Letter to the Editor, IT Issues

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.

 

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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