Shared Spaces Briefing, Aug 11
Given the time difference between New Zealand (where Michael is) and British Columbia (where I am) I often get Michael's postings a tad late for me to explore all the interesting news he finds. Case in point, the OpenText FirstClass update. I worked with LiveLink for a year or so and thought it was pretty cool. It had a lot of potential then (that was nearly five years ago now), some of the biggest hurdles were just browser/OS limitations and bandwidth (LiveLink over dialup could be excruciating). So I'm anxious to check it out tomorrow.
I did take a look at HyperOffice, though. At first I thought it was the web-based office suite that is powering a few cities and one state. That's SimDesk. HyperOffice is more like Outlook with some collaborative features built in. I have to say from the screen shots if you're used to Outlook, HyperOffice would be pretty easy. For one user, it's about $6/month. Not bad. One problem. It's all web-based. Unless you already have Outlook, you don't (it appears) to have a local copy. So, how do you write an e-mail on the plane? What if your Internet connection goes South for some reason? Sure, with better and better bandwidth web-based applications are becoming easy to use. The rich-text editors common in many blogging platforms is a pretty good example that's close to home. But to have something as important as all your e-mail and contacts only online that just doesn't work for me. Granted, having, ostensibly, a nice safe, regular backup of your files is better than most folks get. But what if the whole company goes South with all your files? Even the network backup services haven't been 100% reliable in the past. So what about a company that is going to have all your e-mail, contacts, tasks, calendar, and shared documents? No argument from me that Exchange and SharePoint should come with a label like “batteries not included” saying “IT administrator, not included”, but before you completely hand away the keys think about the “what ifs”
I think these are serious questions to ask when thinking about this kind of hosted service.
Shared Spaces Research & Consulting: Shared Spaces Briefing, Aug 11
Today's highlights: HyperOffice; Exchange 5.5 Hole Patched; Notes and Domino 5 End of Service Date; AIM Flaw Fixed; Riverbed White Paper on Exchange's Chatty Protocol; FirstClass 8.0;
