He said something that struck me as odd because it seemed to fly in the face of experience.

His view was that there is a big question mark hanging over tablets – iPads and their Android equivalents – and this is: What are they actually for?

He took the view that they are really nothing more than a luxury, without the portability of a smart phone, or the capabilities of a good notebook. Tablets are nice, but they’re just not especially useful.

Instinctively, I know he’s wrong and that tablets in business are both here to stay and that they ARE useful. But it got me thinking – exactly why are tablets so popular with businesses and what uses do businesses actually have for them?

Here are nine answers…..

1      Arm your retail staff with tablets.

If you run a shop and you have an online presence, what better way of capturing a sale even when you don’t have a physical product in stock on your premises, than offering to order it online for a customer then and there. So easily done with a tablet.

2      Meetings.

To me, there’s little more irritating than people in meetings immersing themselves behind notebooks – their heads literally half hidden behind the propped up screen.

The tablet is so much more discreet and convenient and nicely bridges the gap between the unobtrusiveness of paper with the ability to share documents, images and applications easily when it’s useful to do so.

3      Warehouses and other places where you need fast, readable and easy-to-access information.

The tablet is great for use in a warehouse where people need simple access to information and messages. In these environment a tiny phone screen is just annoying and a notebook is impractical.  The simplicity of swiping a tablet is ideal.

4      The paperless office – at last?

Well, perhaps not paperless, at least not just yet. But many things that require paper are worth trying on a tablet instead.  Obviously, just replacing paper with a tablet does not make the tablet especially ‘must have’. What makes the difference is that ‘paper content’ can be brought to life on a tablet by adding interactive elements.   This means re-considering content to take advantage of the tablet format – adding links that offer additional information would be just the start.

5      Offering tablets in hospitality.

Let your customers browse, check emails or tweet in the bar, in the hotel reception or in a lounge waiting area. This is increasingly common in the US and I can see it happening increasingly in the UK.

6    Great for displaying the details behind big-ticket items.

The richness of the information that can be presented on a tablet has obvious advantages when it comes to retailing more complex, big-ticket products – like cars, for example. That’s why Mercedes have said all their dealerships in the UK will be issued with iPads to use to show customers the special features of the new B-class as well as apps for the C-Class coupe.

By pointing the iPads at the display model, different features can be highlighted and layered virtually over the display car.

7       Or just as a run-of-the-mill sales tool.

It doesn’t really have to be big-ticket items. The tablet is a great sales tool because it invites a potential customer to participate in a way they may well be more reluctant to do when merely talking face to face. And it’s hard for even the best-informed and animated sales person to compete with the rich graphics and text of a quality display on a tablet.

8      Wine lists and menus.

Use a tablet to dig as deep as you want for information about food or wine being served. Suggestions for matching wines with foods, information about preparation and ingredients. So much more informative than a traditional menu or, indeed, a waiter or the average sommelier.

9     Super portability.

Here the tablet bridges the gap between notebook and smartphone.  For business use on the go when you don’t want to carry around a notebook, however slim, but you need more ease of use than a smart phone offers, the tablet is ideal.

Like me you probably react in amazement when you read in the news of yet another data breach as laptops, flash drives and external drives containing unencrypted files are left on trains, buses and park benches.

Carrying personal information or confidential information around on devices such as an unencrypted memory stick is clearly unwise business behaviour. But situations sometimes arise when you need to transport files from one location to another in a secure manner. So what are the options?

Encrypted Data

If you really need to move sensitive data physically with a removable device such as a hard drive or flash drive, then you need encryption. This gives your data an extra layer of protection should the worst happen and your device containing the data goes missing.

Although it sounds simple enough, until fairly recently the process of encrypting an external device was not a straightforward process. You relied on installing third party software usually on the transport device (hard drive or flash stick) and on each computer that needed to access the device.

As with many things, the more complicated you make it, the less chance there is of it becoming common practice and it is no wonder that the news is full of stories of unencrypted devices being lost or misplaced. I am sure if encryption was straightforward, then many of these data breaches wouldn’t have occurred.

There were improvements with the release of Windows 7 and the native “BitLocker to Go”  application, however accessing the encrypted files from a non Windows 7 machine was a struggle and writing back to the encrypted device impossible from legacy operating systems.

