[ Spotlight: Cloud computing ]
solutions often come with spam control and virus checking as part of solution. Server hosting – One of the best known names in this space is Rackspace, which offers a number of cloud- based server solutions, ranging from multi-tenanted to customer-owned servers. This will remove the need to have some or all or all of your servers at your offi ce. Website hosting – There are numerous providers who
operate in this space. Basically, you are given a control panel which allows you to build a website, based upon a template. These solutions are aimed very much at users without any development skills, so you shouldn’t be daunted by using this sort of service. As the market has become more congested, the price has fallen dramatically, which is good news for the end user. One such provider is 1&1, and it offers packages starting at £9.99 per month, with a free trial to see if it’s for you. File sharing portals and backup – This allows you to
drop fi les onto a server in the cloud and access them from any device at any location. A good use of this would be to share documents between a group of users across different companies. Microsoft offers Skydrive, which is free to use and just requires a Windows Live Account. On the commercial side there is Dropbox, which gives greater fl exibility but is chargeable. Voice over IP (VOIP) telephony – Skype is a great
example of a VOIP solution, which uses the internet to route calls and is free for the basic services, including one- to-one video calling. There are commercial applications that offer hosted telephony systems, and these allow offi ces to just have extensions, so to the end user their experience is no different to a regular offi ce. The only word of caution is that to have clear voice calls you should have Quality of Service (QOS) on the line you are using, but to
Desktop suites – the main players in the cloud
A few words about two of the bigger cloud- based services out there... Offi ce 365 – This is Microsoft’s new offering that it has been working on now for a few years. Before this they had a product called BPOS (Business Productivity Online Standard Suite), but that was always missing Offi ce, so was fl awed as a full offi ce environment. The Offi ce 365 solution now offers a pick-and-mix approach to the following: ■ Exchange – Provides email functionality with built in spam and virus checker.
■ SharePoint – This is a collaboration space whereby you can store and work on documents amongst a shared community.
■ Lync Online – This provides presence and messaging, so it wraps up instant messaging, voice and video calling, as well as the ability to show who is currently available to participate.
■ Offi ce Web Apps – This provides all
the usual favourites such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
This solution is the way that Microsoft
would ideally like to push users, as once you go down this route it’s hard to walk away, as you will only own the documents and not the programs to use them. So, if you cancel your subscription you will need to buy traditional licenses to carry on editing your documents. Pricing ranges from £6.50 to £17.75 per
month, depending on what you take, and there are discounts for taking packages. Google Apps – This is Google’s offering, competing head-to-head with Offi ce 365. ■ Gmail and Postini – This is Google’s email solution that, again, comes with built in spam and virus control.
■ Google Chat – This is an instant messaging tool.
■ Google Docs – This provides the equivalent of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
There are a number of household names
using Google Apps, such as Jaguar, Land Rover and National Geographic, so this solution is a viable player in the market. If you like the idea of having your desktop suite in the cloud, then it will depend very much on what you are looking to get out of it, as there are pros and cons to both offerings. Google will always win if you judge on price alone, as it costs £33 per year per user, and it looks like Microsoft will not change their prices to match this. However, if you have a large estate of Microsoft-based Word and Excel documents and that is what all your users know, then it’s not an easy decision to move away from Microsoft – hence why they feel they can charge a premium over Google. Google has come from nowhere in such a
short space of time, so it’s hard to say where this will end, but what it has done is given Microsoft a shake and made it sharpen its pencil – a good thing for all of us.
do this you have to have your own communications lines, as the internet does not support QOS.
Customer relationship management systems (CRM) –
One of the main concerns that a cloud strategy brings is that you need to understand the risks and how you mitigate them
Again, there are a number of providers in this space that allow you to store and share you contacts base among a number of disparate users. Accountancy services – There are solutions that allow
you to run accounts services and create tax returns. Currently, the ECA is in discussions with once such provider, and we hope to bring you more on this in 2012. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) – This is an
interesting service that allows Amazon to sell spare capacity in its data centres. As a rule, for most of the year they are not heavily utilised, although they have to maintain enough headroom to cope with spikes, such as at Christmas and Easter. So this is a novel way to purchase a high-end service without having to pay for the upfront costs, as you pay for what you use. Managing sales campaigns –
Salesforce.com is a good example of a thriving cloud-based solution. It provides a myriad of features, like managing sales, marketing campaigns, and running reports. Remote access tools – These tools allow you to
connect to your offi ce computer and take control from anywhere via a web browser. One prominent company in this area is LogMeIn, offering limited access for free and a fuller paid-for version. Social networking – These services are all cloud-
based, be it Facebook, You Tube, Twitter or LinkedIn, and they are all free. If you have something to say you should consider some or all of these mediums. For instance, the ECA now has a YouTube channel – see www.youtube. com/ECALive. The ECA also regularly tweets and runs an active LinkedIn community.
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ECA Today January 2012
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