How Google and the cloud changed my company
About Chris
Chris Lyman is the Founder and Chairman of the Board at Fonality. Fonality creates innovative and affordable phone systems for small and medium businesses. Our products include PBXtra, trixbox Pro, and trixbox CE.
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How Google and the cloud changed my company
The rantings of a serial entrepreneur as he wins, loses, and doesn't pull any punches in describing both...
How Google and the cloud changed my company
December 22, 2009
A couple of years ago, I made one of the hardest calls I have ever had to make as a CEO. Was it around a RIF? Nope. Was it around a new strategic direction? Nah.
Much scarier.
I asked my employees to pull the Microsoft feeding tube out of their noses and move to The Google.
For some employees (engineers, etc.) this was no big deal. But execs...wow...a whole other ball of wax. Execs have Stockholm Syndrome. Even though they will vociferously announce how much they hate Outlook (resource hog, crashing, etc) that very same Exec will get wild-eyed when you ask them to switch. I get it. I was a 10 year prisoner of M$FT myself.
Well, I am proud to announce that, by force of paycheck, I did get them to switch — or nearly all of them. We have one dinosaur left, but that’s just fear of change talking. Kami, wake up and smell the sky!
What does “switch” mean? Well, here at Fonality we no longer use Exchange for calendaring. We no longer use Outlook for mail. We barely use Word and only the finance geeks use Excel.
Yep, we are in the cloud, baby. And how free it feels! All our calendars are webable and shared. Adios crashing mail servers. Au revoir, IT budget to manage them. Hasta la vista chunky laptops to run bloatware. Heck, I can — and often do — run my entire business on a $300 netbook. All I need is a browser & HUD (sadly, today’s browsers aren't yet robust enough to support something as cool as HUD *grin*).
True story: the other day my laptop broke. In five minutes, yes five minutes, I was back to 100% capacity. That normally would have cost me a full day to get a new laptop ready and another day installing and restoring. Two days of CEO downtime vs. 5 minutes!
And, let us not forget the collaboration value you get from cloud documents. I can work in documents at the same time as other members of my team — all in different locations. This is much more efficient then setting up tedious screen shares. I am erasing this command from my mind already: “I am passing screen control to you.” :)
Oh, did I mention the price? I estimate we will have saved almost $1,000 per employee between hardware and software costs — not to mention the deployment and maintenance savings that we reap over time.
Woah. I just took a moment to re-read what I have written. Sounds like I work for Google. I don’t. But this blog is about what works for business and I feel that Google made a bold move to make businesses work better. I actually am not a Microsoft Hater anymore. Outgrew that when I put away the code. I just think they are an old and overpriced model. It will be interesting to see how good their response to Google Docs is: Office Web Apps. I bet MSFT isn’t used to playing catch-up on one of their core businesses!
Is everything perfect on The Google? Nope. They have more code to write — not surprising given they are supplanting a 20 year business and are only a few years into it. Namely, Google, these five points would really help businesses make “the switch”:
- Add a true redline 'track changes' feature in your Document product. Do this and we can stop using MS Word 100%.
- Let me add images from a URL (vs. just local) in your Spreadsheet product. You actually already have this feature in your Document product!
- Continue to improve the charting in your “Spreadsheet” product such that even the finance geeks can give up Excel.
- Improve your “Presentation” product. It can be tweaky when moving around objects. As of yet, it is not a suitable replacement for PowerPoint.
- Let me upload non-Google documents such that I can use my paid 25 GB of paid Google space as a true file-share. Good-bye local storage!
Yah, cloud *is* the future. Sure it has drawbacks (Internet always on, etc.) but the pros outweigh the cons. That is why, earlier this year, after six year’s of being half in the cloud, we finally launched our 100% cloud telephony product. We call it UNBOUND because it really does feel free to no longer be bound!
--
Chris Lyman
Fonality CEO & Janitor
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Hi, my boss has also the
Hi, my boss has also the Stockholm Syndrome. Good article.
Philip
I Agree
I agree with you that Google Apps is the best communications solution for small business.
Google docs does have some limitations, however for us OpenOffice more than makes up for this, and we have one copy of the latest version of MS Office on a PC in the middle of the office for the occasional incoming MS Office documents that we have problems with (documents with visio embedments mainly). We send out our documents in PDF where possible and for documents which are critical for formatting and need to be edited we save in hybrid PDF format with OpenOffice and the PDF import extension. I understand Google intends to extend Google apps to give it the full functionality of OpenOffice and MS Office in future.
