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What Business Network Services Can Do For You!
By admin | July 29, 2008
In a small business, there are many different people that help protect the interest of the business. There are attorneys to help manage the legal aspects and accountants to look after the financial interests. But there is also the person (or consultant) that is there, behind the scenes, looking after your company’s computer and network services.
When looking at what a small business’ needs to create a network, there are many areas to consider. Some of these areas that require careful consideration include:
- Internet access
- Security and virus protection
- Email implementation
- Desktop computer hardware
- Shared application requirements
- Storage needs
- Backup strategies and tactics
- Power conditioning and protection
- Desktop computer operating systems
What Exactly is Network Services?
Network Services is a collection of computers and devices (printers, scanners, hard drives and other shared resources) all joined by connection points in the form of switches and routers. This gives you the ability to:
- Share resources between coworkers and offices and not be limited by location
- To securely use these resources on or off location without concern of loss of data and intellectual property through theft, loss or disaster
Certain expanded resources would not be available to your business without the level of connection that comes with a network. Such resources include:
- Shared addresses & mail
- Calendaring services
- Document sharing
- Computer Backups
All of the above can be easily implemented by an exchange server, apple server, and windows media server.
These services can simplify searching for coworkers and client contact information, reserve conference rooms, send invites to meetings, and collaborate on projects by sharing files and sharing large chunks of data for use over the network rather than emailing or snail mailing disks.
A small business network also allows for communication advancements such as secure video conferencing and chat servers, as well as restricting employees’ web surfing protecting themselves and your business.
What Can a Network Do For My Business?
Below are just a few examples of what network services can do for your company.
- Collaboration: Network services can provide collaboration within your company. SharePoint file sharing allows you to set permissions on particular files allowing people to share information while tracking each others changes and minimizing wasted resources in meetings. Adobe collaboration tools offer similar services without tying you to a proprietary file format.
- Security: Firewalls restrict outside access to your internal resources, as well as allow access to specific personnel through VPN (virtual private networking) technology.
- Data Recovery: We have all done it, accidentally erased something off the hard drive. These types of occurrences happen especially right around the time a major project is due. But with a data recovery plan in place with your network server, it is easy to recover that major bit of data.
What to look for in a Network Services provider:
When making the decision on which network consultant to invest in, here are few things to keep in mind that would be desirable in a consultant.
- Fast Response Time: You want a provider who is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When something goes wrong you do not want to have to wait until Monday morning to get it fixed.
- Has a Small Business Understanding: You want a provider who has an understanding of how small business operates and, more importantly, how critical uptime is to every small business.
- Extensive Experience: When it comes to a network service provider, you don’t want to stop at just years of experience. You also want a company that is knowledgeable about the type of program packages that are suitable for your company. If your company is a Law firm, you don’t want to be using software that is focused more on commercial business.
Watch the video related to small business networking
Network failures used to mean Brown Bear Car Wash staff went home early because they could not do their jobs. With a Cisco Network downtime is a thing of the past, and everyone is working. To learn more visit www.cisco.com
Help answer the question about small business networking
How can someone wanting to start a small business get find the startup money?I have a great idea for a retail business but can't really rely on a bank loan. Does anyone know of a small business network that may have tips on raising the needed money to begin?
About Author
Where to Begin Looking
If you are looking for a Network Services Consultant in the Maryland areas of Anne Arundel County, Howard County, and Baltimore County and cities including Annapolis, Bowie, Crofton, Gambrills, Columbia, Ellicott City, Laurel, Elkridge, Jessup, Glen Burnie, and Severna Park than visit DSR Computer Repair & Technology Specialists.
Since 1986, DSR has strived to provide the Maryland technology community with a unique option when it comes to purchasing and servicing computer equipment and network options.
