LOGAN — Microsoft Corp. may be the biggest technology giant around, but one of its representatives on Thursday said those in business can learn a tech lesson by looking at another company: one that sells stuffed-animal toys.

Chris Henley, professional information-technology evangelist for Microsoft, told a crowd at Utah State University that Ganz epitomizes business success using technology by combining elements of community, content and commerce.

Ganz sells plush toys that include a tag with a code used to access parts of the company's Web site. Children from ages 3 to 10 dive into the Webkinz picture-based content to discover their toy's "personality," play games, shop for and "buy" virtual food for their toy and chat with other toy owners. Parents can use the site to buy clothing and other accessories for the toys and their children.

"I encourage you to think about your business," Henley told about 130 people at the 25th annual Information Technology Seminar, part of USU's Partners in Business seminar series. "The guys at Ganz who did this, I promise you, they are a happy group of people. They have changed the plush-animal or stuffed-animal toy business forever with the integration of content, commerce and community. Do the same in your environment."

That applies to every business, including those who believe they are too small for Internet commerce, he said.

"I don't care what your business is — if you are going to provide some product, you have a community that buys it, you provide content about that product, and you want to sell as much of it as you possibly can," he said. "The area where those three overlap is going to be called the 'cloud,' and if you do business in there, your ability to exponentially grow not only knowledge of your product and the size of your community but the amounts of commerce that you conduct is huge in that space."

Henley, who attended Brigham Young University, also spoke about how the combination of software and online services can cause electronic devices to "mesh" in interesting ways. For example, a homebuyer can use maps, satellite images and real estate data to quickly view a home and its environment and learn about the owner, property taxes and property values.

Photos taken with a digital camera can be placed on a Windows Live image gallery and downloaded to a digital picture frame at his home. GPS devices can be ready to navigate to a particular restaurant if it knows that the driver recently searched the Internet for information about the place.

That "meshing" can happen with Bluetooth headsets, cameras, camcorders, GPS devices and other tech gadgets, he said. "There really is no reason not to network those components together in some kind of a fabric-based framework where those devices can now share information and data back and forth between one another," he said.

Henley went into detail about network architecture, Microsoft's new data-storage centers and other tech-heavy stuff. But he encouraged the audience to remember what technology is supposed to do.

"Use the software in the way that works for you in your business and the way that it will improve your life," Henley said.

E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com