Email in the Cloud

A few weeks ago I wrote about using cloud-based backups.

(Just to bring you up to speed: cloud-based services are tools that run via the Internet on a server hosted by somebody else like Google or DropBox)

Today we'll be looking at another very important tool that we should consider moving into the cloud: email.

Now some people may be a little confused about that. After all, email is part of the Internet right? Doesn't that mean it's already in the cloud?

Well yes, kind of, but not always.

If you're using your company email account, odds are it's not cloud-based. Most medium to large companies keep their own email server which runs on their local IT network. If you pop down and visit the boys in IT, they could probably show you the email server. When you access your work email from inside your office, you're probably accessing it over the local network, not the Internet.

Your email server probably looks like this

There are some good reasons for doing it this way, mostly so that your email server (which is probably running Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino or something similar) can talk directly to the other servers on your network and exchange information with them freely.

If you use the email account your Internet service provider (ISP) gave you, that's not quite cloud-based either. Their email server will likely sit in a server room with all their other various servers. When you connect to that server, you're doing it through your service provider's network, not technically through the Internet.

In both these cases if you've set up your laptop or smartphone to connect to that email account, that connection will generally happen over the Internet, so I suppose you could say that they're cloud-based in a way, but that's not really the kind of thing we're talking about here.

So What Are We Talking About?

If you've been on the Internet for a while, in that time you've probably come across (and maybe even used) two services: Hotmail and Gmail. They are the leading cloud-based email providers. In both cases you can only connect to these services via the Internet, and therefore the cloud.

But Why Would I Want That?

One thing you've probably noticed with your work or ISP email service is that there tends to be a fair amount of down-time. It may go down for hours, even days at a time during which you're stuck without email. The reason for that is that your company or ISP has a relatively small staff of engineers and technicians, and they're tasked with keeping an eye on a bunch of different servers at the same time. Not only that, but they often can't afford "fail-over" servers (backup servers that take over immediately if the main server goes down). So when there's a problem, you usually have to wait for those techies to fix it, which will sometimes take a while.

Proper cloud-based mail providers aren't limited by that. Gmail and Hotmail have colossal server farms dedicated to nothing but provide their email service. If one server, or even one whole datacentre, goes down, there are others that pick up the slack and keep providing the service with little or no interruption to you.

The redundancy these guys use is so robust that it takes a pretty rare and severe problem to cause any real interruption of the service. These things do happen, but not often. In 2010 Gmail recorded an average of 7 minutes' down time per month. Just to give you an idea, that's 46 times more reliable than your average Microsoft Exchange server.

Cloud Storage

As is the case with cloud-based backup tools, cloud-based email stores all of your old emails on their server, which means you can access it from any computer. And since Hotmail and Gmail offer you quite a lot of storage space, you can keep a much longer history of emails than you could with your corporate or ISP email account. So much so that you will probably never have to delete an email (Gmail didn't even have a delete function at first... they only introduced it later because the users really wanted it).

Gmail in particular puts that extra server capacity to work in a number of ways for you, one of which is the ability to send much larger attachments than with other services. You can now send attachments up to 25MB in size via Gmail (for context, your average Word document is less than 1MB).

But I Like Outlook!

If you've been using Microsoft Outlook or some equivalent email application for a long time, you've probably grown accustomed to it. Although the web interfaces for Gmail and Hotmail are quite intuitive, some people just don't like having to change to a new application to do the same old thing.

Fortunately both Gmail and Hotmail allow you to connect up to your Outlook or other email clients, so you can use your email the way you've always done it and still be working in the cloud! Of course there are limitations - you'll still need to log into the Gmail or Hotmail website to search your archives for very old messages, but you probably won't need to do that often anyway.

(Connecting your Gmail or Hotmail to Outlook can be a bit tricky. Although there are helpful guides on how to do it, you might want to ask your local IT-savvy person to help you with it.)

But I Have Too Many Email Accounts!

If you've been online for a while, odds are you've accumulated quite a few different email accounts over the years, many of which you might still be using. One of the advantages of an application like Microsoft Outlook is that it lets you plug in a number of separate email accounts into one application.

Fortunately Gmail lets you do the same thing. Gmail has connectors that let you link up to your Yahoo Mail account, and both Gmail and Hotmail have a built-in POP3 client (POP3 is an email protocol that's supported by most email servers) that let you pull your various different email accounts into your Gmail or Hotmail Inbox and archive. Unfortunately they don't yet support Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino email accounts - for those you'll still need to use your corporate software.

But I Use Email on my Smartphone!

Gmail for Android

No problem. Most smartphones will allow you to connect multiple email accounts just like Outlook does, so you can use Gmail or Hotmail alongside your work email account on the same device.

