Business IT Query...
Discussion
I've recently moved from a multi national to a small company and am looking for some advice as to what other small businesses do.
We are approximately 6 people and the majority of our work is done in excel and word. We have an external IT 'man' but it seems to me that the work he does for us is on the side of much larger projects, so is more reactive than proactive. I want to try and get an idea of what we should be doing to see if its something he can actually help us with or if we need to move on.
My first concern is e-mail. Apparently its not possible to set our e-mail up to simultaneously deliver to outlook/ iphone. The IT man has set it up so that when an e-mail is delivered to the server it is then forwarded on to individual gmail accounts that our phones pick up. Half of these don't actually deliver to my phone and there is no way of replying to e-mails without showing that its been sent from gmail - which seems unprofessional to me.
Secondly we have a physical server. I say server it's more of an old desktop PC that has a backup power supply. It's sat in the corner of my office and creaks along all day. Although we only work in excel/ word it is important that we keep/ backup everything we do.
I am far from an IT expert and my plan is to understand what others actually do, get an idea of the cost and then look to implement. My initial googlings seem to suggest something like a Rackspace solution? Presumably we would move our e-mail to their servers and this would mean e-mail is pushed to phones/ outlook at the same time. Similarly I assume we could do away with the physical server in the office and have this hosted by them? or am I being too simplistic?
Any comments/ thoughts/ advice gratefully received.
We are approximately 6 people and the majority of our work is done in excel and word. We have an external IT 'man' but it seems to me that the work he does for us is on the side of much larger projects, so is more reactive than proactive. I want to try and get an idea of what we should be doing to see if its something he can actually help us with or if we need to move on.
My first concern is e-mail. Apparently its not possible to set our e-mail up to simultaneously deliver to outlook/ iphone. The IT man has set it up so that when an e-mail is delivered to the server it is then forwarded on to individual gmail accounts that our phones pick up. Half of these don't actually deliver to my phone and there is no way of replying to e-mails without showing that its been sent from gmail - which seems unprofessional to me.
Secondly we have a physical server. I say server it's more of an old desktop PC that has a backup power supply. It's sat in the corner of my office and creaks along all day. Although we only work in excel/ word it is important that we keep/ backup everything we do.
I am far from an IT expert and my plan is to understand what others actually do, get an idea of the cost and then look to implement. My initial googlings seem to suggest something like a Rackspace solution? Presumably we would move our e-mail to their servers and this would mean e-mail is pushed to phones/ outlook at the same time. Similarly I assume we could do away with the physical server in the office and have this hosted by them? or am I being too simplistic?
Any comments/ thoughts/ advice gratefully received.
What sort of budget do you have?
I'd look at moving your e-mail to Office 365 (or Google Apps). Proper sync'ing of mail / contacts / calendar between devices. Office 365 Exchange Online Plan 1 gives each user a 50GB mailbox for £3/user/month
https://products.office.com/en-gb/exchange/compare...
With the right service package, you could also start to use OneDrive for Business (Office 365) or Google Drive as your document store, ditching on the old server. That said, if everyone is office based and you're Internet connection isn't great, keeping files on local server or NAS is still worth considering.
Office 365 Business is £3.80/user/month - you get the 50GB mailbox, but also 1TB of OneDrive storage for the extra 80p.
https://products.office.com/en-gb/compare-all-micr...
I'd look at moving your e-mail to Office 365 (or Google Apps). Proper sync'ing of mail / contacts / calendar between devices. Office 365 Exchange Online Plan 1 gives each user a 50GB mailbox for £3/user/month
https://products.office.com/en-gb/exchange/compare...
With the right service package, you could also start to use OneDrive for Business (Office 365) or Google Drive as your document store, ditching on the old server. That said, if everyone is office based and you're Internet connection isn't great, keeping files on local server or NAS is still worth considering.
Office 365 Business is £3.80/user/month - you get the 50GB mailbox, but also 1TB of OneDrive storage for the extra 80p.
https://products.office.com/en-gb/compare-all-micr...
Sounds like you need a better IT Man! 
What you describe is pretty normal small business stuff and there's no reason at all to be using GMail addresses like that! My iPhone gets emails perfectly from 2 Exchange (O365) accounts and 2 or 3 IMAP accounts with nary a glitch.
You could do it through O365 or just through putting emails on IMAP based mailboxes so that Desktop & phones are always singing off the same hymn sheet.
