Contents of CPA Practice Advisor - MAR 2012

Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.

Page 36 of 38

TECHNOLOGY IN PRACTICE WITH ACCOUNTANTS ADOPTING PORTALS FOR SECURE
DELIVERY OF CLIENT DATA, WE CAN EXPECT TO SEE INTEGRA- TION OF OUR CLOUDS WITH OTHER BUSINESS, PERSONAL, AND PUBLIC CLOUDS SO THAT CLIENTS CAN EVENTUALLY GO TO ONE PLACE TO MANAGE ALL OF OUR INFORMATION.
you have to admit they have a pret y big view fi nder." We see this conver- gence taking accountants from the realm of yesterday's PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) to today's PIDs (Personal Internet Devices), which gets our vote for the best three let er acronym of the show.
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Component Miniaturiza- tion: Intel announced their fi rst Android smartphone which has similar function-
ality to a miniature netbook, but stuff ed into a form factor one tenth the size. Whi le we are always impressed at how many features they
are stuffi ng into these smartphones and ultra portable devices through miniaturization of components, other devices such as scanners and projectors are also being impacted. T ere were a number of PicoP projec- tors demonstrated and we can expect that they will eventually fi nd their way into our "converged" devices such as 3M's Camcorder Projector and the MicroVision devices hoping to eventually fi nd their way into cell phones. In addition, from an imaging
perspective, the smallest unit we saw (other than your smartphone camera) was the HoverCam Mini
which can be used for presenting and projecting video or images which could be tax returns or financial statements. By the way, if you are impressed by the slim profi le of the Motorola Droid Razr and Fujitsu Arrows Es smartphones, check out the Huawei Ascend P1 which is less than 7mm thin!
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Cloud, Cloud and More Clouds: The consumer electronics industry realizes that most people use a
var iety of cloud applications prompting InfoWorld to rebrand the show as the "Cloud Electronics Show." In addition to consumers using the cloud for personal email, social networking, digital sharing of files and photos on the web, and services such as banking and port- folio management, vendors were touting the "cloud" resources behind their products. Users today want to access the same information and resources on multiple devices (smartphone, tablet, PC and Televi-
sion) so that they can pick up where they were regardless of what tool they are using (think about having your timesheet open on all these devices at all times. Consolidation of these features into personal clouds is already occurring and companies (such as Facebook and Google) are making it easier to build both a personal cloud and public cloud. With accountants adopting por-
tals for secure delivery of client data, we can expect to see integration of our clouds with other business, personal, and public clouds so that clients can eventually go to one place to manage all of our information. Consumer products such as Sug- arsync, Dropbox, and Apple's iCloud will be driving developers to do the same for "work clouds." CES 2012 was another great
experience and we see these con- sumer trends pushing into tomor- row's accounting fi rms allowing us to more eff ectively serve our clients, which is why we are in this business in the fi rst place.
2011 TOP TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVES FOR PUBLIC ACCOUNTING This list refl ects the top issues identifi ed by CPAs in Public Accounting.
1. Data Retention Policies and Structure 2. Remote Access 3. Control and Use of Mobile Devices 4. Information Security 5. Staff and Management Training 6. Tax Workpaper Automation 7. Saving and Making Money with Technology 8. Technology Cost Controls 9. Portals (Vendor and Client) 10. Privacy Policies and Compliance
11. Process Documentation and Improvements 12. Spreadsheet Management 13. Server and Desktop Virtualization 14. Overall Data Proliferation and Control 15. Mobile Technology Controls 16. Project Management & Deployment of New Implementations 17. Lifecycle of Technology 18. Budget Processes 19. Cloud Computing / SaaS Computing 20. Deployment of Smartphones
March 2012 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com 37