SmallBizSites.biz is a small business, just like yours, so we understand the importance of time. While you know you need a website, you need office apps, and you need IT support, you find it hard to find the right solutions for your business without being oversold something that will hurt your bottom line. This is where we come in. At SmallBizSites.biz, we will understand your needs, and tailor our custom solutions to meet your needs.

Our solutions are easy, affordable, and let's face it, pretty slick. We are providers of cloud solutions, more particularly SaaS (or Software as a Service), websites and hosting.

What is the cloud?

"The cloud is a set of services and technologies that enable the delivery of computing services over the Internet in real-time, allowing end-users instant access to data and applications from any device with Internet access." -Novell

What is SaaS?

"Software-as-a-Service (SaaS, or "cloud applications") is a model of applications delivered over the Internet, usually through a Web browser. Many of these services are consumer-oriented, but increasingly enterprise applications are coming from the cloud. In fact, a recent IDC report predicted that 76 percent of businesses would use SaaS in 2009, and that SaaS spending would grow more than 40 percent.¹ Examples of cloud applications include Google's Gmail and Google Docs, Salesforce.com CRM, and Zoho Office. In each of these scenarios, applications and accompanying data is stored remotely and delivered over the Internet through a Web browser. Customers generally pay on a per-user subscription model.

A number of technological developments have made SaaS applications more powerful and easier to develop. The latest versions of HTML and JavaScript features make browser-based user interfaces more desktop-like. New platforms have emerged which offer fast development and online/offline modes. These include Adobe's AIR, Microsoft's Silverlight, and Google's Gears. And of course the increasing ubiquity and decreasing costs of high-speed bandwidth have been crucial to this movement.

SmallBizSites.biz as a Google Apps^tm Provider

You are probably using some sort of "thick client" app for your office tool suite right?  Something for word processing, slide shows, spreadsheets, etc.  Imagine being able to access those docs from anywhere, anytime.  We shift the burden of create, save, file, and find from your current infrastructure to the cloud where anything you do can be accessed by anyone in your organization anytime from anywhere, that is if you give them the permissions to do so. And that isn't all we can do.  We can provide your business with mail, chat, full fledged office apps, office collaboration tools like Google Wave, calendar, and more.  We also provide a solution called a CRM, or Customer Relationship Manager.  A CRM is a very powerful tool to control your customer management work flow, from tracking potential leads all the through the sales process, all the while enabling you to track your marketing campaigns, invoices, customer reports and much much more.

Why do all of this?  Well it's simple.  It's cheaper.  And read about each of the Google Apps apps' benefits, then read more here:

GMail

• 25GB quotas per user - never waste time managing quotas again
• Search your email -- find what you need quickly and easily
• Use labels to filter and sort messages
• Conversation threading to help manage your inbox

• Web access from any connection
• Mobile access: Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile
• Outlook Connector: allow users
• to keep their existing client

Calendar

• Quickly add meetings and find available times and resources
• Sync to Blackberry, iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile

• Corporate calendars
• Team calendars
• Launch calendars
• Even external calendars

Docs

• Word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation capabilities
• Unique features like forms for spreadsheets and remote viewing of presentations

• Real time co-authoring built into all of the applications
• Control access to documents at user, group, and company levels

Talk

• Instant messaging with text
• Simple voice and video communications
• IMs archived and searchable with email
• Integrated directly into the Inbox

• No client applications
• Built right into the web-browser
• Video available on any machine with a webcam

Groups

• Users can create and manage groups -- without help from IT
• Rich capabilities to customize groups
• IT can control access to some features

• Groups serve as email distribution lists
• Full searchable archive online for users
• Also useful for defining access controls on documents, sites, and videos

Read more about Google Apps here.

¹Economic Crisis Response: Worldwide Software as a Service Forecast Update, 11/2008