Administer Your Small Server Remotely
Ever wanted complete computer remote control from anywhere in the world? Even though we¡¯re not yet at the point where we can simply adjust our home¡¯s thermostat or initiate a robotic cat feeding from across the globe, some basic computer remote control tasks can be handled by today¡¯s systems. If you have a PC at home that¡¯s acting as a server for a small website or as an FTP server for some important data, you¡¯ll really want to be able to control that computer from anywhere in the world should it be attacked by a worm or should one of the services go offline. Investing in a system such as AccessDesk or pcAnywhere can save you a lot of hassle for those eventualities.
Remote Quickbooks
Sitting in a hotel room, alone, on a business trip, and want to go over your finances but don¡¯t have your QuickBooks file on you? If you had remote desktop software installed and your home or office PC containing the QuickBooks documents were online, you could actually do you remote QuickBooks work!
In general, remote desktop software can be used to run any application on a remote computer that has the appropriate software installed and can receive remote desktop sharing connections. However, WebEx has put together a solution specifically for QuickBooks that allows you to easily do remote finance and accounting from anywhere in the world.
For more information, check out:
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/commerce/catalog/product.jhtml?prodId=prod0000000000007975030
Mobile Workers Save Office Space
Are you wasting a lot of office space on workers doing data entry? With internet and computers in most homes, you could make your employees happy and save money on office space by ¡°outsourcing¡± work to people¡¯s home offices and requiring them to come in only a couple times a week to touch base. To properly support these remote workers, you must provide them with remote data entry technology and probably setup a VPN for your company¡¯s computing assets if one is not already in place. Both of these things can be done relatively cheaply, especially compared to the cost of paying rent on space in which to put a few, unnecessary desks with workers who don¡¯t really need to be any particular place to do their jobs.
Have Your Systems Take Care of Themselves
Spending too much time in your mass IT deployment environment doing software updates? Well, ManageSoft ¡°dynamic software management solutions transform computers into self-managing devices that dynamically self-update, self-optimize, and self-heal,¡± according to their website.
Thought not a be-all-end-all solution for all configurations, their software handles most standard software installation scenarios very well and could potentially reduce your IT costs dramatically.
Desktop Sharing for Demonstration Purposes
Do you want to run a demonstration on a computer, give a presentation, or simply show a colleague how to do something but are in a different state, country, or even continent? Using desktop sharing software, you can. Desktop sharing has become a standard method of online collaboration within the computer industry as it allows teams that are geographically separated to give online demos to each other, but the technique has yet to be taken advantage of in the mainstream. To get a feel for how desktop sharing works, there are free programs available, such as logmein and TightVNC, and for a pretty modest price your organization can get a more state-of-the-art remote desktop control manager that not only allows basic desktop sharing for demonstration purposes, but also allows your helpdesk to remotely control an employee¡¯s computer that needs some fixing up.