The good news is that it seems that hardware manufacturers are stepping up their game as they have begun to realise that data security and protection is becoming a big issue for both businesses and consumers who are worried about fraud and identity theft. The result is that if you do need to transfer data on a physical device there are a number of solutions available.

External Hardware-encrypted drives

Hardware encrypted drives have been around for some time but  have mainly remained the domain of high-end laptops or business-oriented computer systems.  However this technology is now becoming more available in external drives making encryption almost plug and play.

With hardware encrypted drives, the encryption takes place on the device itself, therefore, offering a completely contained solution. This encryption, known as full disk encryption (FDE), also offers potentially better performance because it doesn’t rely on the computer’s processor in the PC to generate the encryption; instead it takes place within the unit leaving the computer’s processor free to perform its normal operations.

But the real advantage is that the encryption is invisible to the user, it does not  interfere with their normal daily operations, nor can it be turned off or bypassed. This means that once setup, the data is secure and inaccessible without the required permissions.

Fingerprint USB Drives

Flash drives are one of the biggest causes of lost data due to their small size and portability. If the worst does happen and your USB drive goes missing choosing one with built-in security could be your only saviour.

Security for USB devices normally comes in three options: encryption, biometrics or a combination of the two.

There has been a fair amount of concern about the reliability of biometric security and a number of demonstrations that fingerprints can be spoofed by taking an imprint of the authorised user’s finger.  It is for this reason that a double layer of authentication, both biometric and password protected encryption, is a more desirable choice.

While these encryption USB drives are roughly twice the price of their standard counterpart, the cost is insignificant compared to the potential damage of losing sensitive company or personal information on a lost drive.

GPS Tracked Flash Drive

Then for those that require the ultimate level of protection, you could always invest in a top of the range memory stick that can be tracked by GPS if it becomes lost or stolen.

If it cannot be recovered then there’s the option to remotely lock the data or, if it is beyond retrieval, you can use a special code to fry the device’s internal chip to obliterate all data.

While this sounds like something from a storyline of Mission Impossible, the fact is that losing data can have far reaching consequences for your business and the wise business will be the one that ensures that encryption is not just something that’s nice to have, but a necessity.

And for the convenience of portability we’ve always had to accept that we sacrifice a certain amount of reliability. Certainly that’s true compared to a rock-solid connection provided by a cable attached directly to your device. It’s a simple trade off.

Except that technological advances now mean that the trade off is no longer necessary.

No-fail WiFi has arrived courtesy of BeamFlex.  This is the first-of-its-kind, smart-antenna technology from Ruckus, a Californian company that’s making serious waves in the UK.

The makers claim more than three times the performance and range over conventional WiFi access points (known as APs or WAPs).

Translated, what this means is that the BeamFlex technology is able to pinpoint a huge number of devices and lock onto them to create superbly reliable and strong WiFi connections.

This technology really does represent a new generation in WiFi delivery.

Normal, traditional antennas radiate signals around 360 degrees; BeamFlex instead transmits directly to those devices it detects, continually looking for and learning the best route (which may not necessarily be the most direct one).

One of the benefits of this advanced technique is that it minimises the effects of noise and interference from neighbouring networks and other devices.  The difference is truly dramatic.

Of course, devices locked onto BeamFlex move, they are often mobile; but that is the essential strength of BeamFlex.  Because positional updates are carried out in terms of milliseconds – far faster than devices are moved in the real world – movement deosn’t alter the solid connection.

So, when a tablet device is rotated to change the picture, or someone walks around with a smart phone, the WiFi signal they receive is not compromised.

With conventional APs, users often find that, while a signal is not usually entirely lost, it is weakened and  quality declines.

One good analogy is that the traditional AP is like a light bulb, giving off light in all directions. But when you focus that same light bulb, as with a torch, the concentrated beam is much brighter. BeamFlex has the same effect.

So, where is this technology making in-roads?

In short, once a WiFi signal is rock solid, the possibilities for deployment become huge because that signal can be trusted and therefore used for critical tasks.

It’s being used in secure institutions in which, for example, patients wear an ankle tag that’s constantly tracked – if they approach an exit door, the door is automatically locked.

It’s also excellent for solving the business network problems associated with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and this also goes for  any large buildings, such as schools, universities and hospitals.

These days more and more medical equipment is WiFi enabled and relies on this facility – this includes such vital devices as heart monitors. No room then for any errors from dodgy connections.

