Tag Archives: CenterBeam Inc.

About 4463 days ago PCs, Laptops, and Notebooks

Cutting the Cord

Environment Wireless workplaces save time and money, and promote mobility — but they can create new headaches as well Mike Bouissey already works on the top floor of a seven-story building in Philadelphia’s Center City. But on warm, sunny days, he slips his notebook computer under his arm and heads up one more flight. Whenever weather permits, Bouissey, a project manager for Web-design company WebLinc, works on the building’s flat, asphalt-topped roof. He’s never out of touch. He forwards calls from his desk to his cell phone, and — although there’s not a cord or a cable in sight — he remains logged on to the company’s local area network (LAN), using radio waves rather than wires. He can send and receive E-mail, build Web pages, track his team’s progress, and do anything else he’d do downstairs in the office, all while sitting on a blanket in the sun. His only limitation: he must stick close to one of three domed skylights so that his computer can stay in touch with the network’s base station downstairs. Beyond that, he’s set — at least as long as his 2.5-pound Sony PictureBook’s batteries last. “If you can be outside, why not?” says Bouissey, who hasn’t noticed any slowdown in performance — either his own or that of his computer — since he began working wirelessly. “You can get away and still be connected.” “We’ll actually be able to have meetings on the roof and be tied into the network,’ says WebLinc CEO Darren Hill. He’s planning to build a rooftop deck, complete with a juice bar, power outlets, and patio furniture. Bouissey’s bosses not only indulge his wanderlust, they encourage it. This summer the company plans to build a 2,000-square-foot elevated rooftop deck, complete with a juice bar, power outlets, and patio furniture. That will let Bouissey and others work atop the 150-year-old former toy factory more comfortably (and have a better view of the Philly skyline over the brick safety walls). “We’ll actually be able to have meetings with clients on the roof and be tied into the network,” says CEO Darren C. Hill. But working without wires isn’t just a warm-weather perk for outdoor enthusiasts like Bouissey and Hill. About two-thirds of WebLinc’s 45 staffers use wireless laptop computers full-time inside the company’s 12,000-square-foot headquarters. So do most of the eight employees at financial-insurance company SuretyBond.com, a start-up that subleases a corner of WebLinc’s office space and shares its LAN. The payoff, according to devotees at both companies: true in-house mobility. People can work almost anyplace they want — not just where the wires are. Whether they’re at their desks or gathered around conference tables or lounging on rec-room couches, both companies’ wireless users are always online — either on WebLinc’s in-house network or on the Web. There’s no running back and forth to desktop computers, no logging off one machine and on to another, no hunting around for an available phone jack. From anywhere on (or in Bouissey’s case, above) the seventh floor, users just open their computers and sign on once. They then can access files, print documents, write reports, create or run presentations, check E-mail, chat in real time, do research, and, in some cases, even update their customers’ Web sites. They can also access the network with wireless handheld computers or Web-enabled phones. Hill says that going mobile makes sense for fluid, fast-growing companies like his own, which went from 3 full-time employees in 1998 to 20 in early 2000 to nearly 50 today. As WebLinc — whose customers include Crayola and Urban Outfitters — expands, it’s easy to get new employees up and running: they just sit somewhere, turn on their newly issued notebooks, and get to work. “We don’t have to run any new wires; all you need is an outlet,” Hill says. WebLinc, like many other companies, often shuffles people around as it expands. From a technology standpoint, moving is no big deal with a wireless network: workers can just pack up their little computers and go. Finally, if a machine crashes or needs service, the luckless owner just carries it over to the closest information-systems staffer and swaps it for a new one. “I can’t imagine going back to the old way,” says SuretyBond.com executive vice-president and chief operating officer Chad Rosenberg, who’s so sold on no-wire networks that he has set one up for his computers at home. “This is just too convenient.” Whether they’re at their desks or at company conference tables or lounging on rec-room couches, both companies’ wireless users are always online. WebLinc and SuretyBond.com are among a growing number of small businesses that are embracing the wireless workplace with the fervor of converts to a new religion. While no one’s keeping a company-by-company count, wireless LAN sales overall should more than triple in the next 18 months, growing from $624 million in 1999 to $3 billion in 