $750m in content sales by 2010, selling potentially 2.2 million Kindle units. That’s pretty extraordinary for a device that almost reaches $500 and costs more than many of the popular mini-notebooks out right now. Bezos’ strategy should be patently clear: what Bezos wants Kindle to be, of course, is the iPod of books, and Amazon the content distributor for books, just as Apple has become a content distributor for Music.  So, yeah, the answer is B.  There’s a lot of competition in this space though and it’s difficult to see if consumers will actually transition away from the look, feel, and weightiness of a book, but also an emotional association we share with books.

In a recent blog post, Megan Savage apparently doesn’t like the Kindle because it’s, in fact, not a book. There’s no way to dog-ear the pages, she says, and there’s an attachment she has for books – a certain sense of romanticism, especially on acquiring a quality library of books. And on the point of extended value, I can’t disagree with Megan. Consumers have a relationship with books and a sense of value that exceeds the purchase price – the value is found in their acquisition and accumulation and, to some degree, their stock evidence that they were read and appreciated, and, could be read again, even passed on through generations.  Although I don’t think Megan’s observations are inaccurate or even wrong, I do think that consumer’s base needs and requirements are changing.

You see, nearly all forms of media today is electronic, storable, replicatable, editable, searchable, customizable, mashable… it’s hard to believe that consumers growing up in a digital age will be satisfied with a boring print copy of a textbook, and carry with them the same emotional baggage that Megan shares about books. They’ll want to link it, extract it, pull it into various editors, manipulate the content and cite it electronically, blog, vlog, and Tweat. Where the text is in static form, the electronic content becomes more “relevant” to the modern lifestyle and the demands upon the modern student. In thinking of the lower costs of distribution, the lesser impact on things like climate change, and the sheer direction of all media, that the Kindle and other products like it really represent a new idea in consuming literature. Searchable Shakespeare is approachable Shakespeare.  I would also suggest that the Kindle is an innovation the student’s been waiting for: students have been paying premium for printed textbooks, why not save money through electronic distribution? Besides, students have been lugging the textbook around for far too long.  

I think it’s hard to argue that there isn’t a market for this kind of service when Kindle is doing quite well. I also think it’s hard to argue that the Kindle will be a flop because of our nostalgia over the “book” and its emotional meaning/value to us. I really don’t think that Kindle will displace the library that I have in my office because books do, in fact, have an emotional value. The Kindle may, however, displace perhaps half of the publishing market, and that should raise eyebrows for anyone in the publishing/printing business, or anyone who retails books, or anyone who writes for a living, or, anyone who relies on printed media in general. You think newspapers have it bad right now? Wait until products like the Kindle make bookstores look like old vinyl record shops.

The long and short is that the Kindle, and products like it, are about to do to text what the iPod did to CD’s – and Sam Goody and Tower Records along with them. The whole concept of distributing music was flipped on its proverbial ear. I think the question should become: how will your business or profession be impacted in the same way as the music industry, or, the newspaper industry? Then prepare accordingly.

R

New Microlecture Posted

Just posted a new microlecture on CIO’s, CKO’s, CSCSO’s, CTO’s, and CPO’s – the IT Executive Officer. Further, you can find it on YouTube.

R

Link-In Like a Pro

 

So why do you want to use Linked-In?

Linked-In is a social networking site for working professionals and maintains a catalog of hundreds of thousands of interactive resumes. Visitors who view a Linked-In profile are exposed to the candidate’s work history, education, and skill-set; for the business owner, Linked-In can also convey product information, brand, elevator pitch, and other forms of media that can indirectly market your business. 499 of the Fortune 500 are represented on Linked-In through director-level members, and as of June 2008, Linked-In is the fastest social networking site showing an 187% growth year-over-year since its inception; you can compare Facebook at 77% year-over-year growth.  If you’re not convinced yet, here are a few more great reasons to start up your own free Linked-In profile.

1. Linked-In is social media for pros.

Unlike Facebook, Linked-In is a professional social networking site that skips over the embarrassing personal details. It’s strictly business with no games or quizzes, but an interactive way for you to network, pass along expertise, get noticed for yours, and interconnect with others in a virtual networking space. Everything about Linked-In supports the professional – whether or not you have a job, are looking for a job, or if you run your own small business, or if you’re a Fortune 100 CEO. Linked-In is a great way to maintain your professional image while making yourself easier to find and contact on the Internet. 