And, clearly, at large expos, in which people are moving around in a highly concentrated area the potential is huge.  It’s common enough now for people to be carrying around perhaps three devices: a notebook, tablet and smart phone, all constantly sending out signals searching for APs. Sorting these signals and locking onto them is a gargantuan task.

Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea Councils have even launched a free WifFi service for the public project using Ruckus technology.

This is an amazing resource, no longer restricting free WiFi to, for example, big chain coffee shops, but instead turning hundreds of public areas into a potential workplace and communications hub. Revolutionary stuff!

The issue of rock steady WiFi amid massive and increasingly dense background noise is going to become vitally important – for businesses, educational institutions, public places and expos – and dozens of other spaces.  The potential offered by products such as those produced by Ruckus is genuinely exciting.

If you want to discover more about this amazing system, check out these videos  or talk to us at Cleverboxes.com

1. United Conferencing

If you outsource work or have satellite offices, then at some point you will probably need to get a number of people together on a conference call.

Unless you have a sophisticated phone system that can handle many callers, then you’ll need to use a third-party conference service. And there are many “Free” conference services available. By “Free” I mean conference services where all participants pay a national or a special call rate to access the service. From a UK landline this will cost around five to six pence a minute for each of the participants on the call.

However, if you access such services through your mobile phone, a few pence a minute can quickly turn into an almost premium rate call. This is because mobile phone networks often exclude numbers such as 0845 and 0844 from your mobile’s monthly call tariff.

Calling an 0844 number on most mobile networks will set you back 40p per minute – so an hour-long conference call will rack up a whopping £24 charge.

Worse still, some mobile tariffs charge 76p a minute, which will make a serious dent in any business’s budget.

The solution is simple: don’t use your mobile phone. But for many business owners, being tied to a landline may not be a viable option. In fact, many small business may not even have a landline, choosing instead to be completely mobile or opt for a VoIP solution.

This is where United Conferencing comes in. They state they are the only free conference call service in the United Kingdom to use a normal landline access number.

As you call a London number – 020 3347 7777 – it costs exactly the same as calling any other landline in the UK and is therefore included in your monthly allocation of mobile minutes.

There is no signup needed and you are not required to register, just create a six digit access code, give it to all the participants and call the number.

One to add to your bookmarks and speed dial – http://www.unitedconferencing.com/

2. Transfer Big Files at WeTransfer.com

Sending a large file, such as a product brochure to the printers, video files or a high-res image, may not be possible through your corporate email system if it is over a few megs. This could be due to limits imposed by your network administrator or through limits set by your email provider.

An alternative option is to set up an ftp account and upload the file to your server and give the recipient a download link. Fine if you have spare server capacity and just need to send files; but it will mean giving access to your server to a third party if you want to receive files.

A third option would be to burn the content to disk and go down the traditional “through the post route”. Not exactly the quickest solution.

But if a file is under 2GB, then there is a free solution out there called WeTransfer, and one that I recommend.

WeTransfer is a file transferring service that allows you to easily transfer files up to 2GBs over the internet. The great thing about this service is that there is no need to register, just simply securely upload your file to the website, type in your email address and the destination email address and hit transfer.

The file is uploaded to the WeTransfer servers and the intended recipient will get an email telling them where they can download the file. Once the download has been completed, you’ll get a confirmation email.

The uploaded file is automatically deleted from the WeTransfer server after two weeks.

Simple.

One definitely for to add to your favourite bookmarks – www.wetransfer.com

3. Get Freelancers for A Fiver

Fiverr.com puts you in contact with freelancers all over the world who will do jobs for just $5 – hence the name fiverr.

fiverr allows anyone to showcase their skills in an online marketplace. Freelancers simply upload what they are prepared to do for a $5 and create what is called a Gig.

Buyers can search Gigs, review a freelancer’s profile and hire them to do the Gig for the $5.

And there are a lot of Gigs to choose from – 600,000 at last count, so the chances are there’s someone out there who can help you out.

So why is this a good tool for businesses?

Well there is no denying that there are a lot of fun Gigs out there on fivver.com. From freelancers who will record an Elvis impersonation of happy birthday for your mum, through to people who will send a picture of a message you provide written in seaweed on a beach.

However you can also get access to extremely talented freelancers. For many, this is simply a service to showcase their talents and to pick up more lucrative work.

