Small Business CIO First Post

Welcome to my Blog. Before we get started, let me help you decide if this blog is going to be worth following for you.

This blog is for you if:

• You make IT decisions for a small or medium sized business. As a general rule, that's anywhere from 1 to 100 employees.
• You are the IT lead for a company and make recommendations or design solutions that you bring to the CIO.
• You aren't the IT lead or decision-maker, but want to be.
• You think I'm cool and you want to read what I have to say.

OK, if you're still reading, that means that you fit one of the above criteria (hopefully the last). Now that I have told you about you, how about I tell you about me? That's what the style guides say I should do in order to build that little thing called "credibility".

Why Should I Believe anything Adam Kehler has to say?
Well, you don't have to listen to anything I say, but I do believe that I bring some pretty good experience to my writing. You see, I've been making IT decisions for small businesses for a while now. My first implementation ever was in 1993 and it was called Novell Netware 3.12 implemented on Windows for Workgroups 3.11. You youngsters may not recognize the names, but it was the prize of its time. And boy did I not know a THING! Fortunately, I kept at it, did some more system administration, then after graduating with my Bachelor of Computer Science, moved into software development for a few years.

It's when I became a consultant at one of the "BIG 5" consulting firms that I really got to see what companies were doing in IT and how they could do it better and more cost-effectively. More recently I've spent 4 years implementing and supporting data center solutions for everyone from the mom and pop shop to large credit card companies (I shouldn't say the name, but it starts with V, ends with A, and the middle is...).

Now I have launched an online backup provider which I will probably plug in some of my writings, but I'll try not to be too overt about it. www.dataknoxx.com

OK, So What?
So I have seen a lot of different solutions to a lot of different problems; some good, some bad, some terrible. All that I'm trying to do here is share my thoughts on specific IT topics that may help some of you small business IT professionals make those decisions that you have to make every day.

I hope you find what I have to say entertaining and at least somewhat informative. Please give me feedback and I would love to hear about the types of topics that you want to hear about!

My first word of advice: Have fun!

Adam