Cisco slams small business for resisting Internet revolution

Cisco has claimed the spirit of Ned Ludd lives on in a quarter of British businesses, who have specifically "rejected" technology from fax machines to PCs. The Great Satan of Routers bases its allegation on the results of a survey of Europe's small businesses conducted by NOP, commissioned by Cisco. The study found that, overall, one in five European small businesses can't be bothered with disk crashes, tech support calls, oily sales reps and unrecoverable application errors, the fools. Not surprisingly, Cisco finds this lack of interest in the hi-tech world disturbing and appears to have a real problem getting its head around the idea. "It's remarkable that as we move into the next millennium we will still have businesses in Europe who have yet to buy a PC," said a poitively flabbergasted Goran Strandberg, Cisco's European director for SME business. "There's a revolution going on in the business world today, and so far these companies have failed to notice," he added. "They are missing out on major cost savings and losing opportunities for revenue generation that this technology can offer." They are, of course, also missing out on the cost of all this technology, but Cisco seems to have missed that point themselves. Still, passing up on the chance to take place in the great information revolution, the Internet and the joys of network installation, means all these businesses won't be able to download the handy guide to small business IT Cisco has published on its Web site to put them right. You'd have thought even Cisco would have figured that one out. ® Click for more stories Click for story index