Some popular gigs include:

Graphic designers who will create professional business logos, website mockups and business cards to help you promote your business.

Translators who will translate 500 words of English into their native language for $5.

Programmers who will fix any type of website error or give you additional website functionality for $5.

You might only be paying $5 but that does not mean low quality. If the Gig is not up to the expected standard you can reject it and make the freelancer start-over or request the Gig to be cancelled.

For the freelancers, buyer feedback is everything and from our experience they often overdeliver to receive positive and glowing recommendations – and the prospect of further, better-paid assignments.

Fiverr.com is here to stay. They have just obtained $15 million of second round funding and I expect that we will be hearing a lot more from fivver in the coming months. Check out www.fiverr.com

4. Design Contests from 99 Designs

If you need a designer then there is probably no better way to access a pool of high quality talent than 99designs.

99designs will hold design contests on your behalf in which thousands of designers compete to create a design that you love or you don’t pay. This could be your new website, company brochure, mobile app design, there are designers for everything.

The first thing you do is upload your brief. Prices depend on what you are asking for, but there are minimum starting prices; for example websites start at £399, brochures at £199 and stationery from £139.

Once you have agreed the price, you sit back and wait for the design community to submit their designs for you to comment on and review.

In the standard contest, all the designers can view what each have submitted and also your feedback on their designs. This helps everyone see what is working for you and adjust their designs for other rounds.

Once you have a winner, the contest ends and the winning designer is awarded the money and you get the designs.

If you are working to a tight budget and don’t have someone available who can design, then www.99designs.co.uk is worth a visit.

5. TED.com

If I have some spare time, then you could well find me watching videos on the TED website.

Unlike Youtube, what you won’t find is cats falling off chairs or reality TV auditions, but instead you can immerse yourself in inspiring talks and presentations by remarkable and highly successful people on various topics.

TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Almost 20 years old, it is a conference that brings together people from a range of industries from business and technology through to science and global issues. The TED website gives you access to the recorded talks at these conferences.

In my opinion, it includes some of the best presentations ever made. You will find talks from well known leaders such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates through to the lesser known but equally inspiring.

Each talk lasts around 20 minutes, so if you are going to watch a video, make the next one from www.TED.com

Doesn’t matter because they’re all talking about the same thing – a personalised desktop, usually for an individual user, that can be accessed anywhere, on any device so long as there’s an Internet connection.

So, staff in a business access all the software they are so familiar with – such as Microsoft Office, their emails and so on, remotely be logging into a data centre. What a user sees on their device however is exactly the same as if they’d set up their own desktop and had installed software on their PC or notebook.

To many businesses there’s something a bit scary about entrusting all this data and all this software to ‘the Cloud’.  But more and more businesses are realising the huge advantages the virtual desktop can offer.

Having said that, it’s not right for every business – but we’ll come to that in a moment.

First, what are the big advantages for a business?

The number one factor has to be the savings involved. There may be some investment, but generally there doesn’t have to be major capital investment in expensive hardware or software. But the real savings probably emerge later through not having to worry about maintenance, servicing or upgrading – this is usually all taken care of buy a simple contractual charge to a data centre.

The Virtual Desktop arrangement is also super flexible – you can scale it up for new users or down – without any delay and no complex IT procedures. This is great for financial management, obviously, but also for productivity.

The other key feature offered is mobility – for many businesses with remote workers or those with people on the road, this is a massive plus. The Virtual Desktop offers secure access from anywhere at anytime.

If you’re using a data centre, your data is also protected whatever happens to your business premises – even if the catastrophic occurs: such as a fire or flood, your data is safely stored elsewhere.

Security of data in another sense is also, increasingly important.  Because data is not stored on devices and access to it is controlled by secure passwords, any device that is lost or stolen doesn’t automatically compromise your business’s security.

I mentioned earlier though that the Virtual Desktop isn’t right for every business, and it does also have a few disadvantages – or at least there are some limitations to consider before concluding that it’s the best thing for your business.

First off, you need the Internet. No Internet, no access to your desktop. As access is becoming increasingly easy, this limitation is only likely to diminish.  But, clearly, the more stable and the faster your connection is, the better.

Which brings me to another possible limitation – the virtual desktop isn’t really always suitable for working with heavyweight graphics or high-definition video, although there often ways to make this possible.