2002, according to market research by the Cahners In-Stat Group. And while wired office complexes were until recently the real estate rage (see “High-Wired Competition,” Inc. Technology, No. 4, 2000), their wireless descendants are beginning to steal the spotlight today. In Seattle a developer is constructing a new building with no wiring for technology or telephone service, for instance; tenants — mostly high-tech businesses to start out — will arrange for their own wireless service. While everybody mentions the system’s mobility first, pioneers insist that their wire-free LANs save money, too. True, laptop computers often cost more up front than their deskbound counterparts. But other no-wire network hardware costs far less. Minerva Tantoco Hobbs, director of eTechnology for Miami-based consulting firm Answerthink, says companies can expect to spend less than $1,000 for a wireless-network hub, plus $100 to $200 for the plug-in cards that older laptops need to communicate with the base station. (Although it’s possible to convert desktop computers using the same cards, there’s usually no advantage in going that route because full-size machines aren’t designed for easy portability. So companies currently without notebook computers would, of course, need to add in the cost of buying them. However, many new notebooks from Apple, Dell, IBM, Acer, Sony, and other vendors now come with built-in wireless capability.) In addition, wire-free companies save on every foot of cable they don’t use, every piece of hardware they don’t buy, and every hour of labor they don’t spend installing, upgrading, maintaining, or moving computers — especially when those changes involve tearing out walls, ceilings, or floors. “It literally takes 10 minutes to put a wireless-network card in a computer and get it configured,” Hill says. “Compare that with the man-hours you need to run a wire through drywall.” In WebLinc’s case, the costs of going wireless included buying three AirPort base stations at about $300 each and some 20 plug-in cards at $99 to $150 each, depending on the type of computer involved. In general, switching requires little or no training: untethered users work on the same network as everyone else; they just connect to it differently. However, wireless technology has limits that many companies may find unacceptable. Most available systems won’t let users wander more than 150 feet from the base station, which works like a cellular-telephone tower, connecting individual users to the network. And there can be side effects. After installing its wireless LAN, WebLinc had to buy new telephones because all its cordless models operated on the same frequency as the computer network, causing unbearable static during calls. Like any true believers, executives in wire-free workplaces seem convinced they’re just the first of many who will find the path to enlightenment. Like many other innovations, the no-wire environment began on college campuses. In the past couple of years, at least a dozen schools, ranging from tiny Mount St. Mary College, in Newburgh, N.Y., to the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, have gone wireless. Students, faculty, and staff at those schools can log on to their networks from anywhere on campus. The colleges like the convenience of wireless networking. Beyond that it helps cut the phone-line congestion caused by hundreds of students dialing into the Internet simultaneously. Early on, most businesses didn’t have the patience for wireless systems, which, at best, moved data at about one-fifth the speed of normal networks. But thanks to recent advancements (see “Going Mobile,” below), wireless data now moves at a respectable 10 or 11 megabits per second, about the same speed as wired connections provide. Meanwhile, costs for wireless-network cards dropped from as much as $600 two years ago to generally less than $200 today. With speed and cost issues resolved, businesses began to see advantages to going wireless. Some adopted wireless LANs as a way to quickly expand their existing networks. Others went 100% wireless. Veritel Corp., in Chicago, which makes voice-verification technology, expanded from 6 to 32 employees last year and expects to reach 80 this year. Instead of rewiring its offices for each new staffer, the company opted to use an all-wireless network from CenterBeam, allowing employees to move around inside the building. Besides, “creativity at your desk is kind of an oxymoron,” says Veritel CEO Christopher Tomes. “This allows you to take your technology into whatever space you choose.” The movement isn’t limited to high-tech companies either. Hospitals, factories, warehouses, stores, car-rental agencies, and other businesses are converting to wireless LANs, too. (See “Where the Wires Aren’t,” below.) At Blueprint Ventures, in San Francisco, all 10 employees switched to a wireless LAN last year. General partner Bart Schachter credits the change with streamlining the venture-capital firm’s meetings. “We can pick up and go to a conference room, and it’s like we never left our desks. You don’t know until you have wireless access how often somebody says ‘Oh, what’s the answer to this question?’ and you can look it up right there,” says Schachter, whose company has invested in MobileStar and other wireless technologies. “You can take notes right there. You don’t have to go back to your office and type them in. Productivity goes up 1,000%.” And at West Coast Office Interiors Superstore, in Santa Clara, Calif., employees can move freely through showrooms and offices, checking inventory, placing orders, and printing out receipts and invoices. The company’s CenterBeam network helps salespeople close deals on the spot, instead of taking up to a week to complete paperwork. With all the benefits of going wireless, are transactions as secure as they would be traveling through wires and cables? Early adopters insist their wireless LANs are at least as secure as traditional hard-wired networks, but even true believers worry about the potential threat from letting sensitive information literally float around. WebLinc’s Hill says that if he were running a financial company instead of a Web-design firm, he wouldn’t use a wireless network. As he puts it, “All security can be broken.” But in the case of his own company, he’s confident that information is as secure as it needs to be. “People can tap into any network, wired or wireless,” says Pete Privateer, president of Pelican Security, a computer-crime-prevention company in Chantilly, Va. Theoretically, hackers can infiltrate a wireless LAN from outside the building, just as they can break into a traditional network over the Internet or telephone lines. (However, they couldn’t be too far outside the building, given the technology’s maximum radius of 150 feet and its inability to penetrate the building’s brick walls.) But, Privateer and others say, the newer wireless technologies — the same ones that enable high-speed access — can be set to encrypt information so that only authorized users can decode it. “If there’s encryption, the hacker won’t get anything but garbage and won’t be able to pick anything out of it,” Privateer says. He also suggests that companies adopt systems in which employees must change their password every time they log in. That measure, combined with encrypting every transmission, may frustrate some users. But such precautions can help companies like WebLinc ensure that the only people who are looking into their computer systems from the outside are their own employees, sunbathing on the roof. Like all true believers, executives in wire-free workplaces seem convinced they’re just the first of many who will find the path to enlightenment. “In 5 to 10 years, I think the world will be wireless,” says Schachter, pointing out that other countries, including the Philippines, Finland, and Japan, already lead the United States in widespread adoption of the technology. “We don’t have to dream the future,” he says. “The future is happening.” Where the Wires Aren’t … If there’s still any doubt that wireless networking is about to go mainstream, consider this: Starbucks plans to offer wire-free Internet access in 2,100 of its 3,000 North American coffee shops within two years. In November 2000, desktop king Bill Gates introduced a prototype of the Tablet, the first Microsoft wireless computer, to much fanfare at the Comdex trade show; the device was among thousands of hot new wireless products dominating the event. Wayport Inc., in Austin, increasingly offers wireless access in airports, hotels, resorts, and conference centers; the service lets business travelers hop online without hunting for a phone line. And in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in downtown Cincinnati, a dozen start-up companies share a single high-speed wireless network, creating, in essence, a virtual business community. Going Mobile If you’re thinking about switching to a wireless network, you need to know about Wi-Fi. Also known by the less-friendly designation IEEE 802.11b, Wi-Fi — for wireless fidelity — refers to the newest technical standard for wireless networking. The standard boosts networking speed from sluggish — 2Mb, or 2 million bits of information per second — to supercharged at 11Mb per second. That allows wireless networks to run faster than traditional Ethernet networks, which top out at 10Mb. And that’s why businesses everywhere are suddenly interested in Wi-Fi. (Don’t confuse Wi-Fi with the much-publicized Bluetooth standard, which permits only short-range radio links between small personal devices like handheld computers and cell phones.) The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, a high-tech industry group, awards Wi-Fi certification to wireless-networking products that meet its standards. For more information, visit www.wi-fi.org. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4828 days ago Data Security

It’s Midnight. Do You Know Where Your Tech Support Is?

