Visit any IT forum and chances are you’ll come across this type of question:

“What are the benefits of hosted email and backup, particularly for small or medium businesses?”

There was a time when most IT pros would quickly weigh in with the routine round of arguments against migrating such services to the cloud: Lack of control over the service, lack of accountability by the hosting provider in the event of data loss, sub-par customer service, and questionable cost savings. This stereotype is so prevalent that in another blog, we look at 5 common myths surrounding hosted services that still persist among many professionals in the IT world.

But lately, IT pros have been changing their stance when it comes to cloud-based services such as Hosted Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync. That goes for online backup and recovery, too. And what they have to say just might surprise you:

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May is here, ladies and gentlemen, and for cine-geeks, that means the Cannes Film Festival is upon us.

Discoveries are about to be made and cinematic gems are on the verge of becoming trend setters. With such an event about to unfold, we, here at SherWeb, feel this is the perfect time to release the second part of our list of Hollywood fortune-tellers’ work (read the first part here).

Bon cinéma!

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Is cloud computing the single greatest threat to your IT career? If the thought has crossed your mind, you’re not alone. Some in IT fear the cloud; others worry that it could be a threat to data security. But more and more organizations are realizing that it’s the smart way to go.

And that means there’s a good chance you’ll soon be faced with the next step in your IT strategy: Taking your service-as-a-software solution to the cloud.

Does that mean it’s time to rethink your career?

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As much as 75 percent of a company’s intellectual property is contained within email and messaging systems, according to Osterman research. And that makes email more than just a vital business communications tool; it constitutes an electronic substitute of legal business documentation. In other words, that message from Phil in accounting could one day be used as legal evidence.

More and more businesses are required to archive email in order to comply with legislation like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was enacted to enforce corporate governance standards and ethical conduct. Other businesses have turned to archiving as a cost-effective long-term solution to the security and storage issues caused by growing volumes of email.

What’s that you say? You don’t archive Exchange? Still not archiving Outlook? These four arguments might change your mind.

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The future is here. 2013 is the new 2012 and although it seems like we’re still in December, that month is long gone. Predictions made back then are therefore a part of our reality.

The same goes for some of the assumptions made once upon a time by strange artists. Indeed, technology’s staggering evolution has turned Science Fiction into the science that’s paving the way for 2013. What we once called the future is now our every-day life.

We know it: blogging about futuristic movies has been done. But what very few people have undertaken is identifying which films predicted the world we live in right now. So that’s what we decided to do.

We drafted a list of motion pictures that forecasted elements of our daily lives in 2013 and then gave the list a nice trimming in order to isolate the most popular topics today.

Here’s the first part of our list.

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Everybody owns a smartphone or a tablet these days. But what do we do with our mobile devices? Talk and text, of course… and play Angry Birds, watch adorable kitten videos on YouTube and update our Facebook status so that all our friends know we’re drinking a hazelnut macchiato at Starbucks.

How did we survive the 90’s without all this?

But there’s more you can do with your Blackberry or iPad. Countless new apps are developed every month, and some of them can be of great help.

In earlier blogs, we discussed how Exchange, Lync and SharePoint can help you be more productive in your work.

For this article, we asked members of the SherWeb team about their favorite apps for making day-to-day activities easier, saving time and improving overall productivity.

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Go back 25 years from now and think about your daily morning routine back then.

Your enormous, Chronomatic-244 Digital alarm clock woke you up every morning at 6. Your hand fumbled on it in search of the Snooze button (but with its fourteen buttons, it was easy to hit the wrong one!). You got up, had to prepare coffee – if you were a little proactive, you would have prepared everything before going to bed the night before, just saying! –, and then painfully rambled around the cold house to the bathroom for a shower.

You would have read your newspaper while eating breakfast, but not on your tablet! Remember when newspapers were… well, made of paper! There was also a fair chance that breaking news had happened since it had been printed during the night.

Let’s just say things were different.

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Picture this: You got a job as a system administrator in a small business with a promising future. So far so good, right? Not so fast. As the company’s go-to guy for all things IT, you’re faced with the biggest challenge of your career, which is to pick up the pieces of a faltering Exchange email infrastructure that was obviously thrown together by non-experts.

And here’s the kicker: You possess little to no Exchange experience. With that in mind, you have two options: Rebuild the entire infrastructure and upgrade to a more recent version of Exchange or move your email solution to the dreaded cloud.

Does this scenario sound familiar to you? If so, then you have probably weighed the pros and cons of the hosted model. Odds are, after perusing the Web and asking your fellow IT experts on online communities, you found more cons than pros.

However, you should know that most of these so-called downsides are nothing but misconceptions and that teaming up with a cloud hosting provider remains the safest, most cost-effective and time-saving solution for your organization.

Don’t believe us? Here are some facts that will change your mind…

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Is IT a man’s world? Better not say that around Tania Gobeil. For the last 15 years, this programmer analyst has been de-programming this gender stereotype.

So with March 8 being International Women’s Day, we thought we’d honor women everywhere who have managed to not only break into—but excel—in a predominantly male field.

We recently sat down with our very own Tania Gobeil, who was recently promoted to the position of Functional and Business Analyst Manager to find out what it’s like being the only female on SherWeb’s development team.

If you’re a female thinking of entering IT, you’ll want to read this. And if you’re a male working with female colleagues in a mostly-male field, you need to read this.

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In January, Microsoft sent a mass email to its 100 million+ Messenger users, announcing that it would be officially retiring the service on March 15, 2013 and migrating all users to Skype (Microsoft acquired the VOIP service back in May 2011 for a hefty $8.5 billion).

So where does this leave Microsoft Lync users? And should SMBs everywhere rejoice at the cost savings they’ll reap from using Skype?

Not exactly. Only certain Skype features are free, and these tend to be more targeted to consumer use. The paid services are those that are more heavily used by businesses.

So does that mean Skype will be a strong competitor to Microsoft Lync for a business context?

Again, not exactly. Skype’s is designed more for consumer use. It lacks many of the functionalities and support most organizations look for in a unified business-grade communications platform.

See why…

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