Don’t get me wrong. I do make limited use of cloud computing applications, especially Gmail. But mostly, I don’t feel comfortable putting my entire computing life “in the cloud”. Here’s why.

Access. Putting all my data in the cloud means I need an Internet connection to be able to do my work. This limits the times and places that I can work, and makes it more difficult to develop a plan to keep my business running in case of a utility outage. I can’t complete work offline on my laptop’s battery power and then make a short visit to an Internet connection to upload it.

Backups. Very few cloud services provide for making a local backup of customers’ online data, leaving me to trust the service itself to do it. I prefer the security of having my own data backups.

Data Loss. One particular issue that I’ve experienced with cloud services is with those set to sync with other devices or services. If one of the sync locations experiences data loss, the other locations see the lost items as deleted and delete them from their storage as well. The multiple locations don’t act as a backup, because being synced makes them vulnerable to multiplying data loss that occurs at any one of the sync locations. So I have to keep data in an additional (not synced) location to have a true backup.

Service Stability. When I buy software for my computer, I have it for as long as it is compatible with my machine’s operating system. If the software’s designer goes out of business, I can continue using it. With SaaS cloud services, I am dependent on those services continuing to operate to be able to do my work. If a cloud service closes up shop, which has been known to happen literally overnight with startup companies, I can at the minimum experience work flow disruption and possibly total data loss. Even financially stable companies like Google sometimes discontinue SaaS products, forcing users to look for a replacement, and to find a way to port data between incompatible applications.

Privacy & Security. Last, but definitely not least, putting data in the cloud raises a whole host (pun intended) of security and privacy issues. It is easier to protect data that is held on a single local machine than it is to guard against breaches on a server-based cloud system. Having a public point of log-in raises the risk of security breach via compromised password, and data can also be breached in general server attacks, not even specifically targeted to your data.

Data held on someone else’s servers is also more vulnerable to being accessed legally by subpoena than data held on a local machine (which requires a search warrant to access). A cloud service usually has no reason to invest resources in fighting legal requests for data held on their service.

So for now, I’ll keep my data (or most of it) on the ground.

Do you trust the cloud?

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• VMware’s Cloudy Ambitions: Can It Repeat Hypervisor Success?
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Here are some needs virtual teams face daily:

Here is a diagram of what we’re currently using as our solutions and which issues and needs each solution addresses. The software we currently use is in orange. Yellow designates the software we are considering.

Where do we go from here?

It seems that Socialtext and GoToMeeting are the next solutions we should integrate. However, how many more SaaS products will we need to cobble together with our current infrastructure in order to meet immediate and upcoming needs as our team continues to grow? I think it’s better to go with solutions that can meet multiple technology needs. When each solution we adopt only tackles one or two functions, there seems to be no way to avoid a technology patchwork quilt. Is there even a system out there — that we just don’t know about — that can provide us with a completely integrated solution. And if so, can we afford it?

In my mind, adding Socialtext and GoToMeeting will certainly meet some immediate needs, but integrating it will take two things that go beyond me simply adopting and paying for the services:

1. We’ll need to define how the new software fits into our overall process and multiple solutions;
2. We need to somehow encourage adoption from the team.

The latter is a key problem. With all of these disparate solutions brought together to make up our tech infrastructure, we are all suffering information overload. Learning and adopting yet another app seems unbearable.

Next on our plate is a virtual PBX system that can accommodate international team members or at least some stitched together work-around to keep a PBX system affordable for a far-flung team.

What systems and software do you have in place to run your virtual team? What other issues are you facing where you still haven’t found an appropriate solution?

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• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview

But as Paisano wrote recently, current conditions won’t last forever. Many sites will eventually become fee-based; others will shut down when their funding runs out, or when their owners decide to move in a different direction.

