Co-working or co-working spaces like the Betahaus Hamburg are a new trend when it comes to become more agile, innovative and work interdisciplinary. This is a new form of work where e.g. freelancer, startups etc. should operate independent and parallel within the same workspace and all benefit from each other. Thereby our own workplace is to be used flexibly in time and without obligation – a pay-as-you-go office!
The Cloud supports Co-Working
And as the co-working helps growing the creativity and interdisciplinary cooperation, cloud computing supports to promote the technical cooperation, to create real products and services from the common ideas. Because increasing the agility and flexibility are finally the basic features of cloud computing as well.
Therefore a numerous of applications are available in the cloud, to work at any time and from anywhere. Beside tools for project management like Basecamp or planio, cloud office suites like Google Apps or Zoho, CRM Tools like CentralStationCRM, Storage Services like Dropbox or JungleDisk as well as complete infrastructures like Amazon Web Services help to achieve the objectives successfully.
The applications above can be activated within a very short time and also adding more staff is a breeze. Gone are the days when a ticket must be opened at the support to add another colleague to the applications he needs to jointly participate in the goal.
Above all, the collaborative editing of documents is through the use of cloud office suites more efficient. So, it’s possbile to work on a Google Docs document at the same time. This is the first moment nothing impressive. But if you see, as if by magic the document is filled by the letters of the project partner, while editing a passage in the same document yourself, this is pretty cool! In addition, I can say from personal experience that documents and decisions, and thus projects are actually completed much faster.
Using cloud services startups and freelancers also benefit by allowing them to limit their investment costs to a minimum, because they do not need to raise any capital in the purchase of its own servers to store the data. Storage services, e.g. the already mentioned Dropbox are good solutions.
You also have to think about the needed infrastructure which is required for the implementation of the ideas that have emerged during the co-working. Fixed costs are known to be the death of any young and ambitious company. In addition, a financial bottleneck prevents the implementation of ideas and innovations, if the appropriate infrastructure may not be available.
Cloud infrastructure services such as Amazon Web Services will help here – not only small businesses and projects. They also promote the technical agility and reduce bureaucracy, as they are known for rigid corporate structures, as the required infrastructure is provided within minutes.
Conclusion
Each co-worker is also a cloud-worker. At least, he should inform themselves about the possibilities offered by the cloud, to be flexible from the collaborative technological view.
