The ‘age of broadband’ has arrived. Broadband is gaining
critical mass among the SME community and it’s not difficult to see
why it is likely to be your optimum internet platform. Sally
Whittle reports on how broadband could allow you to compete more
effectively with larger enterprises as well as your
peers
After years of hype and false dawns, we can finally say
the ‘age of broadband’ has arrived. Maybe not in time to ride the
wave of the internet boom, but broadband has something more
important: critical mass.
By the end of this year, 1.8 million households in the UK will
have access to high-speed internet services, or just over 5% of all
households nationwide. Globally, there are 80 million subscribers
to high-speed services, an increase of 75% over the 2002 figures,
according to research group Point Topic. Broadband isn’t just
changing what we do in the office: consumer adoption of broadband
mobile phones and wireless broadband is also increasing
dramatically.
Broadband-enabled
Businesses like yours are beginning to adopt broadband in large
numbers. Research by Computer Weekly shows that 54% of UK SMEs now
have high-speed connections, and BT is signing up 3,000 new
broadband customers every month, says Jerry Thompson, Director of
Business Broadband at BT. "Over the last 12 months we’ve seen
enormous growth in demand for broadband from SMEs," he says. "We’re
now in the period of white hot growth."
SMEs have traditionally lagged larger businesses in adoption of
new technologies, and broadband has been no exception. "SMEs
associate technology with risk, and they really need more
hand-holding," says Ranulf Scarbrough, Program Manager at Act Now,
which offers advice and support to SMEs in Cornwall.
Act Now recently linked up with BT to broadband-enable local
exchanges in the region, but persuading local SMEs to adopt
broadband isn’t simply a question of availability, says Scarbrough:
"We sent in advisors to help with installation and support, and in
some cases we co-financed the new ICT required to use broadband
effectively," he says.
It is not out of the realms of possibility that moving to
broadband will create more problems than it solves. Certainly,
having an always-on, high-speed connection does put your business
at greater risk of virus attacks and other security problems, and
you must seriously consider upgrading security, server and other
software packages. "With broadband you may want to have a hub, and
share the connection between several people, and that might mean
using network cards and creating IP addresses for each computer,"
says John Coulthard, Head of Small Business with Microsoft UK. "But
those things can be sorted in a couple of weeks and don’t need to
be too troublesome if you have good partners."
Moving to broadband can, in some cases, simplify your IT
function, adds BT’s Thompson. A business moving from six dial-up
connections to a single broadband connection will find that the
amount of time taken to support users will fall. BT has also
developed a 24-hour support package, specifically designed for SMEs
using broadband services, which provides online support through a
dedicated call centre.
Management issues
There are other benefits. Broadband customers typically use
routers (rather than modems) to connect to the internet, and these
can be far more adept at re-establishing connections if there is a
problem on the phone line. Security patches and software upgrades
can be easily downloaded over a high-speed connection and often
automated so that the user doesn’t have to spend time making sure
software is up-to-date.
This kind of support has also helped small businesses to see the
potential of broadband beyond faster internet surfing. For many
small companies, a high-speed connection makes new technologies
such as wireless LAN, virtual private networks (VPN) and online
transactions possible for the first time. "Along with the adoption
of broadband, we’re seeing an increasing interest in things like
wireless networking, remote working and e-commerce," says
Thompson.
Management issues
Of course, these services existed before broadband, but the key
point is that the applications should now be affordable enough to
persuade you to go out and buy broadband services, says Andy
Kitchener, Chief Executive of e-commerce software vendor
Shopcreator. "Broadband is evolving from an exciting new technology
to being a platform for these powerful, always-on applications,"
says Kitchener. Applications such as online back up or voice over
internet protocol phone services would not have thrived without
broadband, Kitchener argues.
For the 54% of businesses like yours who have broadband
connections, there are different priorities. Recent research by
Shopcreator and BT Global Services identified four areas where
broadband has most impact on businesses: e-trading; back--up and
security; collaborative working; and cost reduction.
