Consumer Software That’s Good for Business - delongagantiched57
You've probably seen the give voice "the consumerization of IT" bandied about. What does it mean? According to Microsoft, it's a blurring of the lines betwixt populate's personal and professional lives, driven by their desire to use the same technology at do work as they use at plate.
For IT managers, the phrase conjures functioning images of consumer smartphones and tablets–and the growing BYOD (lend your own twist) movement–but it's apropos for software, too. In this article I'll examine four consumer-grade applications and show you how they can improve your professional life.
Locomotion Planning
TripIt is a fabulous and loose personal travel-management joyride that can easily conform to the needs of moderate businesses. If you or your employees regularly move back for business, this creature toilet assist you monitor where everyone is going, track how long they'll equal out of the authority, and manage the reservations-related minutiae that crop up with even the shortest of trips.
How does it work? First, set up a release account on TripIt. Next, assign someone to create a group for your companion that will enable your employees to share their travel inside information. Once TripIt approves your request, postulate all of the traveling employees in your organization to create their have accounts and sign up for the radical. Congratulations: You'atomic number 75 all connected.
One of TripIt's superlative features is its power to scan a user's email inbox and mechanically fill in itineraries for trips in the making. It's a far more recherche approach than having travelers comb through their email and fill dead, allege, an internal accompany spreadsheet listing arrival times, confirmation numbers, party sizes, and then on.
If TripIt's automatic-import feature doesn't play good with your netmail system (information technology's most compatible with Web-based services, such as Gmail and Bumpkin Post), just ahead a copy of for each one of your travel-related email messages to a standard TripIt address. TripIt will mechanically organize and import details associated with your flight of stairs confirmations, hotel and dinner reservations, car rentals, and the like into a trip itinerary, which you terminate and then add to your personal OR business calendar. You can access the program on the run short via apps for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Headphone 7 devices, to a fault.
Beyond that, you can easily share the travel data you memory in TripIt with new third-party services, including preexisting business networks on LinkedIn, Yammer, or Xpenser (an expense, mileage, and time-tracking application). At the very least, these thirdly-party add-ons can cut down happening the amount of paperwork or appendage files that you'd have to green groceries for every set off.
Productiveness
Businesses large and small would be fountainhead considered to look into Google's free Google Apps for Business collection. All you need is a domain name: Google takes care of the perch with borderline configuration nonsense. Once your Google Apps package is set up, you're tapped into Google's Gmail netmail service and contact database, Web-founded joint calendaring, Web-supported word processing and spreadsheet apps (sound with collaborative editing), and Google Driving obnubilate storage, all proprietary with your business's name.
The pinch? If you want Google to manage the core of your communications for free, you mystify only ten substance abuser accounts, to each one of which is eligible to 10GB of storage. That's enough for many small businesses, but larger entities wish ask to ante up. Google charges $5 per user per month, operating room you dismiss save a little cash by signing up for unitary year of service at $50 per substance abuser.
You tin can still make use of Google's standard services on the brassy if you don't mind doing a bittie extra legwork. Integrating Google Analytics into your small business's website, for example, is as easy as setting up a Google answer for to represent your lin, and you needn't expend the account for anything other than logging on to the Google Analytics tool. Your employees derriere use their personal Google accounts to collaborate on shared documents and files via Google Docs operating room Google Drive; or els, they can create new, work-only Google accounts and link them to their individualized accounts if they neediness a thicker wall between their individualised and professional lives.
Cloud Memory board
Even if your business is fitted out with the well-nig robust servers containing terabytes of network storage, you could still benefit from using consumer cloud-storage services for stashing files, syncing folders connected multiple computers, and collaborating with colleagues.
Services such equally Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive make it comfy to share files among departments, teams, one-on-one employees, and after-school contractors. Each service offers a gear up amount of storage free of charge, and you can purchase more arsenic you need it. These services are particularly utilizable for special projects: Rather than granting web access crosswise the board, you can create a brochure in the cloud, store only the documents everyone needs for that project, and then share that folder with the people knotty in the project. And for sending large files, cloud storage is more convenient than email, which typically caps the size of attachments.
Fog storage also helps you keep files synchronized betwixt your home base, traveling staffers, and remote employees. This arrangement can save your IT team from creating secure VPN (virtual private network) connections and setting up guaranteed remote-sharing capabilities connected your collective network. Altogether you have to do is stash important files in your cloud repositing and subsidization access to other populate on an as-needed basis. Traveling operating theatre remote employees will feature approach on any device–PC, pad of paper, or smartphone–from anywhere they have Internet service.
Setting rising much cloud services is as easy as providing an email speech, downloading a small app, and establishing sharing permissions. That's a lot easier than configuring arcane connective settings connected each person's computer, tablet, and smartphone.
Next Thomas Nelson Page: Online Substitute
Online Reliever
How some irreplaceable information resides on your business's computers? How volition you recover that data if the machines suffer a catastrophic failure or are ruined Oregon stolen? That data is vulnerable level if you're automatically backing up the drives to a local server or NAS box–what happens if a fire, flood, operating room another disaster hits your location, and you drop off some the original and the backup?
Signalise up for a consumer-oriented online-backup service such as Backblaze, Carbonite,or CrashPlan, and you need ne'er worry about losing access to sensitive data once more. As with the cloud-storehouse services I've discussed, you don't need to dedicate any of your own resources–other than cash–surgery know how to raise an automated backup system. All you need to do is have each employee download and install an app.
Backblaze charges $50 per computing machine per year under its consumer and commercial enterprise plans; the last mentioned architectural plan (for businesses with cinque computers Beaver State more) adds central billing and reporting from a master account. Carbonite offers an unlimited amount of depot for one calculator for $59 annually, merely the company also has a small-business plan that provides 250GB of backup storage for an unlimited number of computers for $229 per year.
CrashPlan offers a free, ad-supported backup service for an unlimited number of computers, but IT's not really intended for businesses, and information technology doesn't place your backups along CrashPlan's servers. If you want to back to an offsite location via the free service, you make an musical arrangement with a friend or relative to back your files aweigh to their computer (and they would probably expect you to reciprocate and host their backups). In contrast, their business plan costs $270 per annum, but it leave back up an unlimited measure of warehousing from arsenic many as trey computers. One of CrashPlan's unique features is its support for Mac OS, Linux, and even Solaris, in addition to Windows.
Whichever online backup route you choose, downloading and installing the relevant client software is a dead-simple process for you and your employees, and you'll gain jiffy ataraxis wise that your invaluable information is protected from loss.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/465067/consumer_software_thats_good_for_business.html
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