Working on the Webtop

Installing Office applications on your notebook PC is no longer necessary, thanks to web-based software that enables you to work anywhere that has an Internet connection.

The dominance of Microsoft Office is global. Every office worker on the planet uses one or more of these applications every day. The good news is that you can duplicate these apps online and carry on working without worrying if the PC you're using has these programs and can open your files. Google has taken the webtop by storm and now offers a group of applications that are ideal for the mobile worker.

GMail has now been joined by Google Docs for word processing and spreadsheet crunching. And don't forget Google Calendar to keep track of your appointments. These applications may not have all the bells and whistles of the Microsoft versions, but ask yourself when you last used any complex formatting commands, or actually needed to generate a pivot table from your spreadsheet on your last business trip.

Webtop working

Moving your productivity applications away from your PCs desktop and onto the Internet has significant advantages: You don't have to worry about upgrading software as the latest version is just available the next time you log on. You can access your work from any PC located across the world that has a connection to the Internet. Working in this virtual environment frees you from chores such as data backup as this is completed for you.

Working on the webtop opens a whole world of possibilities not least of which is collaboration with colleagues on a global scale. Services such as ThinkFree and Microsoft's Office Live Workspace illustrate how the web is now an environment for all your office activities.

From 37 Signals is a suite of applications that have collaboration at their heart. Basecamp, Writeboard, Backpackit, and Ta-da List all offer the business traveller the chance to work efficiently online with colleagues that can be geographically remote. The power of the webtop allows this kind of productivity with nothing more than a standard business PC and a broadband connection to the Internet.

Web 2.0 platforms are also being applied to the humble Office application as they move online and embrace the Web 2.0 paradigm. Innovative spreadsheet applications such as Zoho Sheet and Buzzword for online word processing are just the tip of the iceberg.

Adobe has also enhanced their online services. These include Buzzword that they purchased, but also includes: ConnectNow an online whiteboard-like application, Share that enables you to store documents online that colleagues can be given access to, MyFiles that is essentially a document organizer and storage space, and of course, you can create PDFs on the fly from any of the documents you have created or saved.

Business in the cloud

Hand-in-hand with Office applications increasingly moving online is the development of what is often referred to as cloud computing. Businesses are now outsourcing many of their IT services and buying only the technology they need, when they need it.

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allows businesses to run traditional server deployments on a hosted 'cloud' system. Customers pay for the service on a sliding scale according to the amount of server resources used. "When we launched Amazon EC2 over two years ago, the idea of accessing computing power over the web was still a novel idea," said EC2 general manager Peter De Santis. "We've listened closely to our customers for the past two years and worked backward from their requirements, adding important new features such as those we are announcing today."

The Azure Services Platform (Azure) is an Internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers that provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Microsoft also offers cloud applications ready for customers such as Windows Live, Microsoft Dynamics, and other Microsoft Online Services for business such as Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

What these developments mean for the business traveller is that cloud computing enables them to access services and resources that their business has set up from any location. Couple this access with powerful online applications and you suddenly have a business environment that is completely hosted online.

Your next business trip will mean taking your notebook PC, but how you use that machine is rapidly changing. Instead of being a desktop to access Office applications, check email, create documents and store files; increasingly your PC is just becoming a host for your favourite Internet browser that will be all you need to work efficiently no matter your physical location.

Perhaps this is the key to the webtop that has the familiarity of the PC desktop but the versatility of the Internet. Together they can form a powerful working paradigm that many business travellers could use to cut costs and give them an edge over their competitors.

For the humble road warrior these tools together can offer an almost desktop-like experience. It's just a case of weaning yourself off the idea of a notebook PC being the center of your world, and swapping this for an Internet browser that could be on any computer or device located anywhere in the world. Once you free your mind from these constraints, working on the webtop becomes a revelation.