Power Up Your Small-Medium Business: A Guide to Enabling Network Technologies

By Robyn Aber

Addressing the need for clear, business-aware technical information, this work explores the business value of network technologies and how to gauge what's right for your organization. It also provides... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1587051354
• ISBN13: 9781587051357
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Cisco Systems
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Powerful Business Guide for Network Success

Finally someone has written a book on computer networking for the man/woman who signs the check rather than the network technician. While there are hundreds of books for executives about management style, organization, profit/loss, people selection and marketing. This is the first easy-to-read, easy-to-understand book we've read that tells you how to use technology to streamline your business processes and use the dizzying array of previously mysterious technologies to monitor and control business processes, product/service development and reaching the right customers profitably.Ms Aber has balanced her technical background at 3Com and Cisco with her practical SMB experience gained involved in a struggling start-up - OneWorld Systems - and modestly successful mid-sized firm - Novartis. Power-Up Your Small-Medium Business is divided into four logical sections - the value of networking, network basics, advanced technologies and implementation considerations. The network basics section is probably very intriguing to people who tinker and tweak technology, for most business owners and managers we thought it was a lot like reading a book on how your car engine works - interesting but more than we wanted to know. Because most SMB owners/mangers are more focused on results rather than the how-to, the first section - value of networking - is a good primer on the strategic aspects of the technologies. Forget about having to take a computer science course on how network technologies do whatever they do. Whether you sit at the desk where the buck stops or have to make recommendations that will help your area of responsibility - engineering, manufacturing, logistics, marketing or sales - Ms Aber explores why business people need to use the technology in dollar and cents as well as real business terms. Since we know enough about the technologies to be dangerous, we skipped to the fourth implementation section because this is where most sales and technical people seem to throw up all the smokes and mirrors as to what they are going to do for you. Again using words that real people can understand she lays out a variety of application scenarios that small - medium business managers can consider. Her approach is to give you a set of basic to full-blown technology recommendations you can use depending upon your budget. More importantly, unlike most technologists who fall in love with and design/implement a closed-loop solution for you she outlines some technology growth plans you can use. As a result you don't have to commit to solution A, B, C, D or E but can buy off on solution A/B and have a plan on how you can get to E as your company grows. In addition and equally important she gives the reader an insight into the technologies you may want to consider - wireless everywhere, video-enablement and electronic business-to-business or business-to-consumer - that firms may possibly use to give them a competitive edge in their markets. Just by readin