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Letter to the Editor that appeared in the Financial Times on April 2, 2007; it is an example of my knowledge
of some IT subjects issues as well as provides some marketing/communications
advice to small business.
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Every small business needs
unique domain
By Bruce Steinberg
Published: April 2 2007 03:00
From Mr Bruce Steinberg.
Sir, Certainly "software as a service" can be of great benefit to the
end-users ("Free software and services packed with value", Digital Business,
March 28). But some issues associated with using such free tools, including
one that is potentially harmful, should not be overlooked.
While many small- and medium-- sized businesses may justifiably balk at
purchasing office application suites, which tend to be quite expensive, they
may be equally uncomfortable using free or low-cost hosted services such as
those from Google and Microsoft, albeit for different reasons. But there are
alternatives. OpenOffice, sponsored by Sun Microsystems, is a free, fully
featured and complete office application suite with a half-dozen components
(word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database and so on), some of
which are likely never even needed by some small- and medium-sized
businesses.
As the article pointed out, some small businesses and the self-employed use
free e-mail services. However, from a marketing standpoint, there is no
substitute for a unique domain, and with web-hosting services offering a
variety of plans - many available for far less than $100 a year and easily
self-administered - there is no excuse for using a generic domain for
business purposes.
Bruce Steinberg,
Communications, Economic, and Employment Consultant,
Alexandria, VA 22309, US
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