.Roaring Mouse

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Cloud computing” being used in technology circles for a while now. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, cloud computing simply means that instead of having your software and data on your hard-drive, it’s located on a bunch of servers somewhere in the ‘cloud’. Your interaction with software is primarily conducted through your web browser and you access the software and your data through the Internet. (you can go here for a more detailed Wikipedia explanation)

Cloud computing in its rawest sense is not a new idea. If you had a Hotmail email account when it first launched years ago, you were an early adopter of cloud computing. After webmail, the next step in cloud computing was web photo-sharing. Web photo-sharing allowed you to upload your images to a server somewhere and display them without forcing you to learn how to create a webpage in HTML. Web photo-sharing was a big step in helping democratize photography, as it made it easy for people to share their photos with friends and family.

While email and web photo-sharing were the first cloud computing services, cloud computing wasn’t much of a hot topic until more recent times. It can be argued that the real fanfare over cloud computing truly began when commercially-focused pieces of software migrated to the ‘cloud’. The advent of Salesforce.com placed a spotlight on the promise of cloud computing to improve employee efficiency and productivity by providing them easy access to important information, at any time of the day. Salesforce.com’s online CRM offering led the way to prominence for other ‘cloud’ enterprise, productivity and storage offerings such as Netsuite (an Enterprise Resource Planning app), 37 Signals’s suite of software, Google Apps, Zoho and even Lenovo’s Online Data Backup service.

The advantages of cloud computing for a small business are manifold.

1.        Low cost: Cloud computing software companies charge a small monthly subscription fee instead of large per seat licenses. Now, instead of needing a large sum of money for capital expenditure, you’ve turned your software into a monthly operating expense, helping you lower your capital financing needs. In the event you don’t like the software, you can simply cancel your subscription and take a loss only on a month’s worth of subscription fees.

2.        Device independence: You’re not tied to a specific computing device, since all you need to run the software is a web browser. Use your smartphone, desktop, notebook or netbook on operating systems as diverse as Mac OS X and Linux to conduct business. Small businesses that don’t have a big IT budget can use a “bring what you got” approach to run their business.

3.        Anytime, anywhere access: Since your files are stored in the ‘cloud’, you can work on them even if you’re not close to your primary PC. You can leave your computer at home when you’re traveling and use a friend’s laptop or use the desktop at the library to do some work.

4.        Automatic backups: Cloud computing companies may provide multiple levels of redundancy to ensure that data you store in the cloud is safe. Data backups are automatic, and while you may pay for storage in the cloud, you don’t have to buy backup software and extra hard disk drives to store your data.

5.        Automatic and transparent software updates: You don’t have to spend your hard-earned money upgrading your software every so often, or bite your nails as you upgrade your software to the latest version, hoping that the upgrade doesn’t cause any instabilities or crashes in your system. Cloud-based software will update itself without you telling it to do so. The only time you’ll notice is when you see the nifty new feature you’ve been requesting for months suddenly appear in your browser.

6.        Email-less collaboration: Some cloud-based software such as Google Docs and 37 Signals’s suite allow you to collaborate in real time without having to email files back and forth to each other. Changes you make are updated immediately, eliminating the lag time between when you complete your edits or changes and when your business partner or employee has access to those updates. Add VoIP or video chats to the mix and you have a great collaboration platform.

7.        Security: Since your application and data files aren’t on your hard disk, the threat of viruses, trojans and worms corrupting your important information decreases significantly. You can now entrust your data to enterprise-class security, without spending the dollars to do so.

Cloud computing promises a lot of great things, but there are reasons why it has yet to become more prevalent. Here are some of the things I believe will need to exist in order for cloud computing to take off.

1.        Ubiquitous connectivity: Since all interactions happen through the Internet, being connected is a fundamental requirement for cloud computing to become successful. With the proliferation of smartphones and mobile broadband on notebooks and netbooks, we are making major strides towards realizing the positives of cloud computing.

2.        99.9999% Reliability: If you’re accustomed to your software always doing what you want it to do, you may occasionally be frustrated when your cloud-based software is down, even for a few minutes. The reality is that though not all cloud-based software suffers from any appreciable downtime, some do, and until everyone’s software works as consistently as their hard-drive-based counterparts, en masse adoption of cloud computing will not happen.

3.        Offline capability: While you may be connected to the Internet most of the time, there will be times when poor WiFi or cell reception will force you to work on a local copy of your files. Being able to work on your files while you’re not connected is an important requirement for widespread adoption of cloud-computing. Thankfully, technologies such as Adobe Air and Google Gears enable offline use of cloud-based software.

Cloud computing is changing the way we perceive software, allowing us to work and collaborate in ways we could never have done in the past. The addition of value-add, secondary services that are attached to cloud-based software and services changes that paradigm even more. I believe that the move to an all-Internet based software environment for most business software is imminent. Perhaps you’re an early adopter and have already made the switch completely. I’d appreciate it if you’d take the poll below and share your thoughts on cloud-based computing in the comments section.

