If your business is in the Small to Medium Business (SMB) range (10 to 100 employees), and computers are part of the work environment, you may want to ask yourself a couple of questions: Do you have multiple instances of the same software spread throughout your plant? Maybe you have different versions of the same business documents on multiple computers, making the latest version difficult to track down.
If this sounds like your operation, you’re not alone. Putting all your computers onto a network would give you better control of things. But, mention the word “network” to some business owners and you can see their eyes glaze over at the thought of high-priced contractors, expensive hardware, and months of development.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Networking has been an integral function of most operating systems since at least Windows NT (the underlying code base for every Windows since Windows 98). And Unix (the daddy to Linux) was built for networking, so it should come as no surprise that Linux machines can talk to each other “out of the box”, after a little tweaking. The hardest part of networking is figuring out exactly what you want to do with it.
In most cases, your networking needs will be few:
- An email system so your employees can talk to each other and your business contacts
- a file repository so that your people can store, find, and edit important documents
- an application server so that you can have all your software in one place and keep it up-to-date easily (note, this doesn’t necessarily reduce your licensing fees, but it helps with application management)
- a Database server so that you can maintain information easily.
This may sound like a lot for an SMB, but all these servers can live on one server. Ok, that sounds confusing. It may help to know a little nomenclature. There are two kinds of “server”; the actual hardware (computer), and the application software (program). The hardware, if robust enough, can handle all the bullet-point items above and still function as a work station for someone. It wasn’t always that way, but with new multi-core processors on the market in typical desktop computers, there is enough power to accomplish this type of multi-tasking.
There are advantages to networking, and with a little research you can probably accomplish the task in a few hours. If you don’t have the time, or you just don’t trust yourself, you can always hire a contractor. I know a guy…jeff@jeffdoesit.biz