Business Technology, Technology Business

So which comes first?

It really depends on what kind of company are you building.

There are a lot of great companies that provide a lot of great technologies that can be leveraged across multiple business applications. Look at Microsoft, Oracle, Linux, Sun, Apple, etc, etc. 

There are other great companies that use or create technologies to grow their business. Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, UPS, etc. 

BTW, when I use the word great, I know that is subjective ;-)

I would argue that companies like Google are transitional. They started as a Technology Business, licensing their new fangled search methodology to other companies. Their current prominent business model is all about selling advertisements. They build great technologies and GIVE THEM AWAY. They create their own Business Technologies. This is all about getting people to see their advertisements. And their business is much more robust than if they were still a Technology Business.

Google is now moving back into the Technology Business. They have released Google Apps Premier Edition http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/details.html. After creating these great business technologies to grow their advertising model, they have the weight to move back into the the technology business. I can't be certain they will succeed, but they have a huge opportunity to do so. They are perfectly positioned from both the branding and technology perspectives.

Why do I bring this up? Well last night I was in a meeting with a very energetic young man who came to tell us we how he could help us succeed. I generally liked his enthusiasm and his bent towards social networking. We showed him how we are expanding the American Agent Network through social networking tools. His eyes lit up and he got the opportunity. After walking through some of this wide eyed, he asked: "What technologies are you using?".

Let me step back a minute. I surf through ActiveRain http://www.activerain.com every now and then. It is a diverse community and many different opinions. I came across a post last week from someone that insisted that every real estate agent and broker should have FTP access to their web site. Are you kidding me? What would they do with it if they had it? If the proposition was that every agent and broker should manage their web presence, be able to add content, change the direction based on market conditions, changes in their sphere of influence, etc, I would agree with that. But FTP access?

Back to last night. The answer that I gave is that we use a number of different technologies from relation databases, web servers, open protocols, open source technologies,  proprietary technologies and then we wrap those up in a neat package so our network members can do more business. 

Do you know what technologies Google, Twitter, Facebook or Amazon use? Do you know what web servers they use, what operating systems, what compilers, etc, etc?

If you do, you are someone more interested in the Technology Business than Business Technologies.