Nothing wrong with using an old PC as a file server as such but usually far better to consider cloud or an office NAS with multiple drives for redundancy. Remember... ant office NAS also needs to have offsite backups. No good having a box with multiple drives & RAID redundancy if it catches fire or getting pinched. Remember the golden rule of IT, if it doesn't exist in three places, then it doesn't exist at all!
Speak to a couple of local IT Support businesses that deal with the SME sector, they'll be falling over themselves to get you sorted out. It's bread & butter stuff.
You do not want to be looking after your own servers on Rackspace unless you wish to spend more time learning IT than doing your own job!
What you describe is pretty normal small business stuff and there's no reason at all to be using GMail addresses like that! My iPhone gets emails perfectly from 2 Exchange (O365) accounts and 2 or 3 IMAP accounts with nary a glitch.
You could do it through O365 or just through putting emails on IMAP based mailboxes so that Desktop & phones are always singing off the same hymn sheet.
Nothing wrong with using an old PC as a file server as such but usually far better to consider cloud or an office NAS with multiple drives for redundancy. Remember... ant office NAS also needs to have offsite backups. No good having a box with multiple drives & RAID redundancy if it catches fire or getting pinched. Remember the golden rule of IT, if it doesn't exist in three places, then it doesn't exist at all!
Speak to a couple of local IT Support businesses that deal with the SME sector, they'll be falling over themselves to get you sorted out. It's bread & butter stuff.
You do not want to be looking after your own servers on Rackspace unless you wish to spend more time learning IT than doing your own job!
Thanks for all the replies so far, some really useful stuff. The office 365 solution looks good and is indeed what I had where I was working before here.
Rutter said:
Where in the country are you OP i'm sure we could get some recommendations of firms willing to help on here.
We are based in Cambridgeshire. jamoor said:
I'd recommend Google apps over o365.
In the context of what the OP has asked (email, cloud storage, backup etc) or other factors, can you explain why? (do you have experience of trying to achieve the same results with both?)This is a genuine question, as I am interested to know what it is that made you form your view?
Australiam said:
In the context of what the OP has asked (email, cloud storage, backup etc) or other factors, can you explain why? (do you have experience of trying to achieve the same results with both?)
This is a genuine question, as I am interested to know what it is that made you form your view?
Easier to use, support is first rate.This is a genuine question, as I am interested to know what it is that made you form your view?
Microsoft is generally known for shoddy 3rd rate products so I would give anything made by them a very wide berth.
Office 365 is a really good fit for smaller businesses. Under a tenner a month per person and you get your Office licencing sorted (always on the latest version, up to 5 devices each), a 50GB mailbox that works from everywhere, more sharepoint/onedrive space than you can possibly use (1TB per user, but pooled together), and collab/online meetings with Teams. Pay a little more and it can be your phone system too.
jamoor said:
Australiam said:
In the context of what the OP has asked (email, cloud storage, backup etc) or other factors, can you explain why? (do you have experience of trying to achieve the same results with both?)
This is a genuine question, as I am interested to know what it is that made you form your view?
Easier to use, support is first rate.This is a genuine question, as I am interested to know what it is that made you form your view?
Microsoft is generally known for shoddy 3rd rate products so I would give anything made by them a very wide berth.
Let's not mention how you share everything with Google so they can datamine it.
jamoor said:
Microsoft is generally known for shoddy 3rd rate products so I would give anything made by them a very wide berth.
No, they're really not. That might be your opinion, but I would suggest it is driven largely by personal bias rather than any empirical evidence.Both Google and MS have excellent online office suites although for business use Office 365 can often be the better option purely as people are used to the product set, and it makes exchanging documents easier as most other people also use some flavour of Office.
jamoor said:
Australiam said:
In the context of what the OP has asked (email, cloud storage, backup etc) or other factors, can you explain why? (do you have experience of trying to achieve the same results with both?)
This is a genuine question, as I am interested to know what it is that made you form your view?
Easier to use, support is first rate.This is a genuine question, as I am interested to know what it is that made you form your view?
Microsoft is generally known for shoddy 3rd rate products so I would give anything made by them a very wide berth.
deckster said:
No, they're really not. That might be your opinion, but I would suggest it is driven largely by personal bias rather than any empirical evidence.
Both Google and MS have excellent online office suites although for business use Office 365 can often be the better option purely as people are used to the product set, and it makes exchanging documents easier as most other people also use some flavour of Office.
I don't really think you need any evidence, just look at vista and Windows Me.Both Google and MS have excellent online office suites although for business use Office 365 can often be the better option purely as people are used to the product set, and it makes exchanging documents easier as most other people also use some flavour of Office.
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