With over a decade of Information Technology experience working with small and medium sized businesses all over the San Francisco Bay Area, Mark H. Jessen’s Small Business Technology articles offer ideas and understanding on how IT helps small business succeed.

Introduction

Part II of this two part article will look at ways you can consolidate your companies IT systems overhead in 2009. There is no doubt that 2009 is going to be a difficult year for business. You can go into the New Year with one of two mindsets; "We’re going to stay the course and hope for the best" or "We will look at this economy as an opportunity to reinvent ourselves into a lean, agile, competitor in our market." My goal is to have you see 2009 as a time of opportunity to find ways of doing the same, or more, with less. Make 2009 the year you use IT to make your company become a lean, agile, market competitor.

Smaller Servers, Doing More, Using Less – If you haven’t already consider migrating your older standalone chassis servers to low profile rack mounted units and blade server systems can reduce costs in a number of ways. They are both good options for reducing the amount of real estate and power needed in your data center. And both are ideal for running application virtualization software to reduce the number of physical application servers needed. Application virtualization is now a very popular way to consolidate both hardware and management costs in the data center.

Consolidate and Centralize Storage – Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Networks (SAN) are two proven ways to make company data management safer and easier. And by making sure all of your work is stored where it will be uniformly and consistently backed up you reduce the risk of lost data. Adding VPN based storage solutions for your mobile users helps keep their work safe and secure too.

Not Your Mothers Appliances – Use dedicated multitasking appliances for consolidating basic network services like Domain Name Service (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam, and Intrusion detection systems (IDS). There are currently a number of appliance makers in the market that have products that can handle your basic network functionality from single 1U rack mounted units. The savings include their reduced footprint, lower power consumption, ease of use, and centralized management.

How many applications are you supporting? – Depending on the size of your business, you could easily have dozens. First, audit all the applications and make sure they are still relevant and contributing to the company’s bottom line. Next, look for overlap between complimentary departments like, sales and marketing, where consolidation of similar applications would be mutually beneficial. And use this economy as an opportunity to renegotiate and right-size your commercial software licensing contracts.

Open to door to Open-Source – Now is the perfect time to look for less costly open-source options. More and more companies are looking seriously at Linux on the desktop. OpenOffice, MySQL, and SugarCRM for example are reliable options and all have strong support communities. Almost any type of business can benefit from open source software opportunities. New, as well as budget strained, small businesses should look seriously at the early start cost savings advantages available

Think Global, Outsource Local – What opportunities can you find right in your own backyard when you consider local or regional outsourcing to reduce some of your application development and support costs. Within a five mile radius of you, there are probably a dozen application developers hungry for your business right now. Use contractors to rapidly develop applications that you can get up and running quickly will help keep you ahead of the field. The sooner your ideas can come to fruition the sooner your business benefits. The agile company that can find new ways to quickly meet its customer’s needs wins.

Summary

Earlier in December 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) announced that the U.S. economy had been officially in a recession since December of 2007. Now the question is when can we expect this recession to end? Best estimates are that by April of 2009, we may be at the low point of the curve, leading economists to estimate that this economic contraction could last as long as 35 to 40 months which means conservatively 2010, and possibly 2011.

This means small business IT management will need to be prepared to meet the challenges of this recession with a list of cost saving measures that will keep your company lean, agile, flexible, and competitive.

So make 2009 the year of seeking out the advantages and opportunities of doing more with less.

 

Every organization with a computer network needs IT support services for network management. There are many professional, customer-focused IT support firms that provide excellent services for small and mid-sized organizations. Outsourcing your network services will give you peace of mind along with many other advantages, such as time and cost-effectiveness. This article discusses various small business IT support services  and benefits that ensure your business maximizes profitability through streamlined network processes, continuous monitoring, round the clock support and other specialized services.

Fixed monthly cost: Let me first start with the most important but often times overlooked benefit of truly managed IT support services.  Through the typically break/fix IT support model (when something breaks, you call someone to fix it) is inherently flawed.  Under this time and material approach there is not a financial driver for your IT provider to ever really fix the core problem or resolve the root cause.  Basically, the more problems you have, the more money they make.  Under our HeliosVision IT support services, our goal is the same as yours, keep your IT network and users working all of the time.  In the event there are problems, it costs us, the provider, money to react to the IT issue and you don’t pay us any more than your fixed monthly cost.  Think of it as all of the benefits of an in house IT staff with the accountability of contracted services.

