bruceb news

When Microsoft announced that it will provide free or cheap support for Windows and Office and common computer problems, it wasn’t a surprise for any IT consultant who’s been paying attention.

This is a look behind the scenes, some thoughts about the trends that are changing the landscape for IT consultants.

Four things are combining to recast the traditional roles for small business IT consultants.

• Technology is easier to deploy and maintain. In particular, cloud services have virtually no traditional costs for deployment or maintenance. There will be fewer and fewer on-premise server deployments as cloud solutions mature.

[…] continued

Recently I set up a Cisco RV220W wireless router, and a Cisco WAP4410N wireless access point. They are part of Cisco’s small business line and cost roughly twice as much as comparable consumer products – roughly $260 for the router, for example.

The wireless range extended far beyond my expectations. There are so many variables that it’s pointless to list a random number of feet. Let’s just say that I had a strong signal through many intervening walls far beyond anything I would have guessed from my previous wireless experiences.

As you upgrade your equipment, you are more likely to be able to take advantage of the current wireless standard, 802.11n, which offers as much as five times the speed and twice the range of old stalwart 802.11g. […] continued

Previously:
Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Part 1: Overview
Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Part 2: Remote Access

Small Business Server 2011 Essentials has one overlooked feature that fills an important need in most small businesses. Every night, SBS 2011 Essentials backs up all of the workstations in their entirety.

Microsoft originally developed this backup technology for Windows Home Server. Microsoft did some of its best technical magic on the backup system to use the least possible space on the server hard drives and to make the backups quick (although they’re done in the middle of the night, so speed isn’t really an issue). […] continued

Previously:
Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Part 1: Overview

Microsoft has done more than anyone else to promote remote access to small business networks. Almost ten years ago, Small Business Server 2003 opened up Outlook Web Access and safe remote desktop access to small businesses for the first time. SBS 2008 and the various iterations of Windows Home Server refined that first portal to make it easier and cleaner and more likely to work properly.

SBS 2011 Essentials brings something new to the table: remote access to files. Hold that thought and let’s look at some of the other features first. […] continued

Small businesses are finally in a position to set up Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, the perfect server for many small businesses with fewer than 25 users. Today’s technology world does not offer any one-size-fits-all solutions but SBS 2011 Essentials should at least be closely evaluated by almost anyone with 2-25 users looking either for a first server or a replacement for a dusty server in the closet.

The idea is to blend an onsite server and cloud services. In broad overview:

• The server runs the network onsite, authenticating people as they log in and passing out files;
• Email is handled separately, ideally by Microsoft’s hosted Office 365 service.

[…] continued

The request was deceptively simple:

Six very small offices want to share a single Internet connection. Each office wants to have a secure network for its own computers, not shared with the other offices. The offices want to share a single big Toshiba eStudio printer/scanner.

That shouldn’t be so hard, right?

It is remarkable how quickly networking becomes complicated. I don’t have any special instructions today, just a couple of anecdotes to help you understand why you might need help with your home or small office network.

Most people have simple needs: a single Internet connection for a single office; a router to let all the computers share the connection and connect to each other. […] continued

Previously:
Whining About Wireless

I’ll tell you a story about my own experience. You won’t learn anything and there’s not a happy ending, but perhaps it will give you a little perspective on why I’m not urging you to ditch your wires and set up wireless everywhere.

I’ve had a wireless access point at the global headquarters of Bruceb Consulting for a long time. When my wife and I got our matching Vostro V13 laptops last year, we started to rely on wireless more than ever, so maybe we just began to notice a problem that had existed for a long time. […] continued

When you have a choice between running a cable and relying on a wireless connection, you simply must not consider them to be equal choices. The reliability of a wired connection seriously tilts the scales. I have told my clients for years that the equation is simple: people with wireless connections call me for help; people with wires don’t.

These two things are both true:

• Wireless Internet connections, whether 802.11 or cell carrier networks, are wonderful and useful and fantastic and science fictional.
• Wireless Internet connections can be an incredible pain in the butt.

Can you tell I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of wireless failures in the last few weeks? […] continued

Feeling confident about your ability to keep up with the pace of change? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Small businesses will soon have the option to have all of their computing power hosted offsite. No servers in the closet; no workstations under the desks. Onsite you’ll have a monitor, a keyboard and mouse, and a fast Internet connection. Everything else will be in the sky. And yet when you sit down, you’ll log in and see a Windows 7 desktop and click on the Word icon and browse through your files and start Outlook and read your mail.

Sounds odd, doesn’t it? […] continued

Previously:
The Increasing Need For Bandwidth, Part 1

You should know the basic details of the Internet connection at your home or business.

Find out the speed of your existing service. If you have a DSL line – typically from AT&T or Sonic, occasionally from smaller players – it has a rated speed. For example, Sonic has four tiers of DSL service, from very slow 768K to 6Mb download speeds. That roughly matches the AT&T tiers. Comcast has several levels of service from 12Mb up to 100Mb download speeds.

Test the speed. At a time when there is as little activity on the connection as possible (no one streaming movies or running torrents), go to Bandwidth Speed Test or Speed.io Speed Test and see what they report. […] continued