In my experience most businesses have more than enough technology. The biggest failure is that they are not using the technology to be more productive. What I see as the biggest inhibiter to improved productivity is ‘old world’ thinking around siloing information rather than sharing it.
Take a look at all the correspondence you made today, emails, phone calls, faxes, the lot. Now most of these are siloed conversations between two people. However, if you closely examine these conversations I would suggest to you that at least one other party, not in the conversation, would have benefited from the information in that siloed conversation.
As an example, let me take just one email I sent today. In that email I shared some links about working with external users in Office 365. Such information would have certainly helped many others looking to answer the same question. However, that information is now only accessible by myself (in my sent items) and by the recipient (in their inbox). That means if someone else asks me the same question I have to forward the email. Luckily, I write this blog and share such information with everyone.
Now wouldn’t it make much more sense if I had posted that information publically and then told people to look there? Doing so also allows people to discover it via search. Best part about it? I don’t have to recreate the information because it is now available for all to see and use. Even better, they can add to and build on what I initially created to make it even better. Inside email the information simply dies a digital death.
Yes, email is a handy business tool but it has its limits. The overuse of email has effectively trapped much of the information within a business, much of which could and should be public. Don’t believe me? Take a look inside your own business, inside your own inbox. How of what you see there should be available publically and could help others? Lots, I’ll bet.
I can’t tell you the number of businesses I see where you hear people asking the same questions al the time. “Where is this?”, “How do we do that?”, “Why is it done this way?”. If you hear such questions more than once inside a business you know that not enough information is being made available publically.
There are so many tools available to businesses today to make information public. Social media, blogs, Twitter, Wikis, FAQs, etc, etc. Yet very few I see actually make it a point of their business to SHARE. Most business people seem intoxicated with accumulating as many unread emails as possible, viewing that as some badge of honour.
Welcome to the new world of ‘sharing’ people. Successful businesses share information within and outside their business. With their customers, employees, the public and even their competitors and you know what? Doing so gives them a competitive advantage. Why? Because they are more productive and more trusted. Ask yourself, why do you do business with certain companies? Typically because you trust them in some way shape or form.
Take an honest look at your business and ask yourself if it is being a productive as it could be? I’ll bet the answer is not it isn’t. Now ask yourself whether your business is sharing or siloing its information. Again, I’ll put my money on siloing.
Want your business to be more successful? In a word, SHARE!
CIAOPS Virtual Technology Meeting on Wednesday
Don’t forget to register for the CIAOPS Virtual technology meeting this Wednesday the 11th of September from 4pm Sydney time. You can do so via:
https://ciaops0913.eventbrite.com.au/
At the event you’ll learn about what Yammer is and how important it will be going forward. I’ll even show you how to get started with your own Yammer account so you can get a better feel of what this product is all about.
Aside from that you’ll learn about the latest updates to Office 365, Windows and what’s happening in the technology industry. There’ll also be plenty of time for questions and general discussions with other attendees.
To get the best from the even make sure you register and attend in person.
Key to success is networking
I have just returned from TechEd Australia and I get plenty of questions about whether it was worthwhile. The problem is that most of these questions are only concerned about the content of the presentations. To my mind the most important things about these sort of events is networking.
It amazes me at how ‘old world’ many business still approach marketing. They waste all their time doing things like flyers, attempting to optimize SEO and so on. If you really reckon flyers work then can I ask you how many YOU read and act on? None, I’ll bet. As for SEO, do you really want random people typically shopping around for the cheapest price as a customer? Not me.
If it is one thing that I have learnt over my time in business, and something that I should have a adopted much sooner, it is business networking. These days that typically also means engagement with social media.
The first place you should be starting is Linkedin, which you can probably best consider as business to business social media. Make sure that your profile there is complete and contains as much detail about yourself. Next, start connecting with people you know. Then start asking for testimonial and endorsements.
If you look at my profile you’ll see that I have over 500 connections (actually well over 700 actually). How would you ever achieve that without social media?
Apart from written testimonials you’ll find others endorsing your skills. As you can see from my current list above over 99 people have endorsed me for SharePoint and Cloud Computing. These endorsement have been made by my contacts without solicitation by me. Those numbers are pretty powerful when a prospect starting looking you up and see’s how well you are endorse by others! Speaks much greater volumes about your skills than a flyer you put together I reckon.
The real secret to being a business success I believe is attracting people to you. As I have said before, you want to be the moth not the flame. You cannot of course be the flame if you simply sit there and do nothing. You have to work out a strategy that will attract people. How do you do that? Simple. Work out what they want and give it to them.
You can’t be everything to everyone so pick a niche and then niche that niche and niche it some more. You want to aim to be an inch wide and a mile deep rather than the other way around. The only way generalists success is by selling HUGE volumes.
So:
1. Work out your target audience
2. Work out what you target audience needs
3. Create offerings for the needs of this audience
4. Starting networking and attracting this audience to you
The tools for successful networking are now so cheap. Social media is typically free and probably the most expensive outlay when it comes to networking would be shouting someone a cup of coffee when you meet face to face.
