Small Business Computer Consulting

Microsoft recently announced good news for solution providers by tying in Office SharePoint Server 2007 with the Office 2007 platforrm.  Two new services from the SharePoint Enterprise 2007 edition, business intelligence and business forms will integrate with Office 2007 and help solution providers better use Office, most particularly Excel and InfoPath.

Users will now be able to publish spreadsheets with Excelll 2007 directly into SharePoint, so the new solution providers tool will be important when using business intelligence portals.  For example, users will be able to change views with Excel interactively by going from the portal page from Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.  Installation of Office will not be needed.  The only time local Excel installation is required is during the editing of spreadsheets.

The new integration for solution providers will use similar performance indicators as those used in BI solutoins, allowing for the changing of spreadsheet values.  Developers can build on top of Excel output by adding dashboards.  SharePoint 2007 offers optimized security features to help keep networks and files protected.

Solution providers feel that Microsoft has done well in simplifying the publishing process, adding new development capablities.  Solution providers can now add to many filter lists to automate typically mundane and time-consuming tasks. 

The new design is built on an ASP.Net 2.0 object model that allows SharePoint lists to be lengthened, almost to no limit.  Microsoft is calling this new extensions concept Features.

For more information on this new integration, please visit the article for solution providers.  Microsoft is offering a free book for those interested in these innovative new programs. 

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

Because technology is so advanced, a computer network can actually become too bogged down by useful features without expert help.  The following tips can help make a network more efficient:

New Equipment

A lot of small companies have not updated switches, routers and hubs since before Y2K.  New equipment available is eons beyond that you could buy prior to Y2K and prices have fallen as well.  Investing new equipment can vastly improve network performance, even if you just buy a few key components to work alongside older equipment.

What is the Available Bandwidth and Pricing?

Bandwidth providers might not have increased bandwidth or cut prices, even when it’s available.  T-1 and T-3 lines were expensive a few years ago, but now are completely affordable for many medium-sized and small businesses.

Don’t Skimp on Storage!

Storage area networks and network-attached storage components can be purchased very inexpensively now and are easy to manage.  Many companies haven’t increased storage since Y2K even though costs have fallen dramatically.  Adding a small storage device can improve the speed and performance of a network immensely and are better than storing items on hard drives.   Companies can actually get five to ten times the storage today for the same exact price as a few years ago.  

Don’t Forget to Protect Your Network

Spyware, Trojans and worms are being developed constantly by hackers through new programs and can help them steal data and do plenty of damage to a network and its performance.  If you don’t update your protection regularly, it is useless and will not be able to protect your network from the latest problems.  Don’t expect a human to handle this task, as it will be prone to errors; set up automatic updates and scans.

Automated Resource Monitoring

This network enhancement can help display network bottlenecks.  Once you identify what is slowing down your network, you can help speed things up.

Follow Users and Managers

You need to be sure your user and manager systems are set up to automatically update important features, but also talk to them about what they deal with regularly when working on the network.  They might have specific issues that automatic monitoring can miss.

What Can You Do to Reduce Data Entry?

You might notice that some information on the network has been entered many times.  Simple software or middleware can make single-time data entry possible.

Using E-Mail Consolidation and Acceleration Tools

E-mail is one of the most responsible parties for slowing down network performance, mostly because so many (70 percent or more) has attachments that take up more than 5MB apiece.  These attachments take up time and space when sent the first time, but take up even more space when they are forwarded multiple times throughout a company.  Because attachments are often not even downloaded, they end up being wasted space on a network.  E-mail consolidation and acceleration tools can allow users to download e-mails but not attachments, unless the user specifically clicks on the attachment.

Wide Area File Services

Wide area file services give better WAN communication because they allow for better compression and communications between senders and users.  This is an up-and-coming technology and is important for the future of network speed.

Data Reduction and Pattern Matching

This feature allows appliances at various points of a WAN to only exchange file changes instead of the entire file.  Unchanged information is stored on the appliance and not the network.  The less data sent over the network, the faster it will run.

Created By:  Computer Consulting 101

Recent news for IT consultants is that the revenues obtained through the sale of security software increased by 15 percent in 2005.  Market researchers claim that this percentage increase was motivated by developments within the antivirus market.

