We’re often talking with small business owners about their business – to understand not only their needs and usage of technology, but also what’s important to them as business owners. Not surprisingly saving time and money, all the while providing better and differentiated service to their customers is of key importance. Windows Small Business Server 2008 (SBS 2008) is really a best kept secret that is a catalyst for small businesses to reduce costs, increase productivity and delight their customers because it really enables them to organize their business and communicate more effectively internally and with their customers.
SBS 2008 is an all in one server suite designed specifically for small businesses. It provides businesses with the technology to do the following:
- Organize and centralize information and data so everyone can find what they need.
- Share hardware such as printers and faxes.
- Back-up important data and restore files.
- Work remotely with easy and secure access to desktops, files, email and calendars from an internet connected PC or mobile phone.
- Share files more easily across PCs and mobile devices with a company intranet
- Run accounting or other business software on more than one PC (SBS 2008 Premium Edition)
- Easily set up new users, computers, and network access (or discontinue existing users and devices) as staffing levels fluctuate
- Look professional by consolidating email accounts with your own company hosted email
- Get better performance out of existing PC investments with centralized storage to free up memory on individual PCs.
SBS 2008 was designed specifically for businesses with 75 or fewer PCs or users – and many small businesses are benefiting from a server, even those with as few as 2 to 3 PCs.
Allowing people to work remotely is a great productivity enhancer for many companies. For some, it’s one of the most sought-after benefits. For still others, it’s the entire culture of the company — everyone works from home or remote offices and very few people, if any, actually work in a traditional office.
These days, when you call in to an airline like JetBlue, you are likely to talk to a reservations agent who is working part-time from home and is logged into the company’s reservation system and talking to you on a voice-over IP phone connection, not a traditional copper telephone line. The ability to work remotely extends to all types and sizes of businesses, and it propels business to new levels of capability that may have been out of reach.
The key to working remotely is to ensure you are doing so remotely. I’m sure you are familiar with using secure Web sites. Whether it’s your bank or your online e-mail, like Gmail, when you log in to these types of sites, you should be very familiar with the https prefix to the URL, taking special note of the letter S at the end. The “s” means secure and it will be accompanied by a noticeable yellow padlock either on the same line as the URL you type in or in the lower window of your browser. This indicates you are connecting using Secure Sockets Layer or SSL.
Without using too muchtechno-babble, SSL encrypts the communication between your computer and the Web site you are visiting. This means that a hacker will not be able to intercept the data sent across the Internet from your PC to the Web server and vice versa. This keeps your password safe as well as all the data you are accessing. Without the SSL or the “https” in the URL, your session is not secure and anything you type could be “seen” by someone watching Internet traffic.
As this relates to working remotely, many companies are deploying secure applications via the Web that enables people to work via a simple Web browser and access corporate databases, CRM or sales systems, etc. The capabilities are practically unlimited. Even a very small business, one with 10 to 50 or more employees, can leverage this technology for things as common as e-mail access or as specific as a database or even remote access to financial systems and individual computers.
One of the great features in Microsoft Small Business Server, which is a server operating system specifically designed for smaller companies, is a feature called the Remote Web Workplace. This secure Web site allows remote users to access company e-mail, the company Intranet (private Web site) and even their office computer.
Another common method for working remotely is to use a virtual private network, or VPN. One of the very real concerns around using public wireless systems is that even though you may be able to connect to secure resources at the other end, your connection to the Internet is an insecure wireless connection.
If you think of your Internet connection as a four-lane highway, a VPN connection is a one-lane connection that is reserved just for you. That one lane also happens to be covered in a very secure concrete encasement that makes it like your own personal “tunnel” on the highway, which is why many people call them VPN tunnels.
This secure pathway across the insecure Internet ensures that all your communication across this one lane of the information superhighway is truly private. For many security-conscious companies, this is the only way they allow people to work remotely, and that’s good business.
Regardless of how you do it, you should take advantage of the capability to provide secure remote access to your business. The investment is modest and the payback can be substantial.