When you die, will someone need to know your online passwords?

Here's an interesting, if slightly morbid thought. When you die, what happens to all the 'stuff' you keep in The Cloud, assuming you are a user of such services as Google Docs/Drive, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Picasa etc? Clearly the services will carry on without you, but there's a pretty strong likelihood that your family will have to untangle all sorts of things within your social networks, may want or need access to some of your online assets (what about domain name registrations and the like?), and could possibly want to remove some things from the internet.

How will they do this without passwords? I can imagine a long drawn out process of having to contact every single service provider, supply death certificates and the like.

So there are a couple of ways around this. I could write down all my passwords and put them in a sealed envelope which I give to my lawyer (or some other trusted individual) for safekeeping. But then I can never change my passwords, or if I do I need to open the envelope and write them down again.

Then there is a service called LegacyLocker, who for a one time fee of US$299 (or $29 a year) will store passwords (and anything else you want them to), only releasing them to named beneficiaries on proof of your death.

Another option would be to put all of your passwords in a file which you encrypt using a strong encryption key, and then store the file somewhere publicly accessible online. You could then just put a URL and the encryption key in your sealed envelope, so this is a kind of halfway house.

Food for thought at any rate, especially if you have the plethora of online services and passwords that I have, and take sensible precautions to keep your passwords secret.

Go Easy, Cloud

If you've read my book (come on there must be a few of you out there!), you'll know that I talk a fair bit about some of the myriad of bits of web based open source software that are out there that businesses could use at very low cost. There is CRM software like SugarCRM and vTiger, all sorts of content management systems (not just Joomla/Wordpress/Drupal), eLearning from the likes of Drupal, asset management, project management, issue tracking, internet telephony, the list goes on.

But the problem is that unless you have the skill set to set up and maintain your own web server (and let's face it most people don't), these can be quite hard to get using.

Enter Texas hosting company CloutHost, who tweeted me a couple of weeks ago about their new cloud offering, EasyCloud. Their service is based on a simple principle. They have a bunch (something like 70) of standard templates for a lot of the more popular free and open source web applications. So all you have to do is click a button and it's all set up for you at a pretty competitive fee ($25 a month for a small business option).

So, it looks like a pretty good option if you want some of this functionality without paying hefty management fees, although I do think the average non-techie business person might need a little hand holding to pick a product and do the initial setup.

Mobile Web Apps

Nuvola has been doing some interesting work recently with mobile web applications, and thought I'd share some of the benefits we're helping our clients see from this approach.

Firstly, I'm talking here about business software rather than mobile websites aimed at consumers, although mobile websites are certainly a growth area which I'll be blogging about in the near future no doubt. But this article is about how to use mobile web applications to enable field staff to keep up to date, and most importantly keep the rest of the business up to date on what they are doing.

Today, we launched version 2 of a mobile web application for our long standing client, AzteQ Solutions. AzteQ does IT maintenance and installation, one of whose largest customers provides point of sale services to retailers - they subcontract their installation and maintenance to AzteQ.

Previously, Nuvola had built a solution where engineers received and accepted job details by SMS, but the new mobile app takes things one step further. It provides full features to accept and close jobs, and to log movements of stock. Basically it puts the full power of AzteQ's job management system literally in the hands of engineers in the field - I guess it's pretty obvious how beneficial that can be in terms of operational efficiency.

But the really interesting thing about this is that because it is a web application, it really doesn't matter what sort of smartphone the engineer has, and there is no installation or maintenance of the device necessary - just a URL. It has all the security measures in place for a traditional web app, and it can also be used easily by subcontractors without having to supply them with expensive equipment. We used the jQuery Mobile framework to build it, which gives you the easy look and feel of an iPhone or Android app, but as a set of web pages that are a natural part of their existing system.