In 2004, the revenues were $6.4 billion, whereas last year they rose to $7.4 billion.  Antivirus software purchased by IT consultants and business owners on its own produced a revenue of $4 billion, which was 54.3 percent of the total.

Organizations continued to spend money on security in 2005 and analysts expect that the industry will grow significantly in the next few years as IT consultants help businesses comply with government and other regulations.

The security field was led by Symantec last year, and the company was responsible for over 32 percent of the revenue globally in 2005.  Similarly, the company was responsible for about 54 percent of sales in the antivirus sector.  McAfee was next in line with a market share of 12 percent, followed distantly by Trend Micro at 8.5 percent, CA at 6 percent and IBM at 4 percent.  The security field continues to be a hot market for IT consultants. 

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101

As a provider of computer consulting services, you should communicate to your clients that a dedicated server generally can enforce strong user passwords. This means your clients can:

• Force users to change passwords at predetermined intervals
• Prevent recycling of previously-chosen passwords
• Eliminate the use of blank passwords
• Enforce selection of passwords that are a mixture of both letters and numbers, as well as upper and lower case characters

Protection Against "Accidental" Reboots

When a PC is used in a peer-to-peer network as both a server and a workstation, sooner or later the server will get rebooted accidentally – no matter how careful the server’s primary user is.

Let your computer consulting services clients know that whether the peer-to-peer server gets rebooted as a result of installing a new piece of software, or a buggy application with memory leaks causes system crashes, sooner or later their employees will be livid when the server goes down without warning. 

This will likely cause corrupted data files and lost hours of collective work in progress. A dedicated server system is a simple way to prevent this enormous potential problem.

Centralized File Protection

With a peer-to-peer network, servers tend to sprout up throughout your computer consulting services clients’ office as multiple end users set up file and printer shares on their own PCs.

With a client/server network, files are centrally protected from data loss and corruption resulting from hardware faults, accidental deletion, power problems, hacking, sabotage, and virus threats.

Don’t Forget Back Up Solutions

As their computer consulting services provider, communicate to your clients that conversely in a peer-to-peer network environment, with decentralized file storage, they should consider how crucial data files will be backed up.

Will data backup be a manual process? Will an external tape backup drive get passed from user to user (requiring each end user to take initiative)?

The Bottom Line about Computer Consulting Services

When providing computer consulting services, have clients consider how often antivirus definitions will get updated on each server. And don’t forget to think about whether each peer-to-peer server has a UPS (battery backup unit) capable of unattended shutdown if power is lost, when no one is around to manually and safely shutdown the "server".

In this article, you’ve learned about computer consulting services. To learn more about computer consulting services click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

In the computer consulting business, dead-end solutions can be very expensive mistakes for your prospects or clients. So, start by pointing out how scalable your proposed network will be.

Communicate the Options

Discuss server hardware and OS/NOS selection and detail how, as you add more RAM, faster processors, SCSI or RAID hard drive controllers and multiple processors, performance continues to scale up. Explain how your computer consulting business’ prospects and clients can get a tremendous power boost with relatively low cost, by doing incremental hardware upgrades on servers running the solution you’ve proposed.

Then talk up available options for your prospects or clients down the road. Small business owners, as entrepreneurs, are a pretty optimistic group. So they’ll want to make sure their IT investments are in sync with their visions of future company growth.

The Growth Path

Highlight how your computer consulting business’ proposed network solution provides a very well defined growth path to more application-rich platforms. Then, reiterate how a Microsoft Windows 9x/Me/XP "server", on the other hand, severely limits your networking options.

A Microsoft Windows 9x/Me/XP "server" may be adequate for some very limited file and printer sharing, but it’s definitely not a great platform for adding high-performance relational database or messaging applications.

As company IT needs evolve, the amount of files can really spiral out of control if the networking solution can’t keep up. So always highlight how the proposed networking solution and centralizing data helps to protect IT investments by maintaining version control.

A Networking Solution Can Reduce Confusion

With a decentralized peer-to-peer network, there may be multiple, conflicting versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel data files for example. Whether these files are passed around on disk or distributed on different users’ "servers", a well-designed client/server network, with consistent naming conventions and a coherent share and folder structure goes a long way toward preventing confusion. 

