Why the cloud?

When weighing up the decision of moving to Google Apps or an other cloud based solution it is worth remembering the changes seen during the industrial revolution. From the 18th to the 19th century, this revolution saw a tide of inventiveness and social change that left no part of the UK untouched before sweeping over the USA, Europe and many other distant lands.

New industries were forged and in their inception they tried to do or own all their subsequent processes. Manufacturers creating products required power, and sought the only solution available to them. They built their own power-plants that serviced their own factories.

Early steam and belt driven motors

TCO - with the emphasis on 'Total'

The TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of your IT equipment should be calculated so as to include the skills of any resource required to keep it up and running. If you leave this out then it is only PCO, partial cost of ownership.

If you run your email on an internal Exchange server or similar system then you need to factor in the cost of having those skills on hand. Emergencies can and will happen as this recent post on the tech website 'The Register' shows. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/18/microsoft_exchange_eseutil_recovery/

Email downtime is a terrible thing and can have a real impact on business, especially those involving multiple locations. Whilst web based email solutions aren't perfect, Google has an uptime for Gmail of 99.99% and proudly boasts 0% planned maintenance.

The skills required to administer and maintain Microsoft's Exchange Server don't come cheap, and are even more expensive if you have to buy them in to fix a specific problem on an ad-hoc basis.

Have you thought about how your organisation would function without its email systems for a day? or a week?

So when your current email system is up for replacement or upgrade remember to factor in the costs of the skills required to keep it up and running. Google provides a rough and ready cost comparison tool here. All figures are in $ but just substitute your local currency of choice and it will give you a close estimate.

Old browsers: Taking a stand.

Yes IE6, this means you!

Browsers are becoming more and more important to our on-line world. (So much so that Google have recently launched a browser based Operating system.) There was a time however when nearly all of us used internet Explorer to browse the web.

Yes, back in July 2003 IE6 held more than 98% of the browser market. That comforting blue 'e' would take us where we wanted to go. So much so that it formed a backbone of Microsoft advertising for the browser and even its wider products. Businesses loved IE6 and took to it in droves...and amazingly some still use it. Despite the hate campaigns of http://www.bringdownie6.com/ and http://www.ie6nomore.com/; and even the more subtle, humourous approach of http://www.saveie6.com people did stick with it. Heck even Microsoft admitted it had more security holes than a colander and had grown since its launch in 2001 to be 'more patch than browser'.

Consumerization + cloud = ?

con·sum·er·ize   
[kuhn-soo-muh-rahyz]
–verb (used with object), -ized, -iz·ing.

1. To make (goods or a product) suitable or available for mass consumption: to consumerize computers by making them cheaper.
   
2. To encourage or foster the widespread consumption of (goods or a product).

Essentially consumerization is where products aimed at the private consumer market make their presence felt in the corporate world. Often more powerful and yet cheaper as well, these devices end up crossing the boundary into the business landscape.

My first experience of this was seeing my old boss return form a a foreign business trip with a shiny new toy - A Palm Pilot. ( If this means nothing to you, check it out at the museum. )