We have all been told by our parents at one time or another in our childhood that if we are not going to do something right then simply don't bother doing it all.  Excellent parental advice and something that is frequently forgotten in the world of high tech.  All too often, technology companies treat their customers as beta testers, letting them discover issues with the solution long after the check has cleared.

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I have had the opportunity to watch the technology evolution of small and medium businesses for the past 10 years. My SMB adventure started as an analyst with the Yankee Group in the late 90's. I recall vividly some of the initial survey results where only 20% had broadband access and broadband at the time was defined as anything greater than 128k. Not exactly what we would consider broadband today. At the same time the dot com bubble was forming. I met with hundreds of innovative companies that had great plans for the SMB market. Couple issues, the SMB market was simply not ready and frankly niether were the tech companies as most of their solutions while innovative were immature and cumbersome to use. It was common place to make fun of ASPs, unified communications and video conferencing. We even dubbed them as "zero million dollar markets." But again that was then. Enough about the past, let's quickly fast forward to today.

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