2904 S Washington St

The virtual business

I think this is neat:

• business email accounts - virtual (thanks Google Apps)
  • cost savings: Exchange license, servers to run it, admins to keep it going
• business phone number - virtual (thanks GrandCentral)
  • cost savings: Qwest installation & monthly charges, PBX, secretary to route calls
• business fax number - virtual (thanks MaxEmail)
  • cost savings: another Qwest line & charges, fax machine
• corporate website - virtual (thanks Google Apps)
  • cost savings: another box, admins to keep it going
• development servers - virtual (thanks DreamHost)
  • cost savings: more boxes, admins to keep them going
• development software - free (thanks Linux, Rails, Trac, Subversion, MySQL)
  • cost savings: OS licenses, compiler/IDE licenses, application server licenses, Oracle license, Perforce license, document management/collaboration server license (we’re talking 10s of thousands of dollars just 5-10 years ago)
• production servers - virtual (thanks Amazon EC2)
  • cost savings: data center/rack space, T1 charges, routers, firewalls, switches, servers, temperature sensors, RAID arrays, sysadmins to keep them going (we’re talking 100s of thousands of dollars just a few years ago)

It’s really pretty amazing. For the price of a few $20 setup charges and some modest monthly fees, I get the equivalent of what would have taken perhaps $250,000 in startup capital expenditures to setup just a few years ago.
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