Not many things change the way I do things or use things in the computer world.
There was the Commodore 64, Windows 1.03 and the Internet. Now there is one more.
“Cloud computing”. You know I hate that word, but for all the time I have to be worried about running our own email server, keeping backups, our hard drive storage, I am just going to have an outside company run it for me and I would think that would be the right choice for every other small or medium size business. This is an extremely strange for me to say. I love to mess with this stuff, but its got to be so commoditized that its not worth it any more. Let someone whos specialty it is to filter spam email, let someone else worry about making sure we have enough hard drive space, let someone else worry about firewalls and service packs. Let the people who love to do this thing and do it for many people and read about it all day take care of it.
I don’t have a mechanic on staff to fix my car, why should my Small Business have to worry about the inner workings of why the mail server cant connect to my mobile phones ?
Here is what changed my mind.
I love to have everything in-house because I can keep an eye on it. Well, yesterday the power went out in our Small Business office. Great I was thinking, no email, no access to my files and no communication with Skype.
O contraire Mon Amie! I fired up my laptop, stuck in my 3G card and I had access to my gmail, online storage and Skype works just fine. At the same time I could not get to my work intranet email, files or communications, because the power is down, the routers are down, the email server is inaccessible, the storage computer is inaccessible and our BES server is inaccessible.
I also fired up my iPhone and Blackberry, every thing I use when I am mobile worked except I cannot access anything within the building.
Like I said, there are very few times I change my way of thinking but when I do, its usually a winner.
Tags: 3g, blackberry, clould computing, iphone, microsoft, windows