Our Web 2.0 Office

I just posted about how Google embraces Software as a Service (SaaS) for the small company as well as how we are now providing consulting in this space. So, I decided to give you an inside peek on what I actually mean by laying out how we have implemented SaaS, why we have done it, what we use, and the benefits we have seen from this.

Email

We use Gmail under the Google Hosted platform for our email. If you are familiary with Gmail at all chances are you are hooked and will never go back to using anything else. Well imagine that for your corporate or small business email. It sells itself. There are not currently as many administrative features as there should be nor are there as many features as an enterprise level mail system. But I definitely recommend it.

Calendar

Here is another Google product we use – Google Calendar. It is easily the best web calendar implementation I have seen thus far. And, what really sells it is its integration with Gmail. Calendars can be shared, you can set up appointments, run multiple calendars. It’s a full featured implementation that is just great to use.

Word Processor

Not too long ago, Google acquired Writely – a web based word processor that is much more than your traditionl word processor. Essentially it is a documtent management and collaboration platfrom that happens to have a word processor built into it. It allows you to create, share, and collaborate on documents. It has built in versioning with the ability to compare differences between document versions. You can tag documents, publish them to your blog, and be notified of changes and additions via RSS.

Spreadsheets

Kudos to Google – yet another product on the list. I do not use spreadsheets a lot. I don’t know why but I can generally create a web application faster than a spreadsheet so if I have something that requires tabular data and calculations that is often the way I go. But when I do, I use Google Spreadsheets. The interface is the same as a standard spreadsheet interface with the ability to update and view from anywhere and share with whomever you want.

Blogging / Content Management

We use WordPress on all our blogs and recommend it for client’s blogs. It’s simply the best product we have found to customize that maintains its usability. They have also added value through allowing community driven extension and plugin development so you can enhance your implementation any way you like. This is a product we host ourselves but you can find many hosts (or we can help you) and wordpress.com offers free hosting.

Wiki

We use a wiki for many different functions. It maintains our knowledge base, code standards, design standards, client lists, server environments, project documentation, and the list goes on. For this we host our own MediaWiki. We have used some .NET implementations before (because we do .Net) but none of them can yet compare to MediaWiki. Some great hosted solution exist out there if you don’t have the means to do it yourself. JotSpot and WetPaint are great solutions.

Project Management

I used to use Microsoft Project and I am so happy I’ll never have to again. We started by using Basecamp from 37Signals which is an excellent product but decided to move to activeCollab recently for the simple reason that it was free and I could host it internally. Both are great products and I recommend them to any company who needs a great tool for time and project management.

IM / Communications

Two words, Google Talk. It’s integrated with Gmail. You can send files, leave voice mails, and do VOIP. Start using it and you will never go back. Best IM client I have ever used.

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That wraps it up for this round, focused on productivity. If there are any areas for which you would like to know the tools and software we use, leave us a comment and we will include it next time.

Next will either be the tools I use personally – browsing, blogging, to-do’s or about social / new media tools.

technorati tags:office 2.0, web 2.0, office, productivity, google, gmail, activeCollab, google calendar, calendar, email, project management

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