Tag Archives: Microsoft

Is Google Docs Cloud Computing?

Google Docs is a free (with paid service options): Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users. Google Docs is Google’s “software as a service” office suite. Documents, spreadsheets, presentations can be created with Google Docs, imported through the web interface, or sent via email. Documents can be saved to a user’s local computer in a variety of formats including: (ODF, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text, Microsoft Word). Documents are automatically saved to Google’s servers to prevent data loss, and a revision history is automatically kept. Documents can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes.

Google Docs serves as a collaborative tool for editing amongst users and non-users in real time. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time. Users can be notified of changes to any specified regions via e-mail. The application supports two ISO standard document formats: OpenDocument (for both opening and exporting) and Office Open XML (for opening only). It also includes support for proprietary formats such as .doc and .xls. Google Docs is one of many cloud computing, document-sharing services like Microsoft Office Live. The majority of document-sharing services require user fees, but Google Docs is free (mostly). Its popularity amongst businesses is growing due to enhanced sharing features, accessibility, and stability (it’s no longer in beta). In addition, Google Docs has enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity among students and educational institutions.

Is Windows Live Cloud Computing?

Windows Live is the collective brand name for a set of services and software products from Microsoft, which is part of their “software plus services” platform. While a majority of these services are Web (cloud) applications, accessible from any browser, there are also client-side (binary) applications that require installation on a user’s PC.

There are three ways in which Windows Live services are offered:

1. Windows Live Essentials applications - Windows Live Messenger, Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Live Essentials
2. Web services – Hotmail, SkyDrive, Windows Live Contacts, Windows Live Calendar, and Windows Live Devices
3. Mobile services - Windows Phone Live

Windows Live is different and separate from Xbox LIVE, which is a multiplayer gaming and content delivery system for Microsoft’s Xbox and Xbox 360 as well as the Games for Windows – LIVE multiplayer gaming service for Microsoft Windows. However, formerly separate, Office Live, (Microsoft Office cloud) services are now part of Windows Live services.

So is Windows Live actually “cloud computing” like the commercial says? Some of it is and some of it isn’t. Find out more at Windows Cloud.

Read more on cloud storage solutions from Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft.

There are three good options for small businesses wanting to store and share documents in on the Internet in the cloud: Dropbox, Google Apps, and Microsoft’s Office 365, Docs for Facebook, and Windows Live SkyDrive.

Dropbox

Simplify your business and boost productivity with the freedom to use the same tools you work with daily. This means you don’t have to switch the programs you use, you just have to switch where you save and open your documents.

You can share Word documents, Powerpoint slides, and large files easily and securely with colleagues and/or clients. Collaborate across the hall or around the globe and get more work done on the go because your files are always available from Dropbox.

Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. It even works when you’re offline. You always have your files, whether or not you have a connection. Watch your changes synced instantly across shared folders.

With easy setup and control you can get started in minutes. Put Dropbox for your business on a single invoice for all of your employees and manage and migrate accounts with admin controls. If someone leaves, you can simply change their permissions online and if someone needs more space, use the admin panel to add more.

This is the same service trusted by tens of millions of personal users that’s now available for businesses. Enjoy dedicated phone support, bank grade AES-256 bit encryption, and unlimited version history for all your files. This means that you can view previous versions of your files if you need it.

Plans start at $795 for 5 users, but before you balk at the price think about all of the other hardware and software this one service is replacing. There are no more USB flash drives, external USB backups, taking backups to an off-site location, managing grandfather schemes to keep revisions, or buying expensive file servers. There is one more login account that users will have to manage, but that’s a minor inconvenience for what you’re getting.

Google Apps

Google’s web-based messaging and collaboration apps are more than just cloud storage, but they can do that too.

Google Apps requires no hardware or software and needs minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings for businesses. Google allows email clients like Microsoft Outlook to have POP or IMAP access to email, contacts and calendar so the transition can even be seamless to your employees.

Each employee gets 25 GB for email storage, so they can keep important messages and find them instantly with built-in Google search. This is higher than what personal Google Mail users get, which is hovering around 8 GB right now. Google Docs lets you store documents in the cloud in a Dropbox-like way, but only 1 GB of storage is included with the plan. More storage can be added as needed for a nominal fee.

Gmail is designed so employees can spend less time managing their inboxes, and more time being productive. Time-saving features like message threading, message labels, fast message search and powerful spam filtering help employees work efficiently with high volumes of email. It’s spam protection is one of the primary reasons we recommend Google Apps for business.

With several options for accessing their information while on the go, employees can be productive with Google Apps even when they’re not at their desks. At no extra charge, Google Apps supports over-the-air mobile access on BlackBerry devices, the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android and many less powerful phones.

With synchronous replication, your data and activity in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites is simultaneously preserved in multiple secure data centers. If one data center is unable to serve your requests, the system is designed to instantly fall back to another data center that can serve your account with no interruption in service.

Integration options let you connect Google Apps to your existing IT infrastructure if you’re business is already on a domain and support options include: phone support for critical issues, email support, and self-service online support. Plans start at $5 per user per month or $50 per user per year.

