Improving Collaboration with the Cloud

Years ago, managing projects consisted of executives overseeing a group of teammates working together to achieve a common goal—a new innovation or improved process. Not anymore!

Now, project management is very much a social system. According to Mattias Hallstrom, author at The Guardian, the social approach to running companies, process and projects are here to stay. And just what is powering these social applications of management? You won’t have to look much farther than the highly popular cloud hosting.

Social project management has revolutionized the way businesses view the most efficient ways to run a project. Incorporating the cloud into this management strategy can boost communication and collaboration to dramatic levels.

For a project to witness long-term success, the influence lies within the people behind it. Applying this train of thought and combining it with web-based collaboration tools increase the potential for success tenfold.

Your team can move its project management process into the cloud by utilizing cloud-based email, storage, and other useful collaboration applications. When all of this information is accessible in the cloud, transparency is established. Without transparency, trust between teammates is compromised, and the ultimate project goal becomes ambiguous.

Sales Demonstrations, Presentations & Collaborations

Ascending cloud & sales urgency

In case you haven’t heard, the cloud keeps ascending. In January, TJ McCue of Forbes reported that American businesses were likely to spend $13 billion on the technology in 2014, including managed hosting packages for cloud servers. He cites an IBM infographic that gives five reasons the cloud has become so commonplace:

1. file-sharing and collaborative potential
2. real-time analytics from anywhere
3. better efficiency and output
4. greater affordability
5. faster development.

The speed of the cloud is unprecedented, generally faster than a supercomputer. Your power and reliability are further enhanced with SSDs (solid-state drives). Many people say that a major component of successful sales is the creation of a sense of urgency. With the power of almost limitless speed in your hands, you can better create urgency by being able to move incredibly fast yourself.

Sales apps real-world scenario

The below interaction is based on messages between one of our hosting consultants and a client. The client is a current customer of our Windows Cloud server plans interested in an additional system to optimize sales demos and related applications.

Consultant:

Welcome to Atlantic.Net. Would you please tell us about your hosting needs?

Client:

I’m working with a software company that has consultants in various locations in the US.  We already have a Windows Server cloud on Atlantic.Net, which we use for sales demos and testing.  We have a couple of software packages that need to be installed in individual environments.  Currently, I have them on a local ESXi server, but I would like to transfer them to a hosted environment where I can pass control to whoever is performing a demo.

I tried installing Hyper-V and VMware, but neither works in that environment.

Do you have a solution where we can host an ESXi server or equivalent so we can manage different environments? Secondly, this can be used as a collaboration tool.

Consultant:

Yes. One of the core technologies we use is VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0. Also, our private cloud hosting is unmanaged (unless you choose to add managed hosting to your package). We don’t dictate what you do with the server other than following the basic ground rules within our AUP (acceptable use policy).

Other than that, basically, you spin up the server and use it any way you like.

You can even set it up so that your staff in the field can update their sales or other information remotely from their mobile devices.

By improving collaboration through the incorporation of cloud hosting, employees will feel more motivated to immerse themselves deeper within projects, ultimately creating new and more effective ways to be creative. Atlantic.Net also offers VPS hosting services.  See our VPS hosting pricing.