Many businesses start out small. Perhaps a couple of people, working from home on their own laptops. Another couple of people join the company. An office is found. Suddenly the enterprise has expanded to the point where several people are employed full time, and particular services and guarantees have been made to clients. But no-one has ever had the time or inclination to think about the IT infrastructure.

Although everything seems to be fine, everyone knows that there may be a potential disaster around the corner. Are valuable files being backed up? Can people share these resources? Are the users' emails all coming from different providers, with no internal links between them? Is everyone up to date with their virus protection? On the positive side, would the business benefit from services such as shared calendars? Now may be the time to put this infrastructure in place.

There are a number of small-business oriented software packages available, and the hardware necessary to run them has fallen in price massively over the past few years. Dean & Hilton can recommend and install a file and mail server, put in place the necessary network connections between the computers, and ensure that all data is backed up, and anti-virus software is up to date. The benefits that these structural improvements will bring can be measured in more than one way. Not only will users find it easier to communicate with their co-workers and clients, but their data will be safe. In addition, once a server infrastructure is in place, it allows the business to expand upon these lines with an absolute minimum of time and expense.

Click here for a case study on small-office solutions and here for more information about server operating systems.