Laurie McCabe

Integrated payment solutions are tools that your business can use to integrate accounting, customer relationship management (CRM) and other business applications with payments processing. By integrating payments processing with business applications, you can save time and money, reduce errors and get a better view of your business. Why Should You Care? Every business wants to […]

Virtual Desktop for a Small Business Environment A virtual desktop means that a user’s desktop environment (the icons, wallpaper, windows, folders, toolbars, widgets, etc.) is stored remotely on a server, rather than on a local PC or other client computing device. Desktop virtualization software separates the desktop operating systems, applications and data from the hardware client, storing […]

What is Mobile Commerce? Mobile commerce (also known as mobile ecommerce, m-commerce and other variations) consists of two primary components. The first is the ability to use a wireless phone or other mobile device to conduct financial transactions and exchange payments over the Internet. The second is the ability to deliver information that can facilitate […]

What is Business Intelligence? Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term used to encompass the processes, methods, measurements and systems businesses use to more easily view, analyze and understand information relevant to the history, current performance or future projections for a business.  Other terms that people often use to describe BI include business analytics, decision […]

What is an Online Collaboration Suite? An online collaboration suite provides businesses with an integrated set of Web tools that span a range of collaboration needs. While not every collaboration suite includes the same capabilities, they often feature Web tools for business email, instant messaging, contact management, calendars, file sharing, document management, project management, portals, […]

Small Business Computing is teaming up with the SMB Group and Hubspot to conduct a new survey to find out more about how small and medium businesses go about making buying decisions for software and technology service solutions. The results from the small business marketing survey will help us to better understand these topics and […]

What is Hybrid Computing? A hybrid computing platform lets customers connect the packaged small business software applications that they run on their own internal desktops or servers to applications that run in the cloud. As discussed in What is Cloud Computing and Why Should You Care?, more software vendors are deciding to develop and deliver […]

What is an App Store?   An app store, which offers a lot more than just mobile apps, is a Web site that aggregates software solutions for business or personal use. App stores, also known as an applications marketplace, are typically created and built by a “marquee” vendor, such as Adobe, Apple, Google, Intuit or […]

Predicting small business trends — especially small business computing trends — is a tricky proposition at best. It helps to get a dose of reality from people who use technology to run their business every day. Never one to work in a vacuum, Laurie McCabe, a principal at the SMB Group, spent the day with […]

What is Social Media Management? As described in the article, “What is Social Networking, and Why Should You Care,” Internet-based social media make it easier for people to listen, interact, engage and collaborate with each other. But, as the volume of social media venues and conversations rises, it quickly becomes a time- and labor-intense process […]

What is Total Cost of Ownership? In the IT world, total cost of ownership (TCO) is used to calculate the total cost of purchasing (or in the case of cloud computing, subscribing to) and operating a technology product or service over its useful life. TCO provides a construct to evaluate technology costs that may not […]

As the New Year looms, it’s human nature to wonder what’s around the corner. And when it comes to running a small business, it literally pays to stay ahead of the curve. It also pays to keep an eye on the technology trends, because choosing the right technologies can improve efficiencies, cut costs, and help […]