The Office 365 Integration Module (OIM) for Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials is now available for download. This feature add-in simplifies the management of Office 365 by integrating the administration experience into the server Dashboard, the command-and-control center for Windows SBS 2011 Essentials.

 When you integrate Office 365 with SBS Essentials through the OIM you can:

• Subscribe to Office 365 or configure the server to use an existing subscription
• Perform the following Office 365 account management tasks from the dashboard:
• Create Office 365 accounts
• Assign new or existing Office 365 accounts to network user accounts
• Activate or deactivate Office 365 accounts
• Link your professional Internet domain to Office 365
• View usage status and other information about your Office 365 subscription
• Access your Office 365 management portal from the Office 365 page of the server dashboard.

Note: You can install and configure the Office 365 Integration Module at any time after installing Windows SBS 2011 Essentials.

Learn more about Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and Standard editions.

You’re just about to start your first search campaign for Shah’s Cars, advertising your new car insurance product, but you have no idea what the average CPC is, what the seasonality looks like, what your typical audience is and you want to go live as soon as possible. Where do you start?

The Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tool is here to help (download here). The tool can help with:

• bid proposals
• demographic and location targeting
• keyword/negative keyword expansions
• daily or monthly traffic patterns

So first things first, you need to build a keyword list.

• Step 1 – Building your keyword list

To do this, type ‘car insurance’ into an Excel spreadsheet and, with your location set to United Kingdom, run the three keyword suggestion tools: 'campaign association', 'queries that contain your keyword' and 'related search'. The 'campaign association' and 'queries that contain your keyword' tools give you a great list of popular generic terms and also give you some keywords that might like to have in your negative list. For example, you could use ‘classic car insurance’ as a negative keyword if Shah’s Cars insurance policies don’t cover classic cars.

You can also run the 'related search' tool on the term ‘car insurance’. This will provide you with a list of keywords that people are known to search for relating to your original term. 'Related search' will provide you with a great list of popular car Insurance providers, which you can then use to build a competitive landscape.

For more information see - Microsoft Advertising Intelligence - Keyword and Negative Keyword Expansion

• Step 2 – Seasonality Insight

After running the 3 expansion tools, you can compile the generated keywords and remove any that you deem irrelevant to later become negatives. With this, you can then run all of the terms through the daily and monthly traffic tools. The monthly traffic tool provides you with the seasonal peaks for the terms, showing that car insurance searches peak in March and April.

The daily traffic tool provides information on daily trends, in this case showing that queries increase at the beginning of the week and then fall off at the weekend.

For more information see - Microsoft Advertising Intelligence - Using the Traffic and Demographic Tools for Market Trends

• Step 3 – Budget Proposal and CPC data

With these same keywords you can run the keyword monetisation tool, providing you with CPCs data for each of your terms for position 1-10. Using the seasonal trend data from the monthly traffic tool, you can make rough estimates on what the terms could cost each month.

5

For more information see - Microsoft Advertising Intelligence - Using the Pricing Tool for Bid Proposals and Budget Management

• Step 4 – Audience Insight

With a keyword list built and costings researched, you can then move onto learning more about your audience. If you run competitor keywords through the monthly traffic tool you can see who your most popular competitor is. You can then run the demographic and location tools on the car insurance terms to get a better idea of what demographic looks for these products and where they are most popular in the UK. In this example, you can learn that car insurance has an even gender split, but is most popular in the 25-49 year old age group, and searched most often in London.

Within an hour, you can have a generic keyword list to work from, find out that car insurance is most popular between 25-49 year olds, that you should upweight the budget in the popular months and ensure your daily budgets are high enough to cope with the increased searches at the start of the week. So in four easy steps, you have all the information you need to start your search campaign.

Thanks for reading,

Katrina Morris

Previous posts in the series:

PPC for SMBs #1: Paid and organic search

PPC for SMBs #2: An introduction to Bing

PPC for SMBs #3: An introduction to Microsoft adCenter

PPC for SMBs # 4: An introduction to Microsoft adCenter Desktop

Research in the first month of the New Year points to record levels of new businesses being created and high optimism amongst small business owners. Will this confidence convert into international trade and expansion? We hope so! Enterprise Nation founder, Emma Jones (@emmaljones), offers four steps to going global in 2012 and announces a series of events with DHL and Regus that will help you along the way.

