Computing in The Cloud: Where To Begin?

Today on the Project_World twitter feed I couldn’t help but notice a number of people tweeting about “Planio”—a cloud based collaboration and project management tool. It’s hard to say with twitter sometimes which of those tweets may have been sponsored, but it still got my attention.

Regardless of industry, more and more companies are looking towards cloud-based solutions like this for collaboration. From sharing documents and calendars in Google to paying for a solution such as those by PPM vendor Innotas discussed here there are a wide variety of ways to take your activities to the cloud. So many in fact that a simple web search for “cloud based project management tools” turns up overwhelming results (and frankly, lots of advertisements, but few clear reviews).

Cloud-based tools can be greener—less need to print and share documents or emails—and can be easier to access for telecommuters or team members in external offices. Clients won’t have to install new software on their computers, and in an era when Internet is ubiquitous, it just seems to make sense.

The question is, how to decide what program will work for your company or project? We’d love to hear from you about successes or failures with SaaS (Software as a Service) providers. What works and what doesn’t? What factors were key in deciding what to use? Share with us in the comments or e-mail me.

Use social media to help manage your projects

In a recent article at Untitled1, they look at ways social media can enhance your project management tool set. You can use blogs for project status updates, wikis to help centralize your information, and for larger projects, you can set up online communities. These tools shouldn't replace what you already have, they should enhance the tools you're already using.

Do you use any of these tools when you are managing a project? What benefits have you seen?