
Amazon, Microsoft and Google: The Cloud Leading Trio
Following several discussions with fellow bloggers and industry executives, I found it quite fitting that the natural cloud leaders are the top software and web giants: Google, Microsoft and Amazon. While Amazon’s AWS is The public cloud today Google recently reported that it is doubling its office space near Seattle, just miles from the campuses of Amazon and Microsoft, […]

Dropbox Listens to the Criticism–Starts to Mature Corporate Product
I’ve been a harsh critic of Dropbox in the past – mostly because I feel they lack maturity – both as a company and as a product – and this lack of maturity is a real risk for enterprise customers using their product. It seems Dropbox has been listening to the criticism that myself and […]

IBM SmartCloud Docs Enters The Market But Does It Still Matter?
Last month IBM released SmartCloud Docs (formerly called IBM Lotuslive Symphony) at a pricing competitive to other offerings in the market like Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365. It is free for existing SmartCloud Advanced customers and $3 per user per month for SmartCloud Standard customers. It is based on Apache OpenOffice and offers solid […]

Google Docs updates spell check lets pray they do not query Facebook users
If you have ever read Failbook over at the wonderful I Can Haz Cheezeburger site then you will see a collection of grammar disasters as well as some unique spelling ideas for common words we use every day. While the Google Docs team is very proud of enhancing their spell check to incorporate new words […]

Office Applications, Cloud Office Applications: An Open Letter
Alright, there are a dozen office suites out there that sit in various places on one’s computer, in the cloud, can do X, Y, and Z and the list goes on. However, I don’t want to talk about any of those suites. I want to talk about the suite we all want, the suite that […]

Using the Cloud for personal productivity with Evernote
I’ve just made a significant switch in one of the main tools I use for my own personal productivity which highlights a key trend for the industry and all of us – the personal cloud. Whether it is for work or our personal lives we use desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, media players and tablets […]

Google Apps Security Tool from BetterCloud
One of the key issues for organizations moving to Google for office productivity applications is the ability to enforce policy on end users around sharing outside of the organization. This issue is a good example of the tension that exists between keeping an offering as simple as possible, and ensuring

On Google Drive, and Core Focus, and Dropbox
News today (admittedly for the umpteenth time in the last few years) that Google looks likely to finally roll out its cloud storage product, G Drive. According to the WSJ; Drive allows people to store photos, documents and videos on Google’s servers so that they could be accessible from any

Syncplicity moves to Document Lifecycle and Workflow
I use a bunch of document and file synchronization, backup and collaboration tools. From SugarSync to Box.net, from Dropbox to Syncplicity I’ve pretty much used, and currently use, them all. One of the things that interests me from a business strategy perspective, is how companies that primarily sit in the backup and synchronization space manage […]

Battle in the Clouds: Intelligence on Google Apps
Google Apps is used by more than 40 million people and signs up 5,000 new businesses every day according to numbers recently cited by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. But what do all those millions of people actually use Google Apps for, and how heavily do they use it? At Spanning we have a unique view into […]

Microsoft Sky Drive now worth checking out
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Windows Live Microsoft Word Document UX vs. Google Docs UX
Before even getting to the point of writing a document, there are very distinct user experiences (UX). I have my own preferences, but I am very curious what others think. When somebody decides to create a new Microsoft Word Document in the Windows Live Site on their Skydrive they’re presented with this interface. Windows Live […]