Bear in mind too that switching to the Virtual Desktop environment may not be totally capital expenditure free – you may need to replace the existing hardware used by staff with so-called thin-clients or other more appropriate PCs. Then again, devices need to be replaced as a matter of course anyway. You may need a dedicated server to support the extra bandwidth necessary.

Most of these limitations are, to my mind, minor for most businesses compared to the superb pluses the Virtual Desktop offers many SMEs.

It’s hardly surprising then that the Virtual Desktop (or whatever name your prefer) is set to become ever more popular for businesses.

Check if introducing the Virtual Desktop is right for your business by consulting with your IT supplier.

But what’s the difference between the types of cloud available?

Deciding what’s right for you is all about understanding the difference between the options and then costing them out for the individual needs of your business.

Here are the options and a brief overview of some of the pros and cons of each solution.

Public Cloud

This is the service that most people are familiar through using hotmail or Google docs and gmail, etc.

A provider offers applications and storage space at a different site to users via an Internet connection to the public.  Often these services, on a small scale, are free; but most businesses will require upgraded accounts that involve ongoing costs.  The key is that all the resources on offer are shared and all services make use only of the Internet.

Pros –

The great advantage is that the public cloud is instantly scaleable, up or down. Because you are not dealing with purchasing hardware, things can happen almost instantly.

For micro businesses, in particular, this is a very simple and cheap (even free) solution.

You only pay for the space and services you actually need and use, so there is no need for wasted capacity. Much more the way we handle paying for electricity or other utilities.

It’s quick and relatively cheap to set up because there’s no capex for hardware or system software.

Minimal to no IT staff spending needed.

You take advantage of the security and IT expertise employed by the service provider.

Cons –

Greater concern about security. Your data is beyond your own firewall.

If your business is storing certain personal data, storage in a public cloud may not be compliant with the law – for example, certain data must be stored within certain specified geographical boundaries.  In addition, you simply don’t know where your data is physically stored – it’s just ‘up there’ in the cloud.

You are dependent on another’s infrastructure over which you have no control. Public clouds are highly reliable and promote their uptime percentages, but crashes and loss of data are not unknown – as evidenced by Amazon Web Services last year.

While the cost is clear, it can also be changed by the provider.

Private Cloud

Access to a Private Cloud is confined to a specific group of people in a network. The data in your private cloud is either stored in servers where your premises are or – far more cost-efficiently – your private cloud is hosted in a data centre that is run by your cloud provider.

One way of describing an in-house private cloud that’s often used is that it’s like providing your own electricity from your own generator with all the maintenance and capex that implies.  A hosted private cloud, in the other hand, is like getting your electricity from a plug in the wall.

Private cloud is certainly the preferred option for any business that has sensitive data to store and needs to comply with certain security strictures.

Pros –

A far higher level of security – you are behind a firewall can set your own security level.

Possible to make compliant with data storage legislation.

Control over infrastructure – you are able to deploy resources to tackle problems and maintenance as and when you need them.

Costs can be either treated as capex or spread as operating expenditure by a leasing contract, at the end of which you will own the equipment.

Or you have the option of having your private cloud hosted in a data centre, whichever is often the most cost-effective solution.

If you are running virtual desktops, a private cloud is just as scalable as a public cloud.  For more about virtual desktops take a look here -  Is a virtual desktop right for your business? and here -  Virtual desktop your questions answered.

Cons -

Costs may be higher than using a public cloud – more internal IT resources may be needed to set up and/or manage the data centre – although this can all be entirely outsourced.

Back up and security become your responsibility as well as paying for servers and hosting.

Hybrid

As a combination of the two previous options, the hybrid can be seen to combine the best of both worlds.  With this solution, your business gets all the pluses of a private cloud, plus the instant scaleability and huge storage potential of the public cloud – if needed.

Pros -

You can combine your own infrastructure to maintain the highest levels of security for data that requires this, while still taking advantage of many of the benefits of the public cloud.

If you already have a large amount of infrastructure in place, the hybrid solution allows you to make use of it.

Allows a virtual desktop environment while backing up archived data elsewhere, in the public cloud.

Cons -

Possibly more complicated to manage – having to deal with two systems.

Probably more expensive than using just one cloud solution.

Whatever your business, if you’re thinking about migrating to the Cloud, I’d always recommend consulting with other similar sized businesses as well as your IT suppliers to get the benefit of their experience.

