This has been a real virtual week for me. I have been to several meetings over the past months in coffee houses throughout West Michigan. I recently had the pleasure of attending a meeting at the "home office" of an executive of a local business that like many enterprises does not lease or own any commercial office space. Although the meeting was technical in nature, we did discuss the benefits of having a virtual organization composed of both full time and virtual (part time and as needed) staff, geographically dispersed. Not only does it save both the employer and employee expenses, (and provides the world with a greener environment) it provides the enterprise the ability to have their talent strategically located in diverse areas that can better respond to the business. We had a face to face meeting but it could have been done using any one of several web conference tools such as Webx (c) and Go To Meeting (c).
This brings me to one of the most powerful capabilities of the Internet. That is the ability to provide services to business and consumers that at one time required a dedicated computer. Google is offering an "Office" package to users and many firms are offering core business packages such as Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management. Today, the term we use is Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS). Years ago, prior to the advent of the PC, several companies offered services over phone dial up. One of the major time sharing vendors was General Electric’s Information Services Business Division, who many consider the founder of this concept. Time sharing companies provided many of the features we see today in Cloud Computing (but lacked Graphical User Interfaces and speed).
Today we can "rent" specialized services over the Internet, paying for what we need, when we need it. We can be certain that we will have virtually 24 hour availability and that our data will be secure. Many of these applications can be customized to the needs of the users. These applications can interface to in house systems via “web services”. Since these systems are offered on monthly and annual fee structures, they may afford the users the opportunity of procuring the services using Operating rather than Capital Budgets.
Implementing these systems is best done with the assistance of an independent technical consultant such as Ada Business Technology who has expertise in SaaS and Cloud Computing. Please visit our web site at http://wwww.adabustech.com/ . Please feel free to contact me at support@AdaBusTech.com .
....Mark
