Law Students

Link: Ericsson predicts demise of hotspots | InfoWorld | News | 2008-03-10 | By Mikael Rickn?s, IDG News Service. Ok, here is where the rubber meets the road. I am in the process of launching a "digital business" of sorts and considering all the usual options for telephony, collaboration suites (including email), front office & back office functionality and other similar "startup issues." Much of the advice that I have pointed to in recent posts is therefore both timely and relevant, personally.

This startup will be have multiple locations from day one, and therefore computing logistics are more complicated, or at least they would have been in the old universe. I have found everything I need on the cloud, competitively priced and from vendors that are proven and around for the long haul.  I considered some "old school" functionality, because some of the offerings I was looking at were arguably more "mature" in this space.

But, I quickly punted on this idea. I want everything (and I mean everything) available on the cloud, accessible anywhere/anytime there is an available internet connection, and as the link above implies, that will soon be everywhere that I happen to be with a laptop or a phone. If I want to add an employee/partner in California, Alaska, Paris, or Argentina, I simply plug them into the existing infrastructure and give them a virtual extension from my VOIP provider, and bingo, they are on board.

I assume that they have a PC, a cell phone and the ability to connect. I don't provide any of that. They are required to use the tools that they already own, sure we will be happy to expense cell phone minutes where the VOIP line is not tactically feasible, but that is the exception rather than the rule. I don't care what their favorite device or OS is. Want to use a Mac, or Linux, that is completely up to you. Want to use a Blackberry, a Treo, or an iPhone--knock yourself out.

I am confident that this is the right way to go? 100%! Will there be some bumps in the road? You bet. But they will be surmountable. The cloud is the future and is only going to get better, and better. The ability to scale the infrastructure, for a fraction of what it would have cost in the old universe, is enough to convince me that this is the only way to go. I want to leverage enabling technologies, but I do not want to manage the speeds, feeds, wires and the rest of what goes along with it. I have been there and done that, and for me that game is over!