Science seems to compete with the universe itself in fascinating us every day, and computer science is no doubt one of science’s most fascinating disciplines. I remember saying good-bye to the last mainframe in town back in 1997 (yes, I had the chance to actually see a dinosaur); back then, no one would have imagined in their wildest dreams that we would be able to access the resources of super-fast data centers from our mobile devices anywhere in the world, especially a mere 12 years later.

Today, it sounds rather normal if I tell you that you can run a virtual office completely online. Thanks to great technologies made by great people, Zoho has come up with a suite of applications that allows you to do most of the things you do every day using expensive hardware and software. And they provide it online and for a price of a morning latte.

In this book, you will learn how to start taking your work online, and you will see a handful of good reasons why you should do this. No matter what your business or the size of your organization, you will find at least a few applications useful for solving some of your problems.

In this journey, more than knowledge and ambition, you will need a slight change in mind-set in order to welcome the new era, and I hope this book can play a role in that process, no matter how small.