Articles about Small Business

Three-quarters of small and medium-sized firms say that having a reliable wireless network in place is now essential for business success.

It doesn’t matter if the company has two, twenty or two hundred employees, all agree that a wireless network keeps employees connected wherever they are on site, and that this boosts productivity, strengthens competitiveness and enhances customer service.

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The health of the PC market has been a topic of debate as spending shifts towards tablets and smartphones. This shift is readily evident in the consumer market, but the enterprise market paints a completely different picture. PCs still rule within the walls of business and will likely continue for a while.

Why has the corporate PC been spared from this down cycle? First and foremost, we are in the midst of a business-centric refresh cycle. The factor that has received the most attention when attempting to explain this new growth is Microsoft’s end-of-life (EOL) support for Windows XP in the spring of 2014. This hard deadline served as a wakeup call for many companies who, by mid-2013, started to upgrade their PC fleet. There is quite a bit of additional data, however, that suggests the EOL of Microsoft XP is only one of several factors driving a corporate PC refresh, and that this bounce may have legs once the Windows XP refresh has run its course.

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Business agility is the "ability of a business system to rapidly respond to change by adapting its initial stable configuration". So far, so Wikipedia -- and I'm pretty bored already. But what if we can look at the concept from a slightly more interesting angle, and work out some business agility tips you can use? Star Wars, anyone?

There are few examples of non-agile organization greater than the Galactic Empire. It's huge, sprawling and paralyzed by bureaucracy. It loves enormous, costly prestige projects and is controlled top-down by what can only be described as the Universe's worst micro-manager. And in the end, it's defeated by a bunch of what are basically teenagers. Remind you of anyone? Let's take a look at what we can learn about business strategy through the medium of Star Wars. I can at least promise that it's not nothing.

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Microsoft is introducing new, cheaper Office 365 subscriptions to businesses in a bid to encourage small businesses into using its office suite. The cost of an Office 365 Personal subscription remains at $6.99 but small to medium-sized businesses -- those with fewer than 300 employees -- are now able to snap up a subscription for just $5 per user per month (which doesn’t match the $1 offer from GoDaddy).

Before you get too excited about this, there is something of a catch. Firstly, there is a commitment to subscribe for a year, and the cheapest package, Office 365 Business Essentials, does not allow for Office's apps -- Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so on -- to be installed. Opt for the cheap subscription and you're stuck with Office Online.

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As overused as it may be, the old mantra still holds definitively true: you're only as strong as your weakest link. This goes for sports teams, business divisions, vehicles, and most anything else in life where multiple links make up the entity at large. It shouldn't be surprising that IT systems and networks follow the same logic.

Yet this very notion is what causes me to cringe when in discussions with new and existing clients. There is a large disconnect when it comes to the average small business owner, as to what technical improvements will actually lead to better stability and resiliency -- all encompassing what they truly care about: uptime.

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No one ever wants to focus on worst-case scenarios. However, the unfortunate fact of the matter is this: terrible things can happen. Tornados, hurricanes, fires, blizzards, and floods -- they can damage and destroy both personal and intellectual property within seconds. That’s why preparation for the aftermath of such disasters is crucial -- and with September being named National Disaster Preparedness Month, what better time to formulate a plan of attack than now?

According to the National Federation of Independent Business, about 30 percent of small businesses will experience some sort of natural disaster. Even worse than the consequences that often follow in the wake of such catastrophes is the fact that complete restoration of important data, files, and applications is not always guaranteed. All too often, businesses that fail to properly prepare for disaster lose critical information and assets. The end result? A business that is past the point of recovery and instead must rebuilt itself from the ground up.

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When you hear terms like "Enterprise" and "Corporate", you immediately think of large office buildings, fancy men in suits and billions of dollars in revenue. However, we do not all work under such naming constraints. Hell, we do not even always work in the traditional sense. Whether you babysit, contribute time at a local church or develop a home budget, you are working -- even if you do not get paid. In other words, work gets done outside of the enterprise.

So, to name a product "Enterprise", really limits the appeal. Quite frankly, that word is very intimidating to the average person, so it makes sense to not use it. Today, Google wisely rebrands Google Enterprise as Google for Work. Believe it or not, sometimes a name change makes all the difference.

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As the world packs its bags and forms an orderly queue in crowded departure zones, the plethora of smartphones, tablets and laptops coming along with us, highlights a need to stay connected on holiday. This is the age of the connected consumer. As travel surveys and online review sites repeatedly confirm, the most important amenity for the connected consumer is Wi-Fi.

Whether venues like it or not, wireless internet access is now as important to customers as electricity, or water in the bathroom, and for many more important than a clean room or a brilliant hotel restaurant.

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Some people love spreadsheets, it's a fact. It's also a fact that a lot of people dislike spreadsheets, and for companies that use them every day, their less-than-efficient aspect can be a hindrance to growth.

Or so says research from Intuit -- an online accounting software provider -- in an investigation of 200 UK small businesses.

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Microsoft ended support for XP two months ago, yet consumers are still proving resistant to change, and many businesses are similarly reluctant to upgrade to a newer version of Windows.

According to security firm Bitdefender, which conducted a three-month global study into the operating system use of small and medium businesses, nearly 19 percent of firms, or almost one in five, are sticking with the aging XP despite security concerns.

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Backup is something that all businesses need to take seriously, but for smaller enterprises the cost and complexity of professional backup tools can be daunting.

The problem gets even more acute with the use of virtual machines. Backup and recovery specialist Paragon Software has the answer in the shape of a new product that will be available free until the end of June.

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A new piece of research from Salesforce.com claims that apps boost worker productivity levels considerably.

In fact, app usage apparently boosts productivity by some 34 percent, according to the study which interviewed 470 staff members across small and large businesses in the UK.

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Opening a new business is a very risky ordeal. Many of them end up being unsuccessful, and people's dreams and lives can easily be destroyed as a result. Often, business owners make decisions with their hearts, rather than their heads. When I see a new storefront open in my area, I can usually predict correctly as to which will close and which will prosper. It is sad that the people opening the business are not able to take a step-back and see the same thing.

Google has taken an interest in new businesses and how they utilize technology to be successful. Today, the search-giant releases a report and infographic aimed at helping future upstarts to learn from existing successes.

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Many surveys of how employees use technology focus on larger companies, but the latest 2013 Small Business Employee Survey from GFI Software looks only at firms with between two and 99 employees.

The survey of more than 1,100 employees across the US asked about job satisfaction, use of social media, connecting to company networks, attitudes to cyber crime and more. The results are interesting. While the majority of employees (75 percent) believe that mobile computing has improved their lives because they can work from anywhere, they’re also concerned about privacy and data protection. The other 25 percent said that it had made their lives more stressful because it made escaping work harder.

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Today, TeamViewer announces a new beta version of its popular remote control software for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs. The latest release, named TeamViewer 9 Beta, introduces new features aimed at businesses, developers and end-users as well as security improvements.

The most noteworthy security addition in TeamViewer 9 Beta is two-factor authentication. It allows users to add an extra layer of protection to their accounts by using security codes, that can be sent to their mobile devices and, alternatively, generated by dedicated mobile apps. On Macs, TeamViewer 9 also adds the option to increase the password strength in QuickSupport.

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