Years ago, we launched our first business on a couple of cheap, out-of-the-box Dell Computers with Microsoft XP and Dreamweaver.  Shortly thereafter, we signed a lease with Apple Financial and purchased nearly $30,000 worth of computer equipment and software for our new offices, followed by regular rounds of equipment additions and new systems being shipped into headquarters.

The e-commerce sites, of course, have been hosted on top-of-the-line secure servers throughout the world since the earliest days, some in partnership with Yahoo’s merchant solutions business and others with competitors depending upon the technology needs of the particular site (Kennon Home Accessories, for instance, uses a PHP-driven database platform built on a Network Solutions backbone with most of the inventory management handled through regular CSV uploads, whereas the Mount Olympus Awards site is built on hand coded Dreamweaver html pages with call tags that reference a product inventory sheet in Yahoo’s catalog).  The digital content distribution business is built on secure web hosting packages with redundant backups managed by third-party server farms.  What I’m talking about here is the system that we use at headquarters so when I want to drop an SEC filing on Aaron’s desktop with my annotations and have him get back to me on a particular investment idea – the actual machine that I pass each morning when I go get my Douwe Egberts coffee.

I’m beginning to wonder – at what point does it make sense to switch to a Mac OS server configuration? I’ve never been exposed to one and, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure how they work.  The research is going to begin this week.  We’re probably not going to do anything this year, but as we grow, the idea of having rows of 24″ iMacs tied into a server we control (and can use to restrict certain activities) is highly appealing, especially when we begin hiring CSV product coders who will be sitting in front of the screen all day before shipping product feeds and search marketing bids up to our administrative accounts.

I know our manufacturing company, Chenille Appeal, LLC has a Microsoft-based server that sits in a room in the middle of its production factory and that it’s used to control the individual terminals throughout the building.  Maybe I’ll try to make my way over there and start asking questions.  Better yet, I’ll just find some firm that specializes in this.  I want to stick to the investments, launching new businesses, and enjoying my system (both Aaron and I work on Mac Pros with two (2) High Definition 30″ Apple Cinema monitors and at home, use a 17″ MacBook Pro).

This whole conversation does make me question one thing: At what point do we pull our ecommerce activities in-house, spend a couple million dollars, and build our own secure server farm with a custom-designed platform?  I don’t know if I’ll ever see the need for that until we go public because the companies exist to generate investment cash for me to deploy and anything requiring a project that large would a distraction from doing what we do best – outselling our competitors and keeping our cost structure ruthlessly low.