By the way Google mail can be accessed by POP3 or IMAP downloaded to a local mailbox (while leaving the email on the server if you prefer), so it is no more hobbled by lack of Internet access than any other email system. Indeed we find it is less affected than a conventional mail system because lack of access to your mail client in the office while you are out does not prevent you from reading your email.
With Google apps, a small business gets off site backup, remote and mobile access, and office applications with zero maintenance. In addition Postini email backup for a small extra cost gives you cheap and easy email arching compliance.
For a big company, the best solution is probably an internally maintained corporate cloud server. However Google mail, sites and docs are still a good fit for communications within this setup.
How Google and the cloud changed my company
Hi,
You have mentioned "Two days of CEO downtime vs. 5 minutes" but have you considered 1/2 days downtime for your entire company if,
* your ISP fails or,
* google fails (has happened in the past)...
since all your mail and data are on the cloud without access to it how would you even fax an important doc let alone refer up information.
how much would that cost a company. what would be the cost of backing up data for such situations. What would be the cost of maintaining a link with another ISP. would it not be waste if nothing goes wrong?
thank you
Downtime? Nada mucho
Good question. Here goes:
We have been using Gmail, Gcalendar, and Gdocs for about two years for myself and hundreds of my employees. In that entire time there was only one minor outage (intermittent hour or so where some of us couldn't get mail). That's pretty amazing for two solid years.
Also, during that time we:
* never had to run our internal mail servers again
* never had to run Exchange and calendaring services again
* no need for RIM BIS because BB and Google work nicely for free
* didn't need the IT to manage any of it
* didn't need to buy any software licenses
* can search our docs and mail in seconds not minutes
* bye bye "please wait my Outlook just crashed" in the middle of meetings
* converted from workhorse laptops to net books
* haven't had to make a single backup
Am I worried that Google will somehow loose all of our data? Nope. I ran a hosting company for 5 years back in the day. We had 50,000 customers. We never lost any of their data during that time -- and we were peanuts compared to Google.
It's really simple to create foolproof backup systems in the cloud where your data is centralized and money is no object.
After two years, with around 5 9s of uptime, they have earned my trust.
../chris
Hello Chris, Looking at
Hello Chris,
Looking at your business model and the nature of business you are into, may i suggest you one more Google Product? - I am sure you have heard of it. It is called Google Wave. It is too good for real time Collaboration.
Right now Google Wave is only on invite basis. I heard Google App users were given free invites when Google Wave was launched. Not sure if everyone was given.
In case you do not have an invite, let me know, will be glad to send you a free invite to Google Wave. And you can in return send out invites to your colleagues and use the real time collaboration.
I read you comment on HUD. You stated that today's browsers are not robust enough to handle HUD. I am not really sure what you mean by that here as i have never used HUD. Did you try HUD on Google Chrome. Chrome is supposed the best among browsers. With advanced HTML5 features (which none of the other browsers currently have) it is just too good.
Best regards,
Subbu.
Wave and Chrome
Re: Wave. It looks amazing. It's one of those things that could be truly revolutionary or gimmicky and I won't know until we roll it out...once it launches. But I have high hopes for its collaborative contribution!
Re: HUD & Chrome. Sure, I use Chrome. It's got a wicked fast Jscript engine and I am thrilled to finally get to use it on my Mac as well as my PC. But, in no way can it handle Fonality's HUD yet. HUD is a phone, real time call control, presence system, operator panel, visual voicemail system, visual conference room system, call center control, and unified communications system rolled up into one. There's nothing like it on the market.
Much in the way you cannot play advanced video games or use advanced graphics/music editors in the browser yet, you also cannot use HUD in the browser yet. Some day...but not yet. The good news is we made it for both PC and Mac so most everyone can use it at the desktop level.
HUD 3.0 video (not as cool of a video but more features): http://www.fonality.com/hud
HUD 2.0 interactive video (older demo, but much cooler one): http://app.fonality.com/hud/demo.htm
../chris
Great ! :) Chris, I am not
Great ! :)
Chris, I am not sure if you have already thought about it, did you guys think about developing HUD as an extension for browsers like Chrome and Firefox?
I guess you guys could develop a light weight extension for the browsers.
Best regards,
Subbu.
Always thinking but not yet doing. :)
Yes, we actually stop and consider this on a yearly basis for about five years now.
The browsers are getting better and the jscript engines faster. But they just aren't there yet. HUD is a very serious real-time Unified Communications tool and just doesn't belong in a browser quite yet. Some of our competitors have made much weaker copies of HUD and put them in browsers, but the considtent feedback has been that it doesn't yet belong there.