In short, new rules are going to affect every business with a website.

For many, the new rules will seem like just another piece of unwanted bureaucratic legislation from the EU designed to make business harder than ever.

Even so, non-compliance isn’t going to be an option because the consequences could be very costly indeed, with fines of up to £500,000.

The new rules are contained in the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 and will be imposed by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

So what is it all about?

The European Privacy Regulations of 2003 were changed in 2009 to give visitors to websites greater knowledge and control over the information a website collected when they visited. It was all about protecting privacy.

All EU governments had until 25th May, 2011 to incorporate these changes into their own laws, which the UK did; but, in order for UK businesses and webmasters to get to grips with the new requirements, a 12-month grace period was allowed.

That expires on May 26th. After then, all websites will need to comply with the legislation.

Of the new requirements it is what has become known as “The Cookie Directive” that is causing the most fuss.

If you own a website, the chances are that you, or rather your website software, will automatically set a number of cookies on your visitor’s computer as they arrive and move around your site.

Cookies are simple text files that typically contain information that make your visitor’s interaction with your site smoother.

For example, they may store usernames, browsing preferences, even shopping basket data on what the visitor didn’t get around to buying on their last visit. Cookies are also used extensively to analyse which parts of your site are most visited and how users interact with your site.

The Cookie Directive forces businesses to be fully transparent about how they are using cookies and requires sites to obtain permission from visitors before certain types of cookies can be used.

This could all be dealt with by a few paragraphs in your terms and conditions or privacy statement; but with the new legislation this will no longer be sufficient.

The law says that sites must provide clear and comprehensive information about the use of cookies and must:

1. Tell people that the cookies are there

2. Explain what the cookies are doing

3. Obtain visitors’ consent to store a cookie on their device

What does this mean for your business?

Whenever a first-time visitor arrives at your site you must obtain their consent before certain cookies are set; and you must do this by serving up a banner or similar prominent method. If you don’t do this, your business could, potentially, be risking a fine.

The big concern for many businesses is that having such an alert dominate the screen as soon as a new user arrives doesn’t exactly fit the bill of a friendly ‘come-on-in-and-shop’ kind of welcome.

And, for those visitors who have no clear idea what a cookie is or the benefits it can offer, the fear is that they’re going to be far more likely to hit the ‘decline’ option than they are to accept. The net result will be a far more clunky experience – and one that’s far less likely to turn a prospect into a customer.

What your business needs to do to avoid breaking the rules!

Cookies are not all the same and the visitor doesn’t have to opt-in before all of them are set. The main distinction is between first and third-party cookies.

First-party cookies are those that are set by your website or domain when a user visits.

These are generally used to remember the goods your customer wants to buy as they progress from page to page through the checkout sequence; these cookies also help the site to operate efficiently. Generally, this type of cookie falls outside the new rules and you don’t need to ask visitors to opt in to store them on their device.

Third-party cookies on the other hand are different and it is these that the legislation is targeting. Third-party cookies are set by a domain other than the one being visited by the user. If a user visits your website and a separate company sets a cookie through your website, this would be a third-party cookie.

These would include companies that record your visitors’ browsing data and then use this stored information to show products or serve relevant ads that follow them as they navigate around the web.

Many analytics packages also fall into this third-party cookie category, so will come under the new rules and require visitors to expressly opt-in before they can be used.

The bottom line is that there are no winners with this legislation.

Visitors will be interrupted with messages about cookies. And, if they opt out, they will see less relevant ads and also be without some of a website’s functionality, functionality that until now they have taken for granted.

Businesses may well lose revenue, whether through lost sales or advertising opportunities. Data on how to make sites better will be lost, and, ultimately, the experience many visitors have when they visit a site will be diminished.

How businesses will deal with all this remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: it is going to be up to each business to try and educate visitors quickly and effectively about why they want to set cookies and how they can benefit that customer. Otherwise, online businesses – already operating in the hardest market conditions for decades – are going to find things have just got a whole lot harder!

And I think we can say that even though the service isn’t even fully live in Europe yet (it’s rolling out over the coming days).

For businesses, especially SMEs, this service, while not the first of its kind, nevertheless marks a milestone because it’s the first truly mainstream offering to be launched that takes file sharing to a new level.

But it presents as much of a problem as an opportunity.

