Businesses of all sizes are facing unprecedented competitive and economic challenges as they attempt to satisfy their customers’ rapidly changing needs and support their employees’ rapidly changing work requirements.

Globalization and eCommerce have dramatically changed the competitive landscape for companies of all sizes, including small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs). Escalating fuel costs and tightening credit markets have also severely impacted the business operations of companies.

Companies must achieve greater customer intimacy in order to win and retain customer satisfaction and loyalty. Companies must also support increasingly dispersed and mobile workers in order to ensure employee productivity. These challenges demand new forms of communications and collaboration, along with greater reliability and reporting to meet rising regulatory and compliance requirements.

These trends are also forcing companies to adopt new technologies and new methods of managing these technologies in order to maximize their business value.

The good news is that there is a myriad of new networking and collaboration technologies to respond to these demands. The problem is that many companies lack the inhouse skills to capitalize on these technologies and effectively manage them to achieve their business objectives.

Fortunately, companies no longer have to do it all by themselves or hand over their entire IT/network operation to an outsourcer. There are a growing number of managed service and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ‘out-tasking’ alternatives that can help companies leverage today’s new technologies.

I am pleased to be a contributor to this blog and provide THINKstrategies' perspective regarding ways companies of all sizes, but especially SMBs, can address these challenges, capitalize on new technologies and focus their limited inhouse resources on key corporate objectives and initiatives rather than mundane or frustrating technology management issues.

Unlike other blogs that offer the vendor point-of-view about technology trends, we hope this blog will be a forum for IT and business decision-makers to provide their perspectives and best practices regarding today's business technology management challenges and opportunities. We believe this peer-to-peer dialogue will make this blog unique and valuable.

Please let us know if you’d like to contribute your views, and give us your feedback so we can be sure we are meeting your needs.