This post was contributed by @rafyouni. Thanks Riad for the great post, you can send your contributions to snail101 [at] ontornet.org. Please make sure they meet our transparency and informative guidelines
Ontornet for businesses?
This post intends to describe how important ontornet is for small and medium businesses. Especially those involved in the service industry, and having to answer queries via phone or email from customers, prospects or partners from all around the world
Competition is no longer local, with the introduction of the internet back in the early 90s and the boost of social media in the past couple of years, businesses have been relying on the internet for many reasons, not to mention businesses solely depending on the internet for their operations, such as Digital Agencies, Public Relations agencies, Media Buying agencies, Travel Agencies, etc…
Ontornet has greatly supported businesses in:
Embarrassment
“We are sorry, we currently cannot process your request, because the system is down”, “We didn’t download your 50 MBs file yet, please give us a couple of hours and we will get back to you”, “We couldn’t upload the files yet, please give us till tomorrow morning” and so on, are merely excuses businesses have to give to their customers because of slow internet connection, creating a great deal of embarrassment and sometimes putting the whole project, deal or transaction at risk.
Overheads
Typically a business in Lebanon relying on the internet would probably need two HDSL lines (yes 2! Just in case one fails), which would cost them something around ~1500 USD per month. What does this number mean?
1. 1500 USD is an overhead that has to be added to the project costs. Reducing the ability to compete with other countries which sometimes pay as low as 50 USD per month (for same internet specifications)
2. 1500 USD could be the salary of 2 Fresh graduate employees, or 1 employee with 1-3 years of experience
3. 1500 USD is possibly the actual margin a project makes for a business. (Especially travel agencies who’s mark ups are practically 2 digit numbers on regular transactions)
Hosting
Operating businesses often would like to host their applications, websites or web services in house for ease of management, update and maintenance. Yet they find themselves having to pay double the amount of hosting externally in order to sustain a proper bandwidth, create the necessary backups, and still have to face complaints of slowness, unavailable or inaccessible services
Insult to injury
While Lebanon still struggles to become the technological hub in the Middle East it is now well surpassed by most countries around it. Not only because it has poor road infrastructure, major problems with electricity BUT also even the Internet which is no longer a luxury tool is also not available, or available at extremely high prices. Strangely, we find countries with huge territories able to cover vast areas, yet the 10,452 km2 Lebanon is not fully covered!
Mobile
This is slightly more ridiculous, as time becomes critical for every business, the need to be “connected” remain a strong desire for every entrepreneur, executive, business developer or sales person, yet, you would be amazed by the look on the face of the individual who has to download a 2 MBs file from his mobile…Surely must be thinking: “This email is costing me more than the project itself”
