I found this recent news item from the BBC of interest and thought I would share it with you.
Recently the Police in the Arab Emirates were baffled by a sudden drop-off in the numbers of road accidents. It was only when the Blackberry service was restored that the accident statistics returned to their previously levels that the emergency services put two and two together and made the connection.
The spate of highly visible Blackberry service outages only goes to prove the reliance on mobile information access by today's workforce.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Flexible Working Technology Update 2011
In this article we look at the latest developments in technology which help to enhance and improve both team morale and performance.
Cloud based solutions
What are "Cloud" based solutions - in general any solution provided by services running on computers owned by a third party and accessed via the internet can be described as 'cloud based' -- also known as "Software As A Service" or "SAAS".
SAAS is currently in-vogue, although the pros and cons of using them should be weighed before allowing use for "real business".
Advantages
By allowing someone else to take care of the headache of looking after infrastructure : Servers, routers, storage, backup etc. you allow your organisation to concentrate on it's core strengths and get on with the job.
SAAS is delivered via web browsers such as Chrome or Firefox which almost any computing device; laptop, tablet, smart-phone etc. will have.
This also reduces the hassle of "rolling out" software to users and means people can get up and running almost straight away with an interface they are used to with no technology-frustration.
Because the reputation of organisations offering these solutions are based on the quality and resilience of the solution being offered (Google, Amazon and Microsoft) are big players in this sphere; high levels of availability, hassle free usage and very secure access are the norm.
As these are now a well established alternative to in-house internally supported systems - information and reviews about the various services are readily available.
Considerations
For any cloud based solution, your information will be travelling over the Internet and hosted on third party servers. So your organisation needs to look carefully at the provider's Service Level Agreements and
the implications of any local (UK) data storage legislation and compliance policies.
Some useful cloud based solution include :
Dropbox - This is a cloud based file sharing service which is simple to use and allows you the benefit of an allocation of free storage that can be accessed anywhere with Internet access. For a team separated by
distance this can be very useful. Off-site, secure storage of important documents can make the difference between business closure or delays resulting from a disaster and means that continued working can be immediate as restoration of files come from this cloud based off site storage, making it a valuable part of your disaster recovery plan. http://www.dropbox.com/
Google Docs - Built by the makers of the Google search engine, these tools allow you to build Microsoft Office compatible documents, spreadsheets and presentations from any location on the Internet. When
teams are collaborating on projects from multiple locations - on-site, home based or traditional office accommodation - this service is extremely helpful in removing the problems associated with multiple
copies of working documents and allows more than one person to be editing these documents in real-time. https://docs.google.com/
Private Virtual Cloud
This is where your organisation owns and looks after the servers, where using external shared services is not an option due to policy compliance or other issues. There are SAAS solutions which can be deployed on
private clouds such as Microsoft Sharepoint and Adobe TeamWare. These systems allow you to share documents and collaborate on them in real time, overcoming of the drawbacks of traditional document based administration.
Cloud based solutions
What are "Cloud" based solutions - in general any solution provided by services running on computers owned by a third party and accessed via the internet can be described as 'cloud based' -- also known as "Software As A Service" or "SAAS".
SAAS is currently in-vogue, although the pros and cons of using them should be weighed before allowing use for "real business".
Advantages
By allowing someone else to take care of the headache of looking after infrastructure : Servers, routers, storage, backup etc. you allow your organisation to concentrate on it's core strengths and get on with the job.
SAAS is delivered via web browsers such as Chrome or Firefox which almost any computing device; laptop, tablet, smart-phone etc. will have.
This also reduces the hassle of "rolling out" software to users and means people can get up and running almost straight away with an interface they are used to with no technology-frustration.
Because the reputation of organisations offering these solutions are based on the quality and resilience of the solution being offered (Google, Amazon and Microsoft) are big players in this sphere; high levels of availability, hassle free usage and very secure access are the norm.
As these are now a well established alternative to in-house internally supported systems - information and reviews about the various services are readily available.
Considerations
For any cloud based solution, your information will be travelling over the Internet and hosted on third party servers. So your organisation needs to look carefully at the provider's Service Level Agreements and
the implications of any local (UK) data storage legislation and compliance policies.
Some useful cloud based solution include :
Dropbox - This is a cloud based file sharing service which is simple to use and allows you the benefit of an allocation of free storage that can be accessed anywhere with Internet access. For a team separated by
distance this can be very useful. Off-site, secure storage of important documents can make the difference between business closure or delays resulting from a disaster and means that continued working can be immediate as restoration of files come from this cloud based off site storage, making it a valuable part of your disaster recovery plan. http://www.dropbox.com/
Google Docs - Built by the makers of the Google search engine, these tools allow you to build Microsoft Office compatible documents, spreadsheets and presentations from any location on the Internet. When
teams are collaborating on projects from multiple locations - on-site, home based or traditional office accommodation - this service is extremely helpful in removing the problems associated with multiple
copies of working documents and allows more than one person to be editing these documents in real-time. https://docs.google.com/
Private Virtual Cloud
This is where your organisation owns and looks after the servers, where using external shared services is not an option due to policy compliance or other issues. There are SAAS solutions which can be deployed on
private clouds such as Microsoft Sharepoint and Adobe TeamWare. These systems allow you to share documents and collaborate on them in real time, overcoming of the drawbacks of traditional document based administration.
Teleconferencing
This is a very crowded and competitive market, great for a business in terms of keeping operating costs down and with the quality and functionality of these products becoming higher all the time the business case to adopt this technology continuing to gain strength.
Teleconferencing has moved on a great deal in the last few years; with collaboration advances that bring all the points of information required to work well as a team into focus in a full on-line shared workspace.
It is no longer just sufficient to bring individuals face-2-face via webcams from different locations. Entire teams can now be involved on-line with the development of documents, the support of entire business processes and the sharing of complex calendars. Team events can be facilitated via presentations and shared artefacts can be
created and then subsequently modified as they are discussed.
Here is a link to a comparison web-site that describe the key features available in teleconferencing software today and provides a direct comparison between the features in each.
Top ten teleconferencing solution reviews - http://web-conferencing-services.toptenreviews.com/
Work is something you do - not somewhere you go !
The mobile workspace, regardless of your chosen flavour - be it Blackberry, Android or iPhone - provides location-independent access to many services, including email and document viewing wherever you are. It
is also platform independent; desktop, laptop, ipad or mobile device and extends where you can work to where work needs to be done as never before.
We hope you have found this article of interest and given you some areas for thought around how technology can support your team in a new and exciting way. If you would like to explore your own team requirements in
more detail, please just contact us and we would be happy to discuss how we can help.
You may also like to consider having a team tune-up, where we could cover your specific issues in more detail.
(See special offer in this months CAL newsletter )
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