Stories about: Virtual Office

Cisco is announcing a bundle of gear and services aimed at helping companies design and install remote-site communications that replicate the connectivity workers have when they're located in corporate sites.

When it comes to running a business, our feet are firmly on the ground but our data and software are increasingly in the cloud. My burgeoning media empire consists of two people (my lovely wife and me), but to the outside world we seem a lot bigger, thanks to online applications. To get our tasks done, we lean heavily on Web-based apps, from office suites to calendars to collaboration tools that let us work with colleagues on the other coast. Better yet, many of the services we use are free--at least, in their most basic incarnations. That never hurts.

Virtual reality is making its move from gaming and social sites into the business world.

Telco Perl is being used to empower IVR telephony developers to eliminate the typical technical restrictions of proprietary systems to create new services in a shorter time and at lower cost.

The long battle of "thin versus fat" has commenced. From all appearances, Google is angling to end Microsoft's hegemony by disrupting fat client computing on the desktop. The target: none other than Microsoft Office. The weapon of choice: browser-based, thin client applications.

Telecommuters are nothing new at TriNet Group, a human resources outsourcer in California, U.S. In fact, a significant part of the company's workforce operates remotely, either out of their homes or in small satellite offices, all on laptop computers, according to Bob Dehnhardt, the company's network and information security manager.

Microsoft said it will seek to invalidate claims by a California company that has sued it for trademark infringement over the "Office Live" name.

I give up. After almost two decades of e-mail being my quintessential business tool for managing people, projects and processes, I have to admit that it no longer is up to the job. It is time for me to deal with the fact that we are living in a post e-mail world.

Content management vendor Xythos Software recently introduced an online version of its software aimed primarily at small and midsize businesses that lack the resources to install their own document and file management systems.

His real desk may be a mess, but Jason Clarke's virtual office is as neat as they come due to his assiduous answering, filing or deleting of the 400-plus e-mails he gets each day.

A U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit alleging that the National Association of Realtors tried to hinder Web-based real-estate agents will move forward after a judge rejected the group's motion to dismiss the case.