For me, this really is the way forward in terms of mobile development. But of course the one drawback is that it only works if you have an internet connection, and this is why the other mobile web app we're working on is really exciting. It will allow engineers for another field service business to take readings when they're in plant rooms and the like with no mobile coverage, and then sync them back to a main server where anything out of the ordinary can automatically be flagged back to the customer. All from just a URL sent to their smartphones.

With some mobile field service systems selling at well over £1000 per handset (and that's before you've bought software and services), it's great that there is now a real way of bringing some of this functionality within the reach of the smaller business.

Salesforce wants to be Facebook

I was at a client yesterday who happens to use Salesforce.com as their CRM software, when I heard one of the sales team who had just returned from maternity leave exclaim 'Salesforce wants to be Facebook!'. This was followed by grumbles of agreement from her colleagues.
She was referring to the fact that the pioneer of Cloud software now invites you to connect with other users and to share things, in the same way as Facebook, LinkedIn et al do.
It got me thinking that this is an interesting trend where everyone and everything wants to copy the social networking model. Indeed, it's a tribute to the success of these sites when something as 90s as a CRM system (albeit one that came along in the 2000s and shook up the established players) is copying their features.
So is this just a large dose of 'me too' from Salesforce, or do these social features really add something? The additions are certainly treated with a healthy dose of cynicism by their users (a quick and highly unscientific straw poll of friends who use Salesforce drew similar sighs of derision).
Yet, one of the biggest problems with implementing CRM systems has always been getting salespeople to enter data into them, which can then be shared with others in the business to positive effect. I would argue that since social networking is now one of the main ways in which people are used to sharing stuff, applying the same principles should make it easier to share business information with colleagues.
It all sounds great in theory, but will it really work in practice? Well, there are already (and have been for a while) project collaboration tools (e.g. Huddle, Basecamp) that look not a million miles from social networking. And the trend in database back ends at the moment is towards less structured, flexible designs which can store information in different formats, and lend themselves more to the data streams of social networking than traditional records and child records.
So I wouldn't be hugely surprised if the next big enterprise software product looks more like LinkedIn than it does SAP. But what's more likely is that other CRM and project management products will integrate themselves much more with social networking tools and the lines between them all will become increasingly blurred

Client portals and collaboration

I was recently sent a link to this article on the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accounts in England & Wales) website, about how accountants should be offering portals to their clients. The key point is that rather than emailing highly sensitive documents back and forth (which is not very secure), accountants should allow clients to download them from their web portal, and upload signed versions and other required documents.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I have used Dropbox in the past to share things with my accountant because I worry about using email for that sort of thing. But a portal would potentially offer a lot more functionality. This of course applies to any business which shares data with their clients, not just accountants.

In fact, this ties in rather nicely with some collaboration and project management software which we're trialling with a couple of customers at the moment, and plan to roll out as a full service offering this side of Christmas. The software in question is FengOffice, a powerful piece of open source software, which we'll be offering in conjunction with our UK-based specialist hosting partner, Dudobi. It'll run on servers in Dudobi's secure data centre so there are no data protection issues with the location of our customers' confidential business information, which can be a problem with cloud-based offerings.

The great thing about FengOffice is that while it acts as a great web-based collaborative workspace, it's also a lot more than that. It can be used as a CRM system, for tracking professional time, or just for capturing all information about a client or project in one place.

This is not yet a finalised offering, but I'm very interested in hearing from any businesses who like the idea and would like to test it out.

==Update==
We are now a reseller for FengOffice and are able offer help in setting you up on their full hosted platform.

Cloud Phones!

Had a great meeting this morning with Andy Moore from Pink Connect, who provide a full range of telephony and broadband services to businesses, and it got me thinking about how phones can be run 'in the cloud' just as much as software can.

Traditionally, if you're a small business wanting to get a professional telephony solution, you'd probably invest in an expensive phone system and as many physical phone lines as you needed. The availability of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology, combined with increasingly reliable broadband connections (in towns at least, have a chat to Andy if you're in a rural area with rubbish or non-existent broadband), now mean that you can get a very powerful hosted phone system at a very reasonable price.

