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iTWire: The biggest name in the high-end enterprise market has released a beta version free online collaboration tool, aiming to bring business the level of teamwork expected from Google Wave.

I was interviewed for a brief story in MIS magazine on how CIOs can get project funding past the CFO in these modern times.

You know a virus is big news when suddenly your users start asking about it instead of the usual “Good news” hoax variants (you know, “my friend’s brother’s uncle’s IT guy said don’t open an e-mail with the title ‘good news’ or it will melt your whole computer and eat your house. Microsoft has said there is NO cure !!!!!!”)

Now, good network admins already have their infrastructure under control – both for present and for future threats.

So, it’s prudent to send out an affirming message at this time letting your users know that they can have confidence their data will be protected from harm and they won’t suffer downtime.

Here are some template e-mails you can use – and not just for Windows, but for the Linux and MacOS guys too!

In 2002 I joined a company who had an abysmal payroll product (called “Sapphire One”.) After evaluating the payroll scene I selected and implement MicrOpay Payroll Manager in 2003. This was a text console type application which was dead fast to use and best of all, accurate in its outputs and up-to-date with legislation.

Some people didn’t like the look-and-feel but I’ve never had any problem with text-based payroll apps; all the payroll people I’ve worked with have been super fast on a keyboard and at numeric entry. Pulse Mining Systems is another like this which, again, was text-based but as a direct consequence a regular user could fly through its screens and it was also extremely light on network resources.

What I did have a problem with was the horrible, basic, payslips produced by Payroll Manager. I wrote my own Delphi app to parse a text file generated during Payroll Manager’s payroll processing and produce a much nicer formatted payslip with our own logo, better use of fonts, bezels for grouping and so on. (I also wasn’t keen on Payroll Manager’s locked proprietary database which limited ad-hoc reporting. Neither of these criticisms are, I’m sure, unexpected to MicrOpay and certainly I raised them with them at the time – but let me be clear; the good far outweighed these two issues.)

I kept thinking this may be a useful app to other MicrOpay customers. I kept planning to make the code more generic (eg instead of having a logo embedded into the code, allow the user to import their own and so on.) Consequently, on my “Software” link on the side I had an entry for “MicrOpay payslips” but without an actual download.

Fast forward to 2008. My current employer again has had a need for new payroll products. When I came in, one system in use was 2Clix. Some of you may have heard of it; this company went into liquidation last year spectacularly placing the blame on their vocal users who spread bad word of mouth about experiences with the product. Rather than fix the software, 2Clix chose instead to criticise its own users. An attempt to resort to the courts failed with monumental international bad press and 2Clix then closed their doors, re-opening under a new name with the same product and management team. But I digress …

Once again, after a review of the payroll scene I returned to MicrOpay and have implemented and gone live with its more modern Meridian package. Pleasingly, this uses Microsoft SQL Server under the hood meaning the data is far more accessible. Additionally, it still maintains its excellent outputs, accuracy and legislative compliance but in a friendlier-looking package. This includes a graphical report writing module which lets you modify the payslip format, among many other uses.

Thus, I’ve killed off the link to my MicrOpay payslips product which never even materialised in a generic form anyway.

Suprisingly, I got a call from MicrOpay about my link. While it had sat there for years, they only noticed it when I returned as a customer and were alarmed by the reference to terrible payslips. Happily, this was easily resolved when I explained I was referring to the Payroll Manager product. However, I also wanted to take this opportunity to let any others know that MicrOpay’s current flagship product is definitely not suffering the few shortcomings I felt the previous product contained.

Again, do let me stress, the good points of MicrOpay far outweighed the two items that I felt were underperforming. In fact, while performing parallel pay runs we noticed that 2Clix didn’t even balance between its own reports. It reports a different amount paid to employees than sent to the bank – due to rounding issues on one report but not the other. Thank the deity of your choice for good software.

In this world of ubiquitious online access I was stunned to come across some small business managers who were dogmatically convinced they had to use their mobile phone as a modem for their laptop, to dial an ISP, in order to pull e-mail.

That’s probably not uncommon, but when I offered alternatives which were both faster and cheaper they strongly argued that BlackBerry was a “gimmick” and that the real key to e-mail anywhere was Bluetooth – their explanation being their laptop could use their mobile phone as a modem via a Bluetooth connection.

It gets sadder; they smiled at me sagely, this obvious knowledge they possessed arising because they “can’t be without e-mail” and because they are such “heavy” e-mail users. (Although, I noted some irony that they could only read an e-mail if they first printed it, and then usually didn’t reply because the hardcopy just had the sender’s display name, not e-mail address.)

Now, I can appreciate people have different understandings of technology and different levels of tech-savviness. What shocks and surprises me though is when we talk about management. These are people I presume surely must have business acumen, people who surely must be sharp minded, and not the least people who would want information at the speed of thought. I guess not. And that’s the thing which I have the hardest time comprehending.