What is Cloud Commuting?

I was reading an interesting article on a blog for outsourcing. Learn what is meant by 'Cloud Commuting.'

Maybe The Recession Wasn’t So Bad

What is "Cloud Commuting" and what does it mean to business owners and skilled professionals like you? Gene Marks, online columnist and author of the best-selling Streetwise Small Business Book of Lists, gives us his take on the rise of the cloud commuter, the recession and its impact, and how his business and others plan to adjust in this new age of online work.

Hmmm, maybe the recession hasn’t been such a bad thing after all.

Prices have been kept in check. Many of my competitors are either struggling or out of business entirely. Industries that have been failing for decades are now reorganizing themselves. Our bankers are picking up the phone when we call them. People have stopped buying useless crap on its way to the landfill. Being a cheapskate has even become vogue.

And business owners are no longer vilified for outsourcing. In fact, it’s not even called outsourcing anymore.

It’s called Cloud Commuting.

Cloud Commuting is a refreshing upgrade from the loaded term ‘outsourcing’ which suffered from a bum rap. For years, enterprising business owners like myself have been outsourcing work and subcontracting jobs to others in order to keep our costs as low as possible and to find the best people. In fact, ‘Division of Labor’ has always been right there on the top of the syllabus for Capitalism 101, right after "Lemonade Stands" and just before "Global Expansion".

Like every red-blooded opportunist, all we’re trying to do is to produce quality products and provide excellent services as cost effectively as we can. Once upon a time we faced the scorn of the media and others who looked down their noses at us. Well, a few quarters into the Great Recession, it’s now considered virtuous for business owners like us to do everything we can to keep our fixed costs low. And those same pundits who accused us of not employing people are now embracing us for bootstrapping our way back into the game by hiring our “cloud commuters”. Go figure.

Cloud Commuting is obviously a play on the buzzword “Cloud Computing” which is how the server-room nerds are unsuspectingly describing their ultimate obsolescence as more and more technology and data gets hosted by secured and reliable central servers in the sky. But, those server-room technicians will have the last laugh, as just as the technology is migrating to remote parts, so is the work. Configure a database from Maui? Aloha!

Talk about liberating. I’ve already started telling the world that my people are “Cloud Commuters”. Even my kids think it’s cool. Maybe they’ll even let me watch “The Hills” with them. OK, maybe, not.

The fact is that finding specialists “in the cloud” (or in a cave for all I care) is a critical part of running my business. My company sells business software. When I look to hire a telemarketer, I look for someone that specializes in software sales. When I need help writing up technical specifications, I need a person who’s done this before. When I want to employ some collection help, I want someone who does collection work for a living. Cloud commuting is all about finding people that specialize in something and hiring them to perform specific tasks at specific times for me.

My ten person company isn’t going to outsource our support operations to India anytime soon. In fact, we don’t have a support operation – it’s just a few us running around and yelling at each other. But when we do need specialists to complete a specific task, we here know that it’s downright Neanderthal-like to limit ourselves to our own backyard. We want to find the best people, no matter where they are. Indi(an)a. (New) England. (South) America. (Paris,) Texas. I couldn't care less whether they can see Russia from their house or not.

These knowledge workers, thanks to the recession, are now open for business the same hours as my neighborhood 7-Eleven. This virtual workforce is comprised of millions of innovative and talented professionals that have been let down by backward-thinking companies, and have made the move to control their own destiny. As an entrepreneur myself, I can relate.

Cloud Commuting is, for me as a business owner, the ultimate way to tap into a pool of talent while avoiding the risk of committing to full-time headcount. And I can say this now because we’re in a recession and we’ve already established that it’s OK to be a cheapskate. And as any recession survivor knows, the only way to get through these times is through a combination of heavy drinking and keeping our overhead low.

And we’re getting a lot of assistance from the geeks too. Within just the past few years, we’ve been ambushed with incredible technology that helps facilitate working with people in the cloud. There’s great remote connection that allows remote people to connect into a company’s computer and work as if they’re sitting in the home office. There’s desktop sharing software to display work as it’s done. There’s web-based meeting software to bring groups together from anywhere. There are teleportation systems that allow remote employees to step into a booth in their own homes and be physically transported, within seconds, to another location anywhere in the universe. There are free (or very inexpensive) services for phone calls, conferencing and messaging so that communications with any far flung specialist can happen immediately.

And then there’s Elance. They’ve has been creating innovative systems that have withstood not one but two economic downturns while putting over $200M in the pockets of their community of professionals. They’ve designed a platform that helps businesses, both big and small not only find great people but manage the entire working engagement online. From bidding to evaluation, to managing the work, all the way to payment. And they’re helping the experts find work too. They’ve recognized that gaining access to great people is the number one biggest problem for business owners like me, so they’ve provided a platform to make it much, much easier. Why didn’t I come up with that idea? I guess I was busy watching The Hills with my kids. Or, not.

So thanks Bear Stearns. And AIG. And General Motors. And Ben Bernanke. And all the other great people and companies who’ve played a part in our Great Recession. You’ve helped us flush out the weak. You’ve provided opportunities for the survivors. And you’ve enabled companies like Elance to build a system for helping us find and manage experts cost-effectively. In the cloud. Yeah, maybe this recession wasn’t so bad after all.

About the Author:

Gene Marks’ latest book is the best selling Streetwise Small Business Book of Lists. Gene is a regular online columnist for Forbes.com, Business Week.com and American City Business Journals. Gene also owns his small business outside of Philadelphia.

Source: Elance