The idea is familiar to anyone who's used Skype - your computer turns your voice into a stream of ones and zeroes which are sent across the internet and decoded by the software at the other end. The difference with a hosted phone system is that you have a proper phone on your desk (although computer-based 'softphones' are also an option), which connects over your broadband connection to the VoIP server 'in the cloud'. Your call is then routed via the normal phone network, and as far as you're concerned you just pick up the phone and dial as normal.

Apart from the cost, the great thing about this kind of cloud service is that it is very flexible: you can set up phones to ring in a certain order, forward to your mobile or to a different voicemail box depending on the time of day, and your voicemail can be sent to your email, from which it can even be pulled into your CRM system (where potentially the date and time of all calls could be logged under the contact). And if you move offices (or want to work from home), you just plug your phones into your network.

It's all a bit of an improvement on having to contact BT and wait a few days just to make a tiny change to your phone service....

Office 365 and Google Docs

Microsoft has just announced that its Office 365 service has left its beta test version and is now fully available as a paid service. The Redmond giant was clearly inspired to do this by threats to its core Office business from Google Docs and Google Apps, so how does it compare with its Californian competitor?

Well, at first glance there doesn't seem to be that much between them. Both offer full email along with word processing, spreadsheets and presentations through any web browser, and both offer powerful collaboration features. Being based on the well established Sharepoint platform, Microsoft offers a deep integration with their desktop office software. Google on then other hand has a wealth of third party systems which integrate with it. You can sync contacts and email with your mobile from either - Microsoft's is probably slightly better, but unless you have a Windows phone you'll have more options for mobile access to your documents with Google.

Office 365 starts at £4/month, more than Google Apps at £33/year, and Google Docs and Mail are free if you don't need the enterprise features.

So Microsoft is clearly putting a serious contender out there for cloud services. For me, Google’s open platform which means there are lots of third party apps which integrate with it still gives it the edge. However for businesses who are dependent on Microsoft Outlook and the rest of the Office suite and don’t wish to make a massive cultural shift, Office 365 is a great way of getting some of the power of the cloud without having to change or risk too much.

Standing on the shoulders of giants - why I love PHP development

Anyone who knows me might have heard me talk about the benefits of open source software, but it is something that, if you're not technical, often goes over people's heads. I wanted to use a specific example to demonstrate why the open source principle is so good.

I'm doing some work at the moment for Nuvola's long standing client, AzteQ Solutions Ltd, to expand on the inventory management extensions we've already built to their job and management system. Specifically, they need to print physical pick and packing notes for their warehouse operatives, one of which they will carry around the warehouse while they pick the job, and the other which will be attached to the package when it gets shipped. They wanted automation in this - pick jobs should just appear on the printer, rather than the warehouse staff having to go to a computer and print them. The pick and packing notes should also be saved as PDFs.

Having a remotely hosted web application do this presented a bit of a problem, until I came across internet printing protocol (IPP), which basically uses the same technology that my browser will use to publish this article to send a job to a printer over the internet.

Being a good PHP developer (that's the programming language we use), I immediately Googled 'PHP IPP' and quickly found that someone had already built a nice library of code which would handle all of the printer connection and job for me. There's also a similar library which I've used before to create PDFs from web pages.

So here's the beauty of open source. Rather than spending days having to get to grips with creating PDF documents automatically, and then more days working out how to send stuff to a printer over the internet, I was able to write about 4 lines of very simple code (open connection, set file to print, send print job) to do each function. Someone else had done all the hard work!

Easy life for a lazy programmer then, I hear you say! Well, possibly, but the way in which open source works tends to go something like this: Somebody has a need to do something a bit out of the ordinary on a particular project. They write some code to do it and that code works well. Then, when they have time, they sanitise the code a bit so it can be used by anyone, and publish it so that everyone can benefit. Why do they do this? Because they've had the benefit of re-using other people's work themselves in the past, and want to give something back. Everyone (including clients and end users) benefits in terms of shorter development times, simplified testing and reduced costs. As I said, standing on the shoulders of giants.

