What can we do?
So glad you asked. We have taken care of the IT needs for several very small home-based businesses, for some bigger small businesses, and of course, for many individuals.
For instance, one of the first calls we got was from someone who was having a hard time getting a call back from their previous computer guy. At the time, their office consisted of six old PCs, one of which was running NT 4.0 as their server. All of this was housed in two construction trailers in a dirt field outside of North Plains, Oregon.
Unfortunately, the "server" would crash randomly. By cleaning out the dust (and yes, that remains the worst PC I have ever seen) and reseating the memory and the processor, it ran just fine.
Realizing that their server was quite out of date, they knew they needed a new server to run Microsoft Windows 2000 Server so they could upgrade their accounting software. So they asked me to build a new server system. And then I built new PCs for everyone in the office. Now mind you, these weren't high-end PCs, but they fit into the small company's budget and everyone was happy getting their work done. And their business grew.
And a couple years later it was time to move out of the construction trailers and into a real building in North Plains. I checked out the wiring and network switch that was already in the building, and then on the big day I loaded all of the PCs, the server and printers into the family Dodge Caravan, set it all up and they were ready to go. That took a couple of hours. And their business grew.
Then an interesting problem popped up: the office staff at one of their construction sites several miles outside of a small town in another state needed to be able to log into the server in North Plains to do the accounting. But there was going to be a delay in getting a phone line with DSL (digital subscriber line) out to the construction site. Unfortunately, the delay would be almost as long as the project. And the cost of putting up a micro-wave link for a short project didn't make sense. So, I found a means to make the connection at a very reasonable cost; the accounting got done, the project was completed and the business grew. And there were more projects in out-of-the-way places and we used the same method to connect the remote PCs to the home office server so that all of the accounting could be done in the North Plains office.
Before long there were more employees, more PCs and 2 more servers. And a couple years later it was time to move again. This time into a new building in Hillsboro, with a new wiring layout and a server room, with racks for the servers.
We handled their IT needs for over 6 years at a few hours per week, always working with them to fit within their budget, and had a lot of fun watching the company grow.
Of course, there are plenty of other examples and we would be happy to have you join us.