2. Legitimacy and Reference Checks.

Prior to employment interviews or during screening, it’s not uncommon to see organizations troll social media to find out more on a potential candidate. Linked-In profiles are a nice electronic complement to the resume and can be the professional face you want to present to a perspective client, employer, or business partner. It also establishes legitimacy through personal interconnections and a history for doing business with others, as well as offers a way to refer the work of others and congratulate their performance.

3. Networking.

Linked-In offers ways to transmit virtual business cards between connections. Don’t know somebody who can help fix your laptop? Linked-In can help you contact somebody who knows someone right away. It’s a natural complement to your Rolodex. 

4. Connectivity.

Through connections, you’ve got the opportunity to extend your reach and receive referrals from anyone at any time. Also, connectivity can make you the “go-to-person” for finding that right talent at the right time. Finally, Linked-In connections offers a way to market yourself and your company easily to potentially hundreds of people who’re acquainted with you.

5. Pagerank and Backwards Links.

Linked-In offers means to point-back to your website through URL’s. These backwards links from Linked-In improves your Pagerank score in Google, making it easier for people to find you, and in convincing the Google search engine that you’re an authority on various topics. It also helps direct more web traffic from somebody viewing your profile and clicking-out to read more about you.

6. Ask for Advice.

It can happen at any time. Somebody is in a crunch and they need a problem solved. Who do you know? Who does she know? A question can come in out of the blue – a new customer, a new contact, a new job offer. Also, too, Linked-In gives professionals the ability to give advice as well, and forums/groups with whom to share your expertise. 

7. Competitive Analysis.

Hey, if you’re looking into this, you’re doing it because your competitors may already be on social media and leveraging it to their advantage. Use that knowledge to your advantage. Use Linked-In to take an inside tour of the competitor’s staff, professional background and history, client base, and other facts that could give you a better understanding of what you’re up against.

Okay, I’ve sold you on this – how do you get started?

1. Setup. Get your free Linked-In account by going to Linked-In.

2. Stage. Develop your profile in waves. Don’t spend five hours on it; just develop it gradually over a week. Also, don’t feel compelled to cut and paste your resume – edit your details so they convey the point without being too wordy.

3. Beta. Once it’s developed, take some time to invite others to see it – especially a few friends already on Linked-In. Get their feedback and comments. Make minor tweaks and changes.

4. Launch! Allow Linked-In to scan your address book to establish possible connections with people already on Linked-In.

5. Promote. Link to your profile from the Internet and put it on the footer of your email. Get people to go to your public profile to learn more about you and the services you can provide.

A couple of tips for using Linked-In:

1. Fill out your profile completely. More complete information makes it easier to find you through Linked-In’s search features. You don’t have to go overboard, but if you share too little information then you might get missed. 

2. Join groups. Unfortunately, many groups and forums have become venues for passive marketing and spam. Yet, some good threads commonly appear that will allow you to show off your expertise and get your name in front of some key decision-makers. Joining groups on Linked-In expands your visibility and ties you together with others of common interest.

3. Ask and answer questions. The more you can demonstrate your expertise and knowledge in a specific subject matter, the more authoritative you’ll be, and the more likely people will trust you. 

4. Ask for recommendations, and give recommendations. Be generous with others and they will be generous to you. This also helps expand your viewership as your name is exposed to others when they’re reading the recommendation.

5. Link to your blog and Twitter feed. There are some great add-in’s to Linked-In called Applications that allow you to integrate your blog and your Twitter feeds into your profile. When people view your profile online, they can also see what you’ve recently been up to! These are great ways to tie in various forms of social media through one portal, and improve that overall Pagerank/relevance score that I was talking about earlier. In short, it’s a great way to improve your visibility on search engines.

6. Upload your photo. You’re more likely to do business with somebody you know or trust, right? Well, a professional photo will help with that, too, on Linked-In. Try to keep it professional and representative of what you hope to display to a new client. 

So what are you waiting for? Go get started! And when you’re there, please feel free to Link-In to me!

R

Follow-up on Local Business Listings

You know, free is a very good price. Putting your company’s name in the “other” two search engine’s local business listings – for free – isn’t a bad strategy, either. So here’s where you can find them.

Yahoo! Local Business Listings
http://listings.local.yahoo.com

Microsoft’s MSN Local Business Listings
https://ssl.search.live.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx

R

How to Create a Local Business Listing in Google

Ever wonder how your competitors show up in Google with extended business profiles, which are then linked to Google Maps? There’s no mystery here – they have set up a local business listing under Google. If you believe that the first place your customers turn to find you, or, your competitor, you want to complete a Local Business Listing in Google.