First, though, what does it do?

Google Drive has probably been misnamed, though, in my view.  This isn’t so much about storage, as the name ‘drive’ suggests; it’s just as much about working with files, applications and docs across all devices – about synchronicity and mobility.

And this is especially so for businesses.

As the Google slogan says, you can ‘Keep Everything, Share Anything.”

You can upload and access all your files, including videos, pictures, Google Docs, PDFs and so on.

Share these with others and they can work on them simultaneously across all devices – notebooks, PCs, Macs, phones and tablets.

And the free service comes with 5GB of space – less than SkyDrive, which offers 7GB.  Drive will offer up to 16TB with its paid-for version.

But it’s the level of integration  of what you store with others that marks out Google Drive from similar services such as SkyDrive and Dropbox.  Click on a doc for example and email it instantly, or work on a file simultaneously with another user.

With Drive, businesses will be able to share different files and folders with colleagues and customers. Another striking feature is its ability to search for text in scanned documents.

It’s the business market that will be the real target of Drive.   The Apps control panel lets administrators assign storage to users and all the data is transferred in encrypted form.

The service already has apps for PC, Mac and Android, and an iOS version will follow.

This all sounds like a great service and it is; but for the business market, it also presents a similar problem to the one that bring-your-own-device (BYOD) has thrown up – all because it’s the consumer market that is so often driving the adoption of new devices and services.

The way Drive is being rolled out is with the message that you can ‘work and play in one place’.  But for a business, is that always such a great idea?  Just as we are seeing with the iPad and smartphone, people are using their own devices at work simply because they’re very useful and allow mobile access away from work.  But this can be a real headache for IT managers.

Obviously, as Drive is using the Cloud, we’re not talking directly about the ‘leaving sensitive information on a train’ problem.  Although, this is still a concern because a user only has to tick the ‘leave me logged in’ option and anyone waking the left device is into the Cloud and all the information that careless member of staff has access to.

But the idea of a personal account also being used for business AND the ease with which files can be shared, does raise obvious potential headaches.

It’s all about giving businesses a certain ability of control, which, for this concept to work, will certainly need to be addressed.

I believe that there is another game changer on its way and if you deal with customers face-to-face and take payments from them, then you need to start thinking about this.

Over the coming months we are going to see contactless payment terminals appear in more and more shops. These are small boxes that make paying for low-value goods goods as simple as swiping your mobile phone across them.

And, let’s face it, anything that helps your customers pay for goods has got to be good for you and good for them as well. The technology that is making all this happen is called near field communications or NFC.

NFC allows a device, such as a mobile phone, to collect and exchange data from another device at close range – about 1.5 inches. This makes it a good choice for secure transactions, such as contactless credit card payments.

And it’s not some new technology that is buggy or difficult to integrate into phones. In fact, Orange and Barclaycard came together in May last year to launch the UK’s first wireless payment system called Quick Tap. Since then Orange has sold over 500,000 NFC enabled phones.

More recently, Barclaycard has launched its own product called PayTag, which, simply put, is a sticker that contains an NFC chip, which enables any phone to take advantage of wireless payment terminals. Visa expects there to be over 150,000 of these in shops and food outlets by the end of the year.

In the not too distant future, swiping a smartphone in front of a wireless payment terminal to make purchases will become commonplace. And we’ll could finally see the end of those bulging pockets full of loose change.

The big change that will bring this about – if widely reported rumours are true – is the fact that the next series of iphone and ipads, out later this year, will come with NFC as standard. If that’s the case, then businesses need to sit up and take notice and start planning for the changes now.

But first it makes sense to first discover if your business can benefit from such payments.

Contactless wireless payments will work best for small purchases that don’t require a signature. Barclaycard has set this level at a transaction value of £15, which will rise to £20 later this year. So if you sell big ticket items then this is clearly not for you.

The clear winners will be fast food restaurants, coffee shops, grocers, pubs, specialist shops and those businesses that have a high volume of smaller transactions.

For these businesses contactless terminals should mean quicker checkouts resulting in fewer queues, increased average order values due to greater impulse buying and an increase in purchase frequency.

So, if you think that taking payments with a swipe of the phone will be of benefit to your business then, what’s next? Well, it’s at this point that we realise that, while the technology is ready, rollout of that very same technology is lacking .

