The difference between small business and big business has always been more than the number of employees and the dollars of revenue.  Big businesses have information technology (IT) infrastructure that allows them to better collaborate, analyze data and make complex decisions.

Only big businesses are sophisticated and worldly, right? 

Well guess what?  To compete today everybody is being forced to play the same game.  Suddenly, being a small consulting practice, a regional insurance broker or a manufacturing company in the Midwest is not as simple as it used to be.  In fact, it’s gotten a lot more interesting.

If you’re a small business today, it’s inevitable that your sales channels and supply chains will reach across the country, if not around the world. The key to managing this business sprawl is teamwork and access to data. Data has to be accurate and real time and teams have to always be in touch no matter where they are and the time of day. Achieving this is a lot more challenging as employees and business activities become more far-flung.

Here’s the rub. Big business IT, and especially networks, are too complex and costly for small businesses to build and manage. While small businesses need big business IT capabilities, they have to be…

• Simple. 
• Secure.
• Flexible. 
• Expandable. 

And, of course, affordable.  We are small business people, right?  That’s one thing we all have in common.

A new generation of cloud-based IT services are on the way that will do just that. I’m not talking about a mish-mash of consumer apps that are hard to manage and lack business-level security. I mean big business-like IT capabilities that use the power of cloud computing to make them available and affordable to ANY business.  Now access to IT technology doesn’t have to keep you from growing business.

You may be a small business today, but that no longer means you can’t play the game like the big boys.