Watch carefully, because in the midst of this global financial crisis, we are also experiencing the biggest single change in the technology market place since the advent of the internet. The emergence of high speed low cost internet over the last few years has been the principal catalyst that has enabled a dramatic shift of power from local computer to the internet. Every business in which an investor invests in 2009 must have a lean operating model.

Charles Black founded Nasstar in January 1998 after writing a ground-breaking paper on the internet  later published by Tolley’s Communications Law.

I experienced Nasstar in my firm last week as they took a burdensome local IT system which was being poorly maintained, and delivered to Ariadne Capital a brilliantly simple “hosted desktop” subscription service. The Nasstar team were flawless in terms of their work to transition us from our history to our future. I forget that it’s 11 am on a Sunday sometimes, and just call people I want to speak to. Andy Kyriakides, our Project Manager, wasn’t phased a bit when I rang, and got me sorted out in 10 minutes with my question. What AIM-quoted professional services firm (ticker NASA) do you know who can give you that kind of personal service?

Nasstar Hosted Desktop is part of the larger revolution of ever more services being delivered over the internet, and the vision of a single powerful global network delivering TV, radio, music, computing and information is now a growing reality.

That revolution is also seeing casualties in Microsoft, who were the victor of the desktop, laying off 5000 employees recently. Google this past week introduced their G drive which will replace the desktop for those who prefer Google apps to those of Microsoft.

Nasstar’s genius is not to change what people use, but to change the way they use it, change the way they buy it, change the way they feel about it.

 I can now access my company desktop anytime, anywhere, and have slashed Ariadne’s IT costs.   Nasstar have about 50 companies enabled on Desktop now, from small two man organisations to 800+ users in a single organisation. By eliminating the IT manager (or enabling them to focus on core business applications) you can start to see savings. If it’s good enough for the Easy Group and Allied Healthcare, it’s good enough for my firm.