Big brands such as Google, Apple, all the major mobile network providers and the payment heavyweights, Visa and Mastercard, are all implementing various NFC plans this year but it is here where the problem lies.

Each have their own solution and view on how the technology will work best. From the virtual Google Wallet and the Apple Wallet integrated with iTunes through to NFC stickers from BarclayCard. This uncertainty on who the ultimate winner will be means that businesses will need to consider carefully who they partner with to ensure they choose a platform their customers are most likely to use.

Finally, although the big buzz is around using NFC for contactless payments, the technology also opens up a whole new level of customer interaction and tracking between the online and offline worlds that has previously been absent .

For example, using NFC it will be possible to integrate a mobile phone with check-in systems whereby the user can simply use their phone to check-in at reception in a hotel and also use the same device to open up their hotel room.

Or how about giving customers loyalty points every time they make a offline purchase by touching their phone on a loyalty point box and then offering discounts based on their purchase patterns. Marketing can be tracked to see which promotions work best and marketing budgets made more efficient.

One thing’s for sure, it is going to be an exciting few years as we see the mobile phone become much more a part of how customers buy products and interact with brands.

£19.3 billion will be spent via mobile phones by 2021 – up from £1.3 billion in 2011, according to Barclays Corporate research.

M-commerce is expected to grow 55 per cent over the next five years.

52 per cent of consumers already use mobile devices at one or more stages of the shopping process.

Pretty compelling evidence for many businesses that if they have an online offering they should be considering taking it mobile.

As any smartphone user knows, standard websites just don’t cut it when you’re browsing on a phone or small tablet.

So, what are your options? Or, put another way, what’s the difference between an app and a mobile site – and which is right for your business?

Mobile sites and apps can, at least superficially, provide a fairly similar user experience, but what is going on with each at a more sophisticated level is very different.

Which is right for your business will depend on a number of factors, including how you want or are able to interact with your target market, and, very importantly, your budget.

Here are the big differences.

A mobile website is really just a stripped down version of a regular site. It’s stripped down to make it easy to view and navigate on a smaller screen and it also often (but not always) incorporates a touch screen facility. You access the site through a mobile browser. Simple.

Apps differ in that they are downloaded to the smartphone and much of their content resides on the phone.  Updates are pulled in as they are needed.  This is instead of opening all content in a browser.  As most of the data resides on the phone, apps are economical with bandwidth.
The other big difference is that an app is a great deal more interactive and can use the native applications on the mobile phone – the camera, the address book and so on.

With a mobile site, the user needs to bookmark it, search or know the URL to return; with an app, a reminder of your mobile offering is sitting on the phone the whole time.

But it’s worth keeping in mind that it’s been found that the average app last a mere 30 days on a phone before being deleted. So, you are relying on a high level of brand loyalty if you are expecting your app to stay on your customer’s phone.

The other factor is that an app is going to cost some three to four times more than a mobile site to produce.

Which is the best option probably depends for the most part on what is you’re trying to do.

If you’re looking at offering greater interactivity, then an app is probably the best option. But it probably doesn’t make much sense developing an app before you have a mobile site.

One of the crucial potential mistakes is to develop an app to do something that a mobile site can easily do. This is just a waste of your money. So, it’s best to be clear about what it is you’re trying to achieve before you draw up a spec or brief a designer on what you want.

Mobile sites have some big pluses that are worth keeping in mind.

They don’t require any downloads. Asking someone to download your app is asking for them to jump a barrier – not a massive one, but a significant one even so. They need to download the app and install it, which they probably won’t do unless they are already pretty familiar with your offering.  A mobile site on the other hand just opens in a browser instantly.

Mobile sites are also much easier to update.  Version updates for an app, on the other hand, need to be downloaded.

Different types of app also need to be developed for each operating system – one for Apple, one for Android and so on. More expense.

Sites can be accessed through a normal browser search. Apps, on the other hand, have to be found in app stores.

Apps, as has been mentioned, can easily be deleted – and usually are.  Only the most frequently used are going to survive on most users’ phones.

A mobile site isn’t just cheaper to get up and running, it’s a great deal cheaper to operate afterwards and requires far less developmental work.

So, for most small businesses out there, a mobile site should be the first choice – but if  you’re thinking of launching the next Angry Birds phenomenon, you’re going to have to head down the app route.

Either way, it’s probably time for your business to catch the trend and go mobile.