This will be a good year to grow sales and Go Global. A sizeable opportunity is opening up with growth in markets beyond the Eurozone where more people are going online and wanting to buy British made products and services. Here’s how to make the most of it:

1. Know your product/service – this sounds like a basic starting point but what I mean by this is focus on your niche. Clearly define the look/feel and cost of your product so you know exactly how to position it in new markets and where to promote it.
2. Look beyond the Eurozone – in late 2011 the HSBC Trade Forecast predicted world trade to grow by 73% in the next 15 years, with forecasts showing Egypt, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, China and Brazil being the international powerhouses that will drive growth. These countries are not natural trading partners for the UK and for reasons of culture and distance the European Union remains the largest recipient of exports from the UK. Political figures have recognised the need for British companies to look further afield with the Prime Minister urging businesses to seek out opportunities ‘in huge modern cities from Bogota to Istanbul where people are hungry for the skills and services Britain is best at.” Research and visit emerging markets to assess the potential for your business.
3. Make the most of powerful platforms – upload products and services to international trading platforms and/or source the talent you need to serve new markets. Elance.com is a good place to promote yourself as a business service provider or identify experts and professionals and Alibaba.com is the platform of choice to source from and sell to Asia.
   
4. Seek help – there has never been so much support available to help you Go Global. Seek advice from peers who have been through the experience of international trade, from government agency, UKTI, and from industry experts and service providers.

Enterprise Nation is on hand to help and has partnered with DHL and Regus to deliver a series of events throughout 2012 to help you Go Global. Speakers at the free events are well qualified and include Christian Arno of Lingo24.com who will show how to localise your website to increase sales, Gabriela Castro-Fontoura who will offer a guide to doing business in Latin America and Tony Wheeler will share the story of how he co-founded Lonely Planet and built it into the UK’s largest independent travel guide publisher before selling a majority stake to the BBC. 

The Go Global series will offer the guidance and support you need to make the most of what is a growing opportunity to take your business to the world.

Please click here to register for the Go Global events http://goglobalworkshops.eventbrite.co.uk/

After a break over the Christmas period we're continuing our series of guest posts from Microsoft Advertising on how to get started with pay-per-click advertising.

In our previous adCenter post, an introduction to Microsoft Advertising adCenter,  I gave you the basics of adCenter and how you can use it to manage your campaigns, track performance and generate new keywords. This week I’m going to show you how to do all this and more within the adCenter Desktop, an application that can be installed on your computer and used offline.

adCenter Desktop is great for managing campaigns in bulk, meaning you can make edits to multiple items at once. It also has some very useful time-saving features.

Getting started

Download the tool from http://advertising.microsoft.com/uk/small-business/support-center/adcenter-downloads/adcenter-desktop and log in using your adCenter details (you can register at http://adcenter.microsoft.com/ if you haven’t already done so).

Navigation

adCenter Desktop is divided up in to 5 main areas; the ribbon at the top of the screen is where you’ll access the tools you’ll use most regularly, whereas the left menu is where you can select which account to work on or a particular campaign or ad group. The main area shows the campaigns, ad groups and keywords within the account which can be edited at the bottom of the screen. Finally, the dashboard on the right allows you to track campaign performance and view current trends within the account.

Adding and selecting accounts

The browser menu on the left can be used to add and remove accounts. Start by selecting the account you want to start working on.

When selecting an account for the first time, you will be prompted to download it. When you make any edits to an item, such as a campaign or keyword, it will appear in bold: a bold item indicates that changes have not been made live. You must then click ‘Sync Changes’ on the ribbon to apply the changes to your account.

Dashboard view – New feature

Dashboard is a great new feature that allows you to track campaign performance from your desktop tool, allowing you to view metrics such as clicks and impressions over a range of dates. To begin, simply click the dashboard bar on the right of the screen.

