Technological Difficulties For Small Business – Software

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Mitchell

Software can be a very important aspect of getting things done at work or home but software also plays a large role in starting your own small business.  Needed software will vary depending on what type of business you are starting but I am going to cover some of the paid and free options for your small business.  The basic software you will need is a word processing application, email client and internet browser.  All of these software categories have both free and paid options and there are advantages and disadvantages of each.

Word Processing
-Microsoft Office Word – Paid
-Open Office – Free
-Pages (Mac Only) – Paid

Email Clients
-Microsoft Outlook – Paid
-Thunderbird – Free
-Apple Mail (Mac Only) – Pre-Installed

Internet Browser
-Internet Explorer – Pre-Installed
-Google Chrome – Free
-Mozilla FIrefox – Free
-Apple Safari – Free

Depending on your business you are going to need more software then just the above categories.  If you are planning to do graphic design you are going to need a graphics design program and just as there were free and paid options for the above products, there are free and paid options for the more advanced programs that you will need.  These more advanced programs are something I might go into in an upcoming series.

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Technological Difficulties For Small Business – Backups

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Mitchell

Backups tend to be difficult for everyone from home computer users to enterprise businesses.  The reason it can be the most difficult for small businesses is because they can have a larger amount of data then a home computer user and they don’t have the funds that larger companies have in order to implement backup solutions.  Luckily there are solutions that are cost effective and will also be able to handle the amount of data that a small business will have.

The solution that I have found to work best is called FreeNAS.  FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD and works very well for cheap storage and backup solutions.  Some of the features of FreeNAS are:

Version 7

  • SMB/CIFS
  • FTP
  • RSYNC
  • iSCSI
  • Bittorrent
  • Itunes Server
  • ZFS v13
  • WebGUI

Version 8

  • SMB/CIFS
  • FTP
  • iSCSI
  • Snapshots
  •  ZFS v15
  • WebGUI

FreeNAS can be installed on a low end server which helps to save costs for small businesses that do not have a lot of money to invest in backups but it also has the flexibility to run on very high power servers for larger businesses or as your small business grows and needs to be able to access larger amounts of data at a higher speed.

One of the best parts about FreeNAS is that it offers the ZFS file system.  ZFS was created by Sun Microsystems and in many ways is a new and improved form of RAID.  As for the features of ZFS, I think Wikipedia puts it best.

“The features of ZFS include data integrity verification against data corruption modes (like bit rot), support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z and native NFSv4ACLs.”
 

ZFS is very flexible and helps protect your data from 1 or more drives failing depending on your setup.  It also can protect your data from bit rot which occurs if your data is not accessed very often.  Another great feature is that it can fix problems in your data based on its storage algorithms and the other copies of your files that are stored across all the hard drives in your storage server.  All these features are great to protect your data to the furthest extent possible in order to prevent your business from coming to a stand still when your storage or backup server goes down.

Backing up your data can be a easily over looked task at your business until it is to late and all your data is lost.  Now you should have a better understanding of how easy it is to have a basic backup/storage server for your business and how you can prevent this disaster from affecting your business.

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Technological Difficulties For Small Business – Accounting

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Mitchell

Accounting is an important part of all businesses.  Larger companies have entire departments to manage the accounting records for the business but when you are operating a new business that is just starting, there isn’t a budget to hire this kind of team so you must do the accounting on your own.  This can be a daunting task if you haven’t taken any accounting classes and don’t have any experience in finances.  In order to simplify your life I would suggest using a software package such as Quickbooks to keep track of your businesses finances.  When I first started my web hosting business I used excel to keep track of what clients owed and what they had paid.  This worked for a while but as I started getting more business it became unfeasible to keep track of everything this way so I started looking for more professional alternatives.  This is when I came across Quickbooks.

Quickbooks allowed me to keep track of all of my clients along with invoices and account balances without having to know a great deal about accounting.  This doesn’t mean that I suggest not getting educated on account but it is not mandatory in order to use the software.  Before Quickbooks it was difficult to keep track of my companies accounts and how much was actually being made or lost.  This also caused major problems when tax time came around because it was difficult to calculate how much the business owed for taxes.  Now it is as simple as printing off a few forms that have all the numbers that I need for the taxes.

Depending on the size of your business you may be very limited as to how much you can spend on this type of software but there are a few different options that you can use in these situations.  If you have the available cash you can purchase the software and use it for a few years before upgrading to the newest version.  This will work best if you have your own work computer to install the software on and you feel comfortable managing the software yourself.  The other option is to go with a service where you pay them monthly and they maintain the Quickbooks Online installation for you and you have web access to all of your Quickbooks Online information.  This can be the best option when you would rather not maintain or purchase the software yourself but over time this can get very expensive as you are paying a monthly fee.  The services that I have found that offer this charge $30+ per month depending on the size of your business.

Purchase Software:

Advantages:

  • Cheaper over time
  • More flexibility
  •  No limit on size of company

Disadvantages:

  • Must conduct your own backups
  • Your responsible for managing the software
  • No web access

Hosted Software Solution:

Advantages:

  • Backups are taken care of for you
  • Web access
  • Reliability

Disadvantages:

  • More Costly
  • Limited by size of company
  • Less flexible
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