Microsoft Office 365, Docs for Facebook, and Windows Live SkyDrive

Office 365

For those who want the familiar Microsoft Office collaboration and productivity tools delivered through the cloud, Office 365 is the ideal solution. Everyone can work together easily with anywhere access to email, web conferencing, documents, and calendars. It includes business-class security and is backed by Microsoft. Whether you are a small business or multinational enterprise, Office 365 offers plans designed to fit your organization’s unique needs.

Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses is $6 per user per month subscription that lets your employees access email, documents, contacts, and calendar from virtually anywhere on almost any device. This plan is ideal for organizations with fewer than 25 employees that do not have IT staff or expertise. Compare Office 365 to Google Apps for Business.

Docs for Facebook

Built using Microsoft Office 2010, Docs for Facebook provides the best possible document service for the Facebook environment. Seamless integration with Facebook means that the service is all about sharing your documents. Docs enables Facebook users for the first time to create and share Microsoft Office documents directly with their Facebook friends, using the Office tools they already know. Docs uses the Facebook login and is intended for personal use, but can be used for business if it suits your needs.

Windows Live SkyDrive

Windows Live SkyDrive is a free cloud storage service that allows users to upload files to Internet file storage and then access them from a Web browser. It is part of Microsoft’s Windows Live range of online services, and uses Windows Live ID to control access to files, allowing users to keep the files private, share them with contacts, or make the files public. Publicly-shared files do not require a Windows Live ID to access. The service offers 25 GB of free personal storage, with individual files limited to 100 MB. Compare this service to Dropbox for Teams.

Watershawl Technology Consulting

If you need help choosing or deploying any of these solutions at your business, contact Indianapolis Technology Consultants, Watershawl, Inc. We serve the Greater Indianapolis area, but travel all over the state of Indiana helping small business owners get more out of their technology.

As you may remember, even in 2011, I’m still installing XP for clients, but just so you’re aware, support for XP ends in August, 2014.

According to Microsoft Support Lifecycle, support for Windows XP will end on August 4, 2014. Most companies still on Windows XP are skipping Windows Vistafor Windows 7, which will probably still be the dominant operating system choice for businesses in 2014. If you haven’t started testing your programs for Windows 7 compatibility, now is the time. Worst-case scenario is that you’ll have to run your XP apps within a virtualized XP PC on your desktop, but that is a pain and can take up extra system resources. Windows 7 comes with a compatibility checker that runs on install, but that’s probably not the best time to test.

How much does Windows 7 cost?

At Amazon.com, Windows 7 ranges from $266.22 for Ultimate to $174.99 for Home Premium:

Although Hotmail popularized web-based email, it has fallen behind the competitors Yahoo and Google in features

Down, but not out, Hotmail is still used by millions of people around the world and is still a critical aspect of Microsoft’s online business strategy, especially as Microsoft moves more into the cloud with its more traditional revenue models like Microsoft Office, which is releasing version 2010 this year. Hotmail is particularly useful to non-english speaking users because of its large language support and according to Comscore its still the most used web email with 360 million users compared to Yahoo’s 300 million and Gmail’s 200 million. Still, Hotmail hasn’t changed much since Microsoft bought it in late 1997. This was after starting up in 1996 and garnering over 9 million users.

So what is changing?

Microsoft announced that this summer they will begin rolling out new, advanced features that are akin to what Gmail users are used to:

• The option for viewing emails as conversations (although the default will still be as single emails)
• Automatic filter buttons to filter emails from people on your contact list, emails from social networks, shopping sites, and others.
• Larger attachment sizes, up to 10 GB using Microsoft’s SkyDrive

One thing that remains the same is the huge banner ads running alongside your email, ala 1996, in addition to the text ad tagged onto all of your emails beneath your signature. That is, unless you pay $20 a year to remove the ads.

Our First Web Email

Despite all it’s shortcomings, we still have a spot in our heart for Hotmail, which provided me with my first personal email account, which I still have, back in 1997.

One of our clients wanted all of their staff to have email access through Microsoft Outlook on each PC, but they didn’t have the need for a Microsoft Exchange server.  Instead, we configured their domain to install Google Apps, created email accounts and distribution groups for the staff members, then configured Microsoft Outlook on each staff member’s PC to allow them to have access.

“The difference between Exchange and Google Apps is transparent to the user, ” said Erich Stauffer, Business Consultant at Watershawl, Inc.  “They don’t know and they don’t care – as long as it works.”  And it usually does.  Google Apps sports a 5-nine’s uptime which means they are up 99.999% of the year.  This means they can statistically be down for up to 8 hours a year, but uptime is significantly higher with Google than with your own standalone Exchange server.

However, cloud computing like this is not for every customer.  Some would not be able to keep secure data on remote servers and Microsoft Exchange does offer the ability to keep all email stored locally, but even so, only the email kept internally stays secure.  Once it leaves your organization, unless the email is encrypted, it is prone to eavesdropping.  Another reason for an Exchange server would be for backup’s, but with Outlook, you can download Google Apps mail as a PST, then store the PST as your back-up.

What unique, money-saving technology can Watershawl help you with today?