No matter how many multi-national conglomerate corporations appear around the world, those in the know understand that it is the small business owner that truly drives the economies of the world. For instance, in the US small businesses increased employment over 44,000 from July to August of this year - when in the same period there were a total of 4,000 jobs lost across all businesses. The small business owner has to be more adaptable and agile. For my consulting business - a very small business composed of one person - I have a virtual attendant to help me to be flexible without creating an infrastructure that I am unable to support. Having a person as an assistant would be wonderful, but small businesses have to go with high impact and low cost solutions that allow for easy change in an ever evolving business environment.

Go one step further than the virtual assistant - how about a virtual office? With the wide-spread adoption of high-speed internet - both wired and wireless - it is possible to have a cost-effective PBX Phone System for your small business giving you and your employees access to PBX features worldwide. Packet8 offers a Virtual Office which is a complete hosted business phone system using the internet. Scale the system to your needs - remember, stay agile. You have a big project that requires an additional three or four subcontractors? No problem, add the necessary lines to support the project and once the project is done - go back to your standard services. The ability to scale up and down without worrying about complex infrastructure support gives the small business owner the luxury of worrying about the next project, rather than the next phone system upgrade.