The Bottom Line about the Computer Consulting Business

In this article, you’ve learned about the computer consulting business. To learn more about the computer consulting business, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

How do you move from micro small businesses to the sweet spot IT consulting?  What you need to do is look over the checklist of what technology they are looking for and start spending some time beefing up your skills.

How Much Time Do You Spend to Improve Your Skills?

Balance your time.  If you have the skills to work with micro, but don’t quite have the skills to work with sweet spot, spend about 75% of your time over the next couple of months on IT consulting business development and about 25% of your time on increasing your technical skills.

What Skills Do You Need to Focus On?

Get a not for resale copy of Microsoft Small Business Server 2003.  Load it up on a spare system and start learning that.  That is, by far, the most common thing that is going to get you into IT consulting for the sweet spot clients.  Second would probably be Novell Small Business Suite.

Start With the Simpler Sweet Spot Clients

You are going to be able to qualify your sweet spot clients before going on sales calls, and generating proposals. Then, you can figure out if your skills are strong enough.  There are all kinds of different IT consulting sweet spot clients out there.

The smaller sweet spot clients the 10, 15, 20 seats are going to have less sophisticated needs than those on the upper end of that range where they start to get into 2 or 3 servers and multiple locations.

Transition to the Sweet Spot

Start working with some micro small businesses in IT consulting.  Get the confidence and start building your business up.  Get your references going, so you can transition. 

Some of your larger micro businesses are probably going to start needing the skills that you are going to need to brush up against the sweet spot anyway, like when they outgrow peer to peer. 

The Bottom Line about IT Consulting
 
In this article, you’ve been introduced to IT consulting.  To learn more about IT consulting, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Years ago, your clients never would’ve had a problem finding "takers" for old PCs. After your clients got four or five productive years out of PC systems, they may have given the PCs to employees or sold them to employees for pennies on the dollar. Alternatively, many others donated PCs to local schools, charities or nonprofit organizations.

Changes in PC Recycling

In the past several years, this has all changed. In the U.S., about sixty percent of households own at least one PC. Schools and charities have become so deluged with PC donations that many get more selective on the equipment they’re willing to accept.

In many areas, it’s even illegal to dispose of a PC in a dumpster. Rather, the PC needs to be recycled. So how do you accomplish this?

Finding a PC Recycling Program

Several PC recycling programs and resources can help you and your clients comply with various environmental regulations as you dispose of long obsolete hardware.

• Dell Asset Recovery Services — www.dellfinancialservices.com/solutions/asset_recovery.asp
• EIA Environment: Consumer Education Initiative (CEI) — www.eiae.org/
• HP Environment: Return and Recycling — www.hp.com/hpinfo/community/environment/recycle.htm
• IBM PC Recycling Service — www.ibm.com/ibm/environment/products/pcrservice.phtml
• International Association of Electronics Recyclers — www.iaer.org/

If You Still Can’t Find One

If any of the PC recycling resource addresses above are invalid by the time you’re using this list, start at the home page of the website and look for links related to asset management, disposal or recycling.  You can also try the website’s search function or site map to look for PC recycling information.

The Bottom Line about PC Recycling

In this article, you’ve been introduced to PC recycling. To learn more about PC recycling click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

The sweet spot of the IT consulting business requires more skills than needed for micro business IT consulting. Sweet spot companies have anywhere from 10-50 computers.  This level of business is where you should be focusing most of your IT consulting efforts. 

These sweet spot businesses generally use Microsoft Windows based systems.  They have anywhere from 10-100 employees.  In terms of annual revenue, in U.S. Dollars, usually equates to annual earnings of 1 million up to 10 million.  The big thing that puts them into the sweet spot is that they have graduated from peer to peer and they need one or two real dedicated servers.

Hardware Skills You Need for the Sweet Spot

You need to know all the IT consulting skills a micro small business would hire you for plus about 8 or 10 other things.  You should be familiar with server hardware, such as working with multi processor servers, how RAID works, Zero One Five, you should be familiar with how multiport communications applications adapters work for setting up remote access servers and serial port sharing.

You should have familiarity with attached storage systems, network attached storage, more sophisticated back up solutions like digital audio tape digital linear tape, and the hybrids, etc.