Here’s how you do it.

1. Create a Google Account. If you don’t already have one, create one first.

2. Login to the Local Business Center. The LBC is the location to set up your local business listing. Login with your new Google Account.

3. Complete the form. Provide your business information. In particular, your business’ name, address, city, state, zip, and telephone number.

4. Enter a brief description of your business. Be descriptive. Use your keywords. 

5. Provide the URL to your website.

Once you submit the application, Google will try to compare this information against known records. Google may already have your business listed in its directory. If so, walk through the process of “claiming” your business. 

6. When the business account is set up, add your search categories. These are search categories that are relevant to sets of keywords.

7. Provide your hours of operation, your methods of payment, additional information and keywords, upload up to ten photos of your business, and even link to a video on YouTube.

It’s that simple.

When Google wants to validate your listing – either a new listing or through claiming an existing one – it can authenticate you by phone, or, by post card. Choose the phone method; it’s fast and immediate. An auto-attendant will contact you within seconds and you can enter a secret code given to you from Google. That code verifies the listing.

Once this is done, your listing will become active. You can add multiple listings to this service. Once a listing is active, it’s easier to find your business using Google Maps. Manage your listing by logging back in to the Local Business Center. 

R

Notes on Windows 7

 

This week, on May 5, Microsoft will release Windows 7 RC 1 (Release Candidate) to the general public; the beta of Windows 7 was released last year, and Seven is due to be officially launched around October 23, 2009. In the last six months, Microsoft has illustrated the features in Windows 7 that will appeal greatly to consumers but hasn’t elaborated on the benefits Seven might have for business. So, I wanted to take a few minutes to run down the known pros and cons for the small business.

Pros for Enterprise – companies with hundreds or thousands of users:

1. WOD Compliance. Like Vista, Seven was developed under Microsoft’s Windows Optimized Desktop compliance initiative. Like Vista, Enterprise users can download a number of tools from the Windows Depolyment Optimization Pack for Software Assurance. 

2. New GPO’s (Group Policy Objects). New GPO’s will be released to centrally control how the desktop behaves for end-users and specifically govern aspects of the new Power Shell released in Seven.

3. Power Shell. One of the cooler features released to Windows Server 2008 was Power Shell – a terminal for Windows to control all aspects/functions through a command-line interface rather than the GUI (Graphic User Interface). Seven ships with Power Shell – administrators will like this because it reduces their TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) – example: Microsoft promises you’ll be able to script multiple GPO insertion with Power Shell, which would be faster than using the Group Policy editor on each box. 

4. WIM and WDS (Windows Imaging Format and Windows Deployment Services). Like Vista, you can build and multicast images of the o/s to workstations and, now, dynamically introduce drivers into the image. This means that it’s easier to update the centralized image of Seven and distribute it (in multicast, that’s new) to workstations. Also, Seven allows for integration of up to 36 separate language packs in a single Windows master image, reducing TCO.

5. AppLocker. This is a whitelist function for Enterprise Server that can push “accepted applications” to the client desktop and reinforce through group policy. You can specify applications by filename, version, and publisher, and control what applications can or cannot be used by the user community. 

6. Bitlocker and BitLocker to Go. Bitlocker can be enforced through GPO in Seven, allowing administrators to set encryption rules for hard disks centrally from the server, and in Seven, removable media can be encrypted/password protected using IEEE 1667-compliant USB drives. GPO-enforced policies on removable media can also be pushed to client configurations.

7. More Extensive Firewall GPO’s. Enterprise managers can introduce more settings into the Windows Firewall and allow for exceptions easier than in previous versions.

8. VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). Microsoft promises “better peformance” and “optimization” for virtual deployments of Seven under VDI – better graphics, local audio.

9. Virtual Machines. Microsoft is granting the licensing rights in Enterprise to run up to four fully-licensed Windows VM’s. 

 

Pros for the Small Business – companies with less than one hundred users:

1. BranchCache. Combined with Windows Server 2008 R2, files can be securely replicated from a server share to a Windows Seven workstation using SSL, and, servers can receive dynamic file updates from upstream servers. To me, this sounds like folder synchronization on steroids using HTTP/SSL.

2. DirectAccess. Also requiring Windows Server 2008 R2, this is a new way for users to interact securely with a private network without a VPN. Connections are made securely and “silently”, without user intervention, so that the user is connected with the office.  Some of the implementation requirements on this are a little weird and there are no official white papers yet, but the 2008 Server, for example, is expected to require two NIC’s and IPV6 and running a Certificate Authority for PKE (Public Key Encryption).  Based on its complexity, I’m almost tempted to put DirectAccess into the “Enterprise” category above, but there’s some real advantages for the small shop here, even if implementation sounds highly technical. 