P.S. This is a list of cloud-based software that I’ve personally found useful.

TO DO LIST: Remember the Milk – www.rememberthemilk.com

PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Basecamp from 37 Signals – www.37signals.com

CRM, including Inventory Management: ZOHO CRM – www.zoho.com/crm

PERSONAL FINANCE: Mint – www.mint.com

Over the weekend, I caught up with an old classmate of mine and during our conversation, he introduced me to the concept of “search funds”. A search fund is a pool of money that’s primarily used to finance the “search stage” of a business acquisition. This encompasses the following steps:

1. Identifying a business to acquire
2. Due diligence and evaluation of the target business
3. Negotiation of the deal

Search funds are structured organizationally in the same manner as a traditional investment vehicle, with one or more managing partners and several limited partners. The managing partners take the most active role in the search fund, and are responsible for all the steps described above. Limited partners are usually high net-worth individuals who provide the funding for the “search”. In a typical search fund, the limited partners are given the first right of refusal to invest in the target company once it has been identified and vetted. In practice, the majority of the invested capital is raised from the group of original limited partners.

Where search funds differ from private equity (PE) groups is in the focus of the investment. While PEs are generally viewed as “strip and flip” investors, whose goal is to maximize their investment within the shortest period of time, search funds take a longer term view of their investments. The managing partners of search funds become active managers of the acquired business and are focused on running the business much as if they started it themselves. The benefits to sellers of the business include:

1.      A possible answer to succession planning issues

2.      An exit strategy that allows them to liquidate while preserving the core tenets of the company

For the aspiring entrepreneur(s), a search funds provides the following advantages:

1.      Time to evaluate the right industry and company to match his/her/their skillsets and interests

2.      The ability to inherit a business that’s already operational and profitable instead of having to start from scratch

Currently, there are approximately 200 active search funds and most were started by business school and law school graduates. However, the concept should be intriguing for anyone who would like to own and operate their own business, but do not want to start from scratch. For more information on search funds, please check out the table and the links below:

Stanford Graduate School of Business search fund page

Interview with some search funders

I’d like to thank Andrew Matricaria at Lakeshore Capital Partners, LLC for his detailed and patient explanation of search funds.

Several  years ago, the choices for notebook PCs were somewhat limited. In general, you’d find notebooks that had display panels that spanned in size from 12″ to 15″. Anything outside of this range was unconventional, and hence, expensive. Today, though, a plethora of different display sizes has become mainstream. You’ll just as easily find an 8.9″ notebook at an online computer store as you would a 17″ system, all at prices that are significantly cheaper than they were even 3 years ago. In fact, notebooks are so affordable now that more than half of all PC sales in the US and Canada in the most recently closed calendar quarter were comprised of notebooks (55.2% in the US, to be precise). However, with choice comes confusion, and the recent entry of the ‘netbook’ category of devices into the mix complicates matters even more. Aside from working on the ThinkPad SL, I’m also the product manager on Lenovo’s IdeaPad S-series netbooks and I’d like to summarize some of the major differences between netbooks and notebooks so that you can make a more informed decision about which the right system for you is. Some of the information isn’t universally true, but it’s safe to assume that the information is valid for sub-$500 netbooks. Please feel free to ask me questions about these systems in the comments section and I’d appreciate it if you would also participate in the accompanying poll.

Virtually every successful person, be it in business, sports or entertainment, can point to one or more people who helped guide and shape her/his path to success. Even the most talented athletes or naturally savvy businesspeople need feedback and suggestions for improvement in order to achieve their true potential. While coaches are de rigueur in sports, the role isn’t nearly as pervasive in small business. I was curious about why this is so, since one can argue that on the whole, getting the right coaching in business has greater implications than in sports. As I thought about it further, I came up with reasons why some kind of business coaching or mentorship would be valuable and have listed them below.

1. A coach can help you develop skills you lack and make up for the deficiencies as you develop your ability
2. They help you to stay motivated even when times get tough
3. They force you to create an actionable business plan and make you stay focused on the plan, making you more efficient
4. You can tap into their resource network for anything from funding sources to marketing ideas
5. If you’re a sole proprietor, it’s nice to have someone who knows about your business celebrate your successes with you

While the list isn’t exhaustive, I think it captures most of the value that coaches bring to the table. I think that these reasons are good enough to justify the investment in a coach, even if the sessions are on an ‘as-needed’ basis. Do you have a business coach or have you used one in the past? Why or why not?

