Archive for May, 2011

Faster access to Google Apps products

Recently, I had one of those “how did you do that?” moments with a tech-savvy client.  This client, like me, set up his domain with Google Apps.  During a meeting, he told me he wanted to show me a spreadsheet he created in Google Docs.  In the web browser, he typed d.(his domain).com and the browser opened his Google Docs login page. Not long after that, as we were scheduling our next meeting, he typed c.(his domain).com in the browser, and his Google Calendar instantly appeared.  I could not help but look with amazement and say “wow, that was fast! – how did you do that?” I love finding faster and more efficient ways of doing things, so I also set up my domain this way for the quickest access to Google Apps.  Like many of Google’s products, I found it was incredibly easy to set up.
  • Go to your Google Apps domain management page and click on settings. Click on the product to the left that you want to change the URL for (Docs is shown below).
  • Click on the “Change URL” link which will take you to the page you see below.  Click on the second button and change the subdomain to whatever you like.  My client prefers the one letter subdomains, for example, “d” for Docs and “c” for Calendar.
  
  • I then had to go to my domain host’s DNS Management page and add a CNAME.  Google has step-by-step instructions for this.
In a prior post, I wrote about how I set up a Gmail address with my domain.  I also have a short URL for my e-mail.  By typing mail.dustinwheelercpa.com, I go straight to my e-mail page.

You can outsource IT, but can you outsource innovation?

While doing research for my Information Technology Management (MBA) class at UNLV, I came across the article “The Risks of  Outsourcing IT” by Michael J. Earl (Sloan Management Review, Spring 1996).  Earl explains that the decision to outsource IT is often driven by the need to cut costs.  However, outsourcing IT functions central to business strategy is risky.  Earl lists eleven risks of outsourcing, of which the eighth, “loss of innovative capacity,” really caught my attention (see page 5). Earl tells of a conversation between a company’s CIO and an executive of the company’s IT vendor.  The CIO expresses his disappointment in the vendor’s lack of innovation.  The vendor’s executive responds that he thought the deal was all about the cost and didn’t know that there were expectations to innovate. I think that there are many IT service providers that innovate, generally speaking, in providing services to their customers.  On the other hand, an IT vendor that innovates for an individual customer’s business strategy and adds value is much more rare.  That is the type of innovation IT service providers (or any business service provider) should strive for.