Google Apps – Is it right for your company?

I’ve been testing Google Apps Premier Edition for the last month and this note details my likes and dislikes about the service offering.   Overall, while I think Google Apps holds promise, its smartphone support is lacking and might not be the best choice for all companies.

Likes

  1. Multiple calendars – while at first I thought the lack of category capability was a bit of a pain, I’ve started to warm up to the concept of multiple calendars for tracking different types of appointments/events. The best part about the multiple calendars is that you can view them all on the same calendar view.  Different calendars are represented by different colours on the same view.
  2. Interesting calendars (sports teams, holidays, etc) – as part of my experimentation with multiple calendars, I noticed that there are numerous public interesting calendars available that can be easily integrated into Google Calendars.  Once you’ve subscribed to them, adding them to your calendar view is as easy as clicking a checkbox.
  3. Easy to setup – the Google Apps Setup Guide is detailed and easy to follow.
  4. Integration of your domain name – you can set it up with webmail.yourdomain.com, docs.yourdomain.com, calendar.yourdomain.com, etc.Continue reading

It’s 2009, do you know where your data is?

 

In this post I want to talk a little about our data.  By our data I mean any information that is unique to us: files we’ve created that can contain personal or important information that we may want to keep private and/or that we want to have backed up.  Examples include your email files, your photos, tax files, resume, letters, school papers, even your MP3 files.

One of the challenges of managing all of this data is backing it up.  If your hard drive dies for whatever reason, the data on that hard drive may be unrecoverable and all of that information (some of it priceless to us) may be forever lost.  There are many options for backing up data and I highly recommend checking out this IT Business article for more information on some free online services as well as inexpensive external hard drive solutions.  I personally use and recommend free Mozy for home and we resell Mozy Pro for business.Continue reading

Livin’ in the Cloud

As I embrace the concept of cloud computing, I’ve been asking myself if it’s possible to live completely in the cloud.  To get a picture of what I’m talking about here, imagine doing all of your computer-related work at an Internet cafe or on a diskless netbook.  And I mean “all” of your work.

My revelation that living in the cloud could be a real possibility came to me about a month ago as I was walking into one of my clients with my laptop bag strapped over my shoulder.  As I had done almost every day for the previous several weeks, I put my laptop case on the floor under my desk and proceeded to log in to my client’s computer and carry on with my day.  My email, complete with contacts, tasks, notes, sent items, etc. is all totally accessible from the cloud through my hosted Exchange account.  I very seldom need my laptop at work any longer and I’ve started leaving it in my car to be used only in case of emergency (my security blanket).

There are a number of potential obstacles that must be overcome for a complete transition to livin’ in the cloud:Continue reading