Pulse of Technology, is a blog for Tech enthusiasts. They recently featured DeskAway’s founder Sahil parikh talking  on Cloud Computing Services.

India aims to become the fastest growing economy in 2010. How can a growing small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) benefit with this new technology trend?

That is exactly the area my book will be addressing. Small businesses will now have the ability to use the same tools and techniques that larger companies enjoyed for years. They can leverage Web 2.0/ Social Media tools to connect with prospects / customers, build their brand, and use Enterprise 2.0 tools to automate systems within their workplace using free, inexpensive and simple tools.

Can Deskaway cater to the project management needs of small & mid size companies of non IT sector say manufacturing?

Absolutely. In fact, besides technology companies, DeskAway users are from manufacturing, healthcare, non-profits, accounting etc. We are seeing more and more teams move away from email as a primary form of collaboration (sharing files, delegating tasks, planning work etc.) and use a web-based application.

Read More.

Thanks Basant from Techno-Pulse!!

Goldman Sach has released a survey about technology software usage as on Feb 2010. According to these reports SaaS usage is surely on the rise especially by small to medium sized businesses.

44% of the companies use SaaS for collaboration,

Pluggd.in is a blog about startups, entrepreneurship and tech in the Indian sector. Sahil recently contributed a guest post on common SaaS myths and ways to overcome them.

Using online software to increase productivity and grow your business is a no brainer. I can’t imagine why any small business would not readily adopt SaaS. What’s holding them back (besides poor bandwidth penetration in some areas) when they can pay a monthly subscription, not have to worry about installation, upgrades and have access to the same tools that their competitors have? This is close to having ’software utopia’ for the small business!

Lets go back in time….

- People might not have been prepared to put their money with other people’s money when banking was established. Banking and online banking is mainstream now.

- People were probably afraid to get on an aircraft which weighed a few tones and promised to soar like a bird. Today, air travel is a given.

Back to the present.

Currently, we are witnessing one of the biggest shifts in enterprise software (software used for business) and as everything else, it comes with it’s own set of myths, mindsets and confusion. Here are a few I have experienced over the last few years from people who are still not ready to adopt online software for their business.

“My data is more secure with me than putting it on someone else’s server”

Your data is more secure at your vendor’s data center than your own internal network. Security is more than just about taking daily backups, maintaining uptime and setting up a firewall. It’s about password policies, encryption, intrusion detection, offsite backups, secure transmission, software updates, patching etc. If hosting or maintaining servers is not your core business then you are better off renting out software from a reputed vendor who understands all these things. This will ensure peace of mind in the long run.

Read More.

Sahil Parikh, DeskAway’s founder gave a presentation on Top 10 SaaS myths people experience before they plan to subscribe to a SaaS application/tool. The presenation was given at the Interop event at the Bombay Exhibition Center in Mumbai last week. It is currently chosen (by the editorial team of SlideShare) to be featured on their homepage!

This past weekend one of our customers complained that he could not access DeskAway and that he had paid for it yearly (the question of reliability came up a few times). The problem was not with our service - we have been getting 100% uptime. It was something to do with his PC/ Network/ ISP etc. Something was blocking the site. We wanted to make sure that we help him out to the best of our ability. This is an email we sent him after getting inputs from Rackspace (our hosting provider), technical folks on our team, twitter etc. These tips might help you’ll in the future - since we all are so used to using web apps…

Thanks for your prompt response. The problem is at your Computer/Network/ISP end (I will tell you how we know this below) and hence there are a couple of things that you can do to see if the problem goes away. This is the first time something like this has happened so it seems very strange. There are no complaints from our other global users. We have contacted our hosting provider, Rackspace.com and they have given us pointers that you would need to do at your end.

Check if DeskAway.com is up?

http://host-tracker.com
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
http://isitmeoryou.com/

Here, it shows that DeskAway is up - from multiple regions.

(From Rackspace -> Since it is confirmed the problem is not here or with ‘the internet’, that would usually mean it’s local to either the PC or the network. In some cases clearing cache and what not will help, but in others it might require router resets and/or escalation to their local ISP.)

What you can do at your end?
1. Clear your browser cache, close the browser and try again
2. Restart your router
3. Restart your computer
4. Ask a friend in another part of town or country. In fact we did ask people on Twitter about this today - http://twitter.com/sparkimpact/statuses/1334749922
5. Access the site using a different ISP
6. If you have a network troubleshooter at your office then do show him this email and see if he/she can contact your ISP.

Try the following commands one by one from the command line (If using Windows, then goto Start->Run and type in ‘cmd’ without the quotes) and send us the results:
a. ping www.deskaway.com
b. ping <our ip address>
c. tracert  <our ip address>

Hope this works! If it doesn’t then send me the following:
1. Your IP Address - http://whatismyipaddress.com/
2. Your location (City, State, Country)
3. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP)

Is DeskAway.com reliable?
Check out our Pingdom reports (we use Pingdom for uptime) - http://www.pingdom.com/reports/208dhkc8tf76/
We have got 100% uptime so far so there is no question of the site or server going down.

Lastly, here is a video we took today to show you that DeskAway does work and is online - http://screencast.com/t/6enU7Fqbyw <http://screencast.com/t/6enU7Fqbyw>

Hope to get this resolved soon.

We heard back from him yesterday and all is working fine I am guessing it must have been something to do with the router.

Are there any other troubleshooting tips that you would want to add to this? Happy uninterrupted surfing.