Expand Now - IT for Growing Businesses

Many businesses have plans to expand, after all this is the nature of business. But what most businesses don't know is there is a way to set themselves up so they can expand cost-effectively with their present IT environment. Planning this too late can be prove costly.

Planning early revolves around an understanding of what your requirements will be when you are working with multiple locations/offices. An example is opening your first office, you could put a separate server in your second location and have a completely separate network but you would soon realise you have a number of additional costs and problems:

(i) additional server required; additional maintenance and ongoing support requirements
(ii) additional backup facility required
(iii) de-centralisation of data (there are separate data sources for each location)
(iv) users unable to roam between locations

In an ideal world (and in most cases) you would want all the staff in your new office to have exactly the same tools, applications and data as your present staff wouldn't you? For this reason using terminal services is often the most cost effective route.

Terminal services is a windows 2008 environment that turns your server into a 'remote access machine' - essentially, all your users dial-into the server and work off it. For terminal services to run you need your normal server (hopefully SBS 2008) and then an additional Terminal Server with appropriate licensing. Now, all you need is to set your PC's or "Dummy Terminals" (small PC's that don't have an operating system and simply point to the server) to point to the terminal server and you are away.

Other advantages of the terminal server are the reduced costs, and economies of scale as you add more workstations to the network. Instead of having to buy expensive, powerful workstations you can now buy "Dummy Terminals" or "Thin Clients" which will give you exactly the same functionality for half the price. Then, when you want to open a new office simply send 5 thin clients, 5 screens and some desks & chairs over to your new location and you can have an instant office with the same feature-rich functionality as your head office.

Although Terminal Services may appear compelling when reading through this article, business owners may not consider it cost effective to implement. However with the advent of server virtualisation (having 1 physical server host a number of virtual servers), terminal services has become readily available to the SME market. Also, another not so well known fact, is when Small Business Server 2008 is purchased, Microsoft bundle in 1 additional free license for a Terminal Server. Therefore, in most instances when purchasing a new server, there are no additional hardware costs, and no costs for the actual terminal server opreating system. To set yourself up appropriately for terminal services, even with a single office you can:

1) Setup VMware Server Virtualisation software (free) which will allow you to host up to 4 virtual servers on the 1 physical server
1) Purchase Windows Small Business Server 2008 as your next operating system, which includes an additional license for Terminal Services 2) If you are about to overhaul a number of workstations (4+), perhaps look at "reconditioning them" and installing a Terminal Sever. You will get the same outcome as replacing the machines but have a system that is scalable and ready to grow!
3) Ensure you have adequate internet/broadband capabilities at your office at least 2 months before you look at a second office (we recommend either Private IP or high speed internet).

Terminal Services is the industry standard for multi-site organisations as a scalable and cost effective solution for growth businesses.

Furthemore, with the advent of Cloud Computing there are now options which require no initial capital outlay. R & G also offers a hosted Terminal Services Solution called "Infrastructure as a Service", where the servers are housed off-site at our Data Center and owned by R & G, and clients are charged on a per user per month fee. This acts as a replacement for all local servers (there is no need for any servers at the client's premises, and no need to ever purchase servers again) and removes a number of IT headaches and support problems as the infrastructure is fully managed by R & G. You can find more information about this here

Case Studies

IT Support Case Study "Starting out as a husband and wife team and growing to a 2 office business with 13 employees in just over 18 months certainly gave us a few headaches in relation to managing our IT requirements. We received no “service” from our previous IT Company" » Read More

Cloud Solution Case Study "Expanding a services business into new territories is never an easy thing, but R & G’s hosted desktop cloud computing solution let’s easily manage IT costs whilst having the ability to rapidly deploy new offices and equip staff literally anywhere." » Read More