Last June, I was sitting in the cafeteria of a conference center set in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia working on some emails before a meeting. The meeting was of a service organization to which I belong and the district attendees were from across 11 time zones.

An American from Alaska walked by me, looked at my laptop, and said, “you have Internet! How did you get an Internet connection out here? I haven't been able to check my email since I got here.” I responded that I was from California and that we come standard with it. After explaining that I was using Russia's good digital cellular service, I offered to let him check his web-mail. Word got out, and my laptop was soon very popular with the other digitally-deprived Americans at the conference who had been email-less for days.

After the conference, we traveled to the city of Barnaul where a Russian IT professional arranged a meeting with the owner of the largest network support company in the Altai state. Again, the conversation turned to the wireless card in my laptop running on the digital GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) signals from their cell towers. It took a while to understand why it was such a topic of interest.

After talking at length, I realized that they have similar issues to what we face in our remote area - not that we have to deal with a crumbling physical infrastructure and negative 50 degrees below freezing. The government in Siberia spends little on communication infrastructure, their cities are separated by large distances, they often face geographic obstacles to putting in physical infrastructure, and it's difficult to get consensus on projects because of a lack of technical knowledge amongst decision makers.

We can thank our political stars that some of the powers that be in California are beginning to realize, as the IT folks in Siberia were, that to be competitive and create jobs in more geographically isolated areas, they need to have access to the same technical resources as urban areas. The same can be said for business owners on the N. Coast as those Siberian IT workers. We know we need to put together every competitive advantage in order to attract business from customers in our local area as well as from across the globe.

Mobile computing and the office communication convergence have been, and will continue to be, the forward-thinking trend in competitive business strategies for our area. The two technologies that are enabling the jump in productivity and connectivity are smart phones and integrated messaging systems along the line on Microsoft Exchange, Lotus notes on Linux, or Google's calendar sharing application.

If it had not been difficult to see the screen using a remote application to my computer back in the U.S., I could have left my laptop home in my travels in Russia. As it was, I was able to use Windows built-in remote desktop utility to access all of the assets on my workplace PC through my remotely connected laptop.

It allowed me to process payroll, print checks, view and edit any document on my work network, view all of my employees' calendars for productivity (more later), and to function digitally as if I were physically in the office. Aside from the time zone differences and having to be careful about when I scheduled phone calls, I was able to take care of all of the work-related issues that came up that could do without my actual presence.

The new I-phone and the host of other devices that are improving screen size and resolution have achieved or are heading towards what was not possible a year ago; to allow people with old eyes like mine to be able to use the remote desktop viewing application on a smart phone. I still travel with a laptop, but I don't take it out nearly as often as I once did. If I am out in the field, or on the road, and someone at the office needs me to take a look at a large spreadsheet or has a billing question on documents that are impractical to email, I can view them remotely on my work PC.

The greatest advantage is that I can edit these documents and make entries in an accounting program. It's a bit cumbersome, but in a pinch, it works. The amount of time that you, as a business owner or manager will need to be in the office is greatly reduced by these. I have found that I spend a great deal more time in the field meeting with prospective customers, talking with existing clients, and working on-site visits. This all works out to more making money activities, and without having to haul a laptop and power supply with me.

The back-end to all of this accessibility lies in the Microsoft Exchange server at our office. Don't get me wrong, we are a small company with 10 employees, owned and operated in Eureka. We did not have an IT department at some corporate office set this up for us. It helps that we are in the technology business, however if you do not want to have to keep a server on-site, there are plenty of companies that offer hosting for MS Exchange and Lotus Notes ... and Google offers a very good calendar sharing and email hosting application.

Instead of installing software on your computer at the office, you connect to a Web-based application that allows you all of the some advantages without having to own any of the software or hardware. While Exchange and Lotus Notes are more full featured, Google's calendaring and email applications are quite good. The feature that makes a huge difference for us is that with Exchange I can view all of my employees calendars, set appointments for them, add contacts, assigns them tasks, and once they are entered, the information syncs with their smart phones.

I can fill up an employee's entire schedule for the day and they never have to visit the office or touch a piece of paper to know where they need to go and the details of all of their appointments for the day or the entire week. This has been a tremendous boon to our productivity as our field employees spend 25 percent more of their time doing production-related activities rather than what are essentially bookkeeping functions of managing their schedules and transit to the office.

Carlton Nielsen is the co-owner of NYLEX.NET, a local computer network support company, working with customers in six states and two cities in Siberia. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . NYLEX.NET is a business member of the Redwood Technology Consortium at www.redwoodtech.org.