Need some software for a 12-15 associate small business.

[alkemyst]

I am used to enterprise level or home use, don't have much experience with tools in the small business arena.

It's a 12 associate practice that will possibly gain up to 3 more people this year.

They need anti virus and spyware tools....currently using norton, but stuff gets on due to noone updating it. I am looking for something that can be setup and forced to update.

They have one WD Back up drive (MyBook)...currently it's only backing up one user's data...I'd like to add 2 other associates to this (they hold all the data). This should be easy as they are both already mapped to the the machine doing the current backup. However, is there any remote backup software that anyone recommends. It would be nice to have a couple days worth or at least the current backup and one previous.

Lastly something that can be installed to allow one person to manage the PC's easily and see if antivir/spyware is up to date, etc.

I am planning on going in and removing a lot of user's rights. They are all local admins.

The infrastructure is 3 manager pcs, 1 receptionist, 1 accounting assistant, then 6 'group' pc's that are shared by associates. They have one remote users PC that uses a web interface to log in and work/access office files. That's the 12 current. They will be adding at least 1 dedicated PC and possibly another 2 associates that will share one of the 6 group PC's.

If anyone has ideas I'd appreciate it.

 

[jcmuse]

well im no expert but i have around the same amount of people in my office and we use:
nod32 for anti-virus
jungledisk (with amazon s3) for remote backup
i suppose to see if stuff is up to date you could just rdp in (have rd enabled on each comp).
i dont understand why you're not setting them up with some sort of server though (sbs 2003?).
also my own opinion: mybooks are garbage (really high rate of failure).

 

[alkemyst]

Thanks.

I will not be the admin for this install. I am just setting it up for the office manager to handle.

I could set up remote for her, but she is mainly looking to do this while in the office...would still work for that purpose.

They are on a tight budget as their market is down (real estate).

I had suggested a server and a better local back up device (like a dedicated HD in the server), but they'd like the least outlay as possible.

When I quote the job I will be quoting options...server setup is one. I'd have also liked to move each printer to a network drop. The way it is now is the six shared PC's have one network printer, all the rest have a printer connected via USB and then shared on the network. This setup is ok since each of those printers are really dedicated to each user and they only share when someone is printing out a doc for the person that attaches to the physical printer.

Still that is a lot of extra maintenance and cost when they could pool their expenses into one nice office multi function or two.

That Jungledisk seems impressive. What kind of throughput do you get talking to the the servers up and down versus your backbone speed?

 

[George P Burdell]

Having to make these changes on each PC sounds like a pain. Can you implement some kind of imaging system?

I like Avira AntiVir. Low on memory and CPU usage, even with a real-time scanner. I guess the best defense against viruses is not to run in admin mode.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: George P Burdell
Having to make these changes on each PC sounds like a pain. Can you implement some kind of imaging system?

I like Avira AntiVir. Low on memory and CPU usage, even with a real-time scanner. I guess the best defense against viruses is not to run in admin mode.

Are you talking Ghost type images? If so this is already a working environment....they aren't going to want to wipe everyone's machines.

Being its a small network and each employee has very different job functions it makes no sense to license 12-15 copies of each piece of software to have one workstation image.

I would like to implement something like SMS/WSUS but they aren't looking to spend a lot at the same time.

My network at my office is image based and we deploy patches/updates over the wire from one admin location via SMS and AD.

 

[alkemyst]

summary: 12 user small business, may grow to 13-15 users within 6-12 months. XP with no central server. Running Outlook via POP from their provider.

I have been looking at some suggestions and evaluating them, actually the Norton product seems to be a good deal...normally I hate norton, but the small business 10.2 and Endpoint offers central management. Which is an area others don't really offer. They are already running the Norton you buy at Best Buy on each machine so they are used to it.

For anti-spam it looks like Cloudmark's product is the way to go...it's pricey though at $460 a year for their 15 users. 🙁

The JungleDisk looks like a no brainer...and it's cheap.

any more comments?

Thanks!