Manage your Growth / Target, Attract and Retain customers


Business solutions for managing growth with Microsoft® BackOffice

Find out how Microsoft BackOffice can make your business run faster, smoother and more efficiently.

At first, there's just you and your PC. Then your business grows, you've hired a couple of people, and before you know it the place is filled with your staff and their PCs. If you're not careful, this ad-hoc collection of hardware and software could cause problems. Orders misplaced, vital files accidentally deleted and so on. It's only a matter of time before someone trips over a temporary cable to bring the whole operation to a grinding halt. Time to get organised!

This is where Microsoft BackOffice can help. It's the organisational complement to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows 95. BackOffice products can help to structure the way you use Word, Excel and other applications. Itís the easy-to-use foundation of a solid computing strategy that can grow as your business does.

At the heart of BackOffice is Windows NT Server 4.0. This is the BackOffice equivalent of Windows 95. Whereas Windows 95 is aimed at running desktop applications such as Microsoft Excel, Word, Schedule+ and PowerPoint, Windows NT is designed to run your mission critical business systems.

Client-server computing

Windows NT can function either as a desktop operating system or, as in BackOffice, as a server. A server, as its name suggests, provides services to desktop machines. One of the most important services that Windows NT offers is file serving. This means that Windows NT acts as a central storehouse of files and data. These can be shared among the desktop client PCs. This is called client-server computing and it can help your business run faster, more smoothly and more cost effectively. Client-server computing merges the ease of use of PCs with the power and manageability of mainframes.

Keeping it safe

Other functions of Windows NT that are vital to your business are backup and confidentiality. Windows NT can copy important files to a tape unit for backup and storage purposes. This can be done automatically at a convenient time.

Confidentiality can be ensured by the security features of Windows NT. These cover a wide range of choices from light security - making sure the office junior can't accidentally delete your entire customer database, for example - to keeping the company's profit and loss figures confidential.

Getting wired

Making sure that your data is safe is only one of the services that Windows NT offers.

You can set up a BackOffice server so that it communicates with remote BackOffice servers in your other offices or manufacturing plants. Production data can be retrieved from remote sites. Similarly, the next day's sales orders can be transferred to them at virtually any time.

Once you have all your PCs connected together, then you can use email. With email, you can send messages to colleagues, circulate memos and minutes of meetings, and so on. Part of BackOffice is Microsoft Exchange Server. Using this, you can set up and manage individual and company wide mailboxes.

The Internet solution

Another part of the Microsoft BackOffice family is the Internet Information Server (IIS), which is powerful enough for the world's biggest World Wide Web sites, yet so easy to use that it's possible to create an Intranet in minutes. By extending the power of Microsoft BackOffice server products to the Internet, IIS makes it easy to create powerful solutions that improve communications and deliver the high-impact Web sites which are now so vital for any growing business.

An all weather database

Of the three database applications that Microsoft produces - Access, FoxPro and SQL Server - it is the third that is most suited to large scale, mission critical usage. SQL Server is designed to be used from many PCs at once. It takes in its stride problems arising from a number of users sharing data.

For example, it is possible to corrupt a shared Access database if one of the PCs using it fails. With SQL Server, these problems are handled in a routine way. If the worst does happen, and the BackOffice Windows NT server fails at a key point - say a power failure when the production database is being updated - then SQL Server will start to recover when the power is restored. Moreover, it can automatically recover the database to the point where the system is functioning correctly again.

SQL Server also has diagnostic tools to help track down problems. These tools may not seem very important when everything is running smoothly. But, when Sod's Law strikes and you have to get the sales figures out, then it can be a different story!

On a larger scale

When your business grows even larger and contains a PC network that is split over several sites, a whole new set of problems can occur when you're trying to keep control of the network. BackOffice has a monitoring and management toolset, Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) to assist you with large systems.

With this, you can keep track of what computers are attached to the network, their configuration and what software they have running on them. You can also use SMS, as British Telecom does, to distribute software to PCs. Running around with some floppy disks updating thousands of PCs can be an expensive business. In fact, BT estimates that it has saved several million pounds annually in this way.

Also in BackOffice is the SNA Server. With this you can connect to IBM's System Network Architecture (SNA). For example, you might run your company's payroll and accounts on an IBM mainframe or AS400 minicomputer, but your accountants want to work on Excel spreadsheets with data extracted from the mainframe's database. The SNA Server makes this possible by combining the familiar user interface of desktop PCs with the flexibility of Large Area Network (LAN) systems.

Back in the office again

Microsoft BackOffice is the heavy duty partner to Windows 95 and Office 95. It's simple to set up and use and has the ability to grow as your company and its requirements grow. BackOffice is a necessity for businesses who take their PC networks seriously.