Save time and money

As your business grows so does Small Business Server 2003. It can also help you streamline your business: co-ordinating meetings and sharing information.

Administration 
Microsoft SBS 2003 makes it easier for companies to expand. While it’s best to have professional help to set up a new server, you don’t need to be a super-geek to manage it once it’s up and running. You can add new users to the system or perform other routine administrative tasks thanks to the easy-to-follow wizards.

Email reports and easy-to-use intranet summaries give you regular status reports and instant feedback on problems. You can also arrange for third-party experts, like your IT supplier, to receive status reports and have remote access to the system so that they can look after routine maintenance.

Straightforward licensing 
SBS 2003 supports up to 75 users or devices. A user is a named individual and a device is typically a PC or laptop. Since you have to buy a Client Access Licence for each one, having the flexibility to choose is a real benefit. For example, you can use a device licence even if a computer is shared between different users, such as shift workers. On the other hand, a user licence also works well for employees who access the network from a number of different devices, such as home and office computers.

SBS 2003 includes five Client Access Licences to get you started and you can purchase more up to a limit of 75. Once you reach the upper limit of SBS 2003 itself (by definition, you won’t be a ‘small’ business anymore) you can protect your investment by upgrading SBS 2003 and remove the restriction without losing the money you have already invested in Microsoft licences. 

Sharing printers and fax machines
When you start out, it’s easy: fax machine in the corner, dial-up internet account and a printer attached to your main computer. But as you grow, you hire new people and they want their own printers and internet access. Suddenly there’s a line at the fax machine.

SBS 2003 cuts down the cost of additional hardware when you hire new employees. For example, because it lets you share printers, you don’t need to buy one for each new employee. You can also share expensive devices like colour laser printers and add a cheap inkjet printer for printing invoice.

Similarly, you can add a fax modem to the SBS 2003 server that lets you send faxes without scanning the documents in. Instead, you just print to the fax modem in the same way you’d print a document to a regular printer. The server converts it into fax and sends it for you. Incoming faxes can be printed out or, to save paper, just routed to your email inbox in a digital format.

Efficient meetings
It’s bad enough trying to schedule a meeting with five busy people but it’s even more annoying when one of them shows up late – or didn’t know the meeting was happening.

If everyone had a digital diary and they were all linked up, it would be easier to plan meetings because you could see when people were free. Not only that but once the meeting was booked, it would be clearly highlighted in everyone’s diary and they would all get a proper reminder. You could also see if meeting rooms and other resources are available and book them.

Using Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook (both part of SBS 2003), it’s easy to arrange meetings by email. Just select a time and date and invite people to the meeting. They will all receive an email with the details and can accept the meeting or decline, so you know exactly who is coming. Outlook has a ‘Plan a Meeting’ function that can automatically schedule a meeting for a group of people based on the free time in their diaries.

Sharing information
Microsoft Outlook 2003 does more than manage your email. It contains a sophisticated calendar, address book and to-do list. Combine it with Exchange Server 2003 (included in SBS 2003) and you can share all this information with colleagues.