SMALL BUSINESS SOLUTIONS Minn., has experienced significant growth since 1995. The company offers a line of upscale gourmet foods, sold primarily by independent consultants at home tastetesting parties nationwide. More than 85 percent of product orders are made via the Inter- net by the company’s consultants. Order management, individual consultant business reports and company information are available online. The company decided to purchase its technology direct from HP and uses a broad range of HP products, including HP ProLiant DL580 and DL3880 servers, HP StorageWorks storage area networks, desktop and notebook PCs and printers. “We couldn’t have grown this quickly without technology,” said Doug Cyphers, technology services senior team lead at Tastefully Simple. “HP was the only vendor that offered the range of products and solutions we required at the time.” Starting out small in the early years, Tastefully Simple had \ Za, ai of . ye < \Z . — bie 00AW AANA e ii ~~ 3 00 tOQ 0 : = — savan 7 AAY AAAW\ [% AY RY AAAAAA has QU\ AR (NAPSA)—For a growing number of small businesses, offering hightech solutions or doing business on the Internet have presented formulas for success. An important part of both these formulasis finding the right technology. For example, Tastefully Simple, a 300-employ direct sales company based in Alexandria, \\ The Right Technology Has BecomeA Key To Small Business Success , — The ability to change technology as a company’s nds change is part of the formula for small business success. acquired an assortment of hardware from multiple vendors. It recognized the nd to establish a standardized, reliable infrastruc- ture for all of its business nds. “HP provides solid products to help us create a stable environment. Standardization helps us reduce management costs, which helps our bottom line,” said Cyphers. Whetheryoucall it flexibility or scalability, the ability to change technology as a company’s nds changeis also part of the formula for small business success. For instance, Vesta Corp. is a leader in stored value recharge services and has experienced 6,330 percent growth over five years. Their services are designed to support credit card-not-present transactions—think using a value-added card to buy something online or over the phone— requiring real-time customer authentication and account recharge. For more than seven years, the company’s proprietary recharge and authentication technologies have maximized revenue and provided secure, convenient account recharge services for customers of AT&T Long Distance, Cingular, American Airlines, Citibank, AT&T Wireless and others. Vesta turned to HP as well, tripling the number of HP servers it uses in less than thr years. The company is continually working to accommodate the IT nds associated with its fast-paced growth. “Our rapid growth demands a server line that can scale as fast as we do. The flexibility of HP ProLiant servers has allowed us to seamlessly add capacity and move with client demand,” said Jason Blackhurst, vice president of operations, Vesta. HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. More information about HPsolutions for small and medium businesses is available at www.hp.com/go/smb.
