Business Network Services - What Can it Do For You?

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.

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