SMB Market: Features

It’s not new technology, but to SMBs, virtualisation can still be a scary unknown quantity. MATTHEW SAINSBURY investigates ways partners and vendors can allay those fears to the profit of everyone.

It's a great time to set up a small business. The Web gives even the littlest operation enormous reach, while vendors now sell small-business technology that delivers unbelievable bang for the buck.

There's a special place reserved for the stalwart hardware that many of us have depended on day after day, year after year. Or at least, we believe there should be a special place.

Figuring a good sales compensation plan is like making oil and water blend smoothly. Sales people always think management is cheating them out of commissions. Management always thinks sales people are stealing them blind. Owners of smaller companies who manage the sales people themselves often focus on the dollar paid in commission rather than thinking of the associated $20 of company revenue.

At a time when most businesses are looking to cut costs and leverage existing resources, channel partners may feel discouraged in the marketplace. But according to Lora Gernon, senior director of Microsoft Canada's partner group, there's actually no better time than now for partners to start having conversations with their customers.

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.

Running a small business has never been easy; it needs time, emotional, financial and physical commitment that many find overwhelming. The hours are long, the pace of progress is often frustrating and the results can be mixed.

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