Category: SMB

What is an Online Collaboration Suite, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published on June 30, 2010 in Small Business Computing) What is an Online Collaboration Suite? An online collaboration suite provides businesses with an integrated set of tools that span a range of collaboration needs. While not every collaboration suite includes the same capabilities,...

Will the Appliance Approach Gain Traction in the Wake of Recent Cloud Outages?

This week’s service outage at Intuit is fueling a new round of speculation about the dark side of cloud computing--and whether businesses can depend on cloud-based services to run their businesses. Intuit’s problems come on the heels of other service outages this month at Wordpress and Sage, and as well as service outages earlier this year at

What is Hybrid Computing, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published on June 9, 2010, in Small Business Computing) What is Hybrid Computing? A hybrid computing platform lets customers connect the packaged small business software applications that they run on their own internal desktops or servers to applications that run in the cloud. As discussed in

Dell’s New Vostro 3000 Laptops: Designed for Small Businesses

The realities of a lingering recession and a do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos continue to frame today's economic climate. As entrepreneurs and small businesses went into financial shock beginning in mid-2008, they hunkered down and made do with older laptops (the dominant computing platform for these businesses) and other hardware instead of spending precious cash on new equipment. But with hints of ...

What is Unified Communications, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published in Small Business Computing, July 27, 2009) Technology insiders tend to throw around technical terms and business jargon, assuming people outside the industry understand what it all means. By its nature, technology vocabulary is often confusing and complicated, and ins...

What is Social Networking, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published in Small Business Computing, April 7, 2009) Technology insiders tend to throw around technical terms and business jargon, assuming people outside the industry understand what it all means. By its nature, technology vocabulary is often confusing and complicated, and insiders often add to t...

Demandbase—Can it Turn Your Web Traffic Into Treasure?

Like most analysts, my schedule is usually chockfull of briefings from vendors. Some of these are boring, some are interesting, and once in a blue moon, a vendor comes along with a solution that everyone should know about. Demandbase (www.demandbase.com) is one of these solutions. I initially came across the vendor late last fall, when I was judging for the Destination CR...