So when I evaluate a product that I’d like to incorporate into my company’s workflow — especially a product that will be visible to clients — I try to consider the product’s feature set, along with the issues raised in Judi’s 2007 WWD post. I also ask the following questions:

• Is the product open? Like a lot of people, I prefer open source projects. But I will consider proprietary systems if I am comfortable with how my data is stored and backed up, and whether the product allows me to do my own backups.
• Does it use standard formats that are easy to import and export? If the product will interface with my existing data, I need to evaluate how much work it will be to prepare the data for use by the new product.
• Can I host the product or software myself? Because my company does web hosting, we have easy access to web servers, bandwidth and backup systems. Therefore, I tend to prefer software that we can host ourselves. Maintaining a web server isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, although most of the major hosting companies make it really easy, as long as you’re willing to keep up with security patches and so on.
• If I can’t host the software myself, how reliable and robust are the product’s servers? Of course, even major services (like Gmail) have occasional outages. Here in Seattle, a fire caused a significant outage for many web sites just a couple of weeks ago. So I need to decide how my company will deal with such outages if we adopt the software.
• How will using this product affect my bottom line? Managing any new product requires investing time and resources to install, set up, maintain and troubleshoot. Proprietary services are priced many different ways, and may require an up-front cost, plus continued license fees or service contracts. And while open source products don’t require license fees, many open source software companies offer service contracts. I need to decide whether I want to invest in such a contract, or whether I think I can rely on the user community. Whether open source or not, it’s always a good idea to look at the complexity and maturity of the product, how likely it is to need support, and how active the user base is.
• What is my exit strategy should the product no longer be available? I need to decide how I will get my data, and plan for alternatives, if the product goes away.
• How likely is it that the service provider will be available in the long run? This one’s tricky, since as a small businessperson, I’m hardly in a position to see, much less analyze, the business plans and financial statements of every producer I consider. But there is a fair amount of public information available, so I need to do what due diligence I can.

It’s never possible to plan for every contingency. I had to scramble to replace my Sunrocket VoIP service when that company ceased operation, and I still have some SyQuest backup disk cartridges somewhere for which no players are now available. But with a little common sense, it’s possible to avoid putting all of our technological eggs in one basket and becoming too dependent on any one service.

How do you evaluate what new services to include in your workflow?

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I often give advice to people who are interested in starting online businesses. One of my “pupils” (so to speak) is new to social media, but after the recent media Twitter craze, he decided that he was going to use it to promote his site because, “that’s where everyone is.” A couple of days later, he emailed me and said that he wasn’t satisfied with his results, so he decided to follow the advice he read on a blog and try Facebook instead. Again, after only a minimal increase in his traffic, he wrote to me asking, “Have you ever tried StumbleUpon?” My immediate reaction was, “Social media marketing: you’re doing it wrong.”

This problem of constantly flipping tools doesn’t just happen with social media. I’ve had several clients who’ve spent weeks obsessing about Movable Type vs. Blogger vs. Joomla, for example.

So what should you be doing instead of obsessing about the choice of tools?

Define your goals. Goals give you direction, and without them you have no measurement of success. Do you want a one-time spike in your pageviews, or do you want to slowly build your subscriber base? In the end, your tool of choice (and how you’d use it) would depend on the goals you want to accomplish.

As much as possible, choose quantifiable goals so it will be easy to determine whether they’ve been achieved or not.

Find your audience. Who do you want to reach or help with these tools? Where can you find them? Answering these questions in detail will prove to be more helpful than telling all your email contacts to Stumble your latest blog post.

Keep it simple. You shouldn’t pick a tool just because it has 500 features while the others have five. Know your needs and look for a tool with features that support those needs; nothing more, nothing less.

Stay authentic. This is especially true if you plan to use  social media tools for marketing. It’s not enough just to have a Twitter account. What’s more important is whether your tweets reflect a consistent, authentic message. It’s easy for people to detect “spammy” self-serving promotion; if you don’t have an authentic message your marketing will be ineffective.

Know when to stop. If it’s obvious that a particular tool or platform doesn’t work, no amount of force or prayer will make it work. When the results fall short of your defined goals, it’s time to either pick a new tool or rethink your strategy. What will you do if your tools don’t work out? Will you ditch them altogether or find another way to make them work?

