Dan Muse

When it comes to storage and servers, Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” might be an apt anthem. After all, storage demands and the need to effectively manage all that data are growing faster than you can say terabytes. And a server isn’t simply a physical box anymore, thanks to virtualization technology. Noting storage […]

Instant messaging is hardly kids’ stuff. OK, it’s pretty darn big with preteens and teens, but many businesses rely on those same text messaging services to communicate with co-workers, partners and vendors for those times when a phone call is overkill and an e-mail is too slow. Many small businesses turn to free public IM […]

How do you pay your employees? According to PayCycle, chances are you aren’t tapping software-as-a-service to handle payroll. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, which specializes in online payroll services, says that only 14 percent of small businesses use a payroll service. The rest opt to handle it themselves or have their accountant or bookkeeper take […]

Ridgely Evers, CEO and founder of NetBooks, has an owinteresting take on how small businesses approach marketing: “Most small businesses are not great at accounting, so they hand it off [to an accountant]. Most are not great at marketing, but don’t hand it off.” If you follow Evers’ logic, that means that most small businesses […]

For vendors targeting the small business market, there’s a steady stream of new companies forming each year — which serves to replace the steady stream of small businesses that, unfortunately, fail each year. There are few absolutes in life, but one is that QuickBooks has a firm grasp on the small business accounting market. For […]

According to Intuit, there are 9.6 million small businesses in the United States that employ 50 or fewer employees. The interesting fact is that the 9.6 million number represents a fluid collection of businesses with one million new small businesses starting each year, and, unfortunately, about 1 million going out of business each year. Roy […]

Apptix, a Herndon, Va.-based company perhaps best known as a provider of Hosted Exchange for small businesses, today announced the availability of a new leasing program for its Apptix Voice hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. The company has been providing VoIP services since March, and Jackie Funk, director of marketing for Apptix, said […]

Whether you call it software-as-a-service, Web-based software or on-demand applications, products such as NetSuite and Salesforce.com are changing how small and mid-sized businesses look at productivity tools. The rise of these Web-based services means enterprise-class business tools without the big hardware costs or long deployment times. However, the one claim that traditional software vendors have […]

It’s important to back up your files. In the immortal words of the Seinfeld cast: “Yada, yada, yada … .” You know you should back up your data on a regular (preferably continuous) basis, but finding an affordable, easy and transparent way is, realistically speaking, the only way a busy small business owner is going […]

If you’re an auto enthusiast, you wait for the fall to get a glimpse of the latest models for the upcoming year. If you’re a QuickBooks aficionado, the fall is an exciting time for you, too. It means the chance to see what’s new in the leading small business accounting application. Just as that car […]

For some small businesses, QuickBooks, Microsoft Outlook and maybe another application or two is all the business management software they’ll need. If you fall into that camp, the launch of NetBooks may not be of much interest. But if, like many businesses, you’re looking for a single application that integrates bookkeeping, invoicing, inventory management, sales, […]