You can also view trends in account performance such as ‘Greatest change in clicks ’ over a selected date period. This is a useful way to see which ads and keywords are performing the best and which may need some attention.

Viewing and editing campaigns, ad groups and keywords

The adCenter Desktop allows you to switch between campaigns, ad groups, text ads and keywords using the navigation buttons at the top of the screen. You can also search for a particular item using the search feature.

By expanding the view in the account browser on the left, you can view a particular campaign or ad group. After selecting an item you can edit it, for example to change the campaign name or monthly budget. Multiple items can be edited at once - try using Ctrl+A to select all items or holding down Ctrl and clicking on multiple items to select them all.

You may find the ‘Find and Replace’ functionality from the ribbon useful when making changes to multiple items.

Error view

Occasionally, you may receive notification that you have errors within your account.

Clicking on the ‘View errors’ button allows you to view any items with errors, such as a keyword that has received an editorial disapproval.

These items need to be corrected before they can be synced.

Imports, exports and multiple changes If you have an existing PPC account on another search engine, you may consider importing it into Microsoft adCenter

You can do this easily using the ‘Import’ functionality from the ribbon. This allows you to import existing campaigns quickly and easily, avoiding the need to re-create them from scratch. If you wish to back-up your adCenter account, it’s a good idea to save an export on a regular basis. Therefore, if you accidentally make any changes that you later want to revert you can simply import your saved backup file.

Another way of importing or editing multiple items at once is using the multiple changes function if you find it easier to edit items within Microsoft Excel, simply select campaigns, ad groups or keywords and click ‘Copy to Excel’. You can then make the necessary changes within Excel and re-import them easily using the multiple changes wizard. Shortcuts: adding match types, altering bid types Highlight any keyword. If you would like to bid on this keyword across all match types, right click, select ‘Bid on match Type’, select ‘All’

To alter bid amounts by a particular percentage or amount navigate to the keywords tab, select the keywords whose bids you wish to change, right-click and select ‘Change Bids’

Negatives and targeting by location, time, day and demographic profile

Using adCenter, you can target users by geographic location, time and date or demographic profile. Using the incremental bid feature you can, for example, bid higher for male users over female users if your product particularly appeals to men. You can view these options by first selecting a campaign, and then ‘Targeting’ from the editing window at the bottom of your screen.

Clicking the Exclusions button also allows you to add negative keywords to a particular campaign.

Summary

Microsoft adCenter Desktop is a powerful tool allowing you to create and edit multiple items at once. There are also some really nice shortcuts such as adding all match types or increasing bid types by a particular percentage. adCenter Desktop also works well with Microsoft Excel allowing you to make changes within Excel and re-import them in to the tool. The new dashboard feature also makes it easy to get a snapshot of the performance of your account so you can see what’s performing well and what may need some work. Have a go with the tool and let us know how you get on. If you have any questions or feedback please post a comment!

Guest post from Maria Ross, founder and chief strategist of Red Slice  a branding and marketing consultancy and blog based in the US. She is the author of Branding Basics for Small Business: How to Create an Irresistible Brand on Any Budget available on Amazon.co.uk. Her next book, Rebooting My Brain will be available in February 2012.

“How on Earth did they think of that? Genius!”

Ever say this about a new hotshot company or product you’ve hear about? Some businesses just seem to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time with the right product or service. 

“Hitting a nerve” and becoming the next big thing is something about which all entrepreneurs dream. But building that buzz-worthy brand is about so much more than luck.

With my clients, I look at buzz-worthy brand strategies from two important angles:

• What do you authentically deliver?
• What space can you claim?

Be clear on what you can authentically deliver

If you just want to be a trend-chaser and go for the fast-cash, I’m not talking to you. Many clients want to be the next big thing – but they have to back up their claims with proof.  You can’t just “slap a coat of brand paint” over your business cosmetically and expect it to last.  People will see right through that.

There are markets for everything. So what can you promise that you can really and truly deliver? Don’t try to be hip, cool and edgy if your product or service is better suited for conservative budget-watchers.  Know your product or service well and exactly who it is for and tell your story to those people.  That’s how you can really hit a nerve – especially if you’re authentically providing real value and meeting a real need.

