XFER Blog

Small business owners and Entrepreneurs wear many hats. They have certain strengths and a drive to make money using the skills that they have. But there are many facets to running a business. Someone needs to do the accounting, the networking, inventory, manage employees, do sales calls and more. Then, someone needs to manage the technology.

Desktop virtualization is a method in which one machine can run more than one Operating System at the same time regardless of architecture requirements. There are two models of Desktop Virtualization that will be discussed here: Local Virtualization and the Client/Server Virtualization Model.

Technology today makes it easy for businesses to let employees work from home. Offering secure remote access gives employees the flexibility to work on the road, at events, or from home as if they were at their desks in the office. Is this good for small businesses?

"As a business owner, when should I worry about implementing data backup for my company?"

The answer comes in the form of another question, "How much do you value your business?"

Server Virtualization has been around for a while but has quickly become more popular for small businesses due to the long-term costs saved when your servers are virtualized. What exactly is server virtualization and how can it benefit Michigan businesses?

Tablets are definitely becoming a staple in the consumer electronics world. For the longest time, the tablet PC was an expensive, clunky device that just didn't wow consumers. Some businesses had adopted tablets back in the day, but they were difficult to use, hard to support, and they simply didn't perform for the price tag. However, like many consumer electronics, Apple reinvigorated the tablet market with the original iPad, and now it would seem tablets are here to stay. The question is, are they right for businesses?

We'd really like to gear this conversation towards the other Michigan business owners out there who might not have a solid plan when it comes to IT & Computer Support.  At XFER, we deal with a lot of the same business-related issues that our clients do.  Marketing, driving the business forward, taxes, internal policies, you name it.  Believe it or not, we also have our own IT infrastructure that needs to be kept up and maintained.  We see the same kinds of expenses (after all, working on our OWN technology internally is time our techs could be doing their jobs).  We've put together a few big mistakes that we've seen businesses make that take much less effort to prevent than they do to fix later on when it is too late.

In a 2012 Wrike.com surveyed 1,074 workers, 83% of respondents reported working at home for at least part of the workday. Chances are, you have employees working at home, and they are loving it! In fact, employees enjoy working at home so much 78% would forgo free meals, and 25% would accept a reduction in salary, just for the opportunity to work at home!

For small and medium businesses, attempting to fix your own computer issues can do more harm than good. It may seem like having to pay for IT services is an unnecessary expense, especially when you have a somewhat tech savvy employee who seems to know what they are doing. It may be an expense now, but it will save you thousands of dollars in time and money in the long run.

Saving a little on your technology can go a long ways, but cutting too many corners can lead to additional problems and expensive downtime. Here are a few ways you can cut costs without creating long term issues.

Technology is changing quickly and businesses are seeing a wide variety of options replacing traditional IT methodology that is driving change and productivity to businesses of all sizes. It's getting easier to take work with you with mobile devices and hosted services, but are these just expensive new toys or do they provide serious benefits to businesses?

The time to implement a social media policy is now.

Your social media policy outlines for employees your companies guidelines or principles for communicating in the online world.  Your company should have a communications policy in place that spell out your expectations for phone and email, it’s important that you add social media and online site usage to this policy.