UNIT IV
CLOUD COMPUTING
FOR CORPORATES
Cloud Computing
for the
Corporation
• Earlier adopters of cloud computing.
• Companies large and small recognize the cost savings and productivity
enhancements of using web-based tools
• to manage projects, collaborate on documents
and presentations,
• manage enterprise wide contacts and schedules, and the like.
• Managing Schedules
• Managing Contact Lists
• Managing Projects
• Collaborating on Reports
• Collaborating on Marketing Materials
• Collaborating on Expense Reports
• Collaborating on Budgets
• Collaborating on Financial Statements
• Collaborating on Presentations
• Presenting on the Road
• Accessing Documents on the Road
Managing Schedules
• what a hassle it is to schedule even simple meetings?
• One person is free on Tuesday at 9:00
• but another is out of the office
• you’re not even sure which meeting room is free at that time
• better way is web-based scheduling
• Everyone places his or her schedule in the cloud
• cloud-based app finds the best time for all involved and schedules the
meeting.
• it all happens automatically, in the cloud.
• how it works?
• punch in the details of the meeting and the desired attendees
• the app might have to pick a timeslot when the maximum number of
people can attend.
• Web-based scheduling programs let you schedule both
• in-person meetings and teleconferences with attendees from multiple
locations.
simple web-based calendar programs
• Google Calendar (calendar.google.com)
• and Yahoo! Calendar (calendar.yahoo.com)
For more advanced automatic scheduling features
• need to use an industrial strength scheduling application
• AppointmentQuest(www.appointmentquest.com),
• hitAppoint(www.hitappoint.com),
• Schedulebook(www.schedulebook.com).
• expect to pay anywhere from $20 to $200 subscription fees per month.
Managing Contact Lists
• Salespeople have to deal with lots and lots of contacts.
need to know
• when to contact certain clients,
• when follow-up calls are necessary,
• what the boss needs them to do today,
• Solution: of course, is a web-based contact management
• or customer resource management (CRM) application.
• These programs are tailored to the needs of a busy salesperson and
come complete with features such as
• Activity scheduling, appointment reminders, email templates, and the
like.
• BigContacts (www.bigcontacts.com),
• Highrise (www.highrisehq.com), and
• the market leading Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com).
• Many of these apps include additional functions of use to large sales
departments, including
• expense account management,
• sales activity reports,
• various team management features.
• You might want to customize the program so that you’re automatically
flagged each day with a list of accounts to contact (and for what
purposes).
• Some communication can even be automated, via the use of scheduled
emails.
• You can even click a link to view driving directions and a map to the first
client you need to visit.
This is possible with the products mentioned earlier…
Managing Projects
• project that involves
multiple employees from multiple departments and perhaps
multiple locations
• this type have tons of individual pieces and parts, each of which dependent
on the completion of a previous task.
• Keeping track of all the individual tasks—who’s doing what and when—can
take a gargantuan /huge effort
In a web-based project management
• Project members can log in from any location to access the project’s master
file;
• they can add or delete tasks, mark tasks as complete, enter detailed billing
information for individual tasks
• every team member sees the same Gantt or
PERT chart and the same list of tasks
• features may include group to-do lists, web-based file sharing, message
boards, time and cost tracking..
• make sure they’re not doing one thing twice...
•AceProject (www.aceproject.com),
•Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com),
•onProject (www.onproject.com), and
•Project Insight
(www.projectinsight.com).
COLLABORATING ON REPORTS
• When you work for a larger enterprise, chances to
write a lot of reports and these days, the reports you
write are often in collaboration with one or more
other employees.
• For example, you may need to put together a
monthly progress report that includes input from the
company’s
– marketing,
– sales, and
– finance departments.
• Instead of emailing Microsoft Word documents across
the company and maintain multiple copies ,opt a
web-based word processing program, such as
– Google Docs (docs.google.com) or
– Zoho Writer (writer.zoho.com).
• With one of these applications, everyone contributing to the
report can access the same master document, online and in
real time.
• When someone from one department adds his section to the
document, all the other staffers immediately see the update.
• Most online word processing applications let you embed photos
and other graphics;
• you may also be able to include spreadsheet files as part of the
master document.
• The result is a quality document that reflects the true
collaborative nature of the project.
COLLABORATION ON MARKET
MATERIALS
• Marketing is another area that benefits from cloud-
enabled collaboration
Putting together a catalog requires data
from several different departments.
