Joshua Feinberg asked:


Many technology professionals starting their own businesses underestimate the sheer power of computer business names as a marketing tool for more easily selling IT services to steady, high-paying clients. Choosing the right name for your company can be challenging and must be well thought out before you open for business.

There are many factors to consider as you are thinking through computer business names. To target the best, steady high-paying clients, your marketing materials and branding must communicate exactly what you do to solve small business technology problems.

Use the following 4 tips to decide on an appropriate computer business name that showcases your unique value proposition and target client base.

1. Think About Your Specialty and Niche Market. Do you have a specialty? Perhaps you are an expert at accounting or medical software. If so, you can use this specialized knowledge to your advantage when building your company\’s identity. Also think about how your specialty relates to any niche market. Your proficiency with accounting software or experience working with accountants in a previous job might lead to you marketing yourself as an expert in that particular industry. If you choose a specialty and niche, make sure your name reflects this to attract the clients that will most benefit from your services. For example, you can add the term “accounting solutions” or a similar phrase to your computer business name.

2. Consider Your Location. Often your location can be a real benefit to prospects, customers and clients. When you are geographically close to your small business clients, they know they can count on you for important benefits such as faster response time, service guarantees, and a more competitive rate structure. As you are thinking through computer business names, seriously consider adding location to better communicate your identity and the strength of your services. This also helps to pre-qualify your potential clients. As an example, computer business names such as “[Your City or Your Region] Technology Solutions” will let your prospects know more about you and who you serve than simply “Technology Solutions.”

3. Keep Your Computer Business Name Short and Descriptive. When you are thinking about names, remember to make your company name short and descriptive. To get maximum impact with marketing materials and make yourself memorable to prospects, you should choose a name that can be easily made into a domain name for your Web site and become part of your e-mail address. That way when prospects are trying to get in touch they only have one thing to remember.

4. Make Sure Your Computer Business Name is Unique… At Least Locally! In most cases, a simple fictitious name search for similarly- or identically-named business entities or DBA\’s in your city, county, or state/province is adequate. However to truly cover all bases, or if you have national (or even global) aspirations, consult with a qualified legal expert on trademarks and servicemarks. This will usually be an intellectual property attorney or solicitor.

In this article we talked about 4 critical tips that can help you think through different computer business names. Learn more about how you can get great, steady, high-paying clients and find the best computer business names now at www.GreatComputerBusinessNames.com   Copyright (C), GreatComputerBusinessNames.com, All Rights Reserved

Mark H. Jessen asked:


With over a decade of Information Technology experience working with small and medium sized businesses all over the San Francisco Bay Area, Mark H. Jessen’s Small Business Technology articles offer ideas and understanding on how IT helps small business succeed.

Introduction

Part II of this two part article will look at ways you can consolidate your companies IT systems overhead in 2009. There is no doubt that 2009 is going to be a difficult year for business. You can go into the New Year with one of two mindsets; "We’re going to stay the course and hope for the best" or "We will look at this economy as an opportunity to reinvent ourselves into a lean, agile, competitor in our market." My goal is to have you see 2009 as a time of opportunity to find ways of doing the same, or more, with less. Make 2009 the year you use IT to make your company become a lean, agile, market competitor.

Smaller Servers, Doing More, Using Less – If you haven’t already consider migrating your older standalone chassis servers to low profile rack mounted units and blade server systems can reduce costs in a number of ways. They are both good options for reducing the amount of real estate and power needed in your data center. And both are ideal for running application virtualization software to reduce the number of physical application servers needed. Application virtualization is now a very popular way to consolidate both hardware and management costs in the data center.

Consolidate and Centralize Storage – Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Networks (SAN) are two proven ways to make company data management safer and easier. And by making sure all of your work is stored where it will be uniformly and consistently backed up you reduce the risk of lost data. Adding VPN based storage solutions for your mobile users helps keep their work safe and secure too.

Not Your Mothers Appliances – Use dedicated multitasking appliances for consolidating basic network services like Domain Name Service (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam, and Intrusion detection systems (IDS). There are currently a number of appliance makers in the market that have products that can handle your basic network functionality from single 1U rack mounted units. The savings include their reduced footprint, lower power consumption, ease of use, and centralized management.

