Tabush Group's Cloud & Managed IT Blog

In honor of National Small Business Week, I thought I’d share some technology tools that are ideal for small businesses.

When I first started my business back in 2000, providing IT services to small businesses, we definitely didn’t have what we do today in the way of easy-to-setup and cost-effective technology tools. If your small business wanted file sharing and corporate email, we would have had to setup your own Small Business Server in your office.

Phishing emails (emails which appear to be from a legitimate sender, asking for personal or financial information) have been around for many years. However, in the last few months we’ve seen a big rise in spear phishing (scam email specifically targeting a company or person) and ransomware (viruses which encrypt files on your computer and network, and demand a ransom payment to have the files unlocked). These threats are very real for anyone using email.

As you may have heard, we made an official announcement today about the successful launch of Boxtop™, an all-in-one cloud IT solution for small businesses that includes virtual desktops, infrastructure, data storage, backups, security, dedicated service, and unlimited tech support. It’s the result of a lot of hard work from our engineering and product teams, and I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished!

As I wrote about at the beginning of the year, desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) is a sector of technology that will really grow this year. And, this is why:

 A few days ago, Verizon announced they are shutting down their public cloud services. Customers have a month to migrate whatever servers and systems they run off of Verizon’s cloud and onto a new provider. If a month sounds like a long time to you, you’re probably not the person responsible for your company’s IT.

Last month, we held our annual awards breakfast. As a small business of 25 employees, it’s a much anticipated day, where we all come together to honor team members who have achieved milestones with the company, as well as those who have exemplified our values. Over the past year, we added 6 new employees, so it was also an opportunity to all together welcome them to the Tabush Group family.

As an IT Managed Service Provider (MSP), the largest, and most important, group in our company is our technical services team, which is made up of different types of support engineers.

This time of year always brings a slew of articles about “what’s next” – the hot technologies, stocks, real estate markets, movies, music, food – what we should all plan to use/invest in/watch/ eat, etc. Since everyone else is doing it, I figured why not chime in on the topic I spend most of my time in: Small Business IT. So, without further ado, here are my predictions for 2016:

As cliché as it may be, I can’t believe that we’re only a few days away from the conclusion of 2015. Each December at our annual company holiday party, I get the privilege of delivering the ‘State of the Company’ speech. In 2014, I focused on how we love what we do, and because we love it, our focus has always been on doing it better, and growth has merely been a byproduct. In this year’s speech, I reminisced about how and why I founded the company in 2000 from my college dorm room, and how it has and continues to be an amazing journey of building, learning, and growing. 2015 was no exception to that.