I have to admit that I attend these shows partly as agitator for cause of little guy. Nobody wants to "find" that sector of market as it is inevitably fragmented and hard to reach. But Oracle has seen light and Microsoft is after little guy with their own suite of tools through their small business portal, bCentral.com offering a far less power- ful suite of solutions broken up into modules to appeal to penny-pinching needs of small business owners.

As for AIIM show, I found an email solution offered by one company AIIMing at BIG boys of ecommerce who became VERY interested when I suggested they seek out a partner to buy their software and offer it as a hosted solution to small businesses. Fifty percent of economy? Yeh! That's worth persuing! Damn! I gotta mention that in business devel- opment meeting on Monday! This could be BIG!

I'm so glad he thought of that! Damn! Why has BIG business mostly abandoned small business market? Some of most successful corporations rely primarily on small business market to become megalithic behemoths they are.

Staples, Office Depot, Costco, Home Depot and dozens of BIG corporate discount stores got huge by offering solutions (read, cost savings) to small business person. Where is ecommerce superstore? How about eDepot.com? (The name has been reserved, could it be small business ecommerce superstore arriving at last?) Shopping carts, payment gate- ways, merchant accounts, web hosting, site development, SEO services, ebusiness software, do-it-yourself-ebooks and tutorials. I wish I'd thought of that! Wait, I did!

Oooooh, if only I had some venture capital or angel investors! Not to say that this idea hasn't been badly attempted by some well-meaning small busines portals. The problem has always been that they partner with BIG businesses who insist on immediate, BIG growth and vast volumes of business before losing interest and pulling plug on 50% of economy.

How BIG a market is 50% of ecommerce pie? Must BIG dogs eat ravenously at market before scraps are left to little guy scavengers? Go for vast quantity that is represented by little guy and stop relying on premium prices and rare BIG single purchase by monopolistic corporations. Why just rely on fortune 500 when you could just as easily tap Fortune Five Million?

Let me see now . . . 157 Billion dollars in Ecommerce divided down middle is just under $78 Billion for small business. Market worth persuing? Doh!