Network scalability: IT support services also helps when your business is growing or possibly shrinking.  Since our service is based upon the equipment being managed, as your device counts grow, your monthly fee grows is a predetermined, predictable fashion.  In addition, when their is an economic downturn, your IT support service costs will shrink, in a predictable manner.  It becomes a predictable variable cost vs. a fixed cost when you have your own staff or a highly variable cost when using a third party IT support firm.

Server Issues: The computer network is the backbone of every company and server downtime severely affects your workflow, productivity, and your ability to serve your customers. A good IT support company will maintain optimal performance of your server by resolving all small business server maintenance issues efficiently through a proven service methodology. They will also ensure that your server is secured against internal and external security threats.

Software Installations and Updates: Performing updates of all the software applications is a vital part of any small business IT support service. Technology advances at rapid pace, software becomes obsolete or fixes in the code are released to counter virus or malware threats. The technical support team will regularly monitor the software applications installed and ensure they are always updated.

Disaster Recovery Solutions: Disaster recovery solutions are extremely necessary to prevent data loss caused due to human carelessness, natural calamity or mechanical failure. Your IT Support Company should provide back-up solutions to ensure there is no data loss irrespective of the situation.  A good management company will do more than tell you to change tapes daily, there should be business processes in place to not only ensure data is being backed up effectively but also can be restored in a timely manner following an event.

Network Security Solutions: Security is one of the major issues affecting businesses of all sizes. Any unauthorized access or attacks by viruses or worms can seriously hamper your network and may lead to data loss or loss of client data. Security should not be an add on but instead security should be woven into the technology fabric of your organization.  A good IT support company will help facilitate these management conversations.

Consulting Services: IT support companies have consulting experts that help you plan and manage your IT infrastructure. They help to improve the efficiency of your computer network system by guiding through daily issues and solving them. The experience gained from dealing with thousands of users, hundreds of networks with hundreds of servers on a daily basis constantly exposes our engineers to more issues than most other IT professional’s encounter.

At www.acropolistech.com, you can find unparalleled small business IT support services that include network management service, network administration services, and computer repair services. As a Microsoft gold Certified company, we aim at proactive and preventive network maintenance so that problems can be resolved as soon as they are anticipated or detected.

As the saying goes, “The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” Hence any business without a website will be considered as an outdated one. Hence no matter hoe large your business is, it is always good to own a website. Creating a website includes several steps ranging from web design to web hosting and search engine optimization. When it comes to web hosting, the choices are unlimited. Choosing a right web hosting plan for small business website will be harder because you will have to look for maximum benefits at a cheaper price. User friendliness is another aspect to be considered for small business web host. This guide will help you to choose the best small business web host.

Choosing the right servers

The two common types of servers in use today are the dedicated servers and the shared servers. When it comes to small business web host, the shared servers are the one to look for. Because the shared web hosting is the cost effective solution if you don’t need lots of bandwidth and extremely high performing websites. There are many reasons to select shared servers for small business web host solutions. One of the main reasons for selecting the shared servers for small business web host is the very cheap pricing. However, if you plan to expand your small business, you should definitely go with the dedicated server.

The Control Panel for Novices

The maintenance of a website has to be done using the control panel provided by the web hosting firm. As you will be new to manage a website, control panel provided by the web hosting service provider should be user friendly and easily accessible. There some web hosting service providers who offer small business web host packages which come with a very handy control panel which provides easy access to all parts of a website.

Storage

Storage is an important aspect to be considered while selecting web hosting. For small business website, you will probably need only a little storage space. Incase you wish to expand your business; you will be able to upgrade the web hosting plan which offers more storage space.

Reliability

People have misconception that the low cost small business web host solutions are not reliable. Most people stay away from the cheap shared web hosting options fearing the non-reliability. The true fact is that there are a very few reliable web hosting service providers for small businesses. You will be provided with all kinds of features like 24/7 technical support, online error reporting and maintenance system and much more. With the introduction of such small business web host solutions, reliability is not a big deal at all.

The above said information will help you to find the best small business web host.