What is this?
  • Telecoms

    Bringing VoIP in house

    For growing businesses, an on-premise IP PBX offers flexibility and room for growth. But how do you pick the right set up for clients?
    read more
  • Security

    A smart approach to IP-based video surveillance

    The trend towards converged security requires companies to keep their eye on physical premises. Here's how to specify and deploy an IP-based video surveillance solution for your small business clients.
    read more
Server

Set up event subscriptions in Windows 2008

Set up an event subscription between two Windows Server 2008 systems

   
Server

Building clusters with Windows Server 2008

Microsoft has upgraded the Cluster Service in enhanced-capability editions of Windows Server 2008 and the whole process of creating and managing clusters has been made much simpler.

   
Server

Set up event subscriptions in Windows Server 2008

Set up an event subscription between two Windows Server 2008 systems

Open the Reliability and Performance Monitor console, right-click on Data Collector Sets > User Defined, and create a New > Data Collector Set. Name the Data Collector and choose to Create manually (Advanced).

   
Server

Small Business Server 2008

By the end of this year, the SBS 2008 portfolio will finally officially be out, and it will change some of the decisions that you have to make on your customers’ behalf.

   
Server

Dealing with what’s different in Small Business Server 2008

SBS 2008 has some long-awaited features, including Exchange Server 2007, and it’s far simpler to set up, but it also drops features like firewalling, VPN and some backup options. What do you gain, what do you lose and what do you need to do about it?

   
Business ContinuityThe Business

How to write an IT service-level agreement

A service-level agreement manages expectations and improves communication when you’re starting your relationship with a customer as well as when things go wrong.

 

   
NetworkClientThe Business

Saving power, saving money with a green energy audit: cut printer costs and create power plans

Cold mornings and the clocks going back are going to put up heating and lighting bills for businesses as winter draws in, but increasingly IT is putting up the electricity bill too. Power prices have increased significantly this year and it’s not yet clear whether they have peaked. Offer customers a power audit that covers printing, servers, desktop PCs, storage and peripherals or include it when you’re planning a new deployment to sweeten the deal — and try it out in your own office to find out how much you can save by managing IT power.

   
TelecomsThe Business

Unplugging the PBX to sell a VoIP installation or hosted VoIP

Unless your clients have just returned from a stint on Mars, there is every chance they will already have used VoIP, though they may not call it that. VoIP, or Internet telephony, has been one of the undoubted technology success stories of the last few years. Skype alone claims 200 million users, many of whom work in small and mid-sized businesses.

   
Telecoms

Bridging PBX to VoIP using a hardware gateway or VoIP enabled router

The simplest way to bridge between VoIP and conventional telephony systems is by installing a hardware gateway, or a VoIP-enabled router.
   
Business Continuity

Sponsored feature - The Paperless Office – what’s stopping you?

Over the years, the phrase ‘Paperless Office’ has become something of a distant dream to many businesses.

   


Next
issue March 2010

To read a sample please
download Jan/Feb 2009
IT-Expert-Magazine-Vo2-Ed1.pdf

 

MS-SMB-Report-2009
Download the Microsoft SMB
Insight Report 2009

“Because they can respond so quickly as business conditions change,small and midsize companies have an advantage in a volatile and uncertain economic climate".

Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

IT EXPERT TOP TIP

You want the PCs you support to have the right time for more reasons than keeping the users happy; for one thing, if every PC has a slightly different time, finding which version of a file was updated most recently gets much more complicated. Get your head around the Windows Time Service at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773013.aspx, get the commands for making a PC get its time from the domain at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc758905.aspx and if you want a an alternative time server use uk.pool.ntp.org to get the time from a random time server in the NTP Pool Project (read about the project at http://www.pool.ntp.org/use.html) read more

TAKE THE POLL

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WELCOME

 If it ain’t broke, should you fix it? Actually, yes. The one thing most of your customers need is backup, because they’ll be out of business so this issue we take a look at the trickier systems to back up – databases and Exchange. But to get the most from their opportunities, your small business customers need to be innovating – because the bigger businesses they compete with are going to be. 

According to a survey done by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Accenture, 63% of businesses are going to increase their IT budget in 2010, 75% say IT has to give the business more flexibility – and over 80% said that yes, the cost of projects is very important when they’re trying to get them signed off (no surprise there). 

Incidentally, a third are planning to keep costs down by setting project requirements and sticking to them, which means you need to ask the questions that let you spec the project correctly in the first place. Expect to be asked to drop your charges and to include open source software (which too many businesses still assume is always cheaper, so make sure you know what’s actually cost effective). Think about services you can offer that will save them money by avoiding disruption; GFI’s MAX and LANguard tools help you create monitoring services that cover the full range of small business systems with very little effort and you can prevent most of those irritating and avoidable configuration problems more easily than you think with a free tool in all modern versions of Windows and Windows Server, Group Policy Preferences. 

The survey says businesses want to rationalise and replace existing systems: if that makes you think of virtualisation, 37% of businesses agree with you. Remember that replacing kit means dealing with what gets replaced; we take a look at both the problems and the business opportunities in recycling hardware. They also want to invest in CRM (which we looked at last issue) and improving business processes, in data analytics, compliance and supply chain management. VoIP might help them with that and we look at both the budget option, based on Skype, and the full in-house VoIP systems you can specify and video surveillance is coming down in price as it shifts to IP-based systems. 

We’re also seeing enterprises accelerating their Windows 7 deployments; according to analysts Forrester two thirds will migrate to Windows 7 in 2010, making it the new business standard OS. That’s a significant change given that analysts IDC says 72% of businesses across Europe are still using XP with only 15% on Vista – again, you’ll want to remind the small businesses you work with that they want to get the benefits of Windows 7 sooner rather than later. 

Things aren’t back to business as usual it does look like there will be more business in 2010 – but you’ll have to think strategically to win it. Dell’s director for SMB advanced technologies Aamir Paul has some ideas about what the small businesses you work with will need this year and how you can position the products and services you offer them to suit that. See more of the interview on our Web site, along with all our previous features.

 Mary Branscombe Executive Editor 

P.S.
Smartphones continue to go from strength to strength in business and if your customers are buying the new Bold and Storm BlackBerrys they’re going to want you to upgrade them to BES 5 to get the extra features; in this issue we have a full step-by-step guide to make it easier.

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