TiGra Networks has partnered with Microsoft Office Live to offer Welsh small businesses the opportunity to promote themselves online with a professional-looking web site and company email addresses at no cost.

This new free service aimed at small and micro businesses who are not yet ready to buy a server offers free domain name registration; a professional-looking template driven web site; 25 email addresses for company employees; free advice and assistance from TiGra Networks on getting set up and designing a basic web site.

As the business grows, they can chose to subscribe to some of the premium services which provide online business management tools, simple customer relationship management, tracking of company assets, invoices, project management, document sharing and team collaboration tools.

According to Tim Long, TiGra Networks' owner and technology consultant:

We're living up to our claim of being the Small Business IT Specialists by helping the smallest companies get online at absolutely no cost. We believe this is a fantastic opportunity for micro businesses who want to promote themselves online and are not sure how best to do it and don't want to commit any money until they've seen the benefits. The template-driven web sites look very professional and the business will have email addresses ending in their company name, instead of an amateur-looking web address. It is no longer necessary to choose between looking professional and low cost - now it is possible to have both.

We decided to throw in our services for free because, even though Office Live is a free service, we think business owners will still value our experience in making the right decisions when they set up their online presence and design their web site. In South Wales, uptake of IT is well behind the rest of the UK. It's not clear why that is so, but with free support from TiGra, there's nothing to prevent many more Welsh businesses taking advantage of the Internet. It also gives us an opportunity to meet the business owner and talk to them about what they want from IT and to outline the ways we can help them achieve their goals. We can also make it clear to them that when they outgrow the Office Live service, we'll be there to support them and migrate their business data.

For larger businesses who need more than Office Live, there is our flagship 'Eye of the Tiger' managed support service, which offers reliable well-maintained IT systems for a fixed, affordable monthly subscription.

To try out the new service, contact Tim Long on (01443) 208678 or Tim@tigranetworks.co.uk to arrange a visit.

Tim is TiGra Networks' owner and technical specialist. Timothy P Long.vcf Skype: TiGraNetworks