../chris
Speaking of HUD
Chris,
Just a stray thought as you discuss HUD. We are an engineering firm that uses 64 bit workstations for our modeling and graphics programs. Any plan to publish a 64 bit version of HUD down the road.
I like the cloud concept for many things and agree that for many groups this is the way to go. We use many of these services but you hit it on the head when you mention that Google needs to open the file formats to allow other file types to use the space.
(Love our PBXtra and look forward to development of the system as times and needs change.)
64-bit
Eventually I am sure we will move HUD to a 64-bit format. But today, since we have to build it in 32-bit as well for a time longer, there is not much advantage to the dual development track. HUD doesn't chunk files > 4 GB and tends to not be CPU intensive, so I don't think there is a lot to gain from the 64 bit path just yet.
But, it's only a matter of time to be sure!
Glad you like your PBXtra. We have version 5.0 just about out, with a ton of new features! Woah, customer #2460?...you have been with us for a long time! Thank you :)
../chris
Security issues?
Interesting to read about someone who have actually done the switch, and have bookmarked this blog in hope of learning more from your experience.
I am no fan of any specific system (talking Windows, OSX and Linux here), and I am skeptical about storing my data on a system out of my control. It would have been interesting to hear more about how you have secured access to your data? Have you done anything more than using the standard features from google?
There is one quote I like very much, from one who is highly respected in the security community, Richard Bejtlich. He says: "The trustworthiness of a digital asset is limited by the owner's capability to detect incidents compromising the integrity of that asset."
How can we detect incidents on a system out of our control?
Do not get me wrong here. I personally use google for private non-work related stuff. But I would be very careful about storing sensitive data on any online application/storage system without being able to use strong encryption.
How secure are you really?
I often hear this same security issue when mentioning the cloud evolution and wonder: how secure are you really with your own employees and IT having access to all your backups and mail? Anyone with access to your in-house mail server has all of your secrets anyway. It just doesn't take that long to root a box that sits 20 feet from your desk.
In fact, if *I* had the requisite lack of integrity, it would have taken me about 5 minuets to get on our old postfix Open Source mail server and write a script that would grep any incoming/outgoing email based on interesting keywords and then pipe the output via a BCC to my own email address. Anyone in the company mentions my name in an email thread and...boom I get a BCC of that thread instantly.
And, we are a tech company, so I imagine there are the better part of 50 folks here that could have gained the same ability to that same thing back to me.
Now that we are in the cloud, that ability is eliminated. If our IT admin ever even looks at my mail he has to change the pwd first which would notify me of an intrusion.
Actually, I feel safer.
Sure, the truth is that Google employees could do nasty things. But, remember, most attacks come from within -- either employees or ex employees. At Google we are just another one of their 1.75 million businesses already using Gmail and gdocs. Heck Motorola even uses it now.
Look at the end of the day so much of my (and our) life is already in the cloud.
* I "host" my mobile telephony needs with Verizon. They have access to all I do and say on my smartphone.
* Salesforce.com (actually now using SugarCRM) had my all valuable sales force automation data -- that used to freak me out. Got over it.
* Netsuite has our financial data and has done a great job with it for the last few years.
* Now Google has our email, docs, and calendar.
I guess if you build Weapons-grade Plutonium for a living than maybe you should put all your data in an underground vault. But other than that, I don't see a big security risk in this switch. If anything I feel safer knowing that non-interested parties have access to my data vs. interested ones!
../chris
Is secutiry a factor at all?
Do not get me wrong. I like the way things develops with "the cloud". For most of us, the availability aspect of information security is much cheaper to get in the cloud than we could do locally.
But the development is more focused on pure functionality than the integrity and confidentiality part of information security. Personally I would not recommend anyone to store sensitive data in the cloud... not until we have strong encryption on everything, including the storage.
Where is the data physically stored? Does Google have copies on them in servers in Sweden? If so, the Swedish government are allowed to look at them[1]. Are there other similar issues related to storing the data in the cloud? Are your data worth anything for anyone else?
Again, do not misunderstand me. I use Google myself for everything but the most sensitive data.
Hm. The fact that I've worked with information security the last 10 years, might also have an effect on my views. :)
[1] http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9567/big_brother_comes_to_sweden__fra_law_p...
Very nice post
Very nicely written post....its nice to see the more and more companies are moving to cloud....thank you for sharing your experience here.......it may be inspirational to other companies..........
I'm the IT Coordinator at a
I'm the IT Coordinator at a state government agency and I'm slowly, but surely, moving in the same direction you are. I'm glad to see that it is going well for you and your company.
