You started your business some time ago and you can still rember working from home, just yourself, your desktop and your phone next to you. The good old days when you could do all the work yourself. Time has past and you have grown a bit since then. You have moved into a small office and you can clearly remember the day when you put up your first sign. The day when you announce to wold for all to see, that you also form part of the economy.
You are about 4 people now, each with their own pc or laptop, all doing the bit they are responsible for. After a while it becomes a hassel finding stuff. You need information that you are not directly responsible for, but have to wait for the person to find it. Or maybe he is gone for the day, or on leave, and you have no idea where the files are saved on his pc.
Sooner or later you spend much of your day searching for files, mailing them to each other, or looking for a flashdisk with space available, to copy the file that you need and then take it to your pc to work on. The next problem is, that you have a few versions of the same file, and the guy responsible has a few and nobody has time so sort out this problem.
You began to relise that you need some sort of sentral storage of files that everybody has access to where you can quickly find your files.
What is a server?
When people think of a server, they think of this high tech very expensive piece of hardware sitting in a datacentre somewhere. For the big corporations, that is just about right. But the normal SME does not have the budget to buy expensive hardware. They need their cashflow to generate money and not dwindle away having to buy a massive server.
A server is basically any pc that stores files for you. It could be one big expensive server hardware, or it could be just a normal entry level pc. Once again, it does not have to be this expensive piece of equipment. If you are like most SME with a user base from 1 to 30, you do not have to have this major piece of equipment. I do not say, throw out all your servers and buy a normal desktop pc as your server. There are lots of benefits in having proper server hardware. All I am saying is that it’s better to have a normal pc as your server, than having nothing. Remember, there is always a solution for everyone and everything.
As with everything in life, it’s all about economics. It’s always a give and take between speed and comfort and the cost in provinding that speed and comfort.
Bennefits of having a server solution
Sentralization of your files. When you create a shared directory where your entire employee’s files are saved, it will be quicker to find your files.
When you have all your important files on one pc, your server, (remember a server is not a server)you only have to backup one pc and thus simplies your backup solution. Now backups is a complete different ball game and you should have a look at our backups page for more information.
