Its Sunday evening and for a change its warm and sunny in this neck of the woods and I am very pleased that for the first time in a while I am using my lap-top in the garden, oh the joy of technology!
As a techie I subscribe to a number of industry journals and recently I received a newsletter from TechRepublic that I would like to share with you. I think it would be fair to say that TechRepublic is aimed at technology professionals. However the TechRepublic team often offer fantastic advice, that with a bit of translation, is just as relevant to a much wider audience. Back to the news letter in question: 10 essential tools and services for work-at-home IT pros. All of it makes excellent reading for anyone who regularly works from home but I would like to draw your attention to point 1 in particular i.e. the need for a quality Internet service.
I come into contact with a number of small businesses, run from home, and I am amazed at how many are trying to run a business using an Internet service aimed at the average domestic user. If you haven't got time to read the entire article I would like to share with you the valid points raised by TechRepublic:
"If you are working from home, it is obvious that you will need the Internet all day long to do your job. Where a lot of people go wrong on this is by getting cheap Internet service, such as a consumer grade DSL or cable modem line. The problem is, these services are aimed at providing fast downloads, sometimes with a “burst” of bandwidth for a big item. But they have slow upload speeds, no static IP address, and no guarantees of service quality.
Instead, I recommend a business class account. While it is more expensive, the benefits for a home worker are huge. Having a static IP address lets the home office feel more comfortable in opening services to you, for example, and host services yourself if needed. Business class accounts come with bandwidth and technical support response time guarantees, as opposed to the “best effort” you get with consumer accounts. And many times, the bandwidth is segregated from the residential access so your access does not get jumbled up with the mass of BitTorrent, Xbox Live, and Netflix from the house next door"
In a nutshell if you depend on the Internet to run your business you need to ensure that the service provided by your supplier is fit for purpose. Business Internet services are more expensive but those costs need to balanced against the costs to your business of having poor, limited access. Do you know what the financial impact will be to your business if you loose the Internet access that you rely on?
No comments:
Post a Comment