Full Service Computing and Networking for Small Business

Services

Most people wouldn’t buy a truck without considering the sizes, weights, types, and routes of loads it will haul, and neither should most go to StaplesMaxBestDepot, buy a bunch of computers, plug them into a DSL or cable router, and then start thinking about how to make them be useful to the business. If you’re all alone you can buy almost any desktop or notebook computer you fancy, Windows or Mac, install Microsoft Office and QuickBooks, and off you go. Run a business with more people than just yourself, and your computers could have you wishing for the good old days of typewriters, ledger cards, carbon paper, and printing calculators. We can help you assess your computing and networking needs – for startups, established businesses, new locations, and mergers and acquisitions.

Your valuable data and files

Whether in spreadsheets, QuickBooks, or other, you have financial and customer data that are critical to your operation and would hurt if you lost it or it got into the wrong hands. Likewise, you have business and marketing plans, product and service documentation, and other files and data that are important to your operation. Without proper management you might not know who has the latest copy of a file, a hard disk drive could fail and lose its entire contents, including the only copies of critical data and documents, or a fire or theft could leave you without both your computer(s) and your external backup disk(s).

Once upon a time proper management called for expensive servers and personnel that only The Big Boys could afford, but today there is a range of options appropriate for the smallest businesses up to global enterprises, with costs – both personnel time and cash – appropriately scaled, options that can be on your own premises or off in “The Cloud”, as Internet-based services are often called. All on your own premises, all somewhere out in the Internet, or a mix, we can help you select the right options for your your business and get it all set up and operating correctly, including moving existing data and files to new locations.

E-mail

E-mail, necessary though it be for business, is not always as professional and reliable as it could be and should be. You can get anything from a free service that only offers access from an ad-riddled web site, blocks good incoming mail in the name of spam resistance, and gives you an address like to a business class mail server with good spam resistance on your own premises or hosted by one of countless Internet services and a professional looking address like .

Do you need to share contacts, calendars, and to-do lists? Do you need integration with CRM or other applications? Should you operate your own mail server or have an Internet hosting company do it for you? How important is keeping old mail for a long time? Should you use the full features of Outlook on your PCs connected to Microsoft Exchange Server or would a competitor like Google Apps or generic mail service do? By starting first with an analysis of your needs, we can help you select the best E-mail option for your business and if a change is in order get it running properly, including migrating your old mail into your new system.

Your Computers and Networks

Whether you choose to keep all of your critical data, files, and E-mail on Internet-based hosts, all in house, or a mix, you'll need some computers and you'll need Internet access from them. You might want only certain personnel to see customer data, a different but possibly overlapping group to see accounting data, sales people not to see vendor data, Internet-only service to visitors who you want to keep out of all of your internal operations, etc.

We have seen clients' computers with public IP addresses or in a DMZ, clients who had no idea what a public IP address or DMZ is, and who trusted The Cable Guy to set them up safely. As much as one would like to think that installers set things up safely, sometimes they don't and sometimes they bring in equipment that leaves its user vulnerable to attack regardless of how it's set up.

The lines between your computers, your local network(s), and the Internet are blurry indeed, and they all offer their own sets of opportunities to impede your own legitimate use and for criminals around the world to hurt you. We can help you define your production and security needs and then get things working with easy access for the good guys and fire breathing dragons in the moat around the castle walls for the bad guys.

Your Web Site

When was the last time you picked up a paper phone book to look up a business? Almost every business today needs a web site, which can range from a few pages as a simple web-based brochure telling what you do and how to contact you to a complex site with online ordering of multiple product lines and public comment, with or without links to social networking sites such as Facebook.

Do you want to write a monthly newsletter? Do want to write less formal blog entries on a regular schedule or when you're in the mood? Do you want to tweet every time you post a blog entry or get a big order? Do you know how to get people following you on Twitter? Do you want to post the latest news of your industry and/or your location? Do you want authorized customers or the general public to post comments? Do you want a web-based shopping cart? Do you want to collect payment? Do you want to pay to show up in the sponsored links (ads) above search results or in the right column, and if so how much?

We can help you sort all that out and get you online with reliable, secure hosting of content that you can prepare yourself or purchase from industry sources.

Virus, Spyware, and Other Evilware Remediation

Even the best anti-virus/anti-spyware software can't block everything. It's a cat and mouse game with organized and freelance criminals around the world discovering yet another security hole to exploit, software developers working to close it, and defenders learning how to block such attacks. You can keep your software up to date, run good defensive software, stay off tacky web sites, and not open suspicious E-mail, but the right piece of well-crafted evil software sneaking past your own defenses can still get you. Once you've been had, a scan by the same defensive software that allowed the attack in the first place is unlikely to clean it. We've developed manual techniquies to clean up such problems without losing valuable content on the compromised PC.

Repairs

The best laid plans sometimes don't go as planned. We prefer to replace aging equipment on its owner's schedule, but sometimes the owner's schedule is too optimistic and sometimes things just break. When that happens we can make necessary repairs when possible. We have contacts with most manufacturers for parts, and for old equipment in unique applications that can't be supported by newer equipment we can get parts.

There are many different types of hard disk drive failure, some easier than others to repair, and for catastrophic failure of disks with valuable content that has no backup we know companies that can recover data from seemingly impossible failures.

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