Apple hits a nerve because Apple continues to deliver on its promises. Their processes, R&D, and design aesthetic all lead into a product that the market adores.  Have they always hit the mark? Not, they haven’t.  But they always go back to who they are in their soul and what their brand represents.  And they continue talking to the people who want to hear that message, not to those who don’t.

What value do you provide? What problems do you solve? Who is your best customer? What can you realistically deliver? Once you know these answers, you’re much closer to crafting a story that people will care about and one that will really hit a nerve with a specific niche.

Understand the lay of the land – and carve out your story

Once you know who you are and where you play, now you can start to “zag” when others “zig.” With my clients, we do a high-level audit of four or five competitors: What do they say, to whom are they talking, what do they emphasise, how do they look?  After seeing some clear trends, we plot the businesses out on a scale. For example, with one client I used “traditional technology player” at one end and “cutting-edge new media expert” on the other.

All the competitors seemed to fall on one side or the other, but no one owned the space in the middle.  Literally, we saw a glaring “white space” that our client could authentically fill – and that was where we focused their brand story. The result is that their revamped brand story “hit a nerve” with their target audience because no one else was telling that story.

You’ll never hit a nerve with a “Me Too” strategy. You have to understand the competitive landscape and find a way to differentiate.  I’m always surprised by how many business owners do not map out their competitors’ brands with an analytic eye.  Instead of looking at everything your competitors are doing and copying it, look at what they are not doing and saying and find a way to stake your claim.

Developing a break-out brand isn’t easy. But you will be able to hit a nerve with your brand story no matter how crowded your industry if you approach it from these very two important angles: What can you really deliver and what space can you really own?

2011 was the year that most small businesses discovered ‘The Cloud’.

Because there’s still a fair amount of fuzziness (technical term) around what ‘The Cloud’ is, here’s a brief explanation. In essence, working in the cloud means using the Internet to access tools we use for day-to-day business tasks.

You might think that’s old hat – after all, people have had Hotmail email accounts for years.

But in business terms, the benefits go much further and are spelled out with some clarity:

1)      As with Hotmail, you can access your stuff from anywhere

2)      And from the cloud, you can use these services on different platforms: your PC, laptops and tablets, or apps on your phone

3)      You don’t need to install new software: applications are accessed through a browser

4)      Data storage is getting cheaper by the day. Store your stuff cheaply, or even free

5)      Someone else worries about security, backups and all that other technical stuff.

Indeed, the word ‘cloud’ came to symbolise this online data management precisely because you didn’t need to know (or bother with) any of the swirling mist of stuff which happens there. Rather like my microwave oven, I know that clever things are going on to make it work, but I don’t need to get my hands dirty. Computing and data storage have become an off-the-shelf commodities - and with low prices and minimum techie knowledge required, small businesses are the main beneficiaries.

So, where’s the catch?

There is no doubt that the cloud is redefining the way businesses use computers.  At some stage soon, then, we will all throw off our shackles and walk into the blindingly white future of cloud, with smiles on our faces and perhaps an ethereal choir ringing in our ears. I’ve seen ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. Right?

Well, sort of.

There are companies which see the cloud with this sort of unalloyed joy, and there’s no doubt that most services will be cloud based in the future. But not all. At Microsoft, we’re committed to cloud technologies, but we’re also committed to choice.

There are occasionally reasons why companies may choose not to use cloud services:

• Some niche software applications simply aren’t built for the cloud, and may never be
• Some companies feel safer with key types of information locked away physically – even though there’s a cast-iron guarantee of data security, they don’t want the infinitesimal risk of information going astray
• Sometimes, when old records are still on paper, for example, you might as well have newer electronic data in the same room.

I’m sure you can think of more reasons – it all comes down to personal preference and the circumstances of your business.

Furthermore, operationally, the transition to cloud computing needs to be a smooth process. Here’s a good parallel example. At some stage in your business or personal life, you might have changed email addresses or used a new piece of email software. I bet it was a miserable experience. You were worried that you might lose old emails, or things might not work out properly and you’d lose important messages.

