Small Business Computing Staff

PCmag: Use Your BlackBerry To Make Calls On The Office Phone System With Mobile Voice System 5 (MVS 5) from BlackBerry maker RIM, you can integrate your BlackBerries with some Cisco-based office phone systems. “BlackBerry users can now integrate their smartphones to the corporate phone system via Wi-Fi. Research-In-Motion today, announced that the latest version […]

AllBusiness: Offering Online Chat Can Help Increase Customer Satisfaction Ramon Ray argues from personal experience and also cites marketing survey data to prove that offering online chat as one way for customers to communicate with a company helps improve customer satisfaction in certain demographics. “Yesterday afternoon I was having problems with static on my phone […]

Entrepreneur: A Recipe For Creating ‘Sticky’ Web Sites You may have heard some of these before: guest columnist Scott Steinberg suggests five elementary strategies for increasing Web site traffic, such as including a frequently updated blog, building a sense of community and offering free online services. “Every small business loves the exposure, empathy and sense […]

InformationWeek SMB: Netgear Gigabit Firewall Affordable For SMBs The value-oriented SRX5308 ProSafe SSL VPN Firewall supports Ipsec and SSL VPN tunnels for SMBs and branch offices at $0.50 per Mbps. “Netgear introduced the SRX5308 ProSafe SSL VPN Firewall today. The vendors claims that the flagship model of its ProSafe VPN Firewall family is the first […]

ITBusiness Edge: Peplink Balance – A Way To Ensure The Internet Is Always Available ITB small biz tech blogger Paul Mah explores the notion of SMBs subscribing to multiple Internet services, aggregating them to create one big pipe and using the load balancing features of a product like Peplink Balance to ensure 100% up-time. “Have […]

InformationWeek: Next-generation LTE Mobile Technology Gathering Momentum LTE, which promises mobile networks offering true broadband data speeds, will see rapid growth this year with the market reaching $11 billion by 2014. “Already undergoing rapid deployment, the worldwide spread of Long Term Evolution network technology is accelerating, according to a report from Infonetics Research. The market […]

InformationWeek: Why Big Business Is Moving To Cloud E-mail An examination of why many CIOs in big corporations are considering hosted services when they next upgrade their companies’ e-mail systems. Should SMBs follow their lead? “E-mail is hot again. Major vendors, from Microsoft and Google to IBM and Cisco, are vying to provide this venerable […]

ZDNet: Is Microsoft Really Committed To Cloud Computing? Microsoft wants to sell you on itself as a cloud computing partner, but as Google App developer Louis Naugès argues in this – possibly somewhat biased – blog post, Microsoft stands to lose big if cloud computing conquers all. So what’s its real agenda? “Why this title? […]

Laurie McCabe’s Blog: Acumatica – An ERP System For Small Business? Small business analyst and consultant Laurie McCabe looks at Acumatica and its ERP system – aka the one system to run your entire business. It’s available as both licensed software and software-as-as-service, and is aimed at companies with $5 million and up in revenues. […]

Small Business Trends: Small Businesses Can Run Webinars Too – Here’s How SBT’s TJ McCue makes the case for small businesses using webinars as part of their marketing mix and lists and previews 26 tools, from mainstream products such as Microsoft’s Live Meeting and Cisco’s WebEx to lesser known products such as Dimdim and Tokbox. […]

PCmag@Work (Small Business): Cloud Computing As Green IT Sure, cloud computing is cheap and convenient and solves business continuity problems, but as Samara Lynn reports, it’s also good for the environment because it means fewer servers onsite and less cooling, which means less power consumption. “The Cloud Expo 2010 just wrapped up in New York […]

InformationWeek SMB: Desktop PC Sales Way Up Strong first-quarter sales signal that businesses are back buying PCs. Sales of specialized computers such as all-in-one PCs were particularly strong. But sales growth will likely slow later in the year. “Companies have finally joined consumers in buying PCs, helping to drive sales up by more than 24% […]