If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’re probably in the habit of thinking of tech upgrades as expensive, labor-intensive and likely to get in theway of everything else your business is working on. So it will be a relief to learn that you can get on board with one of the biggest updates required by the changing tech climate of the 2010s — migrating desktop apps to a web-based environment — with relative ease thanks to the free web toolkit provided by Google.
Make the tools work for you, not the other way around
If you’ve worked with us at OpenGambit, or read this blog before, you may have already started using open-source tools to simplify your business’s architecture, or worked with tech partners who’ve helped to incorporate these tools for you. A logical next step might be to play around with the new edition of Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and start taking your upgrades into your own hands. GWT is designed to be useful to developers from a wide variety of backgrounds, and is surprisingly flexible — instead of working like a set of model parts that have to be put together a certain way, it’s more like a box of building blocks — like Legos — that offer a wide variety of choices to support different architectural models. You can continue to use your existing programs, and use GWT to create the script to move them to the web.
Why make the move?
Moving your desktop apps to a web-based environment can make your systems more secure, reliable and accessible to employees wherever they go. With traditional desktop apps, employees have to use email and flash drives to move files around, creating confusing duplications and risking the loss of information. With a web 2.0 environment, you can:
- Allow employees to work from home when needed
- Share information between multiple locations — like OpenGambit’s Hawaii and NC offices
- Collaborate on shared documents
- Survive computer crashes and other hardware failures
- Create a seamless workflow without messy email exchanges
- Share one organizational system between all of your business’s computers
But don’t take our word for it.
Try it for yourself! Check out GWT at their website, and if you need some help, try their tutorials.
We’re increasingly moving away from a world where your first impulse when you find a problem is to look for someone you can pay to fix it. Using GWT can be your first step to declaring your software independence!