"Everyone is familiar with the benefits of broadband for
personal use, whether it’s faster music downloads or faster email,
but that doesn’t necessarily translate to the business
environment," says Kitchener.
"For businesses, the real benefit of high-speed access is the
ability to use faster, more reliable connections for functions like
e-commerce and web conferencing."
When independent software developer T-Plan moved to broadband in
September 2003, the biggest benefit wasn’t the increased speed of
its internet connection. "What had the biggest impact was the
ability to use things like VPN," says Steve Coombs, an account
manager with the firm.
T-Plan has 20 employees, many of whom work remotely. VPN
software allows those staff to securely access software on the main
office server, and have instant access to email and other business
systems. "It’s as though they are in the office," says Coombs.
Since adopting broadband, T-Plan has also been able to provide
e-learning applications for employees and web-based conferences and
training programs for customers.
The company has even invested in a new remote support
application that allows support staff to control remotely
customers’ PCs to diagnose software problems quickly and
effectively.
"We used to rely on a series of dial-up connections, which
probably cost the same as what we have now," says Coombs, "but
there’s no comparison. With broadband we can be so much more
responsive."
As well as better support and new applications, broadband can
also help your business to smarten up its IT systems and compete
more effectively with larger competitors.
"Broadband lets businesses do things like integrate their
website with their ordering system in real-time," says David
Greggains, Vice-President of Operations with the DSL Forum, an
industry consortium that promotes high-speed DSL access.
In addition, Greggain believes that businesses like yours are
changing the types of service they offer because of broadband
access. "New broadband technologies like SDSL (symmetric DSL, which
offers equally high upload and download speeds) let companies do
completely new things, like online gaming and video-on-demand," he
says.
New technologies
The growth of broadband in the SME market has also persuaded
enterprise software vendors to create new, hosted versions of
applications that you can access over the internet, thereby
allowing you to compete more effectively with enterprises.
"Companies like Siebel and Microsoft are now creating products
designed with broadband connections in mind," says BT’s
Thompson.
"It’s putting the IT systems of smaller businesses into an
entirely different league."
Case study: The Bean Shop
The Bean Shop has sold thousands of bags of freshly roasted
coffee to restaurants, cafes and consumers in recent years.
However, the business has seen dramatic growth since investing in
broadband technology.
Based in Perth, Scotland, The Bean Shop buys coffee beans
wholesale from around the world, roasts and blends the beans, and
sells the blended coffee to local consumers and restaurants. In
July 2003, the company decided to try and expand its market beyond
Perth by creating an e-commerce website.
Moving from the existing dial-up internet connection to a
broadband service was a necessity, explains John Bruce, Managing
Director of The Bean Shop. "We needed to be able to maintain a
database of products and to handle transactions promptly and we
couldn’t have done any of that with a dial-up account," he says.
"Dial-up would also tie up the phone line, and we wanted fixed
costs each month."
The Bean Shop paid £200 for the installation of BT Broadband, in
addition to BT’s Internet Trader Pack, which allows small
businesses to rapidly develop a transactional website. Developing
its own site was a steep learning curve for the business, Bruce
admits, but the whole process took less than three weeks. "We had
the line installed behind the counter, but even so, there was very
little disruption to the business," Bruce says. "There’s occasional
downtime on the network, but it’s very easy to keep the technology
up and running."
The broadband connection has allowed The Bean Shop to reach new
customers in Europe and the US, and has also improved the
efficiency of the business. Because coffee deteriorates rapidly
once ground, it is essential that orders are received and processed
quickly. "We can now turn around orders much more quickly, and
we’re constantly connected so we can predict demand much more
accurately," says Bruce.
The company has also taken advantage of packages from BT for
security and performance, which, Bruce admits, The Bean Shop would
struggle to provide internally. "We aren’t IT experts, so it’s
ideal to have a checklist that BT takes care of, for a flat fee,"
he says. "BT is a big company and have a team of people who know a
lot more about internet security than I do."