If you have clients or colleagues who are experiencing “analysis paralysis” when it comes to tool selection, remind them that without a proper strategy, the tool won’t function as well as they expect. After all, what use is a good quality wrench in the hands of a poor mechanic?

How did you choose your tools when you were starting out as a web worker? Were you overwhelmed with the number of choices out there?

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Zoho CRM comes with all the basic CRM functions you’d expect: You can manage campaigns and leads, view reports and dashboards and manage inventory.

Getting Started

It’s best to start at CRM.zoho.com, even if you have an existing Zoho account. At first glance, the application looks overwhelming, especially if it’s the first CRM package you’ve used. Zoho has a useful Getting Started video that gives you a quick overview of the application and makes it feel less threatening.

Everything you need to access appears in the tabs at the top of the screen and the links below them. You can customize most of the reports and dashboards as well as the settings for every tab.

The first thing you’ll want to do is add a second user as an administrator so you can access more features, including adding your company’s logo.

Setup

To start with, you need to import your business contacts. This will give you some content in your CRM to work with the rest of its features. You can import contacts from whatever application you use for business contacts, in comma-separated value (.csv), Excel (.xls) or vCard (.vcf) format. A tip: Before importing the data, open the file in Excel and make sure the first row contains headings, as you’ll need to match up Zoho’s fields with your data.

If, like many web workers, you have a service-based business, it will take a little work to figure out how to set up Zoho CRM. It focuses on products and doesn’t work with hourly rates. For example, if you’re a writer creating a quote for some web content, you’ll need to treat the web content as a package and give it a flat project rate. If you charge by the hour, you can always make a note of it in the description field.

Fields, Forms and Features

Zoho CRM has a useful wiki-based Help section. Helpfully, it includes user questions and answers at the end of each page.

You’ll need to refer to that Help section every now and again, because some of Zoho CRM’s field names take some figuring out. For example, the “Create Potential” form requires filling out the “Potential Name” and “Account Name” fields. Do they both take the company name? Or a contact person’s name? It takes a little digging into the Help section and even there, it’s not clear.

Fortunately, the required fields are few. Zoho has plenty of non-required fields so you can keep track of as many details as you need. Its settings let you remove unneeded fields, but it won’t let you change field names such as “Unit Price.”

Tracking and Managing Leads

The key reason businesses invest in CRM is for tracking and managing sales leads. The Leads tab lists all the active leads for easy reviewing and updating. After creating a new lead, you can return to that lead to update its page with information including attachments, products and activity tracking. You send emails straight from the application, with a record of the sent email added automatically to the lead’s page.

If you need to track many leads, Zoho CRM keeps all the information in one place for easier management. Once a lead converts to a sale, Zoho CRM removes it from the Leads tab and moves it though the pipeline, automatically creating the account details.

Customer Support

Customer support is handled with the Cases feature, which provides tools to manage customer trouble tickets. Another useful feature is Solutions. Here you can keep track of common questions and answers. Then when a customer or a prospect has questions, and you can search Solutions to see if you or another person in your team has solved it before.

As well as being able to search within specific categories, like Solutions, an account-wide search box is always available. The search results are sorted by category.

Activities and Calendar

You can keep track of key dates using the Calendar. You can also enter tasks and activities along with due dates in Activities. However, they don’t show up on the Calendar, and they should.

Price

Zoho CRM is available in three different flavors. While most web workers should be able to get by with the free version, the Professional edition costs $12 per user per month, while the Enterprise edition costs $25 per user per month. Note that Zoho charges for some features on the free account, such as the Outlook plug-in, requests for importing all data and adding storage space.

You can see some screen shots of the application in use and see also check out the online demos. Compared to other CRM solutions, Zoho’s CRM package is affordable and easier to learn. Web workers will more than likely find most of what they need in Zoho CRM for a great price.

