What’s your cloud communication strategy?

A previous blog discussed cloud technology from a data storage perspective. Now we’d like to draw your attention to some other options – as well as putting things in the cloud you can also access some remarkably helpful tools. They are simple, free and can help you share and sync your data including emails, calendar, photos, documents, music and much more.

Apple, Google and Microsoft are the three main organisations that have made their tools available online. Apple launched their iCloud storage and computing service in October 2011 and as of July 2012 they had more than 150 million users. As well as data storage iCloud acts as a data syncing center for email, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, notes, reminders (to-do lists), iWork documents, and other data.

Google Drive and Google Plus work together to provide a very similar service. One major feature here is Google Docs which is a tool for real time collaborative editing in which documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time. The majority of document-sharing services require user fees, whereas Google Docs is free. Its popularity amongst businesses is growing due to enhanced sharing features and accessibility. It has also enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity among students and educational institutions.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft’s new Windows 8 will incorporate many of the services (previously offered by Windows Live) to deliver content and enhance communication services. These will include Windows Essentials, a suite of software applications that aims to offer integrated e-mail, instant messaging, photo sharing, blog publishing, and security services. Essentials programs are designed to integrate well with each other, with the Windows operating system and with other Windows Live web-based services such as SkyDrive and Hotmail, to operate as a ‘seamless whole’.

How genuinely seamless it all is will depend on how you apply the options across your networks especially considering how much you want to share and how much you want to keep private. Of course Chill IT can advise on similar strategies for your personal and professional life.

Another cloud-based file sharing option we’d like to add in here is Dropbox, a file hosting service that’s been operating since 2007. Dropbox allows users to create a special folder on each of their computers, which Dropbox then synchronises so that it appears to be the same folder (with the same contents) regardless of the computer it is viewed on. Files placed in this folder are also accessible through a website and mobile phone applications.

The cloud continues to offer a vast range of possibilities for business and personal communication and if you haven’t explored it already, perhaps it’s time to develop a cloud communications strategy to keep you well in the game, well into the future.

Next Week’s Topic: BYOD Policies – Hear the best and worst on Bring Your Own Device work environments, and how they could be changing.

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don’t sweat – Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.

What is cloud computing and what does it mean for me?

Cloud computing has been around for years… It just never got called that before. If you have ever had a Hotmail or Gmail account, or even just downloaded your email from your web site host, you have already used the “cloud”.

Actually the true definition of cloud computing is pretty deep but, as usual, marketing hawks the world over have managed to twist it to mean a whole host of things (forgive the pun).

The cloud is what you use when the applications you use don’t actually live on your computers. More often than not, you rent these applications.

What’s an application? Well that’s the software you use to achieve a particular function. It may be a simple mail system such as Hotmail or a sophisticated enterprise management system such as Netsuite.

It could be your web site customer interface that allows your customers to purchase from you. None of these things need to be purchased any more. The relatively recent quantum increases in Internet connection speeds mean that it doesn’t really matter where your applications live.

That’s the simple definition. It gets more complicated. If you can stand it…read on.

Cloud and virtualization go hand in hand. If you are not sure what virtualisation is, have a look at this.

It used to be that virtualisation used to be just about getting a server or a workstation to run “virtually” on a host computer. Then companies such as VMWare and Citrix really started to get very tricky. How about being able to virtualize just a part of the computer? What if you could get all the bits of software that will run Microsoft Excel, for example, and package that all up to run as a virtual “package”? And if you could do that, could you serve it to more than one person remotely? And if you could do that, could you do that for hundreds? Thousands? If it were to be thousands, would you need to distribute the serving of this application package over more than one server? Would they need to be in the same room? What if you could dial up these servers as you needed them?

Well, if you can answer yes to all of these questions…what would you call that technology?

It’s called the cloud folks, and Microsoft, VMWare, Citrix and others are all delivering this right now. At the moment, the pricing puts this in the reach of medium to large organizations, but the costs are dropping daily. And the cloud capacity builds, larger companies are looking to offset their costs by offering discounts to their smaller counterparts.

Cloud is here to stay….think about that before you purchase your next server….do you really need it?

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don’t sweat – Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.

What is it with these law firm software packages?

We have been providing support to many law firms in the past few years and the one common problem we need to address is their main application software – the thing that is supposed to be driving the firm.

There are numerous systems out there that offer the promise of matter management, precedent searches, document control and time billing – but they rarely work well technically – and therefore cause downtime, equating to frustration and general disasatisfaction with “the system”.

This then translates into frustration with our services – even though we offer the right advice as to what is needed to fix the problem. Things such as better resources, dedicated servers or upgraded workstations. We just want to be able to offer our customers a stable working platform – at a sustainable price.

Is the answer possibly in the clouds? Cloud computing is here now and being taken up at a rapid pace by large and small companies. The large companies are doing it because they recognise that they make significant savings on their infrastructure costs.

The small ones are doing it for the same reason – however a high infrastructure cost was a barrier to entry, rather than a headache to solve. Small firms now have access to enterprise grade systems and no longer have to “make do”.

Our job becomes simpler too. We simply supply you with a working network and a rock solid browser installation. That does not cost you much to have us do and maintainting it means much lower costs to you.

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don’t sweat – Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.