I still live here in Southern California, but from an IT standpoint, I am as depressed and miserable as never before.  The reason?  Clouds.  The entire IT industry is rabid about pushing the increasingly ridiculous “cloud computing” fervor, spinning off every possible facet of the industry as some form of “cloud”.  Every day I receive a barrage of e-mails telling me that I must be selling cloud services to my customers.  Every vendor producing every product imaginable is re-branding their products as some sort of cloud product or service.  It is my intent here to part the clouds enough for some light to shine through on the subject.

First off, “the cloud” is NOT NEW.  The very first time I learned of it was when I saw my very first Visio drawing of a WAN (Wide Area Network, or a network that connects a network at one site with a network at another site, such as a head office connection to a remote office).  The link between the two locations, represented on the diagram as a cloud, was metaphorically used to represent the Internet.

“Cloud computing” is NOT NEW, although the term is.  Think about it:  Basically, any computing that you do via the Internet is cloud computing, much like my writing of this blog, and your reading of it.  Sending an e-mail can even be considered cloud computing.  Definitely nothing new about that.

What IS new, is the maddening fervor over the concept of SaaS (Software as a Service) and computing as a service.  An example of SaaS may be software such as an anti-virus client installed on all your business computers, but managed by a hosted service accessible via a web page.  Computing as a service is using a remote computer or service across the Internet, in lieu of owning and using that computer or service locally.  Neither of these concepts are new, but the IT industry wants you to feel that it is.  And, what is worse, they want you to feel that you absolutely must have this “new” technology.

As a business owner, you need to look past the hype (which is difficult here because of all the clouds…sorry…I couldn’t resist that vain attempt at wit) and ask yourself if you really would benefit from it.

Is it better?  Probably not.  It depends largely what you have today vs. what your real needs are.  If your business is completely virtual, then it is the only way to go.  If you have an office with really good Internet, you really should consider the advice of an IT consultant who is not all ‘caught up in the clouds’ before you decide to make any radical I.T. changes.

Is it cheaper?  Probably not.  There may be some benefits to having these services part of your monthly operating costs, in lieu of capital expenditures, but it is highly unlikely that it will be less expensive in the long term.  A cost that is difficult to measure is how much it will cost you if it turns out that you and your employees’ productivity suffers as a result of putting services on the cloud.

Other considerations are security, trust and ownership, all subjects that must be weighed carefully before moving servers and services away from your office and to the Internet.

As for me, I will be a lot happier when the clouds clear up and I can get back to talking about Information Technology in clearer terms.  But for now and the foreseeable future, I.T. is overcast.

The paperless office never happened for two reasons:

1. There wasn’t a cost-effective total hardware/software and method solution to replace paper.
2. People resist change.

The solution to number 1 above is *almost* no longer valid.    I am waiting patiently for the final component:  A touch screen tablet device with a screen size that is 8 1/2 x 11 inches.  Another model needs to be produced that is 8 1/2 x 14 for legal sized documents.  That’s right, a larger screen – we don’t really want smaller devices anyway.  These first generation tablets would need to have a stylus to capture signatures.

When I discuss the paperless concept today, most of my customers will say that they just like to have something tangible in their hand, that they can hold and touch and feel. Put one of those letter or legal sized tablets in your hand and you should feel pretty stupid printing anything ever again.  Once these tablets are commonplace, the paperless office is finally truly conceivable.

As for item number 2…well you just can’t change some people.  I would just hope that they would realize just how silly they would look printing a document that will be exactly the same size as the screen on their tablet.  It shouldn’t take long before realizing just how cumbersome and inconvenient paper documents really are, not to mention the environmental impact of paper and printing.

So, the question now is, who will be the first manufacturer to build these business-class tablets?  It won’t be Apple – they don’t really care about business customers.  They are primarily consumer grade products.  Android tablets could do it, but with some compatibility issues with business networking.  To be truly business class and scalable to enterprise class, these devices would need to be Windows Active Directory Domain capable, easily securable and managable.  Windows 8 is coming soon and allegedly fully touch capable, so really it is wide open to the computer manufacturers to embrace this concept and run with it.  Of them, any who also manufacture printers are unlikely to be the ones to spearhead it; they’re making a killing off the printer market, so probably not HP.  Dell is not a real innovator and they only resell or re-brand most of their non-PC products, so probably not them, especially since they also sell printers.  Lenovo, are you listening?  Imagine redefining the legendary ThinkPad into a business tablet.

Whoever creates this device first can stake their claim to the one innovation that makes “going paperless” truly possible.  Who is it going to be?

If you think back a few years to what mobile phones looked like..they were getting smaller and smaller and smaller – ridiculiously, unusably small. Then, Apple designed the iPhone with a touch screen that encompassed the vast majority of the device face; it defied the ‘tiny’ trend. It didn’t require a stylus to touch the screen.  It became possible to watch videos, read messages and e-mails, and actually see it on a sreen larger than a postage stamp. The touch screen eliminated the need for a QWERTY keyboard, even though some other phones later came with an additional slide-out keyboard for those who still want/need it.

The iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad all pioneered the way to larger devices, not smaller.  People bought them, even those outside of the group of “I will buy anything Apple without even thinking” fools.  Yes, people finally realized that it is nice to have a phone that fits comfortably in your hand.  We really do want a screen that we can actually use to read text and view photos and video.

We like larger devices. I propose even larger devices. Read my next post for the reason why…

Not so.  Keep reading…this might be you.

Here’s what I learned:  Many people have no idea how to properly use a web browser and end up wasting a LOT of time when they do.  A web browser is a program on a computer that allows the user to access the World Wide Web, a very large facet of the Internet.  Okay, so this is pretty simple so far and you are with me, right?  You also are very familiar with web site addresses like www.digitalcoasttech.com and so on.

Not too recently I purchased a brand new domain name and set up a web site on it.  It was pretty simple, I am not a super web developer, but I can make it happen, and I did.  This web site was to support a group of individuals who needed to see updated information on a regular basis, so I sent out an e-mail to them all with the address of this brand new site.  What happened?

Many (and I mean MANY) of them replied back to me stating that they cannot get onto the web site, or that it doesn’t work.  Thinking that I might have done something wrong, I immediately checked the site, and accessed it using three different web browsers to be sure that it was displaying the information properly.  It was up and working just fine.

I called some of these people back and had them test it while on the phone with me.  What I discovered is that MOST people were entering the domain name into a search field in Google or Yahoo or Bing and coming up with nothing.  The fact that those search sites came up with nothing didn’t surprise me because the domain name was brand new and they would not have the site listed in their databases yet.  What shocked me is the fact that most people don’t know that when you need to get to a web site and you already know the address, you should NOT enter the address into a search field on a web page.  If you don’t understand that statement…you are among a very large group of Internet users.

Most people intent on using the Internet will run Internet Explorer or another browser, and by default it opens a “home” page, usually at Yahoo, Bing, MSN, or Google.  Near the top of those pages there is always a field where most people enter things they are searching for on the Internet.  That is great, but if you already know the address of the site you are looking for, there is no need to “search” for it.  All web browsers have an Address: field, usually near the top of the screen.  THAT is where you are supposed to enter the web site address such as www.digitalcoasttech.com.  Enter that address in the Address field at the top of the screen and it will take you directly there.  No searching.

To illustrate: This is the equivalent of when you already have the phone number of the person you want to reach, but instead of dialing the number, you choose to dial 411 and ask for the phone number first, then request that they dial it for you rather than just dial it yourself.  Seems silly, doesn’t it?  The same applies when using the Internet: if you already know the address, just enter it in the address field and it will get you directly there.  No searching.  Less wasted time.