How do you track leads and manage client accounts?

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“The Small Business Web is a movement to bring together like-minded, customer-obsessed software companies to integrate our respective products and make life easier for small businesses,” Pamela O’Hara, CEO of BatchBlue, told me via email.

By using the APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, present in each other’s products, the participating companies hope to offer a very high level of integration between their services. This will allow each company to focus on its own core competency, while allowing for easier data portability and a better overall experience for the user.

We’ve already seen companies make use of APIs to allow for some level of integration: most time tracking applications allow for import from a Basecamp project, for example. This new initiative is seemingly taking this to a whole new level and is essentially looking to offer a suite of mix-and-match services that will work together to provide a higher level of interaction to offer the functionality you need.

The initial batch of participating companies include WebWorkerDaily favorites such as FreshBooks, Shoeboxed, Outright, MailChimp and, of course, BatchBlue, and there is a good level of integration between these products already in place.

My initial reaction to the announcement was a good one. As someone who promotes efficiency in business process, needing to do duplicate data entry in multiple systems has always been a sticky issue. The more that the tools I use interact to keep data in sync, the less time my team has to spend to do so manually.

A potential stalling point is the cost involved in this mix-and-match approach. At what point does it make sense to consider a more integrated solution rather than lumping individual products together? I can (and do) justify the cost of a couple of these services but when I start combining $10 here with $14 there across five or six different products it has the potential to become prohibitively expensive for a small business.

It will mean that we may need to reevaluate our providers to see if this interaction offers a benefit that would make switching services worthwhile. I’ve long been a proponent of the BatchBook CRM, but I recently moved my invoicing from FreshBooks to Cashboard. Do the advantages offered in this new mashup make it worth it to return to FreshBooks?

Of course, these are decisions that one must make in any case, and the increased integration does make the use of these unique services more appealing, but for a small team to spend upwards of $1,000 a year on SaaS products is a considerable investment. Perhaps a plan to discount the cost of services when you combine them could be implemented.

The initial group of participants announced is certainly a compelling assortment of applications and services. My hope is that the options will continue to grow and that it won’t be exclusionary. For this to be successful, we need to be able to choose between competing applications within a space.

I would also like to know more about what the criteria is for inclusion as a provider. Is there a baseline of functionality needed? Is there a formal process or a commitment of some sort? I am sure more info will be forthcoming. So while it is still early for this movement, I’m hopefully optimistic about the possibilities of the Small Business Web initiative. Offering nice benefits in efficiency and productivity to those of us who use web-based products is a good thing.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Yesterday, a couple of new tools were announced that made me stop and reconsider how much of that potential is actually being capitalized upon, how soon the virtual world’s appeal might broaden, and what that might mean for working on the web. The services in question are a Virtual Conference Centre and Real Time Research, joint venture projects by Second Life development vets Rivers Run Red and consulting group Futuresource.

Virtual conferencing and meetings are gaining popularity as companies look for ways to cut costs, and travel budgets are a prime target for cutting excess. I’m fine with conference calls, and they’re a necessary part of internet commuting, but I’ve yet to try a virtual world-based meeting. For me, the 3D character avatar still belongs to the province of video games, so I’m resistant to the idea of bringing business into the equation.

Perhaps that’s the point, though, when we’re talking about a virtual convention centre. Part of the appeal of attending conventions is the appeal of the socializing that goes on outside of business. And as an independent contractor, I don’t often find my travel expenses comped, so I could definitely see myself agreeing to be a guest speaker or a panel member at a Second Life convention that I would not attend in the real world. It would allow you to build your personal brand in places and to audiences you wouldn’t otherwise reach, which is always a good thing.

Real Time Research, the second service to be launched, presents a more interesting and innovative use of the Second Life world. It is intended to provide a way for companies to test and receive feedback on new products and design in real time. Second Life is a great environment for this sort of thing because it allows a wide (or selective) audience quick, easy, and reliable access to 3D product models.

