Turbotek recently published the 2011 Information Technology Optimization guide. In it, we laid out some of the key business drivers for small businesses for this year and the IT initiatives that are going to help organizations meet their goals.
What are your key business drivers? What IT projects do you see as critical to meeting your business goals? Are there new technologies out there that you think may be helpful, but you do not know where to begin?
To summarize the whitepaper a bit, here are some of the key small business drivers predicted for 2011:
- Increased competition due to more marketing spend in an environment of modest econmic growth (< 3%), high unemployment and sluggish consumer spending
- More mobile device proliferation for everything from marketing to mobile payments (e.g. Starbucks app)
- Continued focus on green operations and technology
- Pressure to hire in cases where innovation is needed
Five of the major 2011 technology initiatives that will aid organizations faced with the challenges and opportunities above are:
- Virtualization
- Cloud
- Social Media
- Off-site storage and disaster recovery
- Security audits and vulnerability
Three of the major obstacles that small businesses face when deploying best practices in their environement are:
- Infrastructure documentation
- Lack of domain expertise
- Limited budget
The whitepaper then discusses the role of IT Managed Services as well as how to measure success. How have your plans for 2011 come together?
