Network Design & Implementation

LANs
Many small, even medium, businesses although they have invested in some basic IT infrastructure, they don't have a LAN (Local Area Network). Most of them have either no idea how it can benefit their business, or have inaccurate and most probably wrong information about this technology.

A LAN has many advantages. The list below, although not exhaustive, will try to make things more clear for you.

Data Sharing - Employees can share common information. e.g. All staff in the marketing department can share the file regarding your advertising campaign. They won't be able to access Payroll though. That is for the accountant's and your eyes only.
Sharing of resources - This means that people can share printers, a network connection, hard disk space, etc. This obviously saves money on ink/toner cartridges, call costs, upgrades, etc.
Data Backup - Due to the fact that user data become bigger and bigger, it is very common not to be able to fit them in floppy disks. Floppy disks are more error prone than hard disks any way. When having a LAN we can make backup copies of all the data no irrespective of size. Backups usually take place during the night, so it won't disrupt business tasks.
Centralisation - You can have access to all data, at any time, any day, even if a member of staff is off-sick. This increases productivity and gives the control back into your hands.
Hot Desking - Assuming you have 5 sales people out of the office that come in occasionally in order to report and get data. If no more than 2 at each moment are in the office you can have two desks with computers that they can login into whenever they come in order to type orders, sales reports, and get information on new products. Simple solutions that saves you money!
Easy Installation - The installation of a LAN can be non-disruptive to the business. Nowadays we can use external (USB) network cards that make installation much quicker. With the use of WLAN (Wireless LAN) technology we can have an affordable network without any need to drill through walls, especially usefull in listed buildings. WLAN Security is mature enought to allow such move without any compromise.

WANs
Wide Area Networks are becoming more and more common. In the past they used to require a high initial investment as well as running costs (leased lines, etc.)

Now, we can use different technologies that cost much less and provide better results. We can connect seperate LANs between them using two different technologies.

Wi-Fi - This is exactly the same technology as in a WLAN. If the two sites are in the line of sight of each other no more than 10km apart, we can use two directional antennas to connect the two sites.
VPN over xDSL - If the distances are greater or there are tall buildings between the sites we can use VPN over xDSL. xDSL is a very low cost solution, and VPN technology is so cheap and secure that should cover any business scenario.

As you can see, there is absolutely no reason why, a small to medium company, cannot have the infrastructure that big corporations have. This give a competitive edge and a fair advantage to expand and gain a considerable market share.