Working in the Cloud

The internet has not only changed the way people communicate with each other or the way companies can speak with their customers or employees, it’s also made employees that much more location independent. That means different employees work together from different locations throughout the world (or across the hallway) or one employee can work just as easily from the office, home, the road or a retreat half-way across the world. Granted it can lead to team-building challenges, but that’s a discussion for another time. If you expect your employees to work together or away from the office, are you giving them the tools to do so easily?

Last Friday I was invited to attend an event held by Microsoft Canada at the Montreal SkyVenture facilities. Fellow bloggers and I were there to hear about Microsoft’s latest Cloud services available through Windows 7 and their mobile platform. I have a Windows laptop at work so I use Office products regularly, but at home I have MacBook Pro at home and I’m a huge user of Google Docs and I don’t have a Windows Phone. I wasn’t 100% sure I would get anything from this event, other than the opportunity to use the SkyVenture freefall simulator and that’s always fun!

I have to admit I was impressed with what Microsoft has done with its products and from some of the reactions I heard, I wasn’t the only one.

I think my friend Frédéric Harper — evangelist at Microsoft — summarized the company’s position in the market the best. It’s a great mix of fun and entertainment and work. I think Microsoft has always tried to be everything to everyone, but personally, I think they’ve gotten closer to understanding what users want and need.

What’s in it for you?

Through SkyDrive and Live Mesh, what Microsoft has done is that they’ve added a lot of software that’s freely available for you to download and use. You can really easily edit pictures and videos but what I liked the most, is you can upload your Office documents to cloud storage and work on them from the road, your mobile phone or at home on a different computer (even a Mac). So you can easily access the stuff you need for your next blog post or what you need for tomorrow’s big client presentation.

Let’s face it, the reality is we no longer work from 9 to 5; so right now if I want to work on a presentation at home, I have to save it to my desktop and take the work laptop home with me (I don’t have Office for Mac at home) or access via VPN. With this I’ll be able to save it to my cloud service and edit the document online from my Mac. Not only that, but if I’m working with the biz dev guy on our client presentation for Monday morning, he can login and check my adjustments and add some stuff online as well…

What’s in it for your company?

Why am I so impressed with these latest features? After all, it’s not that new, Google Docs and Evernote have been around for a while now. But let’s face it, most medium and large companies use Office products and as employees are increasingly location independent and work in collaboration with others; these new services increase collaboration possibilities and in-turn, efficiency. Don’t get me wrong I love both Google Docs and Evernote, and I’ll still be using them quite a bit, I just feel the reality is that most large organizations and their employees would benefit from Microsoft’s offering.

For example, I was working on a client proposal with the Digital Strategist in Calgary and our boss in Toronto. Instead of emailing a document back and forth, we could have all worked on the same document. Not a big difference, but just that much easier and no version confusion.

I’ve just started using some of these products, so I’ll wait a little longer to see if I really like them. Is your company using cloud collaboration? If so, do you like it? If not, why?

Thank you to Microsoft Canada, High Road Communications and above all Frédéric Harper for the invitation.

(Photo credit: spDuchamp)

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