This sort of real-time feedback environment could allow small firms and even independent designers to get the benefit of focus groups without the cost, which is generally prohibitive for those of us working on this end of the spectrum. The problem might be attracting users from useful demographics to give you feedback, or to take the activity seriously at all. In-world incentives could help to remedy that problem, as could services that allow Second Life users to sign up to become part of an active testing pool.

The tools may not in and of themselves necessarily represent firsts for virtual world applications, but the fact that they’re being sold to enterprise users through a third-party vendor is. It means that at least some companies are beginning to market Second Life collaboration SaaS solutions the same way many others did when Web 2.0 started really taking off.

It’s definitely an option I’ll float to clients looking for these types of tools, especially if they’re open to innovative or non-traditional approaches. My only worry is that users unfamiliar with Second Life might require a separate orientation for both the virtual world, and the tool itself, and might find the environment distracting to the task.

Would you recommend/use this kind of service for your or your client’s business? Do you currently use Second Life for web work, or can you see yourself doing so in the future? From a developer’s standpoint, what do you think about the viability of Second Life as market to sell these kinds of applications? Is there enough interest to justify the effort?

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• Report: Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise Market
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After creating your account, you’ll be sitting at the Projects list. Creating a new project is streamlined: supply a name, a rate, a client, and optionally a deadline, and you’re ready to go. Choosing a project to work on is simple, as it should be. Each project contains four tabs in a web interface: Canvases, Milestones & Tasks, Time Tracking, and Invoice.

Canvases are similar to wiki pages or writeboard – a place where you can keep relatively unstructured information. You can insert notes, lists, pictures, files, or code snippets and move them around. Canvases can also be shared, either publicly or with a password – a good way to get some information where your clients can see it.

The Milestone & Tasks tab provides a simple checklist of what remains to be done, and ties into the Time Tracking tab by having timers for each task. You can also enter time directly. When you’re done, you can generate an invoice in PDF format with a single click (or customize it by adding additional line items).

Focusing explicitly on the single-user case lets Burden Butcher dispose of a lot of complexity; you won’t find user management here or security beyond password-protecting canvases. This should leave them free to concentrate on adding more features just for freelancers. So far, it’s a good start, and you can get a trial account (3 projects, 25MB storage) for free. Other accounts, adding more projects and storage, range from $12 to $48 per month.

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The new features incorporate elements of social networks into DeskAway’s project management and collaboration architecture. Specifically, what used to be the “Services” link now brings you to the “My Account” page where you can update your profile, associate a profile photo with your account, and provide a brief bio or mini-CV for team members to look over.

Your profile photo will be visible to all project team members, and will appear next to your comments in discussions, which is a nice touch when you’re working with relative strangers scattered in diverse geographic locations and there’s not much opportunity for face-to-face interaction.

There’s also a status update feature, like on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. that allows you to notify team members of your current activity/progress. Useful if you need to instantly communicate with a group of others about work package status updates, but don’t want to interrupt them with an obtrusive email or message.

DeskAway promises more to come, as well, including RSS status update subscriptions and more. Of course, in a project management framework, the key to successfully implementing social networking features will be knowing when to stop, which is probably why DeskAway is doing a gradual, multi-staged release, rather than a single overhaul.

The new features are available now for both free and paid plans. Let us know if you think they add value to DeskAway’s existing services.

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While I applaud them for the added functionality, I think the limitations they have placed on their use in some of their plans are a bit restrictive. For example, those on a standard $24/month 6 user Small Business plan only get the ability to track 5 open deals. It is true that only active deals count towards that figure, but 5 deals in a sales pipeline for a 6 user team isn’t likely to be sufficient. Want more? Pro and Plus plans give you unlimited Deals but start at double the monthly fee.

I certainly understand the tiered pricing model of web services but I don’t see the point of introducing such useful new functionality and then so severely limiting its usage. I do hope they reconsider and up that number so that even those with the mid-level accounts can benefit from them.

How do you track your deals?

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