Business Setup

A[L]C · 4 Dec 2010 at 11:12

Hi all,

I wonder if you could give me some assistance.

My brother in law is setting up a company. At the moment it will consist of himself, my sister in an office/unit area, and a partner.

Bro in law and partner will have laptops, and there will be 1 desktop.

So 3 machines in total. They are looking for a way to manage their email, calendar and documents so they can all access each others stuff remotely.

I was thinking of setting up google apps to the domain to manage all this, but then noticed the document storage is only 1gb. They will have quotations and photographs, so I can see this being quickly used.

Are there any other all in one solutions?

Thanks
Paul

theheyes · 4 Dec 2010 at 12:46

Office 365 (or Office Live for Small Businesses I think it's called at the moment) sounds like a potential solution and it will scale (at additional cost but the pricing looks reasonable). Have a google.

I think it's definitely wise to try to find a solution that doesnt involve you setting up your own server, especially considering it's a start up. If you could avoid that then it's a great start.

Duke · 4 Dec 2010 at 13:24

Hosted Exchange could deal with the email/calendars, but not sure about document sharing. I'm guessing some cloud based one would do the job?

Paul11 · 4 Dec 2010 at 17:26

for documents use dropbox (this is brilliant)

for calendar use google calendar sync (this is also brilliant)

not sure what to suggest for contacts

davidansell · 5 Dec 2010 at 07:20

I am also in a pickle!

A[L]C · 24 Mar 2011 at 20:09

Hi,

Just wanted to revisit this.

I have initially tried using webdrive to connect the systems to the webhost via ftp (outside of the www root). However this is 1) too complicated for the users and 2) seemingly unreliable.

So I wonder if anyone can recommend me a service to connect 1 desktop, 2 laptops for file sharing and offline working?

Office live seems good but no offline working from what I can see.

SiriusB · 24 Mar 2011 at 21:48

Dropbox can be used offline iirc. Not sure how it handles changes to the same file from different people though.