Small Businesses Create Customer Intimacy with SaaS: Improving Productivity and Competitiveness with Software-as-a-Service Applications

Ed Lucente is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager at AT&T. You can find more blog content from Ed and other experts on emerging technologies on the AT&T Networking Exchange Blog. AT&T has sponsored the following blog post.

Software-as-a-Service in the CloudBefore the advent of cloud services, IT was managed ad hoc by small businesses (less than 250 PCs). This included tasks like on-premise server installations and maintenance, software upgrades, database administration, network management, and backups. Small businesses faced difficult IT challenges related to increasing operating expenses, unending complexity, and a lack of trained resources. IT management and costs distracted small businesses from focusing on building better solutions for customers. Fortunately though, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications have changed this malaise. Today, SaaS services are allowing small businesses to increase productivity and competitiveness, reduce IT costs, and develop solutions that create customer intimacy.

Productivity and Competitiveness

A survey commissioned by Microsoft showed that of the small businesses that use the cloud, 41% said they were able to employ more staff in roles that directly benefit sales or business growth, 39% invest in more product development or innovation, and 37% experienced improved agility and competitiveness. The cloud has made it easier for small businesses to scale their business to explore new markets, according to 42% of respondents. And 52% said that using the cloud enabled them to add new solutions and services that benefit their business more quickly and securely.  Read More

AT&T’s Cloud Architect Is A Bold Step Into Public IaaS

Ed Lucente is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager at AT&T. You can find more blog content from Ed and other experts on emerging technologies on the AT&T Networking Exchange Blog. AT&T has sponsored the following blog post.

IT professionals like selecting computer or storage resources in the cloud using an intuitive, self-service portal and convenient configuration aids. AT&T’s Cloud Architect is a good example that appears to have addressed these two primary features.

This wide array of configuration options is what I think IT professionals and others will find most striking about Cloud Architect. It is important to have the structure to support all major hypervisors, including VMware, Citrix and Microsoft. A multitude of operating systems are supported, like CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Ubuntu Linux. Deployment models cover public, private, dedicated and “bare metal” servers.

Perhaps most intriguing is how rapidly applications can be deployed. Within five minutes, deployment for public or private instances and bare metal servers can occur. Dedicated servers deploy within two-to-four hours. Read More

3 Big Data Predictions for Small Business in 2012: Why predictive analytics will empower businesses of all sizes in 2012

 

Ed Lucente is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager at AT&T. You can find more blog content from Ed and other experts on emerging technologies on the AT&T Networking Exchange Blog. AT&T has sponsored the following blog post.

Introduction

There’s plenty of talk about the benefits of business analytics — the analysis of “Big Data” to spot insightful trends, patterns, or correlations — for large enterprises in industry sectors like financial services, healthcare, and retail (see examples of analytics applications below). I’m surprised, though, that little attention has been given to the potential value that big data analytics can unleash for small businesses as well. Read More