The rate of change of small business technology is still incredible. Imagine what you thought of the idea of email when you first heard of it. I don't imagine you thought it would be as integral to your daily operations as it is after only a little over a decade. Today about 60 percent of your business's important information is sitting in someone's email box. Now consider if your computer network consulting company had approached you in 1992 with this idea of sending electronic messages to your employees, customers, vendors, and others. What would your response have been? How about if your IT support services provider had suggested around that same time that you provide cellular telephones to key people in your organization in order to stay in touch?

What is your response today when you're told that you should consider having some of your critical software applications hosted at Amazon.com or Google? How hard would you laugh if I suggested that you may not need to purchase another server? In my Indianapolis computer consulting company, we have made suggestions like these and others to some of our small business customers. They are laughing at the suggestion (mostly because I told them they'd be talking to their computers by now). They are also considering the possibility that this may very well be the future of their small business computing.

Most of my competitors will tell you that you've got to have your critical information and applications right there in your office where you can make sure it's secure and properly backed up and fully supported. The next time you hear that, ask the speaker if he uses any of the Software-as-a-Service applications like Salesforce.com. Ask him if he's heard of Amazon's EC2 or Google's App Engine, not to mention the hundreds of hosted applications from CRM and accounting to word processors and spreadsheets.

These changes a frightening to a traditional network support company because they don't know how to make money from it. They are reluctant to suggest something that will prevent them from making money. If your provider isn't bringing you the latest ideas in technology, then how are you going to know what technology you need to compete successfully?