Let's face it: in the world of consumer technology, purchases are often a simple case of keeping up with the Joneses. When it comes to small business (SMB) technology, however, a valuable app or hardware device could mean the difference between taking your company to the next level and getting left behind.

SMB tech is, slightly-ironically, a huge business. With the incredibly diverse range of product categories aimed at that market, which come through our labs, it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of the ones really worth recommending. It's incredibly important, however—after all, while spending money on a shoddy camera, MP3, or big screen TV can be heartbreaking, making the same bad choice for a small business tool can be far, far worse.

Here are four of the best small business products that we've looked at in the past few months. Click the links for the full text.

Bomgar Box B100
Looking for a simple, secure, and elegant way to provide customers with remote support? This little orange box can help improve the lives of your customer service representatives with its desktop session and chat recording. The Bomgar Box is also one of the more cost effective solutions around.

Iomega StorCenter Pro NAS 150d
Network attached storage (NAS) drives are a great tool for companies looking to add shared hard-drive capacity without having to install and configure a new file server or new drives in an existing server. Iomega's StorCenter Pro NAS 150d adds a hot-swap capability, allowing users to replace drives without going off-line. The unit's capacity and performance are also top-notch, given the SorCenter's reasonable price.

Prophet 4.0 Professional
Avidian's Prophet 4.0 is a solid contact management tool that offers good integration with Microsoft Outlook. The app's well-designed interface gives users easy contact navigation. The app requires Microsoft Exchange for effective sharing, however, and we ran into a few minor interface issues during our testing.

Spiceworks 1.5
This app gives IT administrators a powerful method for creating and updating an inventory of end-point devices and managing your network. Spiceworks is free, easy-to-use, and the program's online community will help you troubleshoot any problems you may encounter along the way.