Resources Finally, a new breed of tech consultants provide affordable, timely help to growing businesses No computer comes worry free. Despite all the advances in computers, software, and networks, our wired universe, sadly, often becomes tangled. And since the pace of business has revved up to Internet speed, random crashes and network traffic jams are becoming more taxing than ever. Of course, if your budget has room for a full-time tech-support team, kinks like these are mere headaches. Pop an Advil and call the help desk. But what about the smaller and solo businesses that can’t afford to devote precious resources to computer support? What about people like Andy Schilling? Schilling, who is president of Tangent Fund Management LLC, also wears the hat of “technology decision maker” at the private-equity-fund -management firm in San Francisco. Since Schilling joined the 15-employee company 11 years ago, Tangent’s computer arsenal has grown in much the same way that most other small companies’ do — one PC at a time, when a new employee is hired or a creaky computer dies. As Schilling bought new computers, he’d pass the old ones down the food chain. Tangent chose its tech support, too, as most small companies do — -by proximity. When the company decided to network its PCs, Tangent hired a local computer-consulting outfit, which installed, configured, and maintained the new network. When the business decided to add more PCs to the mix, though, it went to a local branch of a computer chain that provided basic maintenance for its machines. That worked fine — until the branch went bankrupt. So Schilling figured he’d devote more of his own time to the company’s tech decisions. But since his expertise is in finance — not in computers — he found himself at a disadvantage. Back in 1990, Schilling had purchased what he thought would be adequate hardware and software to network the office. But as time went by and Tangent added more users, the network constantly crashed. So he brought in new consultants, who advised installing an Ethernet local area network along with more-powerful computers. “We had to rip the whole thing up to put in the Ethernet,” says Schilling. Then he hired another local computer consultant just to wire the LAN, which added to the bill. “It would have been cheaper to install the Ethernet LAN from the beginning,” he says. For computer emergencies, Schilling depended on the same consulting company that had advised him to install the Ethernet network. Although he found its service useful, Schilling says he had to wait for the consultants to respond to his pages and then to travel to his site. Meanwhile, Tangent waited in limbo. “When they got here later in the day, the clock was ticking,” he said. “I kept thinking, ‘How many hundreds of dollars would it take to get our printers to print?’ It gets expensive.” Sometimes very expensive, says Mark Margevicius, a senior research analyst at the GartnerGroup. The average large company spends between $8,000 and $10,000 a year just to install, maintain, and support one corporate PC. Those costs are even higher, he says, for small companies, which often can’t afford an in-house tech staff. As a result, they suffer from significant downtime when faced with a computer glitch. Schilling was hardly alone in his frustration; most small businesses have never had much in-house IT help. According to Eric Klein, a senior analyst at the Yankee Group, 53% of networked very small businesses — those with between 2 and 19 employees — don’t have any full-time tech staff at all. Of networked companies with 20 to 99 employees, only 32% have a full-time IT staff. “The bottom line is that businesses are continuing to adapt to PCs and the Internet. The fact that they don’t have a tech staff points to an obvious hole in their support system,” Klein says. Moreover, because of the high hourly rates of most computer consultants (between $40 and $70 for those who offer both time and materials) and the time spent waiting on the phone for help from software and hardware vendors, many small companies don’t seek outside IT help unless they have a major crisis on their hands. Fortunately for companies like Tangent, a growing band of support warriors have spotted this hole and are rushing to fill it with affordable, timely help. By providing standard sets of PCs, software, and networking products — and, in some cases, by requiring lengthy subscriptions — these new businesses can keep their costs so low that even soloists and two- and three-employee companies can have full-service tech support at their beck and call. Some of these technology soldiers configure, install, and regularly monitor individual companies’ systems in an effort to spot problems before they turn into crises. Just call it Fortune 500 service for mom-and-pop shops. CenterBeam When CenterBeam Inc., a start-up based in Santa Clara, Calif., approached Schilling, last July, the Tangent president was grappling with yet another set of tough technology decisions. He was ready to set up an officewide E-mail system and scrap the multiple