 Smart businesses want to avoid these hassles by ensuring that any transition to the cloud is not a case of switching off one service and switching on another, but rather a case of having the best of both worlds at all times.

Best of breed, best of both

We think that convenience and simplicity are what matters for a business, and rather than using technology in whatever way is right for your IT provider, you should be able to use it in whatever way is right for you and your business.

For example, if you have Office installed on your PC, check out Office Web Apps – which allows you to view and edit your documents with perfect fidelity through a browser or on your phone. Web Apps don’t replace Office 2010, they are a cloud-based augmentation of some Office programs, providing a different access and usage option.

Then there’s SkyDrive, the simple and free online storage space, which allows you to keep and share documents at will. It’s endlessly useful – but it doesn’t need to completely replace any local storage on your network.

Or for the most complete introduction to cloud services, try Office 365 which includes Office Web Apps along with enterprise-grade email (Exchange Online), video-conferencing, screen-sharing and Instant Messaging (Lync Online) and complete and secure collaboration (SharePoint Online). All for as little as £4.00 per month – that’s a large cappuccino. Yet all of these services integrate perfectly with the local, PC-based versions of Microsoft products which you may already have in your office. Quite simply, if you check out Exchange Online for email, it will give you seamless access to your email from anywhere and on any device, but it won’t gobble up your old emails or make you change the way you work.

The cloud is already making life for small businesses easier, more productive, and financially both economical and predictable. It is allowing managers to spend less time on technology and more time on cash-generative work. And it is empowering smaller companies to compete with much larger competitors. But cloud doesn’t mean all or nothing – it means you choose whatever works for your business.

And if you want to try it first and see how it works, why not sign up for a free 30-day trial of Office 365? It's quick and easy, and you'll be surprised at what you can do - like build your website for example.

Microsoft Advertising has just launched a new Facebook campaign in the UK and France to help more businesses like yours reach new customers with the help of our fictional UK small business customers Stan & Dan.

What does Stan know about online advertising that Dan doesn’t? You can watch their video on Microsoft adCenter's Facebook page to find out how advertising with Microsoft adCenter on Bing worked for them and hear stories from real-life small businesses that found success with search advertising. Of course we’d love to hear from you as well. What has worked for you and what tips can you share with new advertisers?

Advertisers who are new to adCenter can claim £30 in free advertising for their first Bing campaign (subject to Ts&Cs).

Today's post is courtesy of Ewan Dalton, who heads up the technology group within Microsoft UK’s partner business, and who also publishes a “Tip o’ the Week” to several thousand people, covering many aspects of productivity and technology. Previous tips are also published onto http://blogs.technet.com/ewan”

Some factoids to amuse your family and bemuse your friends...

• TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
• The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog is a pangram, in other words a phrase that contains every letter of the alphabet (in English, at least). It’s often used by typists to try out a new keyboard, and has been used for a long time by typesetters to show off their fonts. It’s not the most efficient (there is a bit of repetition), but it is one of the most sensible in meaning. Well, sort-of.
  • o Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim might be shorter, but it sounds like it came from a random word generator, or is the source of some fiendish anagram.
  • o It might sound geeky, but “Just My Type” is a fascinating book all about fonts, if you have any spare book tokens or Amazon vouchers after Christmas. No, really. It’s Quite Interesting.
• · The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
• · Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand and lollipop with your right.

It’s been a long-held dream of many computer scientists, that people should be able to interact with their machines without using a keyboard. Remember Star Trek’s Scotty and the Macintosh?

Bill Gates championed Microsoft Research to spend years and years looking into handwriting, speech and gesture recognition – some of which was very ahead of its time (the Tablet PC predating the iPad by 8 years, for example – though history shows being first isn’t always best). Microsoft’s Surface platform developed and delivered multi-touch interfaces before the iPhone made the idea mainstream.

Only now has the technology become cheap, fast and advanced enough to make reliable speech recognition available, but it’s mostly being done on devices like phones (or Kinect sesnros), with cloud services providing the recognition & intelligence. See a comparison of Microsoft’s TellMe (in Windows Phone) with Apple’s Siri (iOS 5) – here. A less favourable comparison, here.

