5 Great Technology Business Ideas

If you’re looking to get started with a new technology business, it’s good to have a clear focus on what exactly you want to achieve. 

Many IT professionals “set up shop” with only a vague idea of a business model, eager to grab any IT-related work that may come their way. While this may help to get them off the ground, it doesn’t make for a sustainable (or necessarily enjoyable) business further down the line. 

In this article, we provide you with five technology business ideas, all of which have a specific focus and a fairly reliable level of demand in the medium term. Perhaps one of them will appeal to you and suit your skills? 

1. Cloud Migration - Many businesses are now moving some or all of their IT provision onto cloud services, especially within the SME market. Despite this, plenty of small IT service providers remain “stuck in their ways” and determined to continue pushing “on premise” IT solutions. While we’re not trying to say that cloud-based IT is right for every company, cloud services get constant publicity, and are very much on the radar of business owners. As such, specializing in migrating existing businesses to the cloud could allow you to swoop into businesses to change the way they manage their IT provision.
2. Asset Disposal - “Asset disposal” doesn’t sound particularly exciting but there’s always a need for it. The fast pace of technical change means that companies typically refresh all of their equipment every three to five years. When they do, they are stuck with piles of old hardware that may contain sensitive data, and they rarely know what they should do with it. That is where you can come in: Offer a data cleansing service, and combine it with reselling the old equipment via eBay and other channels. While this may not mean working with the most up to date equipment, this is a technology business that’s perfect for you if you enjoy buying and selling.
3. App Development - The popularity of smartphones and tablets continues to grow at a stunning pace that shows no sign of slowing. Companies of all sizes are beginning to see ways in which custom-made mobile apps could help them – either in interacting with their customers or in the support of back-end operations. Someone needs to build these apps, and starting an app development company doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a programmer. You always have the option of running the customer-facing part of the company and outsourcing the development to offshore programmers.
4. Compliance Auditing - Modern companies have to deal with a huge amount of regulatory compliance, especially if they work in sensitive industries such as healthcare. Smaller firms don’t always have internal compliance expertise, so if you like dealing with complex documents and rules, you can charge handsomely for troubleshooting compliance issues. Another potential branch of this kind of work is helping with policies and procedures; assisting, for example, with issues relating to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and IT security.
5. Business Continuity - Frequent natural disasters and acts of terrorism have combined to make companies of all kinds aware of the need for good disaster recovery provision. There’s nothing to stop you building an entire technology business around helping companies ensure good business continuity is in place. Implementing effective disaster recovery is fairly easy these days, thanks to a myriad of DR cloud services that you can rebrand and sell as your own, as well as cheap and effective imaging and virtualization technologies. 

While there’s nothing to stop you setting up a successful generic IT service company, or a managed service provider (MSP) business, it’s at least worth considering one of these niche technology business ideas first. All of them are ideas that are far less likely to result in disturbed weekends due to server failures!

Do you have any innovative niche technology business ideas? If so, share them in the comments box below.

And to follow-through on the tips introduced in this short article, be sure to download your free copy of the special report on How to Start a Computer Consulting Business: 6 Proven Ways to Build Your Initial Client Base. 

Creative Commons Image Source: flickr losmininos