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Power Up Your Small-Medium Business: A Guide to Enabling Network Technologies

Written by: Andy Marken

Article Overview: Power Up Your Small-Medium Business: A Guide to Enabling Network Technologies – Robyn Aber; Cisco Press, 800 East 98th Street, Indianapolis, Ind 46240; ISBN 1-58705-135-4; March 2004; 295 p; $39.95

Power Up Your Small-Medium Business: A Guide to Enabling Network Technologies

Finally someone has written a book on computer networking for the man/woman who signs the check rather than the network technician.

There are more than 40 million organizations in the small-to-medium business arena – 20-1,000 employees and last year we shelled out over $75 billion for information technology – hardware, software and services. Most of that money was spent or misspent on blind faith that by adding the new technology we were going to increase the control over our businesses.

While there are hundreds of books for executives about management style, organization, profit/loss, people selection and marketing. This is the first easy-to-read, easy-to-understand book we’ve read that tells you how to use technology to streamline your business processes and use the dizzying array of previously mysterious technologies to monitor and control business processes, product/service development and reaching the right customers profitably.

Ms Aber has balanced her technical background at 3Com and Cisco with her practical SMB experience gained involved in a struggling start-up – OneWorld Systems – and modestly successful mid-sized firm – Novartis.

Power-Up Your Small-Medium Business is divided into four logical sections – the value of networking, network basics, advanced technologies and implementation considerations. The network basics section is probably very intriguing to people who tinker and tweak technology, for most business owners and managers we thought it was a lot like reading a book on how your car engine works – interesting but more than we wanted to know.

Because most SMB owners/mangers are more focused on results rather than the how-to, the first section – value of networking – is a good primer on the strategic aspects of the technologies. Forget about having to take a computer science course on how network technologies do whatever they do. Whether you sit at the desk where the buck stops or have to make recommendations that will help your area of responsibility – engineering, manufacturing, logistics, marketing or sales – Ms Aber explores why business people need to use the technology in dollar and cents as well as real business terms.

Since we know enough about the technologies to be dangerous, we skipped to the fourth implementation section because this is where most sales and technical people seem to throw up all the smokes and mirrors as to what they are going to do for you. Again using words that real people can understand she lays out a variety of application scenarios that small – medium business managers can consider.

Her approach is to give you a set of basic to full-blown technology recommendations you can use depending upon your budget. More importantly, unlike most technologists who fall in love with and design/implement a closed-loop solution for you she outlines some technology growth plans you can use.

As a result you don’t have to commit to solution A, B, C, D or E but can buy off on solution A/B and have a plan on how you can get to E as your company grows. In addition and equally important she gives the reader an insight into the technologies you may want to consider – wireless everywhere, video-enablement and electronic business-to-business or business-to-consumer – that firms may possibly use to give them a competitive edge in their markets.

Just by reading these two sections a business manager or unit manager has the tools he or she needs to hire someone – internally or externally – to carry out the company’s network-powered program.

The reader is well armed with information to know what questions to ask, what to expect, and how to use the technologies once the company has them in place.

The middle sections are really reference chapters. Want to know networking basics? Ms. Aber lays out the areas – computer networks, switching/routing, security, intranet/extranet and virtual networks – so you can understand the concepts. Again she delivers enough information you can actually understand so you know when people are making recommendations that will benefit your company or their profit.

The advanced technology or “gee whiz” section is fun to read. She actually makes it easy for you to understand what is here now and on the horizon that can be used to give you an edge over the guy down the street, across the country or half-way around the globe. It is pretty obvious that Ms Aber thoroughly understands her technologies because she explains them so well that whether you have an accounting, marketing or MBA degree you can do a little dreaming and imagine how the technologies can be used in your organization or by others in your marketplace.

Ms Aber’s writing makes dry and dull disarmingly easy to understand.

Whether you head a small-medium size company or are a business unit manager, Power Up Your Small-Medium Business is a good primer and working tool to understand what is out there and available to you as well as what it can do for your company’s bottomline.

If you are in one of the ten million 100-1,000 employee firms that have an IT department the book will help you understand what your people are recommending to you, and whether you believe the recommendations will help you reach your goals.

If you are like us and in the majority of American business – 20 – 100 employees – where a network manager has to wear two or three hats, the book becomes even more valuable. Most of us outsource the network technology implementation and have a service person on call…just in case. Ms. Aber gives the business owner the power to understand what the technologies are, what they are going to be and how we can use them to our advantage.

Finally the biggest segment of American business has a roadmap they can read – and understand – about the mysterious field of network technologies that focus on discussing them in business terms, not techie terms.

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