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Mobile Wireless Workforce: Take your office with you!
 By
George Bardissi, President of Bardissi Enterprises
Technology has grown exponentially in the last few years
especially in the area of wireless mobility and being able
to take your office resources with you on the road. What is
meant by taking your office resources with you? A few things
come to mind such as e-mail, calendaring, To-Do checklist,
documents and forms, financial software. Basically the sky
is the limit and it composes anything and everything that an
employee, executive or business owner can do and must do in
an office environment. Now the office can travel with you
allowing you to do it all on the road if you want to! Now of
course the next question is how much is this going to cost
me? Well the only real way to answer that question is to see
what technology fits your specific job needs and what
options you need to utilize that will best assist you in
accomplishing your job requirements.
The first type of mobility I want to touch on is remote
connection to your office computer. The current Windows XP
operating system has built-in remote access to the Windows
Professional Edition. This same remote access, with some new
features and functionality is also a part of a portion of
the Windows Vista operating system which is the next
generation of Microsoft operating systems that will be
released to the public on Jan 30th, 2007. When
set up correctly, remote desktop connection allows you to
access both your home or work computer from any other
computer with internet access and the address of your system
combined with your username and password. Remote connection technology
affords you the ability to actually see you’re desktop and
work on it as if you were sitting in front of your computer
back at the office or your home. You can open documents,
print documents remotely, access e-mail, etc... There are
alternative remote solutions to the Windows Remote Desktop
Connection such as PC Anywhere by Symantec, Gotomypc.com,
Webex, and numerous others. It should be clearly understood
that they vary in price and usage based on what you are
trying to accomplish.
One thing to note is that
Windows Remote Desktop Connection is free. However it does
take some setup time and depending on where you work may or
may not be blocked by some networks for security reasons.
The second type of
wireless mobility is moving over to wireless solutions. When
I say wireless I am not talking about the wireless routers
or access points in your homes or offices, rather I am
talking about cellular wireless. As many people have already
found out, there are several cell phones, on the market,
that are basically mini computers which run Windows Mobile
which is an operating system for cell phones allowing them
to have internet access. Some cell phone names that come to
mind are the Motorola Q with Verizon Wireless, the Blackjack with Cingular Wireless, and of course the Blackberry
phones which do not run Windows software but instead run the
Blackberry software. In my opinion I would take a Windows
Mobile phone over a Blackberry phone. Why you ask? Microsoft
has this little thing they like to call compatibility.
Anything and everything Microsoft makes, pretty much
integrates or talks to each other.
I am not saying that Blackberry
phones don’t work or work well, but in my opinion the
Windows Mobile phones work better if you are used to and
work well with Microsoft products such as Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, and of course Outlook. If you purchase a Windows
Mobile phone with a data plan you can synchronize your phone
with your office system. That means you can access all of
your e-mail, contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes. That’s
right; anything you have in your Outlook software can be on
your phone and with you all the times. Furthermore, if you are
running a server at your office or business and run
Microsoft Exchange, which comes with all Windows Small
Business Servers, you can get REAL TIME
updates on your phone. What do I mean by real time? As an
e-mail gets sent to you it will show up in your Outlook, at
the office and your phone at the same time simultaneously.
Also,
contacts, tasks, and calendar events synchronize live!
Talk about productivity moving up a notch!
Instead of waiting to go back to
the office you can deal with your e-mail on the road! One
note, when purchasing a smart phone or PDA phone most
providers will make you purchase a data plan. A data plan is
an additional expense over and on top of your regular voice
plan and minutes. Data plans range anywhere from $14.99 to
$49.99 a month per phone.
The third type of
wireless mobility again deals with wireless cellular
solutions. The major cellular providers such as Verizon,
Cingular, Sprint and others depending on your area, provide
wireless broadband cards. These cards can be installed in
most laptops like the regular wireless 802.11 b/g cards you
use at home to connect wireless. When you have a wireless
broadband card you are on the internet anywhere, anytime, as
long as you have a cell phone signal of course! This
functionality along with a Remote Desktop Solution gives you
access to your work computer all the time. You can prepare
invoices, access reports, documents and e-mail. In short,
you have the works while you are on the road or out of the
office. Again, just like smart phones and PDA phones, you
need to purchase a data plan for your wireless broadband
card. These Data plans range anywhere from $59.99 to $99.99
a month per broadband card.
As you can see, the
previously outlined mobile solutions are very exciting and
can boost productivity and save you a lot of time. Being
able to get work done anywhere at anytime really gives you
the ability to get and stay a step ahead. If one does not at
least consider these options, given the intense level of
competition in the business and social arenas, you can
really fall behind the competition, if they can get to
there data faster and quicker than you. It may be a small
price up front but the ability to excel in time efficiency,
work quality and productivity will out weight the cost of
your new wireless technology and data plan. Not to mention
the fact that being able to access and utilize information
from anywhere is just down right fun!! Take a look and see
what makes sense for you. If you are interested in a demo of
wireless technology and how it would work for you contact
us!
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