Computer World Canada Magazine

UP FRONT

Virtual workplace a
model of innovation
Technology helps keep Manitoba
organization connected BY KATHLEEN LAU

AWinnipeg-based organization that facilitates technology skills development across rural communities in Manitoba is using a virtual workplace to stay connected with remote staff.

The Manitoba E-Association Inc. employs youth across the province to teach local communities and community-serving organizations to utilize and adapt technology for a variety of purposes. Skills taught to these communities include Web site design and maintenance; training is also provided on various types of software applications.

Through this setup, paid short-term employment is made available to youth in rural and remote places — youth who might otherwise be hard-pressed to find IT jobs in their hometown.

Currently, there are more than 100 youth between the ages of 16 and 29 who participate in the ‘train the trainer’ program from their hometowns, said Clarice Leader, executive director of the Manitoba E-Association Inc. “The virtual workplace is the only way we can manage a distributed workforce of that type.”

The organization is funded, in part, by the Community Connections program, of which Leader is also project manager. Community Connections is operated by the Government of Manitoba’s Department of Science, Technology and Mines.

Besides cash donations, Community Connections provides funding in kind as well.

E-Association’s virtual workplace, dubbed E-Office, allows users to file progress reports, log

their work hours, gain access to commonly-shared files on the server, and read and post messages on a bulletin board. The organization uses weekly progress reports, filed by youths, to tabulate accomplishments for each community project or community-serving organization. The reporting and payroll part of the system is designed to allow users to log work hours only after progress reports have been filed, says Leader.

The reporting and payroll aspect of E-Office is a service provided by Synray Support Solutions, an information and communications technologies provider based in Winnipeg.

To monitor the youth’s job performance, a designated volunteer for each project provides the organization with reports on a weekly basis through E-Office. This virtual process eliminates the need for the organization to dispatch a supervisor to each location, says Leader.

“The cost to have supervisors in each of those towns would be prohibitive, and the association wouldn’t be able to run.”

Besides staying connected through the reporting and monitoring component of E-Office, the youth stay abreast of E-Association news through the online bulletin board that’s categorized along a variety of subjects. The E-Office benefits the organization’s full-time administrative staff as well, many of whom are also scattered across Manitoba, says Leader. The virtual workplace for employees is much like that for youth, with the exception of the payroll function.

E-Office is based on Windows Small Business Server. “It was chosen to [support] our virtual office setup because of the diverse amount of tools that come with it,” says Troy Fontaine, project coordinator at Manitoba E-Association Inc.

In particular, he says, Microsoft Exchange Server provides “full e-mail capability” and the ability to view other employees’ calendars. It also means they can use a VPN across which to communicate, added Fontaine.

Although E-Office has been a
useful channel of communication
between dispersed employees and

youth, he says, managing remote individuals can sometimes be difficult, due to lack of a managed IT environment.

Drawbacks aside, its mandate to teach rural communities to use and adapt technology fits in with the organzation’s own use of a virtual workplace, says Leader. “We need to be able to demonstrate, from an organizational level, the extent to which technology can be used. We see ourselves as role models.”

“The virtual
workplace is
the only way
we can manage
a distributed
workforce.” — Leader

E-Office should encourage other members of the community to take an innovative approach to business, she says. “If people can see an actual example [of innovation], they are more likely to wonder, ‘Why can’t we do it this way instead of using more traditional methods?’” 078282

BRIEFS

ADOBE TAKES NET APPS TO DESKTOP Adobe Systems Inc. this month released the first public alpha version of its cross-operating system application runtime designed to allow developers to build rich Internet applications for the desktop. Code-named Apollo, the runtime focuses on allowing Web developers to use their existing skills in HTML, JavaScript and AJAX to create desktop versions of rich Internet applications, Adobe said. “People are starting to push the limits of AJAX and what they are able to do in the browser,” said Pam Deziel, director of product marketing for Adobe’s platform business unit.

integration with third-party developer products. Improvements are part of the 2007.2 release of the Rally platform, which was unveiled at the SD West 2007 conference in Santa Clara, Calif. The Ruby REST (Representation State Transfer) toolkit uses REST Web services to store Ruby applications within the Rally SaaS platform.

EMC aims offerings at SMBs

BY GREG HUGHES

RALLY ADDS RUBY TO AGILE Rally Software Development recently announced an upgrade to its hosted service for agile software development projects featuring a toolkit accommodating Ruby programming as well as better

SOPHOS DETAILS NAC PLANS By this time next year, Sophos says it will have its desktop security software fully integrated with the net work access control technology it acquired when it bought Endforce in January. That means customers will be able to buy a bundle called Sophos Endpoint Security that includes antivirus software, a personal firewall, a management console and NAC. The company is already selling Endforce’s NAC software under the name Sophos NAC and will continue to do so, said Ronald O’Brien, a senior security analyst with Sophos. That platform scans endpoints for operating system patches, antivirus and personal firewall software, the presence of spyware, instant messaging and peer-to-peer programs.

without adding to IT headcount or costs,” said Warren Shiau, lead IT analyst at research firm The Strategic Counsel.

“A CX3-10-type system will do that, but a lot of SMBs won’t get to that if implementation costs

are judged to be burdensome.

That’s why the
announcement is
pushing the easy
set-up messages
— that’s what
SMB needs.”
SMB data
storage needs are
driven by growth
in information
^The ^CX3-10 but a lack of staff
addresses SMB issues. _or _funds _to _sup-port solutions tailored to larger
organizations, said Katie Curtin-
Mestre, director of CLARiiON
product marketing at EMC.

Curtin-Mestre said the EMC products support applications like SQL Server or email.

“What we have found in talking to mid-sized businesses and in talking to these customers

Storage vendor EMC Corp. recently released three new products that target small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) uneasy about the cost of setting up data storage systems.

The Hopkinton, Mass.-based company unveiled the CLARiiON CX3-10 UltraScale Fibre Channel and iSCSI System, the Recov-erPoint/SE Soft ware and the Application Reference Architecture.

One analyst thinks the CX3-10 in particular hits on several key SMB storage issues, especially given how lower costs associated with iSCSI may help to drive SMBs into data storage.

“One of the primary issues is management and administration cost — most SMBs will have an IT ‘guy’ without a dedicated storage admin function so you want to keep things that way

is their information infrastructure needs to be rock solid,” she said.

Curtin-Mestre said EMC has made simplicity of set-up an important element of the CX3-10. The hardware employs options such as wizard-driven storage management, application quality of service management, replication software for non-disruptive backup, operational and disaster recovery.

The second product, Recover-Point/SE, supports the CLARiiON CX and CX3 series with up to four terabytes of replicated capacity.

The final product, Application Reference Architectures, assists businesses working in Microsoft and Oracle environments to consolidate and support their data with such programs as Microsoft Exchange 2003 and SQL Server 2003.