Day: April 19, 2026

When AI is no longer just a slogan, the “hidden costs” of enterprise IT are being redefined. Every year, when Gartner releases its technology trends report, there is always a round of noise. For many large groups, these trends mean budgets in the tens of millions and a complete architectural transformation. But for the small and medium-sized enterprises we serve in Beijing — especially those with 50 to 200 employees — over-interpreting these macro reports…

Late last year, an old client in smart manufacturing came to me with a complaint. Their engineers at several branch factories were connecting remotely to the headquarters ERP system, and just to dial in via VPN they had to shout back and forth in a WeChat group for ages. Either they couldn’t connect at all, or the connection was so laggy it felt like dial-up. Worse still, last month a host failure in their headquarters data center brought the entire remote work link down instantly, cutting off dozens of people from the network on the spot. This kind of scenario, in 20…