Srcasm

I recently started at my new company, CRM manager, LLC based in Malvern.  So far (yeah, its only been two weeks) I’m more excited about a job than I have been in a long time.  Besides being excited for the fact that the people who work there are genuine, smart and driven, I’m excited about the work we do.  I’m a Senior Consultant (I’m not a fan of titles) and this is what I do (I am a fan of this):

I connect products of the the Software as a Service (SaaS) world, monthly recurring, awesome products to the traditional systems that exist in most businesses today.  Tools like Salesforce.com and Google Apps can provide huge value to companies both small and large by providing a secure, low-cost and expandable system that can help a group go from spending a large portion of their time keeping their systems online to a group that can grow their business the way it should be — Without the hassles of hardware maintenance and Windows patching.

Why am I so excited about working in this world?  There are three major reasons in my mind to go SaaS:

• Saving money — This is what every business wants to hear and in the SaaS world it’s true.  By using software as a service products, you no longer spend money on server hardware, HVAC, redundant networking and internal IT staff to keep those servers online.  This is a win-win for both the SaaS provider and the business that’s using it.
• Saving time — Money isn’t everything.  With SaaS solutions, companies can save time by reorganizing their resources.  No longer does every system need an IT guy.  Now one IT guy can support a multitude of systems since they’re no longer on premises.  In addition, the SaaS provider should have the resources and know-how to fix their systems when they have issues.
• Going Green — This reason can be easily overlooked but it’s important in today’s world.  We are very quickly depleting our natural resources and killing our world.  I’m not a green-nut, I don’t preach about how we should all walk 4 miles to work, uphill both ways, but I am a fan of doing things that make sense.  Combining the first two reasons I listed with this one means that companies not only save money and time but they save the planet as well.

So why am I so excited to be working in the job I am?  This one is easy.  I get to take my knowledge from working in the traditional IT world with large data centers, redundant networks, late-night cut-overs and endless patches and combine it with my passion for the cloud/web world.  I get to connect these traditional systems (SAP, Oracle, Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange) together with the SaaS products of today (Google, Passpack, Salesforce) and provide a solution that everyone can be happy with.  That in turn makes me excited to do my job.

What do you think of the SaaS world?  Is it the future of IT?  Can it help to fix the environment?  Can it provide more up time in your business and more bang for your buck?

I believe that most of you know that I’m working for Passpack now as a community/technology evangelist and one of the most difficult things to get used to is the time zone difference.  The entire Passpack team is located in Rome, Italy which means that they are generally around 6-7 hours ahead of me on the east coast of the US.  This makes for some interesting conversations with me half asleep and they’re on their 5th or 6th cups of coffee.  The second hardest thing to get used to are the methods and tools used to collaborate. 

Of course we have a project management tool and we can now securely share information between our team but it’s very different from sitting down at a conference room table with a hot cup-o-joe and a pen and paper.  We use tools like Skype to chat while online and Google Reader and alerts to make sure that we are following all of the latest news and trends in the web world but I’m curious to ask some of you how you collaborate with your international teams.  What tools help to aid in feeling more connected with the other side of the world?  How do you improve your processes (especially with the time zone difference) while working remotely or even presenting to the group?

I know one tool I have found very valuable is a service called EQO.  Besides having a fantastic domain (who wouldn’t want a three letter domain?) they provide a solid product.  I can put a little bit of money into my account and whenever I need to reach my friends and colleagues in Italy, I simply click on their name (since EQO can import your phone’s address book, it’s easy) and it connects me for a very low cost per minute.  For instance, to call the office in Italy, it’s only 2.3 cents per minute.  Compare that to AT&T which would run me $1.49 per minute!  In addition, their application runs on a huge number of cell phone including Blackberry and and Windows Mobile devices.

I’ve decided to combine EQO with Skype to provide me two very inexpensive solutions to contacting the people that I need to talk to no matter where I am.  I for one hope that people and companies continue to innovate and create solutions that aid in remote and international collaboration.  It’s how our world should work, as one.

I chose my new design for the site and I’m very happy with it.  It took a bit of poking, prodding and modifications but it now looks fine in IE, Firefox and Safari/Chrome and I owe all the thanks to you, the readers.  I’m constantly amazed at how quickly the internet moves — and they’re quality movements.  Within only a few minutes of posting to my blog and sending out a tweet on Twitter, I got response, after response, after response.  I didn’t need to put together a grand ‘ol survey and get a legal department involved in what I can and can’t ask you.  I simply put my thoughts down to virtual pen and paper and voila, a masterpiece (or at least a new blog design) was chosen in mere minutes.

Today we’ve got some of the fastest communication methods available to us.  One-to-one conversations via cell phone or IM are great for individual conversations, and one-to-many conversations can be held on messages boards and FriendFeed to share with the world.  I think it’s great that we can communicate at the speed of light but there is a loss of privacy that comes with the advantage of speed.  That’s why there are companies today that are providing new methods of communicating that also cover privacy and security.

Sites like OtherInbox let you stay anonymous (and cut down on spam) behind the mask you call an email address and tools like PGP allow for encrypted communications between parties that need to keep their secrets, secret.  One of the largest challenges that all of these services will have to overcome is speed.  It takes a bit of setup to get PGP running properly and for OtherInbox, you need to go through all of your accounts and change your email address to an OtherInbox address.  These are barriers to entry that these organizations and others are successfully breaking through.  OtherInbox is working on a way to change your email addresses automatically and companies like Passpack are taking public-private keys and making the process of sending secure messages simple.

All of these organizations have a lot of work ahead of them but they’re all well on their way to making security just as important as speed.

I have some pretty awesome news to share with all of you, my faithful readers.  As of now, I’m working for Passpack, the secure, online, password manager that I’ve been talking about for almost two years!  This is starting out as part-time community/product/technology evangelism and educator for both Passpack and online identity protection.  No one wants to wind up like Sarah Palin and her Yahoo account, right?  That’s what I’m going to do — I’m going to to help you to protect yourself (and your digital self) both online and off — and we’ll do it in style.

To start off, I’ll be helping Passpack and their awesome team ramp up their blog and education strategies.  We’ll try to teach people how to choose stronger passwords, better security answers (for password resets) and safeguard all of their important data.  We’ll try to help answer any questions you might have about how Passpack (or any other password manager) works and educate you on the ways that people get comprimised online.  Once we get some of those things in order, we’ll move on to helping to spread the Passpack, secure messaging and shared host-proof hosting love around the world.

Now, I have one simple request from you.  Let me know how I can help you.  Whether it’s with Passpack or online security, I want to lend a helping hand.  If you’re not sure on something that I’ve talked about, let me know.  If you have an idea of how to make Passpack or online identity protection better, I want to hear it.  Not so hard, right?  Go ahead and ask away and remember, as my 3rd grade teacher always told me, there’s no such thing as a stupid question.

Passpack rolled out with a great new feature…  Now everyone with a Twitter (or FriendFeed) account can log right into Passpack in under 25 seconds!  (Check out the nifty 24 second screen cast.)  How awesome is that?  Today seems like a great day to start securing your online accounts with stronger, longer and better passwords with Passpack’s help.