In addition, most smartphones also have Gmail and Hotmail apps available that allow you to send and receive emails, as well as search your vast archive right on your mobile device.

So How Much Does All This Cost?

Nothing. That's right, it's free. You "pay" for the service by looking at the ads on the page, but you don't even have to buy anything.

Both Hotmail and Gmail have corporate equivalents that allow you to have your whole company, school or other organisation using cloud-based email instead of a local server - and those generally aren't free. But they are competitively priced, and worth considering if your company has had trouble keeping its local email server up.

Keeping the Lines Open

Although it seems that the telephone isn't generally the optimal communication medium to use, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that most people aren't yet aware of that fact. As a result, many, if not most, businesses still need to make themselves available to clients over the phone.

In medium-sized businesses where most workers are equipped with a telephone on their desk, the temptation is to use that phone not only for dealing with customers, but for internal communications as well. That's probably fine, from a cost point of view, as calling from one desk to another behind the same exchange usually doesn't cost anything.

The problem lies in the fact that, in most cases, that phone can only handle one call at a time. If one of your sales people happens to be calling a helpdesk agent to arrange a meeting, for the duration of that call, any customer calling in will be unable to reach either one of them, which defeats the purpose of having the phone to begin with.

The same is true of companies that have field agents who traditionally use their cellphones to communicate with each other and the head office. The more they need to do that, the less reachable they are to customers and prospective customers.

In a previous post, I've covered the fact that sometimes a phone call is necessary. But what about when it isn't? What tool should be used for intra-office communication that leaves the phone lines open?

Email is an option, but it's often too slow and cumbersome for a quick message exchange. SMS costs too much. The logical alternative is Instant Messaging.

For the uninitiated, Instant Messaging (IM) is a tool that allows users to communicate directly with each other via a text-based interface through a computer or smartphone. The IM application will usually be able to broadcast the user's availability (as in: Logged In, Away or Busy) which can indicate whether it would be best to use IM or some other means of reaching the person.

Odds are, many of your staff are probably already using IM between themselves, but in order to ensure a certain level of standardisation, you may want to consider formalising a policy around it, and declaring an official IM tool for everyone to use.

As with most things in technology, there are a variety of IM tools to choose from, each with its own strengths and limitations. I'll look at a few of the more popular ones.

Skype

You've probably heard of Skype as the tool used by families and friends to stay in touch over long distances via video chat. But Skype is more than just a video chat application, it's also a voice and text chat tool supporting some interesting extras like ad-hoc online meeting rooms and calling out to ordinary phones.

Wikimedia

Skype is probably the best known of the IM clients, and as a result is already pretty ubiquitous. There are Skype applications that run on all popular desktop computer operating systems, as well as most of the more popular smartphones.

The basic service is free, and the software is relatively easy to install across all your company's computers.

Google Talk

If your company runs its email hosting through Google Apps, you already have a Google Talk feature available to you (although it may need to be activated by your Domain Administrator).

Wikimedia

Google Talk has all the same features as Skype with one important exception: it's not strictly necessary to install a Google Talk application on a computer in order to use it. Google Talk can work inside your Internet browser window when you log into your Google Mail page. It also interfaces with your existing Google Contacts and allows you to launch chat conversations with those contacts even from inside an email.

Like Skype, there are Google Talk applications available for most platforms (if you feel it necessary to install one), but unlike Skype, Google Talk is built on an "open" standard called Jabber/XMPP. This means that any third-party application developer may create an application that will allow you to use Google Talk through it. So for those platforms that don't already have a native application available (such as Nokia Symbian phones), there are third-party ones that work just as well (such as Fring).

Microsoft Lync

If your company uses Microsoft Exchange for email, you should already have access to Microsoft Lync (or its predecessor, Microsoft Windows Messenger). It may need to be installed by your Domain Administrator.

Lync is the corporate version of the popular Windows Live Messenger (sometimes still referred to as "MSN Messenger").

Wikemedia

Lync supports most of the same features included in Skype and Google Talk, but with one important difference. Lync can be set up to run on your own internal server. Where Skype and Google Talk both require access to the Internet to work, Lync doesn't need it. If Internet access is limited or otherwise restricted for your company, you may prefer to go with a locally hosted alternative.

The down-side of this, of course, is that your remote workers and field agents would find it more difficult to log into Lync from their smartphones or home offices.

IBM Lotus SameTime

SameTime is IBM's answer to Microsoft Lync, and works in a very similar way. If your company uses Lotus Notes for email, you probably already have access to SameTime.

Ed Brill

Of the services listed, SameTime is probably the least supported IM service by software platform providers. Although SameTime comes built into Lotus Notes for Windows, Mac or Linux, connecting to SameTime from a smartphone can be very difficult or even impossible.

