THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA

On a listserve I'm on there's an interesting conversation going on with a person needing to set up remote access for seven users in their firm.  They have traditional desktops to remote back to, but they do not have SBS.  So there's a couple of ways to skin this cat.  Way one is to plop down a Backup box from www.smallbizserver.com running Windows Server 2008 R2 Essentials.

Pro:  Flat price tag.
Backs up the workstations as well.

Con:  You have to patch it.
You have to maintain the server.

Way two is to purchase 7 licenses of Logmein (or Gotopc or whatever).  Or you can decide who really needs remote printing and just purchase licenses for those that need remote printing.

Pro:  Supports remoting in from a Mac (unlike the Storage server solution).
Pro:  No patching of a server.

Con:  Annual cash outlay for those needing remote printing.
Potential for price increases.

I stumbled upon this quote this evening and found it insightful:

"Moving it all to the cloud – I’ve talked a lot on this blog about the value of moving software solutions to the cloud, but that doesn’t mean every business should move every program skyward. Carefully consider the short and long-term savings a cloud solution will bring to your business. In some instances it makes more long-term financial sense to leave some programs on-premise."

Can you guess who may have said that?  Guess?  Nope, keep trying... guess?

Cindy Bates.

Who?! You ask?  Non other than the "Vice President of Microsoft’s US SMB Organization where she is responsible for the company’s end-to-end SMB sales and marketing efforts, including SMB strategy, business development, regional field sales and national distribution sales, channel marketing, and customer marketing. "  Yes, she's the evil empire trying to shove your client to the cloud.  And even she says you can't just knee jerk one is better than the other.  Look at the pros and cons of both solutions.

It is a lot harder to make a decision of what is the right decision these days.  A lot of choices.  A lot of marketing.  It feels like there's still more questions I should be asking and making sure I know the answers before signing on that dotted line.