Managing both personal and work agendas

In my move to Google services (more generally going “all cloud”), I started to use Gmail (love it though there are rooms for improvement regarding the UI) but I also wanted to start using Google Calendar.

Before: One agenda that contains both work and personnal information hosted in Outlook at work. I synched it with mobile device over USB or bluetooth. Pros: one agenda with all my appointements and todo in one place, can take it with me on my phone, nothing in the cloud (no “corporate” securiy issue). Cons: Mixing both professional and private appointments, I can not share it, no access control (my management could see my personal appointment ?).

Problem when moving in the cloud: With Google Calendar my agenda will be hosted in the cloud, in the Google cloud… It is my call to decide to host my agenda on their datacenter but I can not do the same with my work agenda. Legitimately the company I am working for is not so keen of the idea of pushing sensitive information on an external service.

After: The better solution seems to be handling two calendars separately:

• Personal calendar hosted in Google Calendar: it is now accessible from anywhere and on any device through the web based interface and I can share it with my relatives. Also Google provides a Exchange server wich makes it easy to integrate this calendar into tools.
• Work agenda remains on Outlook at work and I synch it over USB/bluetooth with my phone. Nothing in the cloud.

How to:

1. Google provides a tool to synch your Outlook with Calendar (synch 1 way or 2-ways). I used it to push all my agenda to Google Calendar.

Side note: Yes, I am PC user by default, but I have no technology religion and could move to another platform anytime if needed. Actually having most of my datas in the cloud is just easing this process.