Other Skills for Sweet Spot IT Consulting

You should be really comfortable with sophisticated battery back up solutions, routers, the CSU/DSUs to connect you up to the telecommunications lines.  And you should start to get some familiarity with some of the more advanced Y-5 hardware, the stuff that is not quite commodity level, where you start being able to get into Roam successfully between your access points and being able to do some management and SMP tasks.

Networking Skills for IT Consulting

In terms of networking software, you need to know all the basic desktop software and have the ability to do all the networking skills that are required for micro small business. For the sweet spot, you should also be comfortable with some of the popular server operating systems out there.

These include Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Small Business Server, Novell NetWare, Novell Small Business Suite, and Linux which is starting to pick up some traction among small businesses.

The Bottom Line about IT Consulting

In this article, you’ve learned about IT consulting. To learn more about IT consulting, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Computer Franchises are available all over the country. In this article, you’ll learn to consider many factors before choosing computer franchises.

Computer franchises are widely available throughout the country. Like investments, purchasing computer franchises also involves risks. You will want to consider many factors before buying computer franchises. Then you can feel assured that you have the commitment it takes to operate your new business.

Factors To Consider When Choosing Computer Franchises

Many people will assume that buying computer franchises ensures a successful business. This is not the case. You should consider the demand for your product or service, the competition, your ability to run the business, the company’s name recognition, and the growth of the company. All of these factors will determine whether the computer franchises are the right match for you.

Demand and Competition

The most important factor to consider is whether there is a demand for your product or service in your area. Obviously, the demand for computer experts is very high. It is also a business that can run year round and will have repeat business. This is very important. Find a location that is not saturated with computer businesses and look for computer franchises that do not already exist in your city.

Operating Computer Franchises

Purchasing computer franchises does not alleviate all risks. Sometimes, a franchise will fail. That is why it is vital that you are able to take over if you need to cut personnel. Will you be able to manage marketing or advertising if the company is unable to offer support? Weigh the pros and cons and decide if this is the right decision for you.

Name Recognition

Name recognition is the primary reason for buying computer franchises. Consider the company’s reputation and how long they have been in operation. Compare training programs and support systems. Often the franchise fee is very high and you want to be sure that you are getting your money’s worth.

Computer Franchises Growth

Name recognition is increased when a franchise is growing quickly. This will attract more customers to you. This is all great unless you suddenly become understaffed and over worked. Make certain that the company is well equipped to support you as your business grows.

The Bottom Line about Computer Franchises

Computer franchises make good business sense. They reduce the risk to you as a business owner. Do your homework. Research the franchises that are available to you and consider all of the factors. You’ll be on your way to success!

In this article, you learned about computer franchises. To learn more about computer franchises, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

If you’ve done a lot of research on computer consulting, you probably have information overload. In this article, you’ll learn what steps to take when first starting your business of computer consulting.

Pick a Date

First, pick a definite date for launching your new computer consulting business and write it down: Launch date is ____/____/____. Why is that important? It gives you something to work towards, a concrete goal at which point you say you know you are starting your computer consulting business. Put the date on your calendar, whether it is six months from today or six weeks from today.

Narrow down your to-do lists and organize your tasks in top 10 priority. Write down everything that’s floating around in your head and then go through that list and pick the 10 most important things.

Possible Top Ten Priorities

Your list might include:

• meeting with an accountant
• getting a business resale license
• opening up a distributor account
• picking a company name
• coming up with a business card
• looking through insurance options
• getting a Web site domain
• getting a business voice mail box

There are probably 30, 40, or even 50 things that are on your list. Narrow that down to the ten that you think are the most important to do before launching.

Order Your List

Once you get those 10, highlight them on paper and try to see if you can rank them in order of some kind of chronological order that makes sense to do. Just work on one or two a week. If you’re a more analytical type and you think you work better on the screen, do this exercise in Microsoft Excel or do it in Microsoft Word. And then narrow your huge list down to your top 10 business priority tasks.

Develop a Timeline to Start Computer Consulting

Let’s say you’re launching your computer consulting business five weeks from now and you’ve got 10 things to do. Pick two things to do each week. It seems a lot more manageable when you put it in terms of that kind of time frame.

The Bottom Line about Computer Consulting

In this article you’ve learned more about how to start planning for your computer consulting business. To learn more about computer consulting, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.