Whether vacationing in Europe or working from a client site, PR pro has easy access to his desktop
Whether vacationing in Europe or working from a client site, PR pro has easy access to his desktop
Jerry Swerling likes to vacation in the South of France and rarely brings a laptop. Last spring, while sightseeing near Carcassonne, he received an urgent call from one of his top-tier clients requesting a business document.GoToMyPC.
Without missing a beat, Swerling headed to a roadside café with an Internet kiosk, paid one franc and grabbed the file from his office PC using ExpertCity’s
“When my wife and I are away, we like to avoid as much technology as possible. But when you’re in the service business, you can’t disappear from the face of the earth, and you can’t tell a client, ‘I don’t know the answer,’ or ‘I’m not sure about that,’ ” Swirling says. “You have to respond quickly, with access to everything.”
Swerling, a 30-year public relations industry veteran, runs a one-man firm from his Malibu, Calif., home, and counts Cisco, General Motors, Toyota and Symantec as clients.
With ExpertCity’s service, which costs about $20 per month, users install the GoToMyPC server applet on the target desktop. There’s no client installation, so the product requires no technical training or IT support. Users can access their computers from any Web browser, and the latest version lets them access desktop files via Pocket PC.
Although security concerns have kept GoToMyPC from taking hold in big companies, it’s favored by small firms such as Swerling’s, which are more concerned about cost and ease of use. (“What hacker wants to steal a press release for General Motors?” Swirling jokes.) And the bottom line? It makes him look good. For instance, while visiting the American Cancer Society’s Atlanta headquarters, Swirling eased the client’s tensions by pulling up and printing an important e-mail on the spot.
Although Symantec’s pcAnywhere is more powerful than GoToMyPC, Swerling found it didn’t meet his needs. It requires a client installation, and features such as remote application installation and the command queue file transfer utility are designed for IT use. And Swerling also prefers ExpertCity’s flexible, pay-as-you-go model to buying and maintaining a desktop application.
“GoToMyPC is like an insurance policy,” Swerling says. “It gives me peace of mind.”