Topics: Networking | 18 Comments »
July 29th, 2008 at 9:18 am
this is bad
July 29th, 2008 at 9:52 am
this is good
July 29th, 2008 at 10:29 am
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July 29th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I considered starting just such a business for myself, after doing some research I came to the conclusion that I would charge $100 an hour. Which is a bargain compared to places like Best Buys Geek Squad and Circuit City's Firedog who charge $150/hr+ also you could offer your services to business in blocks for a discounted rate. Say they wanted to purchase a blog of 10 hours a month, would normally cost them $1k but you could offer it for say $800 or so. These are some things I was looking at doing, unfortunately I didn't have the startup capital to start operation the way I wanted to. So now I'm a network admin for a small ISP. anyway, hope that helps!
July 29th, 2008 at 10:08 am
they are a payment collection service mainly used by adult phone service companys.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
newsmix is a seperate channel that is broadcasted that way. Regardless if you do or don't have one of the channels on the screen. You can call in and upgrade your package to get that channel.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:18 am
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July 30th, 2008 at 5:20 am
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July 30th, 2008 at 8:37 am
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July 30th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
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Hope this help,
July 31st, 2008 at 6:39 am
check out http://www.bg-intl.com . . I buy stuff from them and sell it on Ebay & make okay money doing it.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:08 am
Look around what other similar service providers are charging, and charge about 30% more than that. Offer the 30% as discount to the guy who gets you business.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:37 pm
i just hav a question. my family has a linksys router, and were all on the same connection. for some reason, we didnt do anythin, and all of our computers were linked. my printer is an old HP Deskjet, and it doesnt have any ethernet connections, it plugs into my laptop. so my mom wanted to print sumthin from her computer, and wen she hit print, it printed on my printer. i was on a wireless network. one day we all wiped out our drive and lost the network. how can i set it up again? i dont kno how
July 31st, 2008 at 11:22 pm
i don’t think that DMZ is the best way how to access your PC from internet. for services such a webserver is better to setup port forwarding and not to leave whole PC open as DMZ does.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:26 pm
thanx, this really helped, better than my teacher!!!!
August 1st, 2008 at 5:11 pm
NO you cannot.
They will simply ask you to pay first, and once you do, you'll never hear from them again. You will not get the grants promised to you and you will never get your money back in return.
Why? Because the government does not really give grants to expand a for profit business UNLESS your business is eligible for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/sbir/index.html , which fund the research and development of technological innovation that meets specific government needs.
Even SBA does NOT give out grants. From the SBA website http://www.sba.gov/mostrequesteditems/CON_FAQ2.html
"The U.S. Small Business Administration does not offer grants to start or expand small businesses, although it does offer a wide variety of loan programs. (See http://www.sba.gov/financing for more information) While SBA does offer some grant programs, these are generally designed to expand and enhance organizations that provide small business management, technical, or financial assistance. These grants generally support non-profit organizations, intermediary lending institutions, and state and local governments."
Nonetheless, you can go to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) http://www.cfda.gov and Grants.gov http://www.grants.gov – these are two sites created by the federal government to provide transparency and information on grants. Browse through the listings and see if you can find any grant that would support a for-profit venture.
Here is a listing of federal grants for small businesses. See if there is any available for individuals for starting a business — THERE'S NONE.
http://12.46.245.173/pls/portal30/CATALOG.BROWSE_BENEF_RPT.show
You may also want to read the warnings FTC has issued against these "grant" companies:
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/03/grantresources.htm
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt134.htm
Here is also one of the warnings issued by the Better Business Bureau http://www.concord.bbb.org/tips_timesharescams.html
August 1st, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Trusted ID are the ones on top. Right now they are doing a 30 days free trial during which you can use all their tools, then you can cancel if you wish.
See:
http://www.esuperfind.com/id-theft-resources.php?id=tnh
August 1st, 2008 at 8:50 pm
You can go to their website to get the information you need for your state. http://www.bbb.com You can actually file the complaint onoline now I believe.
If that doesn't work, also go to your attorney general's website for your state and file a complaint.