Collaboration in the Cloud

Cloud computing and collaboration are a match made in heaven, but someone must have forgotten to pay the matchmaker because the union is taking its time getting consummated. Strong web-based collaborative tools, just as SharePoint, have been around for a decade or so, however many organizations after all stick with what's comfortable and rely solely on email.Email is the go-to collaboration tool for knowledge workers, in spite of the fact that it is only one piece of what can be a highly efficient overall cloud strategy. Why, at the time, is email nevertheless the primary means of collaboration? Here are four main reasons: 1) it's convenient, 2) it's easy, 3) everyone uses it - all the time - and 4) it notwithstanding works.

The rise of cloud computing is fundamentally changing collaboration. Basic tools just as Outlook and Word are transforming into cloud-based tools. Cloud-based collaboration means that many of the initial barriers to entry for collaboration, just as expensive initial investment in infrastructure, have been removed.  Instead, it allows for pay-as-you-go usage and enables workers to keep using the tools they're already used to, only with cloud-based features added on.

In the past, email was not a mobile tool. Workers used to only have access to corporate Outlook and Exchange on a PC in a physical office. Remote access allowed workers to VPN into a corporate network to synch a corporate Exchange account with a computer at home or during traveling.  That remote experience was tethered to PCs, although.

Now, email is available through any browser and mobile applications, making smartphones and email practically synonymous. Which brings us right back to where we started: email is the de facto mobile collaboration tool because it's accessible across devices. Many other collaboration tools aren't, nevertheless just as email is migrating to the cloud so too, hopefully, will collaboration.

The "app" model pundits slobber over with smartphones is actually just a cloud model in small packages. With applications freed from legacy server environments, cloud-based collaboration platforms can more easily roll out mobile app versions of enterprise apps, during also adding in hooks for various types of social networking.

Fair enough. Security is a serious concern for any computing environment, and during it’s developing and improving for cloud and mobile computing, it is far from solved. Mobile email security is arguably ahead of device and cloud security. With protocols like Exchange ActiveSync, email on a smartphone can be made near as secure as the email on a PC.

After all, what is more secure, sensitive documents stored in laptops and smartphones that can be easily lost or stolen, or sensitive documents housed in the cloud behind several layers of security?

Security threat

Which is more of a security threat, a user uploading a document for access on the go to a webmail account or to a service like Dropbox, or a document in the cloud, accessible via a smartphone nevertheless which does not allow you to download and store data on that smartphone?

Even CIOs who are all in all wary of the cloud should embrace cloud-based collaboration. It's a low-risk, high-reward way to test drive this new method of computing. Which leads to the question: if cloud-based collaboration isn't at the top of your to-do list, why isn't it?