How is this fundamentally different than...
...simply hosting a Linux-based desktop from servers in your datacenter? Have you found the compatibility between Google Docs and Microsoft Office to be better than the compatibility between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office? (OpenOffice offers the track changes feature you mention, but not real-time collaboration.)
Cost, Uptime, and Security
In the past, when we have hosted our open Open Source or Closed Source servers from our data center we have had to:
* pay staff to install and maintain the servers
* constantly upgrade the software with feature and security patches
* deal with downtime of hardware and software
* worry about security between them, the outside world, and the inside world (VPN, blah, blah)
* live without real-time collaboration features of Gdocs
* live without the slick real time calendaring + free integration with our Blackberry's
In short, we manage hundreds of employees now with a SINGLE IT person and zero IT-related servers. Plus we have had only one issue of downtime in two years and it was intermittent and less than two hours.
Damn Google should pay me. I gotta get back to work. :)
../chris
On the Cloud
You're forgetting the part where you're trusting the cloud provider not to do anything with your data. You're trusting that they make proper backups of the data. You're trusting that they won't just up and shut down one day. I've had far too many bad incidents with other people hosting my data and then losing said data through sheer incompetence.
No thanks. Nobody cares about your business like you do. You can trust them all you want. Me? I'd go with Open Source tools and applications before I would jump on the cloud computing bandwagon. There's far more that can go wrong when you don't control the infrastructure. People learned the hard way that managed services wasn't all it was cracked up to be when it was rolled out as the greatest thing since time-shared computing resources. Cloud computing is nothing but managed services in a pretty new wrapper.
Talk with your lawyers
Talk with your lawyers. Most will caution against using cloud resources that aren't under your control.
Your article talks about all the great reasons to remove Microsoft and assumes the only answer is Google/Cloud services. All of the MS-Office tools can be replaced with OpenOffice. Enterprise calendaring has many solutions, including the free Zimbra.
As CIO, I would have to leave a company that uses google services without an ironclad privacy, services and uptime agreement.
Using google for home/non-business use is 1 thing. Using them for business use is completely different. Here's what Seyfarth law firm has to say about Cloud Computing. http://www.seyfarth.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/publications.publications_d.... Be careful out there folks. Just because it is easier, doesn't mean it is really, easier.
I think the cloud can cut
I think the cloud can cut costs, but the security the cloud offer is not a thing to bet on. At least is what i think.
Just remember
Chris,
Just remember that Google, like most of the cloud infrastructure companies, have no tech support to speak of. Don't get me wrong I'm an FOSS junkie and have been happily hooked for going on 10 years now with no plans for a MS intervention. So I say this as a word of caution and not one of discouragement. Local backups will make or break you. If something goes wrong in the cloud, doesn't happen often but it does happen, you don't want to be one of the pissed off masses clamoring for reform of the web because they lost all their business docs and the cloud can't bring them back and won't give a refund. That being stated HOORAY for you and your company. The cloud is the future, either companies will embrace it and thrive or reject it at there own peril. Simple really, every day-week-month whatever download a copy of what you have on line and store it on local media. This way if the cloud does hiccup you are less effected than the pissed off masses.
Missing the point??
Hi Chris,
I think you are missing an important point by jumping onto the cloud bandwagon - you are handing over control of your information to a different 3rd party and will still be locked into the vendor (abeit Google's) rules. What happens when you no longer want to play by Google's rules? So you have made a decision that for you Google is better than Microsoft, and that's your prerogative.
To my way of thinking if you are going to go cloud computing, then hedge your bets with open source tools that are hosted to maintain your vendor independence.
For now, I prefer to keep ownership of my company's important information and do so at a lower cost again with open source software (the European/Australiasian intepretation, not the American one).
Good luck in retaining control of the information that you use to run Fonality (interesting tool, pity it's not open source :-)
Cheers,
Allan.
BRAVO Mr. Lyman......... You
BRAVO Mr. Lyman.........
You are are a member of a rare breed. I love the fact that you've switched to a more business healthy drink other than that Redmond Kool-Aid!
I personally switched my life to Linux 8 years ago. At first I thought the world would come to an end. Guess what? The Sun still comes up everyday.
I love not being a puppet anymore, as I'm sure you do too.
Best of luck in the future. You obviously have an advantage already.
In the future, your employees will thank you for making that hard decision.
Then, you can tell them, "I told you so".
As for the dinosaur, remind him we're still digging up bones from his relatives!
Cheers!
