Small Business Tech

I took the challenge of leaving behind Microsoft Office a couple of years ago. I switched to Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Remember the Milk. The initial transfer took many days, but I quickly reaped the benefits of improved productivity.

I have met many people that have had a difficult time with the potential or even attempted change. Christopher Dawson ponders the idea of leaving Microsoft Office behind on ZDNet Education.

Labels: Google Docs, Microsoft, Office, OpenOffice

Microsoft might have a little fear about losing the next generation of technology workers to Google Docs or OpenOffice. They are offering Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate for just $59.99. The catch is that you must declare that you are taking a credit-worthy class, and you also must have an email available that ends in .edu.

This is a very good price for a full-featured Office suite that includes Outlook and Access unlike the Student version that is currently available.

Find our more.

Labels: Google Docs, Microsoft, Office, OpenOffice

As more of us use online software applications such as Yahoo mail or Google mail or Google Docs the questions and concerns about safety come up. This is a common discussion among not only IT people, but also among business and even casual users. Peter Nulty of Wells Fargo recently had an discussion about the subject and his first question was about security. There are three main concerns that come to mind.

1. Accessibility - Will we always be able to access our data when we need it?
2. Security - Will our data be protected from prying eyes?
3. Exit Strategy - What if the provider goes out of business?

Accessibility is usually stated in the service level agreement. Keep in mind that often quoted 99.9% up time does not mean all the time. If you do the math that level of service could equal up to some serious downtown:

Number of Minutes For Given Period
Day Week Month Year
1.44 10.08 43.2 525.6

This level of service could result in up to 8.76 hours of downtime per year. You could lose slightly more than a workday of service. On the plus side it is statistically impossible that your downtime would happen on a business day and encompass the entire time from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Security is more important than ever. Security of data and even data stored online is the responsibility of two parties. It is your providers and your responsibility. The provider should store your data in a hardened data center with around the clock monitored physical security. The stream of data should also be encrypted. Most studies of big name application and storage providers have demonstrated security measures that far outweigh the security found at even the largest enterprises.

Your responsibility falls in the areas of strong access controls, good password policy, and using secure networks. Be sure that each user as a separate login and password. This way you can more easily track data changes and more easily make personnel changes. You might also be able to set access rights based on each users identity. Also do not fall short in choosing passwords. Choose random strings of letters, numbers, and symbols that are at least eight characters long. Always consider the network that you are using to access your data. Try not to access sensitive data on public non-encrypted networks such as those found in coffee shops and etc.

In this economy it is more important than ever to have an exit strategy. It has been discussed that like many other types of businesses that not all online application providers will survive this economic downturn. You should be aware during the evaluation stage what mechanisms are in place to migrate your data to a different provider or even your own premises if necessary. Nothing would be chilling than the thought of going to the provider web site one day to find an apology about their recent closure.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Google Docs, Remember The Milk, SaaS, thin client, zoho

If you use Google's Gmail or Docs or any other Google service that requires you to sign-in there is some good news from the Google team. You can now monitor where and when your account was accessed, and you can log out remotely.

If you are like me, you use web-based services such as Gmail, Google Docs, and many others at various computers. On many occasions, I have wondered later if I remembered to sign out of the service when I left the host computer.

Worry no more. Along the bottom of some Google services pages such as on Gmail, you will notice in small print the number of minutes logged into the service. There is also a link called "details". Clicking this link will give you a pop-up listing recent activity times and locations by IP address. The page also gives you your current IP address for comparison. The greatest part of this feature is the button that allows you to log out of all other sessions. No more worrying if you forgot to log out.

This is something that other online software services need to go ahead and just copy. Do not worry about pride in saying that you wish that you had thought of it first. Swallow your pride and do it for your users.

Labels: Gmail, Google Docs, software

I have spent the last couple of weeks using Zoho Spreadsheets to keep a couple lists. I wish I had a more calculation demanding sheet to try, but I have not had an application recently.

If you are not familiar with Zoho, it is a collection of online applications including spreadsheet, word processor, and many more. It is similar to Google Docs, but has many more applications.

If you are keeping simple lists such as expenses or such the spreadsheet application works well. One complaint that I could offer is the ability to freeze header rows. This can be done in Excel as well as Google Docs spreadsheets. A review of the forums finds that many users have requested the feature. It seems as though the design team is unable to add the feature without a major code change.

One advantage that Zoho has over Google Docs is auto complete of cells. Excel and Zoho both will complete a cell if the information that you type is the same as a cell in the same column. At one time Google Docs had auto complete, but it was disabled by user request in May '08. I am unsure why it was causing problems for some, but Google is trying to bring it back as an optional feature.

As I continue to use the Zoho suite of applications, I will keep the blog updated with my experiences.

Update: Ramesh explains freezing headers...

Thanks Curtis for trying out Zoho Sheet and writing about it. We will definitely support freeze headers. We have already started on the alternate design, and it would be better to do the implementation in the new design. The new design will give more excel-like experience as well as save us duplicate effort.

Keep using Zoho and get back to us support at zoho dot com for any assistance.

Labels: Excel, Google Docs, Office, spreadsheet, zoho

I have embraced cloud computing fully. I manage most of documents online using Google Docs and all of my finances are managed online using a couple of services. Google has been making the most noise in the cloud-computing space with their suite including word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software. Other well-known players include Remember The Milk and the suite available from 37signals.

One company that has been quietly building a stunning collection of applications is Zoho. They now offer an impressive array of software including office applications, invoicing, project management, and customer relationship management, database, and more. They have formed world-wide alliance partnerships around the globe to assist small business with using their products. They seem much more serious than others about developing a cloud computing business beyond the geek crowd.

The latest addition to Zoho is the ability to sign-in using your Google or Yahoo credentials, so you will have one less user name and password to remember.

In the coming weeks, we are going to dig more deeply into each of the Zoho applications and compare functionality with other online-based products.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Google Docs, Remember The Milk, zoho