These are merely the tip of the iceberg. Other popular IM tools include AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ and Facebook Chat as well as a plethora of less popular services geared at a variety of different uses. If one of the big names mentioned above don't suit your purposes, there are plenty more to choose from.

Having tried all the ones I've listed here, my personal recommendation goes to Google Talk. I find it to have the most pleasant and consistently good user experience, and it's integration into all my other Google services makes it a pleasure to use. If I were to offer one criticism of Google Talk, it would be that there is currently no one Google Talk application that supports all the features. The desktop client supports a different array of features to the Gmail client, which is different to the web gadget and so on. Hopefully Google will release a new, comprehensive version in the near future.

Put Down the Phone: 4 Steps to Choosing a Better Communication Medium

By Takkk [CC-BY-SA-3.0]

For decades now, arguably the single most valuable and powerful business tool has been the telephone. Thanks to the telephone's speed, high fidelity and relatively low cost it has become virtually indispensable as a communication medium.

But in the 21st century, is the telephone still as relevant as it once was? Should it still be the default communication tool for business, to the exclusion of all else?

I argue that it isn't, and it shouldn't.

That's not to say the telephone doesn't still have it's place, but it seems that that place is no longer at the top of the podium. Other tools like email, Instant Messaging and SMS are often a superior choice.

But how do we determine which medium we should use for the given message?

There are four factors to take into account:


1. Speed: 

How fast do you need to get your message across? How soon do you need an answer? It may be quick and easy to pick up a phone and call someone for a quick answer, but is it really necessary? Do you really need an answer so urgently that you risk intruding on the time of the person you're calling? Is it worth interrupting a meeting or disturbing a concentrating worker?

If you can wait a few minutes for an answer, perhaps a better option would be an SMS or an Instant Message. If you don't need an answer for a few hours, an email, a tweet or a Facebook message might be more suitable.

Especially given the ubiquity of cellphones, the telephone call remains unrivaled when it comes to speed. The ability to exchange ideas in a quick-fire exchange has tremendous value under the right circumstances. But faster isn't always better.

2. Fidelity:

Does it matter how much of the message makes it through? Is it short and easy or long and detailed?

Communicating by voice (be it on the phone or in a meeting) is most efficient when the message itself is concise and clear. A brief discussion providing updates on a topic both participants already understand well would be a good example of this. In this case, if portions of the message are lost due to poor audio quality or loss of signal, the impact is low as the receiver already understands the context of the message, and likely only needs to hear a few key words in order to make sense of it.

However, when conveying messages that need to be delivered in full, voice communication is seldom the best choice. This could be things like long numbers, detailed descriptions, unfamiliar terminology or proper names - things that the receiver would need to understand completely, and may even need to refer back to later.

In this sort of situation, text-based communication would be the logical choice. Providing the information in text form allows the receiver to interact with it as needed, which may include being able to copy and paste it into another system.

When it comes to fidelity, the telephone comes out at the bottom of the pile.

3. Cost

It's a valuable exercise in and of itself to try and save on costs, but is it worth it to invest a little more to get an urgent message out?

Most of the alternative communication media I've mentioned above have a cost of zero or near zero: email, Insant Messaging, Facebook messaging, Twitter... these are all Internet-based technologies that cost only as much as it takes to send the actual bits and bytes via the Internet... in other words, effectively zero.

Contrast this with a telephone call which is often billed by the second. A cost comparison between an Instant Message conversation and a telephone call used to convey the same information will often reveal that the phone call cost several orders of magnitude more.

Now, as mentioned above, the telephone call is the fastest tool available. That being the case, there may well be occasions when the extra expense is justified in order to get the quick response. But how often is that really the case?

4. Persistence

Arguably the biggest failing of the telephone conversation is that, under normal circumstances, once the call has ended, there is no record of the content of that call other than in the respective brains of the participants. Human memory as a storage medium may be adequate under certain circumstances, but when it comes to detailed knowledge or sensitive information, it's simply not good enough.

One solution is to record telephone conversations for later reference, but this often has legal implications, and probably shouldn't be entered into lightly. Another popular solution is "following up" the phone call with an email containing the details of what was discussed.

Here's the question I've yet to hear a good answer to: if you're going to send an email after the phone call anyway, why not just save everybody the time and money, skip the phone call and just send the email? Is it really necessary to have a voice conversation first? Really?

Written communication media are generally easy to refer back to, easy to back-up and easy to redistribute. No need to remember what the conversation entailed if it's possible to refer back to the original text, and no need for "broken telephone" when passing it on to others.

In short, the telephone still has value, but that value is limited only to certain circumstances. Before making that call, think through the four criteria listed above, and ask yourself if the phone really is the best option. You'll probably find that it isn't.