E-mail accounts that Tangent’s employees had been using to communicate. And he was thinking about registering a domain name and putting up a company Web site. CenterBeam not only offered him E-mail and Internet access but also promised new PCs with 128MB of memory and 17-inch monitors. The company would also provide printers, a wireless LAN, a local server, a software suite that included Microsoft Office 2000, a professionally managed firewall, nightly data backup, and 24-hour tech support. All this would cost Schilling only about $165 a month per user. Because CenterBeam bills its customers on a subscription basis, those costs would be fixed for three years — the life of the contract — no matter how much tech support Tangent might need each month. Some of these new businesses can keep theirs costs so low that even soloists and two- and three-employee companies can have full-service tech support at their beck and call. Just call it Fortune 500 service for mom-and-pop shops. Schilling scribbled out a back-of-the-envelope cost comparison between CenterBeam’s tech services and the system he had pieced together himself. CenterBeam was only slightly less expensive. However, Schilling found the notion of going with a service like CenterBeam attractive because of its consistency. “Now I know what the budget is,” he explains. “Before, it would go in cycles. I’d have some big problem and would have to get new software or buy new PCs. This is a lot more predictable.” CenterBeam cofounder Sheldon Laube hopes his service’s predictability and reliability will speak to small-business owners. “The whole idea is to not ever worry again about this stuff,” he says. As chief technology officer at Novell Inc. and cofounder and CTO of USWeb Corp. (now USWeb/CKS), a San Francisco-based E-commerce consulting business, Laube spent much of his career worrying about technology. And he’s still a worrywart: he and the CenterBeam staff regularly fuss over the health of their customers’ PCs. Laube’s employees use the Internet to peek into the inner workings of their customers’ computers across the country. They hunt remotely for potential problems — and, using the Internet, they upgrade customers’ software without leaving their desks. But even the folks at CenterBeam can’t solve every problem, like the mystery glitch that murdered a PC in Tangent’s accounting department. “One PC just died,” Schilling remembers. No bother. Schilling opened the storage closet and grabbed his “emergency PC,” an extra machine that had come with the CenterBeam package. Schilling called CenterBeam’s office and had all the old computer’s files transferred to the new machine. Because CenterBeam had backed up Tangent’s data nightly, transferring the information was a breeze. “The new computer was up and running in 45 minutes,” Schilling says. “Things like this were a real headache before.” Now headache free, Schilling liked the service so much that at press time he gave CenterBeam a ringing endorsement: his company invested an undisclosed sum in the computer start-up’s second round of financing. Everdream CenterBeam isn’t the only full-service, subscription-based tech provider vying for the small-business market. Everdream Corp., based in Mountain View, Calif., is aiming at soloists and small and midsize companies that would normally purchase inexpensive, so-called white-box computers from local resellers. Everdream manufactures and brands its own PCs before shipping them off to customers, who end up paying about $150 a month per computer. Everdream, like CenterBeam, provides software, hardware, and networking components, as well as Internet access, Web hosting, nightly backup, and round-the-clock online and telephone IT support. In addition, Everdream builds into its machines a simple, commonsense security feature: it divides the hard drives into two parts in an attempt to safeguard business applications from viruses brought in over the Web. One part of the hard drive houses business applications, and the other plays home to programs and games that users download. It would seem that tech-savvy companies — especially new dot-coms — would hardly need outside tech support. Not so, says the Everdream team, which is betting that many high-tech start-ups would rather develop their own technology than worry about day-to-day glitches. Such is the case of Tom Jones. As CEO of Stratasource Inc., a start-up based in Menlo Park, Calif., that provides automated systems management, Jones wanted his software engineers to spend all their time creating Stratasource products. Sure, the engineers could troubleshoot their own PCs. But the rest of the staff would still need occasional help. Last October, Jones signed up as a beta tester for one of Everdream’s PCs before committing his support staff to the system. This January he became a paying customer. While testing the gear, he hadn’t needed much support, but when he did need support, he got it right away. “I was working in Microsoft Word and just got hung up,” Jones recalls. When he called Everdream, a technician “entered” his computer