A lot of emphasis was placed on the multimedia experience that users have when they use the SL. We know that many, many small business PC users use their notebooks for more than just work. While the idea of “digital convergence” has still yet to truly realize itself, we’ve learned that the notebook is the primary source of entertainment for many people. With that in mind, we specified the SL with some pretty nifty features. The handsome speaker grille above the keyboard is more than just decorative! It hints at the multimedia potential of the SL and we made sure that the experience is not disappointing. The SL400 and SL500 have two 2W stereo speakers, while the SL300 has two 1.5W stereo speakers and all three models are specified with Intel HD audio. In my opinion, the sound for a business class notebook is outstanding! All SL machines also come with a dual array microphone, located just above the display. Skype and other VOIP users will be glad about this, as the microphones ensure that your voice input is clearly captured. Select models will come with an integrated camera – 1.3MP on the SL300 and 2MP on the SL400 and 500.

The audio control buttons are now on the left and the switches we use have enough of an actuation force that there’s no threat of accidentally depressing the audio buttons when you’re typing. Well, not unless you apply the finger pressure of King Kong when you type, that is. For those of you who need a little extra ‘oomph!’ in your graphics processing, the ThinkPad SL offers the option of an nVidia graphics card on all three SL models.

As nice as these other features are, though, probably the most exciting multimedia features on SL are the HDMI port, which comes standard on all SL systems and the optional Blu-ray rewritable drive. Match this combo up to your HDTV and your ThinkPad SL could very well be the center of your high-definition multimedia universe.

As I promised in my first post, here’s a more detailed look at the ThinkPad SL. The first thing you’ll notice about the ThinkPad SL is that it has a glossy top cover and an angular, more contemporary design. These design elements help to set the SL apart from our other ThinkPads. All SL models also come with a VibrantView glossy display, and anti-glare versions are available on SL400 and SL500. The VibrantView displays project richer, more vibrant colors and crisper images. The keyboard area of the SL is newly designed and a large speaker grille just above the top of the keyboard hints at the multimedia features of the SL. The audio control buttons have been moved to the side to make way for the grille, while the status indicator LEDs are now on the right of the keyboard. The keyboard, as I already stated, retains the legendary keyboard feel of the ThinkPad family. Another ThinkPad feature that remains a constant is the UltraNav – the trackpoint and touchpad combination. I personally am a trackpoint convert and will never go back to a touchpad if I can help it, but touchpad users will be glad to know that the SL has one.

Of course, a ThinkPad isn’t a ThinkPad unless you can rely on it, and we built the ThinkPad SL to be no exception. While the ThinkPad SL doesn’t have the magnesium top or bottom rollcages of its cousins, the SL design was subjected to and passed extremely rigorous test criteria before it left our ThinkPad development labs in Yamato, Japan. Rest assured that before all is said and done, the SL-series will live up to its billing as a ThinkPad and will definitely put to rest any perception or claim that this is just a rebadged Lenovo 3000.

In my next post, we’ll explore some of the fun elements of this business machine!

Hello everyone, my name is Brandon Hoe and I’m a product manager in the ThinkPad SL notebook group at Lenovo. It is with great joy that I present “Roaring Mouse,” Lenovo’s Small Business blog. This blog is significant to Lenovo for two reasons – it marks the launch of a completely new line of small business-focused ThinkPads and signifies Lenovo’s commitment to a dialog with small business owners everywhere. I hope that over time, I will understand your needs a little better and provide tips, tricks and solutions to help you run your business with a few less headaches. The first couple of posts will focus on what our new small business offerings are, but I aim to explore small business topics that aren’t necessarily related to PCs in the ensuing posts.

After conversations with our customers and business partners, my team and I learned that small business owners wanted us to work on a computing solution, not just a new computer. One of my friends, who owns a small business said, “I don’t need just another computer. I have other IT related issues to contend with, and just a new laptop won’t help me deal with them.” We took this feedback to heart, and worked hard to put together a computing solution that extends beyond just the hardware. Lenovo’s new Small Business thrust is made up of three components, the new ThinkPad SL, a new suite of services and a software solution that is targeted at Small Business.

To appease the gadget geeks among you, I’d like to start off by introducing Lenovo’s new ThinkPad addition, the ThinkPad SL. Lenovo currently sells millions of ThinkPads to small business customers, but a common complaint we receive from our small business customers is that although the ThinkPad is generally great, there are necessary features that are not included and unnecessary features that are. I’ve also heard from some folks who think that the design of our ‘classic’ ThinkPads is, well, a bit too ‘classic.’ What you do like is the ThinkPad’s reliability, that wonderful keyboard feel, the option of a trackpoint or touchpad and strangely enough, that the ThinkPad is black! My team and I have spent many, many hours ruminating, discussing and arguing about how to fulfill your desire for a small business ThinkPad. The challenge we set ourselves was that the new machine had to have all the hallmark ThinkPad features and some relevant new ones and that it also had to be packaged in a wrapper that would be unique and differentiated, yet be instantly recognizable as a ThinkPad. While the jury remains out on whether we’ve accomplished our goals, we do know that we’ve crafted this machine with a great amount of care and love. More on the ThinkPad SL in my next post. I hope you’ll come back to learn more about my baby!