We have done business off and on with Mobel Electronics based out of Quebec for as long as I have been in this industry.
We found out that they are no longer in business:
Note the last update of the site was this Spring. The site is still there but the phone numbers are disconnected.
There are any number of reasons why the companies we have seen go belly up over the last year or so.
The economy may definitely play a part in their demise, but there are other factors for those of us that provide I.T. related products and services to keep in mind.
One factor is the oncoming Cloud push and all of the logistics of saddling client’s data up there.
Getting to know the various Cloud vendors and their offerings and how those offerings can augment the solutions we provide our clients is critical to the longevity of our I.T. business.
For big enterprise, cutting wholesale the various internal I.T. departments to outsourcing business needs like e-mail, SharePoint, and other related services is an almost no-brainer.
At this point, and perhaps this is premature, we see that the SMB I.T. solutions will probably incorporate a blend of Cloud and in-house solutions for the near future due to specific Line of Business application needs.
Another factor in all of this is the ability to get beyond sitting there waiting for the phone to ring. For consumers of I.T. technologies, which most SMB companies are, the information for getting their company connected, accessible via the Internet, and some sort of mobile phone access will be acquired via search results.
Getting our name out there and in those search results can be done in any number of ways, but keeping a commitment to those methods and working hard at it is key to their success . . . much like the efforts we need to put into keeping our business growing.
This blog, for example, only started yielding business requests after being around almost 2 years!
No effort = no success.
A final factor to consider is partnerships. What companies are we going to partner up with to provide our clients with the best possible solutions for their business needs?
These partners may include hardware and software manufacturers, distribution channels for the hardware and software products we purchase, frontline tier 1 product manufacturers, and Cloud vendors.
The companies we team with will directly reflect the skill set we provide to our clients. If we limit our partnerships to only a few vendors that make it fairly easy to get to know their products and services, then we may end up in a lot of trouble.
Learning any new product offering is critical to our success going forward. The deeper the Cloud reaches into the traditional SMB company the more our knowledge and skill set will be the key to growing our I.T. services company.
And one more thought: The deeper the Cloud reaches into the traditional SMB company, the harder Managed Services providers will be hit.
Monthly revenues will need to come from another source.
Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)
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