Small business owners and leaders often ask why their company needs managed service provider solutions if they already have an IT staff? 

Why do I need to upgrade my hardware now, you may ask, if it has worked well all these years?  This is a classic capital investment question and it is very easy to get confused by outlay costs, operating costs and tax consequences when making such a decision.

So you read "My ISP Gives Me An Antivirus Software Product. Why Do I Need Another?", selected the right anti virus solution and now you are wondering why didn't your anti virus software stop spam and infections?  Why did a particular computer in your office get infected?

Along the same lines as POP3 vs Exchange 2010 - How to Know Which to Choose?, an antivirus software product is often included as part of your Internet service.  Why then, should a small business consider purchasing additional antivirus products?

If you received e-mail service with your Internet service, choosing POP3 vs Exchange 2010 is something you may have considered.  Here is a guide to help your decision process as well as a brief discussion of Microsoft's Office 365 offering for e-mail.

We have looked at the benefits of desktop virtualization in Small Business Endpoint Virtualization - Smartphones, Tablets And PCs and what two flavors of desktop virtualization are in What is Desktop Virtualization? VDI vs. Session Virtualization.  Now we will answer the question, how does desktop virtualization work to improve productivity.

We touched on this topic in Small Business Endpoint Virtualization - Smartphones, Tables And PCs, but what is desktop virtualization?  For the sake if this discussion, endpoint and desktop virtualization refer to the same area, so as to not get lost in semantics, I will use the latter term.  Perhaps more than other types of virtualization, desktop virtualization has multiple deployment models including operating system virtualization and application virtualization.  Microsoft segments operating virtualization into Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Session Virtualization and Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization.

Let's look at a simplified view of VDI and Session Virtualization to begin with from a use case perspective to see which technology is best suited for which business need.

I do not know about you, but I find Microsoft licensing to be confusing.  Here is a summary of Microsoft Open License vs Open Value vs Cloud and other licensing options. Microsoft has three main on-premise license types that are relevant to small business technology procurement  - Volume, OEM and Full Packaged Product.  Within Volume licensing, there are many options, but two are particularly useful for small businesses - Open License and Open Value.  For both types, one must purchase a minimum of 5 licenses.  Finally, there is the Online Subscription which is somewhat difficult to compare directly, but offers a Cloud alternative to on-premise deployments.

Organizations may utilize IT services for small business in many ways, including break-fix, selective managed services and fully outsourced. 

This is a great question that small business owners and IT leaders often pose. In fact, virtualization cost is substantially less, both initially and over time. In one recent example, Turbotek consolidated four servers into one through virtualization. Had the customer refreshed their servers with individual machines for Microsoft SQL Server and their three existing terminal servers, it would have cost them over $50K. With virtualization, it cost them roughly $29K. In addition, they are saving nearly $500 per month on power, cooling and space.  Finally, there are other benefits reviewed in Virtualization And Small Business Benefits - Dollars And Sense that include substantially faster recovery time, potential tax incentives and increased agility, flexibility and efficiency while reducing risk.