 Chris Goh's "On the Net"
After more than six months of negotiations, and a drawn out selection process, the government contract to host our web and banking services went to one of the largest Internet Providers in Asia. But to my embarrassment, the ISP went into voluntary administration a week after we went live with them.
The work colleague who broke the news to me said that in the future, choosing an ISP would be based on how established and large the organisation was, because, as in the early 80s, 'no-one was ever sacked for buying IBM'.
It got me thinking at this point - in such a volatile market - that this was a good point.
But I doubt I would have chosen a different path if was to do it all again. But in the future I'll pay greater attention to risk minimisation.
With good planning you always have contingency plans when you're reliant on third parties. Through risk management you should also have a disaster recovery plan that will keep your organisation semi-operational during failures. This may sound like a daunting task, and possibly not as vital for small business, but in fact is quite easy, and it is a part of any good business plan. The most difficult part is always the planning - then the rest seems to fall in to place.
You will be able to identify quickly the minimum infrastructure, which includes people, you would need to keep the business operational. As you identify what's needed, your disaster recovery or change management process should look at what happens if these are removed. Small businesses are more resilient - partly because they are nimble in terms of being able to put out spot fires quickly and pay attention to any looming issues. But they should have some five point plan to deal with any issues that may lead to insolvency.
The technology industry is in a very awkward position, and has only really had about 15 years to mature. Any retailer or service provision business will tell you the competition is high and so are the capital costs. However, there are invariably niches in the technology market place still to be exploited and they can be entered and scaled to different investment levels. Most importantly, the technology market is highly dynamic, and you have to keep up with technological innovations to remain a player.
Only five years ago the Palm Pilot was the symbol of innovation, but today it has been overtaken by the competition.
The fact that small to medium businesses (SMBs) generate the largest revenue base in Australia is no accident. Many large establishments started out this way, although the large number of failures should remind businesses to take heed of their business plans.
HotNews
Of course the biggest news of the week is the Windows XP launch. Next week I'll cover XP's features and discuss what's good about it and whether it may be the operating system for you.
As concerns grow about biological warfare, the US government continues to secure its websites. The government is taking things so seriously, it's removing any personal information and contact details from agency websites.
After Compaq grabbed the world's attention with a system that helped map the the human blueprint, they were inspired to build a mammoth supercomputer, dubbed Terascale, with 3,000 Alpha EV64 processors in the back. It can crunch through 30 million calculations per second, which gives TeraFlops a whole new lease of life. With about 3 TeraBytes of RAM, you can be sure that the little beasty won't need to phone a friend if Eddie McGuire asks a tricky question.
Microsoft is slowly infiltrating the digital media industry and has established links in print and film productions. Not satisfied with managing his media interests, Bill Gates will be star in a Frasier episode this month. It will be interesting if they have a pie throwing plot…
Move over tear gas - the Airforce Research Laboratory in New Mexico is looking at new ways to disperse crowds. They have completed tests on microwave bombardment, saying the results show it forces crowds to scatter in seconds. The test results (and I'd like to know who they were testing it on?!) suggest that a person would have to stay over 230 seconds to suffer any damage to the skin. I'm sure with about 20,000 people at a soccer match, I can see how effective it would be to keep the wedges warm and start a stampede. Obviously someone's brain is already fried at logistics in the US airforce.
HotSites
www.fallenmartyrs.com/
This is an inspirational site of courage and hope, listing people who have given their all in the pursuit of goodness. Currently the site also has a simple Flash animation giving a tribute to those in the September 11 disaster.
www.drugfacts.com/
A useful site that contains information about various medicinal drugs available for all different types of ailments. It also has information and up to date news on drugs being trialled.
www.penguinclassics.com
Now everyone knows that Penguin Books is a publishing giant. You can now search for every publication it has ever produced. The site has online resources and online ordering.
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