Where the Tech Action is...

April 4, 2007 | Tech Trends

This week I’m camped out on “˜Ye Olde Cape Cod visiting my Mom. She has a very old, very dusty WebTV box for email and wouldn’t know a broadband connection if she stumbled over it. So, during the days I drive into downtown Chatham and make camp in a small conference room here at ClickCapeCod. These guys have forged a vibrant little business servicing the computer needs of small businesses all over the Cape. Inside their offices my worlds are colliding. I listened to a call this morning about email problems at the Chatham Squire, the local watering hole where I worked summers during college. Another call just came in from Ricotta Real Estate, the local firm started by John Ricotta, an old family friend and employer of my sister-in-law.

At Sparkpr, lots of our clients market to small and medium-size businesses, either directly or through the channel. Fonality makes business phone systems for small businesses. They have created an inexpensive and elegant alternative to the rigid and arcane systems that big telecom companies have been selling for years. Zend is an amazing open source company that makes products for PHP, a smart, speedy scripting language for building web applications. Small business love PHP because they can experiment with new online services and make changes on the fly based on what works and what doesn’t. Back in 2005 we launched SpikeSource, and now they are solely focused on selling open source to small businesses that couldn’t otherwise afford things such as content management, business intelligence and CRM.

For decades big IT departments have been the Holy Grail for technology companies. Nowadays, the occasional true innovation triggers new spending but, otherwise, big company budgets grow rather modestly from year to year. Contrast that with the 67 million small businesses in the world and the $133 billion they’ll spend on technology over the next few years. It’s no wonder small businesses like ClickCapeCod represent the next frontier for technology. Funny, but all of the sudden I don’t feel so far away from where the action is.

Rebecca

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