OfficeMedium: The Online Corporate Workspace for Corporate Users Old and New

The corporate world is one that is somewhat of an uncharted territory. I don’t exactly spend a great deal of time there anymore. Not to mention, being a gadget hound, the corporate world isn’t exactly a heaping box of bleeding edge gadgets with the market typically focusing on stability and long term use instead of replacing products every 2-3 months or when the latest and greatest gets released. But every once in a while I do get a chance to stretch my legs in the uncharted lands of the corporate world and the services they offer.

Communicating between business partners in the traditional office usually involves back and forth phone calls and numerous emails — each time deciding where to put each person’s name. Should Frank go in the CC, BCC, or should I leave him out for now all together? Such decisions are again common but are hardly the most effective or efficient way to communicate with one person, let alone a group of people working on a project. If your business or company is looking for an easy to use service that allows mass communication, sharing of ideas and documents, and brings an overall more streamlined experience to your business and work-flows, would you be interested? If so, OfficeMedium may be worth a hard look.

To start off, if you’re a consumer minded individual who has managed to make it this far, pat yourself on the back. Perhaps for you, a more “common” explanation of OfficeMedium is sort of like a Google Wave for businesses and intranets. OM lets various individuals within a company communicate with each other, share ideas and documents, and discuss said ideas/documents in a chat-like style making for quick turn around for questions and answers. That speed translates into saved dollars and more productivity. Now don’t think because Office Medium is fast and easy that it is basic, basic in the sense that it lacks features or any sort of customizable options. Far from it.

One of the neatest features I think is the ability to set different permissions levels. In the corporate world, those who deal with domains, AD accounts, and BlackBerry Enterprise Servers should know all about different user levels and permissions. OM obliges that level of control with three distinct user categories:

• Clients: Lowest Clearance — can only see documents, discussions, etc. with their user name referenced.

• Employees: Gain some added features, most notably the ability to see other users’ files (read only)

• Super Users: Highest level of clearance, unrestricted access to any and all files.

Traditional Communication/Email/Calendar/and Task management

Another business reference that can be easily compared to is Outlook. In the more traditional business world, Microsoft’s Outlook is pretty much the go-to standard for inter-office and external communication. With robust email, calendar, and task scheduling features, OM mimics those features so that new users won’t feel too out of place, making the transition that much easier.

Social Networking

But you can’t simply build a new business or re-invent an old business on old business practices and ideals (just look at the Newspaper industry). With that said, OM again leaves me pretty impressed. Social networking-like features abound in a ways that don’t push away older users and still manage not to bore new users. In the digital age, social networking and online networks are one of the top ways people now communicate. With services such as Facebook and Twitter just to name two, the world has seen and openly embraced this faster paced, less personal means of conversing. In response, we saw LinkedIn, a sort of Facebook for business users grow and flourish into what it is today. Much the same OM has adapted to the changing business user base by trying to more appropriately bridge the gap between the old and the new.

Navigation & UI

What good is a robust and feature filled web office if you can’t navigate the environment to save your life? As mentioned earlier, while more complex and premium, is far from confusing or “cryptic”. I’ve worked in corporate worlds before. Even after some time out of the corporate realm (as well as a general lack of interest for anything corporate related), I found myself navigating OM’s online suite pretty darn quick after only twenty minutes of finding the various P’s and Q’s. In a nutshell, both old and new generations should find OM easy to use.

Security

Recent scares of leaked Gmail accounts, downed web servers, and the all out fear of removing your companies hard earned and valuable data to some magical cloud server in the sky does have it’s concerns and fears. It’s only human to worry about what we can’t control. Thankfully, OM doesn’t skimp on security. Businesses don’t want their information leaking to competitors for obvious reasons. Just as any local storage based office set up, OM offers advanced data encryption, access filters and levels, professionally secured servers, and many other features to keep your data safe and private.

Price

Finally, nothing in the corporate world is ever done, no project ever released for go, and no action ever taken without first asking: “How much?” Depending on your set up, moving to the cloud with OM might be in your best interest as prices start at $6/user and $1/GB. You can have bleeding edge technology, security, and cost savings all in one boat.

After a couple days — and mind you, just barely touching the service as I’m one man, not a multi-thousand employed company — I found the overall environment and idea behind OfficeMedium intriguing and useful. Since embarking on this wonderful journey of words and pictures, do you feel Office Medium is the perfect solution for you?