What's critical for the small-business owner is to critically evaluate whether the latest technology adds any significant new value. But as soon as you decide you want to go to Office 2000, you need to replace all your hardware, because it needs more RAM and hard drive. So if you go to Windows 2000 because it's the latest, you end up with a big, ugly conversion project. We don't anticipate this trend ending any time soon. This growth will produce significant price pressure on conventional telephony providers and should produce significant savings to small businesses.
Services continue to rise.
We expect that these costs will continue to increase for some time, though on a gradually decreasing rate of growth. In addition, costs for Web-site construction, maintenance, and hosting will continue to climb. In the same vein, small businesses heading into e-commerce should be prepared for high costs. E-commerce isn't easy, and you can't do it halfway. You start with an annual plan, make investments with a high level of business rigor, and adopt an approach to designing, maintaining, and upgrading the technology infrastructure.