Oh, well.

Even with all the advances in touch and handwriting or speech, we still predominantly enter information into our PCs using the keyboard. And many of us might be embarassed to still be at the “hunt & peck” method of typing, at best a finger or two of each hand meandering over the keyboard to pick out the right key, whilst looking at the keyboard.

Touch typing revolves around the raised ridges on the “F” and “J” keys, which form the root of the “home keys” – the idea being that you can use 3 or 4 fingers of each hand to type whilst being able to watch the screen and not the keyboard. A decent (nonprofessional) typist should be able to manage 40-50 words per minute (wpm), while the very best touch typists could be 120 wpm or better. Your average web surfer is probably 20-30wpm.

To find out your own WPM and error rate, check here. [Ed's note - I just tried it and I think I was too fast for it!] 
The www.powertyping.com site has a number of practice exercises too.

There are a good number of ways to improve your typing – from seeking out the venerable Mavis Beacon software to teach the user, to online (free!) “Online Keyboarding” lessons.

So, if you have any free time over the festive period, why not make one of your New Year’s resolutions to sharpen up your typing skills? You never know, it could help you get a better work/life balance by being a few percent more effective at doing something we all do, every day!

[Ed's note: learning to touch type was seriously one of the best invesments I ever made .... though people have complained that apparently I type too loudly! ]

Klaus Holse, Microsoft Area Vice President of Western Europe, talks about the positive outcomes of a recent Europe-wide SMB business survey.

Europe may be in the grip of an economic crisis, but the region remains, in many ways, fertile ground for young or small companies. Despite the prevailing pessimism dominating headlines, we’ve actually seen a host of positive initiatives aimed at start-ups recently, from the European Commission’s proposed new regulation that’s designed to make it easier for venture capitalists to lend money to start-up businesses, to a new scheme aimed at helping small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) get loans for R&D.

Things aren’t all bad. The results of a new study we’ve commissioned among 2,100 European SMB owners actually suggest –encouraging signs of optimism.

Firstly, there’s little sense of helplessness in the face of the economic storm. A majority (61 per cent) of SMB owners across Europe feel their business can make a positive difference to the region’s economic woes. In another demonstration of rolling-up-the-sleeves, two thirds (64 per cent) say it is “businesses like mine that will be most responsible for providing the jobs and innovation to bring back the good times.” Given the fact that the vast majority of businesses in Europe are SMBs – around 99 per cent according to industry data – this is clearly A Good Thing.

Secondly, there is a strong sense that SMB owners are feeling more confident than pessimistic about their chances of success in 2012. Nearly six times as many respondents expect to be more successful (28 per cent) as less (5 per cent), and this positive outlook extends to anticipated job creation: 24 per cent of SMB owners say they expect to hire new staff compared to just seven per cent who think they will need to make redundancies.

There are variations between countries, of course. Although 28 per cent overall said they expect to be more successful in the next eighteen months, the figure was 40 per cent in Sweden, 39 per cent in the UK and 38 per cent in Russia. By contrast, Greece (25 per cent), Italy (23 per cent) and Spain (15 per cent), for example, are notably behind.

In some instances this is understandable; Greece, Italy and Spain are arguably more under pressure economically than some other European countries so it is natural that respondents there would not be as positive as elsewhere. Nonetheless, in every country in which the research was performed, a greater percentage of SMB owners expect to be more successful in the next year than less.

That SMBs can make – and, importantly, believe they will make – a positive difference is something we agree with passionately. At Microsoft, we’ve long espoused the ability of small businesses, when armed with the best tools, technology and business support, to drive growth. Now we’d extend that argument to say that, although it won’t be easy, tech-savvy SMBs can help Europe grow its way out of the crisis.

The SMBs we talked to agree. Two thirds (65 per cent) of respondents said that computing technology will help their business get through the current economic crisis. In fact, 55 per cent went as far as to say the use of computer technology will be the deciding factor in whether their business thrives or just survives. Cloud computing in particular was called out as a key driver, with more than half (52 per cent) agreeing that it will become “more important for businesses like mine”, perhaps because of a rising awareness of the tangible benefits: almost half (49 per cent) of SMBs in our survey that are using cloud services report that their business is more flexible, 45 per cent say it is saving money, 39 per cent say it is more productive, while a quarter say it has made them more innovative.