remotely — so that both Jones and the technician were looking at Jones’s screen — and quickly showed the CEO how to solve the problem. That said, there are a few drawbacks to CenterBeam and Everdream’s services. Both companies are subscription based and require long-term contracts. Everdream’s customers are obligated for 30 months — a subscription only slightly shorter than CenterBeam’s aforementioned three-year deal. And then there’s the issue of privacy. Both companies tout nightly data-backup services and the ability to enter any subscribed PC through the Internet with permission. Schilling says that although allowing an outsider full access to his files is troubling, the trade-offs are worth it. “We have more up-to-date methods of communication,” he says. “And it’s clear to me that CenterBeam can provide us with much better firewalls than what we were going to be able to afford on our own.” Finally, these kinds of standard services may not fill the needs of small-business owners who require custom configurations or who are devoted to particular brands of computers not offered by the service provider. And they certainly don’t erase the need for customers to ask for written “service-level agreements,” which describe the time frames in which consultants answer service calls, deliver hardware and software, upgrade equipment, and solve problems. More to Come CenterBeam and Everdream both call California home and at press time had only just begun to expand nationally. By the time these pioneers provide services nationwide, they could be facing fierce competition from large computer companies like Micron Technology Inc., which already offers a subscription service for small businesses. Meanwhile, a potential rival, Dell Computer, recently invested in CenterBeam’s second round of financing, and CenterBeam has an agreement with Dell to supply its customers with the computer manufacturer’s PCs. Competition, of course, usually brings lower prices and better-quality service, which is good news for small companies that until now were unable to afford the kinds of services that their larger counterparts benefited from. For people like Andy Schilling, Tangent’s formerly frustrated president, these new services couldn’t have arrived on the scene soon enough. Anne Marie Borrego is a reporter at Inc. The Nitty-Gritty Company: CenterBeam Inc. Location: Santa Clara, Calif. Founders: Sheldon Laube, CEO, former CTO of USWeb/CKS; Glenn Ricart, CTO, former CTO of Novell; Marc Epstein, executive vice-president of product management and development, former CTO of Quarterdeck; Thomas Twietmeyer, CFO, former Autodesk executive Employees: 70 Funding: $55 million in equity financing from Crosspoint Venture Partners, Accel Partners, Microsoft Corp., USWeb/CKS, New Enterprise Associates, Intel Corp., Dell Computer Corp., Impact Venture Partners, and Tangent Fund Management LLC Buzz: $165 a month per user gets you Dell PCs, printers, high-speed Internet access, E-mail, a wireless LAN, Microsoft Office 2000, regular software upgrades, firewall protection, and 24-hour tech support. Dell recently announced an investment in the company, complementing a deal to supply CenterBeam customers with its own PCs. Fine print: You have to make a three-year commitment to the service. If you’re a hot dot-com, three years probably feels like a lifetime. Also, the CenterBeam monthly cost per user of $165 only applies to companies that need 10 or more machines. Prices are higher for companies with fewer users. Finally, you have to feel comfortable letting other eyes peer into your hard drives. Company: Everdream Corp. Location: Mountain View, Calif. Founders: Russell Rive, CTO, and Lyndon Rive, vice-president of partnership development. The brothers Rive hail from the Republic of South Africa, where Lyndon established a successful catalog business when he was 17. Before founding Everdream with Lyndon, Russell picked up computer and sales experience at Zip2 Corp., an online city guide that Compaq Computer Corp. snapped up last year for about $341 million. Employees: 70 Funding: $18 million from Canaan Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Ricoh Silicon Valley, and others. Investors include Jack Kuehler, former president and vice-chairman of IBM; and Stanford University. Buzz: Like CenterBeam, Everdream operates on a subscription basis. Customers pay about $150 a month for their Everdream-branded computer, 24-hour IT support, a choice of dial-up or DSL Internet and E-mail service, business applications like Microsoft Office, nightly backup, online training courses, and virus protection. Everdream splits the hard drive into two parts — one “locked down” part that handles the business-critical applications and another that’s open to Internet downloads. Fine print: As with CenterBeam, Everdream’s technicians will have access, albeit limited, to your hard drives. You have to sign up for a 30-month contract — that is, if you can get one. The company hasn’t rolled out nationally just yet but plans to offer service outside California by the second quarter of 2000.