About Social Media Today
Information technology is one of the most competitive weapons in the arsenal of business today and has been a game changer in many industries. Perhaps one of the most famous stories of the early Internet days was how Charles Schwab took billions in market share because Merrill Lynch’s CEO at the time David Komansky said the high net worth people would never trade over the Internet. Now the power of technologies never before available to small business are affordable, and even more importantly they are easy to use. Cloud computing and SaaS are leveling the playing field between many SMEs and large organizations, enabling SMEs to find chinks in the armor of large players and exploit them. Technology is finally getting to where I wanted it to be twenty years ago, like a car; you put a key in the ignition and drive it where you want to go. Isn’t it about time?
In spite of all the technological advances over the last twenty years, including huge processing power on the desktop and now cheap memory, the human machine interface remains primitive. It is still for the most part a 2D visual experience forced into windows-oriented design originally developed by Xerox PARC labs in the 1980s. This is in part the result of the monopoly of one company and you know who that is. Cloud computing and software as a service solutions mark a new era in the human machine interface that significantly enhances the interaction between humans. The interfaces of SaaS solutions being developed today have design thinking involved and are fostering a new level of interaction and engagement. This is facilitating new forms of collaboration and dynamic interrelationships between companies, partners, customers, governments, and people that has never been seen before. This in my mind is the power of cloud computing and one of the reasons for their double digit growth in the face of the global economic restructuring.
What’s In the Cloud?
Innovation is the buzz word of today and everyone is talking the talk, but not walking the walk, in a blog last year I talked about how the majority of innovation is coming from outside companies. I think cloud computing will change this because of the collaborative nature of SaaS applications. Technology is often the enabling platform for innovation; however the ideas around innovating are not created by the machines they are created by humans. This is where cloud computing shines, yes there are tremendous savings to be had, and there are now sustainable data centers and security will be an issue forever. The majority of cloud and SaaS vendors are all mired in a sea of technobabble right now and really don’t see the forest for the trees. SaaS interfaces are evolving at a tremendous pace, are highly interactive and this is just the beginning. Technology vendors are in many ways their own worst enemy; they speak a language that most humans don’t understand. During the SAP Cloud webinar series cited below we won’t be speaking technobabble, we will uncover the true value of cloud computing and SaaS applications including interviews with SMEs that have gone to the cloud. We will also feature several thought leaders and business influencers that will provide their insights into the evolution of the cloud, and how you can optimize seminal business processes and enable your employees to innovate by leveraging the collaborative power of cloud computing.
SAP Cloud Webinar Series: Mastering the Cloud in 8 Easy Steps
The fourth quarter of 2010 saw a dramatic leap in the adoption of cloud computing, according to Sand Hill Group’s 2011 research data. More than 50 percent of business leaders Sand Hill interviewed implemented game-changing cloud solutions in the last six months. This first webinar in the series describes how small and mid-sized businesses are leveraging the cloud and provide guidance on how to spot the distinguishing characteristics of a “true” cloud solution.
Submersible Diving in the North Atlantic
Climbing in a research submarine like the Johnson Sea Link II pictured above was one most exhilarating times of my marine biology career. The first time was fraught with fear of the unknown and tested my ability to accept death if it came. For the marine biologist every time you set foot on a ship you think of your mortality. Once in the sub you are launched into the sea with a hydraulic arm that lifts the sub off the ship. In this case it was the Edwin Link a 125 foot long converted US coast guard cutter. The Edwin link was like a rolling and pitching hot dog in the North Atlantic and my first night on her I experienced the worst sea sickness of my life.
After the tether of the arm is released from the sub it bobs literally like a cork in the sea and the motion is more rapid and intense than on the ship. Once the ballast tanks are filled you begin your descent from the surface amongst a cradle of bubbles, descending slowly around 80 feet per minute the quietness is intense. At 200 feet light begins to dissipate, but this dive we will find the shoals supporting the now defunct cod and haddock populations of the Georges Bank. We are now caught in a current flowing around 6 knots to the north so it is time to turn the servo engines on and take our course toward the shoals. We rise up to around 120 feet following a series of sand dunes that look like a biological desert, and as we rise up to a crest we encounter one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen, flying scallops. The subs propulsion scares a bed of scallops up and off the bottom and suddenly thousands of scallops literally fly up into the water column angling their shells like a birds flying in the sky. I had studied scallops and even participated on a few scallop cruises, but I never knew they could swim. There are still many things to be discovered in our oceans, until next time I wish you great selling and marketing in the millennium.
