Let’s start by defining “cloud services.”

Per Wikipedia the definition of Cloud is: the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).

To simply put, the cloud is just services that you might have once had in your office but they are now being provided on servers that don’t physically reside in your location.  Anyone who has ever had a hosted email or web server has used “cloud” services.

More and more services are being offered as a resource.  There are more options for website hosting than ever before.  You can now get software as a service where you pay a small monthly fee instead of buying the software once for a large sum.  Many companies who are embracing change regularly prefer this method because it means they can update quicker than when they had to pay one time fees.

Businesses now have the option of hosting whole virtual servers for employees.  This means that all the company financial and business data that they need to run their operation live on servers hosted somewhere.  It means for less infrastructure for some businesses who may not want a physical office and who would rather run their business with employees in different locations.

Add to all this the fact that you can now have Microsoft Office virtually instead of on your computer.  When you would pay for one license before you had to install it on one computer and then you couldn’t use it again.  Now with Office as a service you can pay monthly and have the same programs on multiple computers because you log into their servers to get access to your software.

People are on the go more than they ever were before.  “Virtualization” is a word we hear more often than not.  The business model of 9-5 and everyone working from the office is changing.  Are you changing with it?

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about “Cloud” services and what your company may be able to do to get a little less dependent on the office.

Every day new information is coming out about how new technology is hitting the market for computers.  We have always been fascinated by the idea of ever shrinking computers and putting more powerful computers into ever smaller cases.  The most recent computer to make the news is the Plug Servers.  These servers are literally plug and play computers that you can use as a file server right in your own home.  If you are more interested in a cloud approach then you can use one of these for that as well.  These are not going to be the most robust servers like your more standard Microsoft Business Class Servers or Home Servers but these give users an option to have a server when they don’t need something so large.

Geeks.com shares with us a great article about the new styles of these tiny little plug in computers.  Take a look and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Microsoft has released a download called Microsoft Outlook Social Connector which will work with Facebook. This will allow you to access all your friends and information streams through your Outlook. This will also allow you to see the latest streams in the bottom of your email.

Overall they are trying to make this as integrated with your Outlook as possible. If you are interesting in trying it you can download it through Microsoft. Once installed it will work with Outlook versions 2003, 2007 & 2010.

Add to that a connector for LinkedIn and you are starting to have a powerful tool that many business owners are already using. You can download the LinkedIn connector.

If you have any questions when installing this or want to know more about plug ins, don’t hesitate to contact a computer technician.

Office 2010 Initial Reviews

This week we got our copy of Microsoft’s Office 2010 and we upgraded a field laptop Friday night. This laptop runs Windows 7 Professional and was running Office 2007 Service Pack 2. The installation itself was very straightforward but it did take over 30 minutes total as components like the Outlook Connector were upgraded.

Initial impressions of the new look is that it looks more like Office 2003 with the Office 2007 toolbars. The biggest obvious change is that the 2007’s Office Button is gone. In its place is the File tab which will be more familiar to long-time Office users but combines some of the features of the Office Button.

The biggest change in the user controls that most people will notice is Outlook 2010 toolbar. Many of the features have been moved andwe’re sure that’s going to throw a lot of users.

We continue to make notes over the next several weeks and will have further reviews for you in a few weeks. If you have any questions, call or email us (info@setms.com) and we’ll be happy to help.