And you really want to spend thousands on SEO optimization? REALLY?
If the secret to successful business is networking then the secret to successful networking is helping people. If you help people, they will continue to seek you out. In most cases they’ll be happy to pay you for this help. Simple eh? Why does it have to be any more difficult than that?
Exchange Online mailboxes double
Hot on the heels of the increased capacity with SkyDrive Pro Online Microsoft has just announced that Exchange Online Mailboxes will double in size. Here’s the announcement:
http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/08/29/exchange-online-mailbox-sizes-are-doubling.aspx
You’ll see that it is basically across all plans and all mailboxes, including shared mailboxes.
Existing users won’t need to do anything, their mailbox will automatically increase sometime between now and November.
This is yet further evidence to my mind of how fast Microsoft is bringing improvements to Office 365 so expect to see further updates coming thick and fast.
SkyDrive Pro online storage gets better
Microsoft has just announce 3 improvements to SkyDrive Pro Online:
1. SkyDrive Storage for all users will be increased from the current 7GB standard to 25GB.
2. You can purchase additional storage for SkyDrive Pro beyond the new 25GB limit up to 100GB.
3. New Shared with Me view to located documents shared with you.
This is great news and another indication of how cheap online storage has become. I would expect to see this limit continue to increase over time.
The ability to add more storage to SkyDrive Pro was a limit for some users but now no more. 100GB of personal space is a HUGE amount of data for one person!
As I have mentioned many time here in this blog, the future of collaboration is all about sharing and anything that makes that easier is good.
Review–Otterbox Defender Series for Lumia 920
Full disclosure – the review unit was supplied by Mobilezap. You can find this device and others at the Mobilezap category page at:
http://www.mobilezap.com.au/31817/nokia/lumia-920/cases.htm
One of the downsides to mobile devices these days is that they are generally pretty fragile. If they get dropped from typically waist height they seem to have an alarming ability to twist in the air and fall on their screens or a corner. In the worst case this results in a unusable device, in other cases a fairly damaged unit.
Now many people need to use their phones in hostile environments where they really need more protection than a standard case or ‘bump’ can provide. This is where the Otterbox comes in.
It is basically an enclosed shell that you insert your phone into and then you encapsulate that in a neoprene like skin. The result is a very protected device.
Initially when I opened the Otterbox I couldn’t work out how to get it open to insert the phone. Turns out that you need to remove the neoprene like skin from the Otterbox and then you can open the case to insert the phone.
It fits snuggly and everything clips together with a resounding ‘click’. Once you place the neoprene-like skin back around the box holding the phone you need to ensure that it mated all the way up to the lip of the box.
With all the done your phone is now pretty much indestructible. You can them clip the phone into the holder which you can attach to your belt. Again, there is a resounding ‘click’ when you mate the Otterbox to the holder. That says ‘it ain’t going nowhere’.
Now there are some minor issues with the unit. Firstly, the hole for the external headphone jack doesn’t line up with the phone jack. You can of course still open the flap and still use any headset but seems strange that it doesn’t line up. The unit does have a number of locations where the elements could gain access to your phone, so don’t go thinking this is a waterproof container.
Here’s a quick video demonstration of the unit I did so you can get a better idea:
Having all this protection does make the phone that much bulkier and you really need two hands to get it on and off the belt holder which may prove a little tricky at times, however as something that will provide almost 100% protection for your Lumina 920 then this is the protective case for you.
In summary, if you really need high end protection for your Lumia 920 so it will survive incidents that would render a other phones inoperative then this is the protective case for you.
Great Windows Phone ad
If you haven’t already seen it, here’s a great add for the new Nokia 1020 Windows Phone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vR4LeL0yzE
It is getting plenty of acclaim out there and I still believe the Windows Phone platform to be superior to everything that is currently out there. If you haven’t looked at a Nokia Windows Phone then I’d suggest you go and have a look at how good these things are.
The second fundamental difference between Office 365 and Google Apps
If you haven’t read what I believe is the first fundamental difference between Google Apps and Office 365 then you’ll find it here:
https://blog.ciaops.com/2013/08/the-fundamental-difference-between.html
The second fundamental difference is that Google Apps does not understand collaboration and here’s a few reasons why.
Google Apps and Office 365 are mainly about a suite of products. The main product most focus on is email. You know what? Email is a commodity. So many suppliers do it and there is not much real value or differentiation you can apply to email, in, as long as a business gets their emails who generally cares beyond that right? From a functionality point of view email is email and thus a commodity. Therefore whatever email functionality one provider has is generally the same as another provider so let’s agree to say hosted email systems are pretty equal.
What I will tell you is that email is an ‘old world’ technology. Today’s world is all about sharing and making information public so that it can be shared rather than siloed in someone’s inbox never to be seen again. Why do you think Facebook has over one billion users? Today people want to SHARE information. As a business I need to collaborate on all sorts of information quickly and easily including, files, folders, calendars, contacts, tasks and so on.