• When it comes to creating marketing materials,
perhaps the best approach is to use a combination
of web-based applications.
• The marketing materials themselves can be created
using web-based word processing applications. This
puts the draft materials on the web, for
everyone on the team (including appropriate
senior management) to see, comment on, and
even contribute to.
COLLABORATION ON EXPENSE REPORTS
• It’s not too difficult to create an expense report using
your favorite spreadsheet software, but that isn’t always
the best way to go.
• The paper or electronic report must then wend/proceed its way
through your company’s various levels of approval: your boss,
your boss’ boss, the accounting department, the HR
department, and….
• A better solution for many companies is to put the expense
reporting function on the web.
• Employees from any location can access the website to enter
their expenses; it can even be accessed while employees are
still traveling, with no need to wait for reimbursement
until they get home.
Then the web-based expense report gets electronically circulated to
everyone who needs to approve it or, more likely, a link to the web-
based report is emailed instead.
No costly paper trail is generated, no documents spend days waiting
in someone’s inbox, and the entire process is expedited which means
employees get reimbursed faster.
Another benefit of web-based expense management is that you can
quickly and easily ensure that all employees follow your company’s
rules and regulations.
Some of the most popular enterprise-level web-based expense
reporting applications include
Concur (www.concur.com),
ExpensAble(www.expensable.com),
ExpensePoint(www.expensepoint.com),
TimeConsultant (www.timeconsultant.com).
COLLABORATION ON BUDGETS
• Every department is involved, with managers required to submit
complete department budgets that are then rolled up by the
finance department into a complete company budget.
• Traditionally, each department works on its own budget
spreadsheet, which is then emailed to the finance
department for consolidation with those of other
departments.
• Instead of working on separate spreadsheets that are later
consolidated, you can use a web-based application to create a
single budget document for all departments on the web.
• This type of online budgeting can be accomplished with a simple
web-based spreadsheet, such as
• Google Spreadsheets (spreadsheets.google.com) or with a
dedicated enterprise-level budgeting application, such as
• HostBudget(www.hostanalytics.com/budgeting-planning-
software.html).
COLLABORATION ON FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
Assembling a monthly or year-end profit-and-loss statement or income
statement is like a budget it requires input from all departments, but it
measures what actually happened rather than making a projection.
Instead of waiting for each department to mail or email its results, the
entire process is accelerated when each department enters its data
directly into a master spreadsheet.
Although you could use a web-based spreadsheet program, such as Google
Spreadsheets, for this task, a better approach might be to invest in a
web-based accounting program.
Host Consolidator (www.hostanalytics.com/ consolidation-
reporting.html) bills itself as a web-based financial consolidation,
analysis, and reporting application.
COLLABORATION ON PRESENTATIONS
Every company today sees more than its fair share of PowerPoint
presentations.
. Want to introduce a new product to the sales force?
• Want to discuss HR hiring trends?
• Want to present last month’s financials to senior management?
The problem with producing a large presentation is that you often need
input from more than one person, department, or office.
If you’re presenting to your sales force, you might need to assemble
product information from multiple divisions.
If you’re giving an HR presentation, you may require input from the
managers of all of your company’s physical locations.
cloud computing makes collaborating on presentations a whole lot easier. By
creating a single presentation document, you don’t have to worry about
consolidating information from multiple documents.
because that document is located in the cloud, any contributor can edit
directly into the master document from any web browser; the project
leader controls the look and feel of the presentation by applying a
universal style or theme.
The most-used web-based presentation program today is Google
Presentations, part of the Google Docs suite (docs.google.com).
This application includes
• Preezo(www.preezo.com)
• Zoho Show (show.zoho.com).
PRESENTING ON THE ROAD
Here’s an added benefit in presenting from the cloud: You
can give your presentation anywhere without taking it with
you.
when you get to your destination, connect your notebook to
the Internet, open your web-based presentation, and give that
presentation in real time to your local audience.
You can use any computer at the host location to access and
launch your presentation.
ACCESSING DOCUMENTS ON THE ROAD
While we’re talking about using web-based applications on the road,
remember that any application or document housed in the cloud is
accessible from wherever you may be.
All you need is a computer (and it doesn’t even have to be your computer)
and Internet access.
Log in to the appropriate site, enter your username and password, and then
open whatever document you need.
It’s the same document you worked on back in the office, so you don’t have
to worry about remembering to synchronize files between computers.
This is one of the great things about cloud computing; it
doesn’t matter where you are.
