Use the Latest Technology to Build a More Professional Company
by Mark Carpenter, CEO, Centricity Communications

Irvine, CA, USA, February 19, 2007 — Have you ever been interested in a new service from a company, only to be concerned when you receive an email from companyname@hotmail.com? Hotmail, Yahoo!, and Google email accounts are great for personal use, but never use these domains for your business brand. Entrepreneurs often don't take the necessary steps to build professional online branding and services because they believe 1) they cannot figure out how to set up the technology, 2) it is too expensive, or 3) it is too much work to maintain.

In fact, there are a number of online services that are very cost-effective and can be set up easily in less than 30 minutes. To incorporate your business or set up an LLC, Legalzoom.com, Bizfilings.com, and other services walk you through easy to understand questionnaires. To set up professional voicemail, services such as Gotvmail.com provide automated attendants and individual mailboxes.

Setting up a company domain name, email, and web site hosting service has never been easier. Companies including GoDaddy.com and Register.com now offer a one-stop-shop. You can register an available domain, create company email addresses, and use simple online tools to build a web site, all within minutes and starting at less than $100 per year. You can even download professional photographs from Corbis.com and Picturequest.com at low rates.

Now that you have set up your company’s professional services online, you will need commercial Internet service to utilize them fully. Is your 10 employee office still using a business DSL connection for Internet access? Though DSL is fine for a 2-3 person office just getting started, it is shared network access in which speed can be impacted by the number of customers using the service at any point in time. Commercial class service provides dedicated bandwidth that is there when you need it, which is vital to maximizing your office and employee productivity.

In addition, whereas DSL minimizes upload speed to lower cost (and service level), commercial class service is symmetrical, which means your upload speed equals your download speed. Remember that your company’s upload speed is your customer’s download speed. How fast you can send files directly to your customer or the speed at which your customer can download from your office server is a key component of that customer’s satisfaction with your service.

More traditional commercial Internet services including T1/T3 access have been available for some time. However, these services have two fee components that have proven cost prohibitive to some businesses, a fixed line local access fee and bandwidth fee. Next generation fixed wireless services are now becoming available from Centricity Communications and others, which eliminate the local access fee and save 30-50% while still providing commercial class service. Furthermore, these new commercial services can be installed within seven business days, not the traditional 30-45 days.

Technology is no longer intimidating with today’s user friendly online tools. Next generation commercial Internet services are also now becoming available that are very cost-effective and can be provisioned within a matter of days. Nothing is more critical to a growing business than its brand and services. Invest in your business with professional, cost-effective technology solutions, and significantly increase the return on your investment.

About the Author
Mark Carpenter is founder and CEO of Centricity Communications LLC, a provider of fixed wireless point-to-point and Internet services for small to mid-sized businesses in Orange County, delivering commercial services from 1.5Mbps to 80Mbps. For more information about Centricity please visit www.centricitycomm.com or you can contact him directly at mark.carpenter@centricitycomm.com.