I will also tell you that those entering the work force now have little concept of traditional drive letters. They have no concept of C: and D: drives. They have no concept of network drives. They have no concept of mapped drives. To them it is simply data and the technology that gives them access is search. So the concept of files and folders in ‘traditional’ folders is really old world stuff.
When you take a look at how Google Apps approaches data they seem to me to still be locked into that old world of files and folders.
When you put files into Google Apps it goes into it’s own separate drive area. This is just like my old C: drive right? Can I add more columns or metadata around these files? Not from what I can see. Sure you can add a star but what about if I want to categorize files by customers? Again, just dumb old files and folders. How is that ANY different from what I did on my PC XT in 1984 in DOS?
SharePoint by contrast provides a single web location for files AND folders AND calendars AND tasks AND everything in ONE PLACE in what is known as a Team site. In the repository within the SharePoint Team Site that holds files and folders you can add as many columns as you like to describe your data. These columns can be text, numbers, dates or your a set of your own choices. You can sort and filter on multiple columns. You can create multiple views of the same data. For example you can change what file listings actually display to be just the file name if you want.
That is collaborative thinking not simply migrating old world thinking to hosted storage as what Google Apps have done.
In Google Apps if I want to move from Drive to my Calendar I click Calendar from the menu across the top. That opens a new browser tab with my calendar. But wait, isn’t that similar to opening a new application on my desktop computer by double-clicking an icon? Yup, it is. What happens if I return to the Drive tab again and click Calendar again? Just like double clicking on a desktop icon again it opens ANOTHER browser tab to show my calendar AGAIN, even though I ALREADY have a calendar tab open. Now I have two calendar tabs open. Again, old world thinking now just brought to you in a browser.
In SharePoint, click on the team site calendar you are taken there. Click on tasks, you are taken there, just as you would expect in a modern web environment!
Now let’s say that I want to create somewhere dedicated to a project. This will need a location for files and folders, calendar, contacts, emails, tasks and so on just for starters. How do you do that in Google Apps? I can go into another area and create a Google Site but then how do I get a common calendar there? How do I display my files? How do I create a shared tasks list? Again, old world thinking being one app for one job. I NEED collaboration not just storage.
Ok, so let’s take something that Google should be good at, search. If I am in my Google Apps Drive area and I want to search for an item in a calendar I can’t, I can only search in my files. Why is that? If I need to find something I want to search from anywhere and find it. Again, I don’t want to be constrained in a siloed ancient world. I NEED collaboration. I NEED to get to my information from anywhere as I might not know where it is.
When I use the Search option across the top in Google Apps I end up searching the whole web not just my data. This reinforces my first fundamental difference concept between Google Apps and Office 365. Google Apps is provided by an advertising business, who are principally seeking to maximise advertising revenue.
Look at what is the top result when I attempt to search in Google Apps. IT IS AN ADVERTISMENT! Again, see my first fundamental difference.
If I need to find something in SharePoint I go to the top right and and enter what I am after in the search box. Bingo, as you can see from the above I get results from file name, file contents, calendars, contact, tasks and basically everything on that site. I also get a preview of some document content embedded automatically on the page. With a few clicks I can expand that search to every SharePoint site I have access to. I can filter the results by file type, author, date and so. Isn’t this what modern collaborative search is all about? I should be able to search across everything I have access to in one hit. I also don’t see ANY results or options to search any information but my own and I don’t get advertising unlike with Google Apps.
As I said previously, the new world is all about social. What happens when I try to be social in Google Apps?
I am asked to join Google’s public social network Google Plus. What happens when I join there? Is my information private? Nope. Am I pushed more advertisements? Most likely. Without question, failing to integrate your environment with social abilities is really old world thinking.
SharePoint by contrast has private social networking built in. It allows the integration with Linkedin and Facebook out of the box if desired. Microsoft is integrating the enterprise social networking product Yammer into SharePoint and Office 365 every day bringing more and more social functionality to their products. Why? Because social is the new way to collaborate, it is how things will be happening going forward in the modern age.
I could go on and on with example after example of how Google Apps just isn’t a modern collaboration platform. Likewise, I could mention in contrast how SharePoint has inbuilt automation with workflows, how it allows you to work with groups of documents known as document sets, how it has inbuilt eDiscovery and more, oh so much more. Microsoft has been developing SharePoint since 2001 as a modern collaborative platform because it understands what collaboration means. Google Apps is still no where near a modern collaboration platform from what I see. They have a long way to come to even be in the ball game. When you boil their solution down, it is just like a normal desktop PC just with a different storage location. Old world stuff I am sorry to say.
Now honestly ask yourself which product understands and supports the concept of true modern collaboration? Which product is continuing to modernize their collaboration platform with the way that people will work in the future? I hope you understand why I can honestly say with my hand on heart that only Microsoft does because Google Apps just doesn’t understand collaboration, or as they would say in Hollywood:
Google has brought email to a collaboration fight.
CIAOPS 