3. Reduced UAC. The User Account Controls (UAC) features that bug Vista users when they want to do something that could affect system state have been eased a bit, so Seven will “complain” less than Vista. 

4. WindowsXP Virtual Machine. The Pro and Ultimate versions of Seven will ship with a complete XP license in a Windows VirtualPC – a virtual machine. This means, for example, that you would have a fully-licensed copy of WindowsXP running virtually on the Windows 7 system to run applications in a safe, backwards compatible space. This is good and bad (see below).

5. Apps in XP Mode. Similar to Parallel’s on Mac, you can also run XP applications in a backwards compatable mode in real-time, similar to the older compatability settings for legacy 16bit apps on Windows95.

6. Mobile Computing. Enhancements have been introduced that reduce battery power on laptops; BranchCache and DirectAccess allow for a completely different model in staying connected to the office place.

7. Windows Touch. With enabled hardware, you’ll be able to interact with the machine using touch-based interfaces… personally, I can’t see a significant embrace of this technology in a workplace on a PC; maybe a different kind of computer, like, a table-top for conferences and discussions, but I hope I’m never required to put my finger on my monitor and drag something. I just got used to moving my hands away from the keyboard to the mouse (grin) – plus, I can’t wait to see people’s dirty, grubby monitors, much like their keyboards today. Ich. 

Concerns for All Involved:

1. Licensing and Editions. Microsoft continues to confuse by maintaining at least six different editions of Windows (Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate). Wikipedia has a great article on the feature comparison between them. Ultimately, this will end up confounding end-users and administrators on what versions are precisely needed to take advantage of specific features. Interesting to note: Starter edition will only be able to run 3 applications at once.

2. Upgrade Path. Microsoft announced a few weeks ago (and I talked about it here as well) that there will be no upgrade path for WindowsXP to Windows 7. This will force a higher TCO on the small business who’ll have to wipe out their hard drive and install Windows 7 clean, reinstalling all of their data and applications. There is, naturally, an upgrade path for Vista, and Microsoft actively encourages small business to embrace Vista today (to work out the compatibility kinks) prior to adopting Seven.  So like I was saying, you can either pay now or pay later – migrating from XP to Windows 7 will be a chore – it may be useful just to look at a Windows 7 upgrade in terms of gradual natural attrition just like Vista: adopt the new o/s when buying new PC’s and keep XP on legacy (older) equipment. Retrofitting older machines to Windows 7 will reflect a high TCO.

3. Danger in VM. I do foresee a danger in hosting a fully-licensed copy of Windows XP in a VM with Vista. This means that TCO is doubled – we have to make sure that Vista is patched and maintained as well as the XP VM so, in essence, for every one PC you’re really supporting two PC’s. Further, how you can lock down the capabilities of the XP license in the VM is really at question – I mean, what’s preventing some user from running risky applications inside the VM – stuff we’d usually lock down using o/s controls? What if the VM isn’t running our standard for anti-virus and anti-phishing? Hard to say. Slashdot echoed this concern last week. What I foresee here is higher administration costs and a security risk: our centralized control and management of machines becomes meaningless if users can work-around our restrictions inside of a virtual PC, and then interact with our network. I look forward to reading more from Microsoft and others on how they are going to handle this risk.

4. User Interface. Windows 7’s interface is a lot like Vista’s and that may be a problem. Many of my small business customers were put off by its interface. We’ll see how widely it gets adopted/accepted.

I guess I’m skeptical. As I’ve mentioned here before, I think next year will be more about options and less about upgrades – consumers have more choice today than Microsoft. Sixty-three percent of all microcomputer o/s’ run on WindowsXP. When comparing the costs of moving from XP to Seven, Macs, Linux, staying put and doing nothing… all becomes more affordable. Although there are certain benefits to the Enterprise that look pretty appealing (with a complementary server investment), the business case for small business still looks pretty tough to me: full-price licensing, high TCO in the migration, new compatible device and software acquisition costs, long-term TCO in maintaining the o/s and it’s VirtualPC/WindowsXP components.  I’m not sure if I can rationalize its benefits yet to small business, and frankly, Microsoft hasn’t provided a compelling case in their own literature. 

What do you guys think? Upgrade? Wait? Enthusastically embrace? Find alternatives? What’re your thoughts?

R