A big heavy underline is drawn beneath these benefits by the Centre of Economics and Business Research, which last year released a report saying cloud computing will add $1 trillion in productivity to the world’s top economies over the next five years.

But – and there is a but – we know that cloud comes with its caveats. We know that data privacy and security remain concerns for SMBs: 44 per cent of respondents have concerns that cloud services are unproven and risky and 30 per cent agree that “data is not secure in the cloud.” In addition, 71 per cent say they want to know where their data is located.

To some degree, I think that represents a deficit between perception and reality: I can assure any small business or start-up they will get greater levels of compliance and security by putting their trust in Microsoft’s world-leading data centre in Dublin rather than a server in the corner of their office. But when it comes to addressing that deficit, showing, not telling, is the key.

That’s why today we’ve taken an exciting step – making our flagship cloud service for SMBs, Office 365, compliant with both the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the EU’s Model Clauses. This makes Office 365 the first productivity service in the industry to comply with EU and US standards of data protection and privacy.

Office 365 is a great example of next-generation IT that helps small businesses compete and scale like never before, with powerful collaboration tools and minimal IT investment. Not only does it offer start-ups and established small businesses increased agility, lower cost IT infrastructure, and collaboration benefits, it’s also really easy to use. Programs like BizSpark, too, also exemplify ways that young entrepreneurs with great ideas can rise quickly – from concept to commercialization.

Kobojo, our 2010 BizSpark winner, just completed the first round of its fund-raising campaign, which has already raised a total of $7.5 million (€5.3 million). British BizSpark One company Huddle, launched in 2007 from co-founder Alastair Mitchell’s bedroom and is now used by more than 90,000 organisations worldwide, thanks in no small part to cloud-based solutions meaning they could launch and grow quickly with little initial capital expenditure costs to worry about.

Yes, times are glum, and I’d be crazy to deny that. But where there are signs of optimism, let’s seize on them. Green shoots need watering to grow. The cloud has the potential to breathe life back into the European economy by helping the SMBs that are its backbone to succeed.

I will simply say that we look forward to the opportunity to help many of the region’s small and medium sized businesses to make the most of that potential.

Guest post from Francesca Geens, who runs Digital Dragonfly, offering practical IT and tech assistance for tiny businesses (typically 1-5 PCs) across the UK. Working with both Mac and PC clients, Digital Dragonfly specialises in business email, cloud solutions, mobile working and general best-practice, giving business owners peace of mind when it comes to their IT setup.

Do you feel like your small business is in the dark ages?

That’s exactly how a recent client felt when she approached Digital Dragonfly for an IT audit. "The difference to our systems is amazing", says Kemi who runs a Lettings Agency in Central London. So what did the IT audit reveal and how did we bring this Small Business into line with current IT best-practice?

This two-person company was using 3 PCs on Windows Vista and XP Professional: the computers were slow to boot up, did not have any backup systems in place, were not able to share calendars and suffering with high volumes of spam.

What did Digital Dragonfly do?

•  Reinstalled their machines and upgraded them to Windows7 Enterprise
•  Installed Windows Intune for virus/malware protection and so we could remote monitor software updates infuture
•  Upgraded their email to Office365 allowing emails, calendar and contacts to sync with Smartphones and a tablet; a shared office calendar; the ability to set Out of Office for the first time; excellent spam filtering and a much more reliable email uptime.
•  Set up backup systems with a new removable hard-drive as well as a cloud solution.

The customer really liked the fact that she could pay monthly for the Office365 and Intune subscriptions. Also Intune allowed for the upgrade to Windows7 without additional costs which brought the whole upfront spend and overall cost down.

The work took one day to do with no email downtime and the business owners now have peace of mind that they can access their data from anywhere, that their files are backed up and computers protected from viruses and malware.  

So if you are small business in the dark ages with your IT hopefully this will show you that it doesn’t need to cost the earth to get yourselves in line with current best-practice.