Data is the lifeblood of any business, but it's especially important for small businesses. Data is how you identify customers to predict and fulfill their needs. It is how you track trends so you can make informed business decisions. Data is where you store customer and employee information.

Virtualization and cloud computing are increasingly replacing dedicated servers as the preferred platform for hosting web services and applications. This is because virtualization and cloud computing offer a number of advantages over dedicated servers. As a result of these advantages, it is likely that the traditional dedicated server will become less common in the future.

When South California business owners and managers think of the cloud, they often first think about mainstream hosted business applications like Microsoft Office 365. But business software can also be more fine-grained — business software for individual business units, departments, or even specific tasks.