So, when do I plan to give something back? Well, Nuvola's framework does contain quite a lot of nice, reusable libraries and bits of code. Some of it is rather woven into the fabric of the framework itself and so difficult to package in a way that someone could just take it and plug it into their own project, but other parts are much more 'detachable' and certainly candidates for being shared. Watch this space - I'll be publishing some of those libraries in the coming months.

What is Open Source software and why do people make it?

There seem to be some misconceptions around open source software. People outside of the IT industry really don't understand it, not understanding why anyone would give software away for free, and how it can be as good as commercially driven software.

So, let's first look at what open source software actually is. All software is written in some form of programming language - there are many of them around with different strengths and weaknesses. Some examples are C, Java, PHP, VisualBasic and C++. A programming language allows the programmer to perform relatively complex operations (calculating dates, for example) with a single line of code, rather than writing every single instruction that the computer's processor needs to perform.

The programming language is then either compiled in one go into instructions which the processor can perform directly (machine code), to create an executable program file, or interpreted into machine code by an interpreter program 'at runtime', i.e. when a user wants to run the program.

In either case, we talk about source code, which is the programming language code in which the program was written. This is what the 'source' in 'open source' refers to.

Traditional, commercial software is generally 'closed source', in other words only the vendor (and possibly specific associates and customers who have signed a non-disclosure agreement) can see the source code, and therefore change the functionality of the software. These companies (and Microsoft is the biggest example) see their shareholder value as the intellectual property they hold in the source code of their software.

With open source software, the source code of the software is available to anyone who wants it. They can then use it to modify the software in any way they choose, providing they themselves make their changes available to the public at large.

To the average user, this may seem a pretty useless privilege - how many people are really going to reprogram the operating system on their home PC? Well, not many, but the point is that some will. And that is they key advantage open source has - there will always be enthusiasts around who will fix bugs and improve things, and the openness tends to encourage good programming practices which lead to stable, secure software.

Some open source projects are structured around just these kind of enthusiasts. These community based projects generally have no commercial element, just a wide spread of developers making things! A good example is the Drupal web content management system (CMS). A lot of the functionality available is delivered by add-in modules, which have generally been built by people when they needed to do something the software didn't already do - they've then shared their work with the wider community.

However, it is possible to make money with open source, and the way to do this is generally from the services around the software you have developed. A good example of this is Red Hat, who are one of the largest providers of the Linux operating system. They have two separate distributions of their product. Fedora Linux is the community version - it is updated often and has input from community developers. By contrast, Red Hat Enterprise Linux incorporates changes from about every third Fedora release (form maximum stability) and is only available to paying customers in its compiled, easily installable form. Of course, the source code of the enterprise edition is freely available and organisations such as CentOS have used it to create a system which you can install straight from a disc. MySQL has been built on a very similar model to Red Hat.

It's also possible to make money from open source software which other people have built. For example, anyone with a basic knowledge of web hosting can download and install Drupal onto a standard package from a standard hosting provider, and use it to create a site which can be edited by users within their organisation. The same goes for the MediaWiki software which powers Wikipedia. But if you become an expert in Drupal, for example, you can then sell your services as a Drupal implementation specialist. You then have a big advantage over someone with their own commercially-developed CMS because you do not need to charge a hefty licence fee (which can run into thousands of pounds per user) for the software - you just charge for design and implementation time, which the commercial vendor would also need to do.

And if you are a specialist in a package like Drupal, it then makes commercial sense for you to publish your modifications back to the community, allowing others to build on them so you have an improved version next time.

Hopefully this has given you an insight into what this open source thing is, why people are motivated to build it, and why it's at least as stable and secure as its commercial equivalent.

Thanks for reading!
James Geldart - nuvola - better business through technology