Trends coming together make a plan for small business

George Peppard said as his character Hannibal Smith on The A-Team, "I love it when a plan comes together." Several trends, if not a plan, are coming together in interesting ways in technology for small businesses. Mix equal parts of online applications, netbooks, and constant wireless networking together, and you get new ways to do more work in more places for less money.

Let's look at the three trends bumping into each other. First, wireless networking of various kinds has been around quite a while. Anyone reading this not use Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n) on a regular basis? Add in 3G wireless networking for data over cell phone networks, such as Web access for the iPhone, and today you have trouble finding places not to be connected. In other words, for US$60 per month (and up), you can be sure you're connected to the Internet if you're anywhere near a Wi-Fi hot spot or mobile phone tower.

Second, let's add in the relatively new notebook form factor called the netbook. These tiny, as in trade paperback book size, portable computers usually run low power processors and often have limited storage space because they leave out the hard disk to conserve weight and battery life. Just about the hottest thing going in portable computing lately, these netbooks have enough horsepower for the majority of laptop users. Add in the price range of US$250-$400, and you make very portable computing very affordable. No, you can't edit video or crunch big numbers with these, but you can do what 90 percent of SMB desktops do, and do it for less.

Finally, let's stir in the huge growth in software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications that run in browsers. High dollar pundits say SaaS is about the only part of the software market that continues to grow, and it's growing faster every day. Again, who doesn't regularly use some SaaS applications? Any Webmail service from companies like Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail all fall under the SaaS banner, as does Facebook, Flikr, SalesForce.com, Google Docs, Zoho, HyperOffice, and on and on for more services than we have space to list.

I've said before I'm a fan of SaaS applications, because they address an issue critical to small businesses: secure collaboration. Everyone with Internet access and a browser can use SaaS applications no matter where they are, making remote access to business data simple and cheap rather than complex and expensive.

Let me add in one more technology that appeared a few years ago, then disappeared, and is coming back with a vengeance: the Webtop, or browser-based suite of applications. While I agree that the Zoho Suite and Google Apps, among others, fit the Webtop definition, I'm impressed by a new Webtop player I never saw coming: Symantec. Their new GoEverywhere "online personal workspace" acts as a Webtop portal to all your other SaaS applications. It's still in beta, but the combination of the three trends mentioned earlier, and Webtops like this, will change how we think of personal computing.

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Why is Symantec into Webtops? Don Kleinshnitz, vice president and general manager of Symantec GoEverywhere told me, "we're a leader in security and storage and systems management, and we want to improve user's computing in all three areas. This is good for small businesses, and it manages itself." The Symantec new project incubator cooked this up, and they seem serious about this.

Sticking with their management mantra, Symantec made GoEverywhere more an organizing tool for various SaaS applications than a productivity application itself. Their value comes from providing a familiar desktop, like you'd see in Windows XP, but with SaaS applications behind all the icons.

They preload their demo with Zoho and Box.net and major Webmail applications. The "My Safe Place" icon opens up a list of all the SaaS connections you want, and you can pre-load your login credentials to all of them for one click easy access. Want to check your Google Calendar? Add your login name and password to the edit screen, and then one click opens up Google Calendar.

Of course, once you load Google Mail, one click can open Google Calendar without Symantec's help. So I don't believe GoEverywhere is the end-all for Webtop organizers, but I'm impressed Symantec came up with this and made a big splash first. It's free to try now, since it's still in beta, and will likely live on as some "freemium" service, according to Kleinshnitz. You know, get many functions for free, but pay a few bucks per month for more advanced features.

While I'm mentioning impressive firsts in this new collision space for our three trends, let's talk Radio Shack. Yes, Radio Shack. They started advertising a bundle that includes the Acer Aspire One and sells the netbook like a cell phone: get a discount on the hardware if you sign up for the wireless data service for two years. I and others predicted this would happen, so kudos to Radio Shack to be the first one that I saw doing that. If you know of others, send me a note.

The combination of a netbook with wireless data service and a Webtop like GoEverywhere makes constant computing not only possible but relatively inexpensive. I can certainly see Millennials (those born after 1980) who don't have a land line telephone connection because they live on their cell phone make the same jump from cable Internet service to a netbook and a service plan. Businesses can provide many employees a cell phone and a netbook from the same provider, and hook them up to all the applications they need through their browser.

This new approach to computing won't work for every employee, but it will work for the majority of mobile workers. Where people like UPS spent millions moving from a clipboard to a customized computing tablet, netbooks, wireless, and SaaS allow you to make the same jump for a few dollars per month.

P.S. -- Leverage, a fun new show on TNT, updates the A-Team idea as outlaws band together to fight the system on behalf of the little guy. Wouldn't it be nice if small businesses had a real group fighting on our behalf?