SMB Market

Australia will lead a new international working group to develop and harmonise international standards on corporate governance of IT.

Microsoft will dump its Windows Live OneCare consumer security software next year and instead give away revamped, streamlined anti-malware software that it's calling "Morro" for the moment.

NEC has announced plans to offer a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to SMBs through its partners.

Microsoft clarified this week that the upcoming Office Web -- a lightweight version of its Office suite that runs as an online service -- will be available to users running Mac OS X and Linux, as well as from Apple's iPhone.

Hoping to spark sales as companies put the squeeze on capital spending, Microsoft said Thursday that new customers of its Dynamics ERP and CRM applications in some parts of the world can apply for zero-percent, 36-month financing.

Just because you don't have a large enterprise doesn't mean you can't run your IT operation like the big guys. Here are seven ways to help your SMB--a small or medium-size business--implement some of the lessons big IT operations have learned over the years. Using these tips, you should be able to improve productivity, cut costs, and keep your business running smoothly.

Whether they're in branch offices or home offices, workers are increasingly telecommuting instead of working in a traditional centralized office environment.

A group of companies that build products to ease the integration of Macs in the enterprise had been separately championing a heterogeneous IT environment where both Macs and Windows can co-exist. Combining those efforts into an umbrella organization seemed like a good idea.

IDC research manager IT spending, Jean-Marc Annonier, claims there is a growing focus on services aimed at the mid-market.

It might sound funny, but nobody should be in any doubt that small business is big business in Australia.

If there’s anyone in the IT industry who knows about starting up and running a successful services business, it’s Peter Kazacos. The founder of the Kaz Group sold the business to Telstra in 2004 for a cool $333 million and worked for the telco giant right up until September 2006.

What was your first job?

Microsoft director of SMB and partners, Paul Voges, spent several years with integration giant, Dimension Data, before relocating to Australia in 1999 and eventually jumping into vendor land. He caught up with NADIA CAMERON in the lead-up to Microsoft's local Partner Conference to talk about channel enablement and opportunities in online services.

You're best known as the local guy who took on the multinational outsourcers. What are you doing in SMB?

At just about every meeting, client catch up or industry event I attend these days, people ask me the same basic questions: “How’s business, what’s going to happen next and when/where is it all going to end?”

Although it may seem like your computing life is all e-mail and browsing, computer users still create files, documents, spreadsheets, boring presentations and all manner of other stored information. Which brings me to the question: Where do you store your data? And are you ready to store your data online in a service hosted by a third party provider?

Small businesses converging voice, video and data traffic sometimes end up with haunted networks, but you can exorcise the demons. Affordable QoS mechanisms are available to oust the goblins that cause delay, jitter, bit-rate errors and dropped packets.

Here's a statistical downer: there will be around 40 trillion inbox-clogging spam e-mail messages delivered this year. Experts know this because there were 30 trillion spam messages last year. With this much hay in the stack, it's hard to find those message needles, and that's why some smart companies are looking beyond public e-mail.

Computers and applications stubbornly remain hard to use. Developers, from solo code jockeys to huge corporations, promise us things will be better "real soon." But if operating systems and applications aren't easier today than yesterday, at least we're seeing advances in how to support them. Take NTRSupport's new FirstHelp tool, a support portal. It combines information, drivers, tips, training, techniques, instant messaging, e-mail and even remote control software in a one-stop support shop.