How many applications are you supporting? – Depending on the size of your business, you could easily have dozens. First, audit all the applications and make sure they are still relevant and contributing to the company’s bottom line. Next, look for overlap between complimentary departments like, sales and marketing, where consolidation of similar applications would be mutually beneficial. And use this economy as an opportunity to renegotiate and right-size your commercial software licensing contracts.

Open to door to Open-Source – Now is the perfect time to look for less costly open-source options. More and more companies are looking seriously at Linux on the desktop. OpenOffice, MySQL, and SugarCRM for example are reliable options and all have strong support communities. Almost any type of business can benefit from open source software opportunities. New, as well as budget strained, small businesses should look seriously at the early start cost savings advantages available

Think Global, Outsource Local – What opportunities can you find right in your own backyard when you consider local or regional outsourcing to reduce some of your application development and support costs. Within a five mile radius of you, there are probably a dozen application developers hungry for your business right now. Use contractors to rapidly develop applications that you can get up and running quickly will help keep you ahead of the field. The sooner your ideas can come to fruition the sooner your business benefits. The agile company that can find new ways to quickly meet its customer’s needs wins.

Summary

Earlier in December 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) announced that the U.S. economy had been officially in a recession since December of 2007. Now the question is when can we expect this recession to end? Best estimates are that by April of 2009, we may be at the low point of the curve, leading economists to estimate that this economic contraction could last as long as 35 to 40 months which means conservatively 2010, and possibly 2011.

This means small business IT management will need to be prepared to meet the challenges of this recession with a list of cost saving measures that will keep your company lean, agile, flexible, and competitive.

So make 2009 the year of seeking out the advantages and opportunities of doing more with less.

Miles Technologies asked:


 

As news of a weakened economy continues to saturate the media and bombard business owners with negative messages, one company has found a creative way of adapting its services to fit within the current economic conditions and help businesses succeed.    

Miles Technologies, a provider of business technology solutions, has created Monthly Budget Plans that allow customers to budget their technology-related expenses without having to commit to a long term contractual agreement. 

According to Chris Miles, Chief Executive Officer of Miles Technologies, the company’s Monthly Budget Plans integrate separate services into one managed services package.  In a single plan a customer can select business services that include IT Help Desk & Support, Business Software Support, Website Updates, and Online Marketing and Public Relations, as well as strategic consulting for all services. 

Miles says that the Monthly Budget Plans were developed as a way to help customers continue productive business operations within the unsteady economic conditions by making managed services more cost effective.

“The Monthly Budget Plans were specifically designed with flexibility in mind,” explains Miles.  “Most managed services providers require that customers sign a contract committing them to a certain monthly fee with a two to three year contract term.  They lock in the customer which lowers the need to provide exceptional service in order to retain the customer. We’re different in that we do not require any specified length to the contract and they can cancel at any time. This way, the customer is using our services because we add value and not because of a contract term. We also allow for month-to-month flexibility in the plans in terms of both the level of services provided and the costs for those services.”

To further ensure the practicality of its monthly budget plans, Miles Technologies offers a one hour guaranteed response time for all budget plan customers 24 hours a day and seven days a week.  In addition, customers may roll over any unused monthly budget time from month to month.  

“We customize each budget plan in order to empower our customers with the best technology available for their businesses,” says Miles.  “These plans are meant to provide a complete realm of services, from supporting a custom software application to identifying and resolving network issues before they result in downtime.” 

According to Miles, the costs of outsourced IT services are easily justified when compared with the costs of a full time IT staff or the costs of unnecessary system downtime.  He emphasizes that the predictability of the newly developed Monthly Budget Plans make the services especially realistic in the current economy. 

Miles reports that the Monthly Budget Plans have been met with significant enthusiasm from customers.  “Our main goal is to exhaust all possible options for helping our customers thrive in these conditions,” Miles says.  “We are looking out for their businesses and trying to help them understand technology’s full potential so that they can make the best business decisions possible.  In short, if our customers succeed, then we have succeeded.”