How Google and the cloud changed my company
Mr. Lyman,
As the President of a small business in Canada (48 users) we too switched our mail and calendaring to Google 3 years ago. We have used their services in the back end of our business by slowly migrating things over but retaining some "offline" functionality. Our partners are now doing the same thing and combined we have over 150 users on their platform.
Here's a middle ground to some of the other posts:
1. Use Google Gears for off line access to email with your note/netbook via your browser. Works great with both Firefox and Chrome. Calendar is view only access (at this point anyway - c'mon Google...get Gears working totally with Calendar too!)
2. For those that don't want to move totally into the cloud for those functions, go hybrid. IMAP with Google through Evolution or Thunderbird (or Zimbra) and Google does a good job with this too. Always there when you need it via the browser of your choice and you can use the client of your choice as well. Toggle the folders for off line use if you need off line access.
3. Gdocs. Nice app and getting better but this is where we differ. We have used OpenOffice since StarOffice 5.0 (which sucked) but the latest versions rival MS Office for what we do. Oh...and we too keep an licensed copy of MS Office on hand for those times that one of our Clients wants us to use their proprietary software with multiple pivot tables and business analysis tools. For anything else, OOo does it all. We do use Gdocs for collaborative purposes, there is no doubt it does that well, however the beauty of it is we can then export to OOo or PDF and send from there.
The cloud is a great way to cut costs I agree, but my view is that a hybrid solution is our best fit right now.
Oh...and we too do all this with one IT person. The money we saved in support actually funds his salary, bonus, benefits and perks.
Loved the post...and now looking at your product too!
All the best,
Very cool
Very cool to hear from a fellow brave cloud business compatriot. :)
It's funny you mention the word "hybrid" because Fonality's own telephony solution, which we have been offering for six years, has had a hybrid architecture mix of some premise and some cloud technology. For this reason, we dubbed it "hybrid-hosted (see the video)". This allows it to use POTS/PSTN/Digital or VoIP connectivity).
That is, until early this year when we came out with a fully hosted flavor of it. Same code...just that this flavor of our product is all in the cloud (hence 100% VoIP).
So, as for the "hybrid" approach -- I am a big fan as well. Tx for stopping by. Bravo on your cloud flight!
../chris
Late to the Party
But Glad I came....
Very Cool stuff here. We have a number of Google apps in use but will have to check our Cloud computing.
I like the idea of a hybrid approach.
Good thoughts here guys.
Dennis
Vector Displays is using the cloud successfully
Our company works on trade show and events around the globe. Our project managers spend most of their time traveling to shows and events and live on their wireless laptops and smartphones. It's the only way they can stay connected across time zones and stay in touch with headquarters and our clients and prospects. About
a year ago we also switched to Google and The Cloud as your company did. We're very pleased with the results and can't imagine now how we would operate without them. I agree that the future is now and we like it. We could use a few refinements to the systems, but all in all, it works exceptionally well for Vector Displays.
Google Apps has only just started
I've been using Google Apps since late 2006. An earlier comment to this post indicated a lack of support. I have to disagree.
I invested in Google Apps Premier Edition and have spoken on the phone with the Google Apps support team a total of three times during that period of time. You can do the math on how many nines of uptime that is pretty quickly.
Here's one such example: http://seesmic.tv/videos/FkX6hNfaWH
In this instance, an outage was isolated only the web (Gmail) that was having an issue. I was using IMAP with no issues. As a matter of practice, I sync my Google Apps via IMAP as well. This gives me the most flexibility and I have a backup stored that I can replicate to other storage media elsewhere for backup and archival.
As for the other two issues, those were related to import of MS Word and Powerpoint files in the Documents area -- each issue was resolved quickly. That said, when I've been assured of solid Internet connectivity at conferences, I've presented from Google Docs for slide decks to prove my points on cloud concepts. Yes, I keep a thumb drive copy in my pocket
Coming from a telecom/ISP/hosting background, my standards are very high. For the price of the seat they offer and the expanding features added over time, it's a solid choice.
Back in May 2009 I attended Google I/O Developer Conference and met the App Engine and Apps teams. These folks are top notch and their concern for sustainability and availability is their top concern and making the best features be exposed when they pass muster. Google SDC is another feature where I expect to see expanded use over time as well for the maximum hybrid functionality.
In short, I'm sold.
Sorry for late post but...
Quick question re: your firm's cloud use.
You mention you changed from salesforce.com to sugarcrm. Why the change? Are you hosting it yourselves? Doing it directly with Sugarcrm? If you are hosting it yourselves [remotely or locally], can it be truly be considered "cloud"?
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