Small Business Solutions

Most business owners would rather run their business than tinker with technology. Small businesses don’t want to be the poor relations when it comes to IT; they want what the big guys have, just neater. They may not have complex procedures and processes, but their basic needs are the same and they need a package of applications that work seamlessly together, reliably and consistently. Therefore the products chosen, installed and implemented are crucial.

There is a lot to consider when evolving your IT infrastructure inside a small business. You need a set of applications that provide the functionality required from your business, yet seamlessly work together and without costing the earth. As you grow, you need to put in place a network infrastructure that will allow your employees to share information and collaborate not just amongst themselves but also with your customers and all of this needs to run securely and with adequate contingencies in place to ensure no harm comes to your business.

Many of the leading technology vendors now provide Small Business Solutions that provide enterprise-grade applications and connectivity at a vastly reduced price. The issue we face is understanding what are the best solutions and how to deploy these effectively without having to invest in costly IT resources.

What Are The Benefits Of A Small Business Solution?
The obvious benefit is cost; the small business suites of applications, servers and networking solutions available are designed and priced for the small business, delivering cost effective IT capabilities.

The other benefit from these solutions comes from their design and packaging. With small businesses in mind, they have been created to provide the functionality inherently required by the small business in suites of applications that require no costly integration. Many of them also come pre-configured, enabling them to be rapidly deployed and then operate with little or no ongoing management.

Select the right combination of solutions and the small business can gain instant productivity benefits, increase the scalability of its operation and provide a better service to its customers.

What Small Business Solutions Are Available?
Probably the most well known Small Business Solution comes from Microsoft with its Microsoft Small Business Server providing file sharing, mail services, networking and security capabilities. In addition to this, Microsoft Office also comes in a Small Business Edition providing a range of the standard Office application suites at competitive prices.

Also available are specific Small Business Solutions for networking and collaboration. Novell offers Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition that provides similar capabilities to Microsoft including OpenOffice.org, a comparative solution to Microsoft Office.

How Can b2lateral Help You With Your Small Business Solution?
Many of our clients are small businesses and as such, we have developed a wealth of experience of deploying Small Business Solutions that have delivered increased capability, productivity and value to our clients.

Selecting the right infrastructure and technologies for your business is a crucial step and one that many small businesses cannot afford to get wrong. We provide small businesses with that IT expertise when they need it. We help you understand your business needs now and in the future and then help you to select the most appropriate and cost effective Small Business Solution that will enable your business to grow.

For those of you who do not have dedicated IT resources, we can help with the commissioning, installation and configuration of your Small Business IT infrastructure and also assist you with the ongoing support through our competitive managed service offerings.