Suffolk Computer Consultants, Inc. Blog

In 2026, we spend most of our days managing cloud architecture, deploying automated security patches, and chatting with AI bots. If we dial the clock back exactly 40 years to 1986, however, business technology wasn't just a different world; it was a different dimension.

In 1986, the cloud that we use for business wasn’t even an option. In fact, the cloud was something that ruined your weekend golf plans. We thought it would be cool to take a look at what some of the cutting-edge business technology looked like if you walked into an office 40 years ago.

In business, it’s often the case that you spend more time talking about work than you spend actually doing the work. How many emails have you sent recently that could be described as “email tennis?” We won’t mince words; this endless back-and-forth discussing meeting times, checking calendars, and re-typing the same responses day-in and day-out is increasing your administrative friction and wasting your time.

Today, we’re exploring three ways you can automate scheduling and communication to put an end to the emails and finally get back to work.

For most small businesses, the manual reporting cycle is tedious, involving numerous different websites and applications, exporting data, and then trying to consolidate it all into one single spreadsheet to determine how well (or how poorly) your business performed last quarter. It’s necessary to look at historical data like this to better run your business, but it’s not necessary to waste so much time doing it. By the time you’re done running reports and putting all the data together, you have no time or energy left to actually analyze it, and that’s a problem.

The most sophisticated firewall in the world cannot stop a human being from making a split-second mistake. Cybercriminals are not just hacking code; they are hacking your employees. By exploiting high-stress environments and the natural desire to be helpful, hackers create click-first, ask-later scenarios that can bypass your entire security stack in an instant.

To defend your business, you do not necessarily need a bigger budget, while that would be nice. You need a better habit. Enter the 3-Second Rule.

If you asked your team what they remember from the last annual security compliance video, we bet they’d be hard-pressed to remember anything of importance. That’s because most small business security training is like going to the dentist; you go once a year, and only because you have to. The unfortunate reality is that most people are going about security training from the “annual compliance” perspective, which isn’t doing your business any favors, and more importantly, doesn’t change their behavior.