Internet-based services – “The Cloud”

Internet-based businesses come and go daily. Some deserve your business and will be here next year, some provide good service but do not have a viable business plan, some will inexplicably and permanently lose data their customers depend on, and some will surprise their customers by going under on short notice with days to retrieve their valuable data or lose it forever. With due diligence you can rely on Internet-based services in “The Cloud” to manage your business for a fixed monthly fee that shows up on your books as operating expense, without any capital expense or maintenance and upgrade responsibility on your part.

Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft, sometimes late to the party but eventually gets there, is not sitting idly while Google and the others take over. Their recently released Office 365 is updated, rebranded, and repriced (lower for many!) from what was called BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services). It lets users run their familiar Microsoft Office* applications on their own computers with local copies of documents on users' computers and master copies on Microsoft's servers. When connected to the Internet, local and master copies are kept in sync, and when disconnected, users can edit locally and their documents will sync automatically when next connected.

Microsoft's competitors like to point out that Office 365's web interfaces for document editing work in a limited fashion, but users have to pay for and run Office on their own PCs to get full document editing features. That's not necessarily bad. Microsoft Office on individual PCs coupled with Office 365 on Microsoft's servers gives users the familiarity and power of Office on their own PCs, while allowing users to work offline or anywhere there's an Internet connection, and letting Microsoft worry about security and backup.

*Office Plus 2010 for Windows and 2011 for Mac are ideal. Office 2007 for Windows and 2008 for Mac work with Office 365 but not as well, and earlier versions do not work with Office 365 at all.

Google Apps

Google Apps is a well established brand that competes with PC-based Microsoft Office and with their online Office 365 and its predecessors. Its documents are all on Google's servers, with the advantage that with no software installed on users' PCs except a web browser* it works identically on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux; and efficiently on netbooks and underpowered old computers. Several people can work on the same document or spreadsheet at the same time and all will see each others' changes as they're being made, and Google is responsible for security and backup. The downside is as of last year it is no longer possible to work on documents offline; you must be connected to the Internet. Some day it will allow working offline, but it will rely on future technology that has no announced delivery date. You can, however, upload and download documents in Microsoft Office formats (.doc, .xls, etc.) for your own use and for exchange with colleagues.

If not being connected to the Internet while working, less power in the web interface than is available from PC-based programs, and not quite 100% compatibility with Microsoft Office document formats are not problems, Google Apps could be for you.

*Google has announced that ongoing they will only support the latest two versions of certain browsers, which as of this writing are Internet Explorer 8 and 9, Firefox 4 and 5, Safari 4 and 5, and of course Chrome. Other browsers and earlier versions of supported browsers might work, but if they don't you're on your own.

Zoho

There are also lesser known competitors, most notably Zoho, no slouch with four million subscribers, and they also offer Internet-based CRM (Customer/Client Relationship Management) and accounting in addition their basic services.

Cloud-based file storage

Internet services like Box and others provide shareable Internet-hosted copies of critical folders, allowing multiple users to have local copies of shared folders on their PCs. Changes to all copies of those folders are made in real time when connected to the Internet, and changes can be made to local files while offline, to be synchronized when re-connected. Unlike Google Apps, if two people make changes to the same document at the same time, one's changes might get lost.

There is unfortunately some controversy about whether an individual service really encrypts data so only its owners can decode it or if they can read their customers' files. Even worse, one did not validate passwords for a few hours last summer, which naturally led to a class action suit. Perhaps not a lot was seen or downloaded by random visitors during that time, but it shows a carelessness and sloppiness that many find unacceptable. In addition to helping you select technology, we can help you evaluate the various options' security.