Ah, the summer of 1995. We rocked out to the tunes of the Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam. We met and fell in love with Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story and we hopped on the Internet with Prodigy and America Online.
A lot’s changed since 1995, we’ve grown, we’ve evolved, our lemonade stands and car washes have become accounting and law firms, or doctors’ and dentists’ offices. We’ve changed with the times and so has the way we do business. Here’s a look at how our small businesses have changed since 1995.
1. You can talk on the phone and use the Internet at the same time
Back in 1995 you had two choices, you could get another phone line or you could lose your connection to the Internet. You could either talk to your client or send them an email. Now you can do both at the same time on the same device. Nobody misses the sound of a modem more than me but you’ve got to admit, there’s something to be said for being able to talk to someone and send them a file at the same time! And while we’re on the subject of phone lines:
2. Your phone goes anywhere with you now
Unless you were Zach Morris in 1995, if you wanted to make a phone call you needed to be in your office or your home. Now your phone is with you everywhere you go. You can travel, work from the plane or train and never have to be worried about missing an important call. Need to take a family vacation but also need to hop on a conference call? Back in 1995, you’d have to sit at home and miss out. Now all you need to do is whip out your cell phone, throw on your headphones, take that call and then you’re back to the beach!
3. Cloud? What cloud?
In 1995 there were basically two kinds of computers: The kind in your office and the kind you couldn’t do work on. Now, with the cloud, you can work anyplace where you have an Internet connection. Productivity tools like Office 365 (which you can back up with Carbonite) let you work anytime, anywhere. Not on 365 yet? No problem. As long as you’re backing up with Carbonite, you can use our Sync & Share tool or our mobile app to grab files on the go. We may not have the killer tunes of 1995, but in 2015 you can work when and where you want.
4. All backups were tape backups
Back in the day, if you wanted to back up your IT environment your choices were tape and…well uh…tape. Not only did you have to manually run all your backups, you had to make sure that you loaded them into your car to take them off site and put them someplace safe. Now with cloud backup, not only can you back up to a local drive automatically (no more running backups or replacing tapes) you can even have it synced directly to the cloud to make sure that you have a secured offsite copy for disaster recovery.
A lot’s changed since that magical summer of 1995. We’ve lived, we’ve laughed and we’ve loved. But the important thing is that for small businesses, technology has made it easier to get work done than ever before.
Learn how Carbonite cloud and hybrid solutions can protect your important work.
