1. Cloud Computing
“the cloud.” But what does it mean?
Business applications are moving to the cloud. It’s not just a fad—the shift from traditional software models to the Internet has steadily gained momentum over the last 10 years. Looking ahead, the next decade of cloud computing promises new ways to collaborate everywhere, through mobile devices.
Life before cloud computing
Traditional business applications have always been very complicated and expensive. The amount and variety of hardware and software required to run them are daunting. You need a whole team of experts to install, configure, test, run, secure, and update them.
When you multiply this effort across dozens or hundreds of apps, it’s easy to see why the biggest companies with the best IT departments aren’t getting the apps they need. Small and mid-sized businesses don’t stand a chance.
Cloud computing: a better way
With cloud computing, you eliminate those headaches because you’re not managing hardware and software—that’s the responsibility of an experienced vendor like salesforce.com. The shared infrastructure means it works like a utility: You only pay for what you need, upgrades are automatic, and scaling up or down is easy.
Cloud-based apps can be up and running in days or weeks, and they cost less. With a cloud app, you just open a browser, log in, customize the app, and start using it.
Businesses are running all kinds of apps in the cloud, like customer relationship management (CRM), HR, accounting, and much more. Some of the world’s largest companies moved their applications to the cloud with salesforce.com after rigorously testing the security and reliability of our infrastructure.
As cloud computing grows in popularity, thousands of companies are simply rebranding their non-cloud products and services as “cloud computing.” Always dig deeper when evaluating cloud offerings and keep in mind that if you have to buy and manage hardware and software, what you’re looking at isn’t really cloud computing but a false cloud.
2. Useful Technologies for the Remote Worker
I do a majority of my collaborating and individual work remotely, which I couldn’t do without the support of various programs. In this post, I thought I would share some of my favorite tools for working remotely. They may be useful to you in your collaboration work as well. I use most of these as a single user for private use. Those of you seeking to use them with commercial licenses might face different pay structures.
Google Docs: I mentioned in my previous post that we at Leading Virtually like to use Google Docs for collaborating on written projects. The spreadsheet and presentation capabilities also allow us to share data and work on group presentations together. Adobe has recently launched its own set of collaboration tools at Acrobat.com. The document, spreadsheet and presentation tools are designed to replace many of the functions for which one would use Microsoft Office and it offers many of the same functions as Google Docs. Acrobat.com is offering both free, basic accounts, and subscription based accounts. A review of the new tools can be read here.
Skype: Although most people know Skype as a way to communicate via instant messaging and VOIP with other Skype users for free, Skype also offers some services that make communication with non-Skype users inexpensive and easy. Skype account holders can purchase an Online Number, which acts as a regular telephone number and can be given out to non-Skype users or people that you don’t necessarily want to share your home or cell phone number with. You can choose the location for your phone number as well. For example, I can choose to purchase a phone number local to Indiana to give to associates from there so that the calls remain local for them when calling me. The phone number will ring your Skype account; when you are not online, you can always forward the calls to your home, office or cell phone. I can even use the call forwarding to forward to my pay-as-you-go cell phone I use in UK–so those who need to get in touch with me can call a local UK number and reach me on Skype or on a cell phone in UK for only a small cost to me.
Another great service that Skype offers is Skype To Go. This is a number that you can use to call internationally from any phone using your Skype account. One UK based phone number can be linked to up to 6 international numbers. When I want to call one of those numbers, I dial the UK number and am prompted to choose which contact I am calling, and then I am connected. So I can make very inexpensive phone calls to international locations from my cell phone or home phone! I use one or both of these services several times a week and pay less than £15 a month on average in Skype credit and subscription fees.
Another potentially useful communications tool is on its way from Google. In a previous Leading Virtually Digest, we covered an article on Google’s new project, Google Voice. The new service will allow users to manage all of their phones (home, office, cell, etc.) through a single phone number that will ring them all simultaneously, so one can be reached anywhere without setting up call forwarding services. Previously, Google Voice was only open to subscribers of its previous incarnation, Grand Central. It has been announced that Google is now opening the service up more widely to those that requested invitations.
Team Viewer: Team Viewer is an easy to use client for remote desktop access and control. I use it for getting remote support when I encounter a problem, transferring large or forgotten files between my office and home computers, and meetings in which I need to share visual data or presentations. A great feature of Team Viewer is that you can set up permanent access to a computer with a computer ID and password. I set up permanent access to my office computer and access expensive statistics software that I don’t have at home. The speed and quality are excellent–far better than LogMeIn, which I used to use. Team Viewer is free for non-commercial use.
Similarly, DimDim is a popular, easy to use web conferencing tool that allows the sharing of presentations and web pages. It offers the added capabilities of sharing voice and video, which Team Viewer does not have.
YouSendIt: YouSendIt allows you to send files to others that are too large to go through regular email. YouSendIt is free as long as files are 100 MB or less. You upload the file you want to send and the recipient receives a link to the download site to retrieve it. There are several services similar to YouSendIt such as TransferBigFiles and DropSend.
Twitter: Although technically it may not be considered a productivity tool, Twitter is proving indispensable to me in learning about new developments and products available for remote workers. Twitter is an excellent place to keep up to date on what is happening in technology, remote work, and virtual collaboration. Quick searches on any of these topics or following knowledgable others uncovers a wealth of new sources of information, even from seemingly unlikely sources. For instance, today I discovered through Rachel Maddow’s feed, a service called Read The Words. This is a text to speech program that allows you to create audio files of RSS feeds, documents, and web sites. These can be saved and transferred to an mp3 player, embedded in your website (with a talking avatar), or made into podcasts. I used a similar service for listening to articles and keeping up on news while traveling, however the service I used was slow and only compatible with Windows. Read the Words seems much easier to use, is web-based, and, although the free account doesn’t offer much, the price for a year subscription is rather inexpensive. The voices are still rather robotic, however.
Here is an article on the best search tools for Twitter that take searching a step above Twitter’s own search capability. Lastly, although it is less talked about in the press, Google also has its own micro-blogging service called Jaiku, with many of the same features as Twitter as well as the ability to see friends’ calendars and availability.
