I’ve spent a great deal of time publicly evangelizing the merits of cloud computing, both on this blog and on the Serotalk podcast. The next logical step was to expand, in the form of a book, on my experiences as an entrepreneur of a cloud-based business and share my thoughts on the effects of cloud computing on the information technology industry as a whole. Coming soon to your favorite bookstore is my first published work, entitled “Cloudy With a Chance of Profit: You, Me, And The Cloud That Binds us”. While you wait for the book to arrive, check out this exerpt.
What is the Cloud? More to the point: why should you care? It's something I would have asked back in 1997 when I first began using that new platform called Windows and the only clouds I knew were the ones from my cigars or the fog machines in the clubs where I worked as a DJ. Back then, the concept of cloud computing had not been conceived, but the Internet was causing a lot of excited noise about what this new type of communication would mean for people and businesses. I don't think even computer scientists had a clue of how the Worldwide Web would grow into the beast we see today.
Let me put it this way, the Cloud means to our generation what the telegraph meant to the world in the early 19th century. It changed communication. It changed how people viewed the world, and the great thing about inventions is that they build off each other until you sit back and think that things cannot possibly get any better. It's funny now to see that the car phone we once thought was so luxurious did not come close to the smartphones of today, but as you will read, the Cloud is so much more than point to point communication. It's a virtual playground, a global community, a new way of working and playing with friends and colleagues.
Writing this book brought back some interesting memories of the days when I was just getting started with Serotek. Those were the days when we felt good about renting enough servers to hold the work of the company in a safe location. We were proud when we had to rent more servers to keep up with the growth of our operations, but those were also the days when the difference between $100 and $1,000 to get the right hosting package would have been the difference between running with an idea and killing it. Now we're comfortably housed in the Cloud, and you know, I'm not even remotely kidding when I tell you that the sky is the limit.
But seriously, why should you care? In a world of bits and bytes, bandwidth and backups, you need to become a part of the technological evolution. You need to understand that the landscape is changing and there is more to the evolution than texts and Tweets. You cannot afford to be left behind when so much of the world is turning to the clouds to do business. Profit is as much about the funds you can generate from using cloud services as it is about the information you can use in the Cloud to build your personal human capital.
I am writing this book to you no matter where you sit. I am writing to the educator who wants to bring a whole new level of functionality to the classroom. I am writing to the person who just lost their job and is looking for a new source of income to survive. I am writing to the blind person who once had to pick living quarters conveniently located to public transportation, because before the Cloud, we were limited by physical time and distance. I am writing to the eager software developer who has yet to experience the beauty of choosing from a number of platforms to deploy your invention to the big blue sky of cloud possibilities. In short, I am writing to every consumer who wants to get in touch with their inner entrepreneur and act on that passion to make something happen.
The Cloud is an infinite frontier. That isn't to say that all clouds are built equally or that every cloud has a silver lining, but the potential is there. Speaking as someone who went from zero technology know-how to working my way through DOS and finally up to my current Cloud activity, I can tell you that it is not difficult. And it is not too late. I want you to put this book down having learned enough about the environment to proclaim that, you too, are ready to take on this ubiquitous thing we call the Cloud.
Showing posts with label Promotions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Promotions. Show all posts
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Deck Chairs On The Titanic
It’s April 15th. Tax day tea party fanatics are holding a national protest against government spending. Of course government spending keeps us blind people going. Without SSDI and government subsidized technology and training, most of us would be a lot worse off than we are today. What may look like waste to conservatives looks like a lifeline to us.
Today is also the 97th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The largest, most luxurious ship ever built sunk on its maiden voyage after hitting two icebergs late on the night of April 14th. It sank two and a half hours later, early in the morning on April 15th and more than 1500 people were lost.
What do these two things have in common other than April 15th?
While conservatives protest too much spending, blind people everywhere are protesting too little. As large as President Obama’s budget is, it doesn’t have much in it for us. The agencies that serve the blind population are being squeezed, and forced to operate with less funds and more demand. That means fewer blind people achieving independence.
One of the reasons that fewer and fewer blind people are being served is that government agencies insist on investing in the Titanic. They buy the biggest, most bloated products, build on obsolete technology, and they continue to pay for such technology long after the initial purchase. But these products are not in tune with today’s environment. They aren’t nimble enough to avoid the icebergs, and it takes weeks or even months for users to become familiar enough with such huge and ponderous technology to even attempt to navigate the waters safely.
So we thought, why not sink the Titanic and put what money we have in state-of-the-art technology that is cheaper, easier to learn and allows government to do more for less? While state agencies and NGO vision support organizations are hanging on to their tickets aboard the Titanic amid shrinking budgets, we are offering seats on the lifeboats.
Any user who currently owns a screen reader and finds himself in the unfortunate predicament of not having the latest Software Maintenance Agreement for the product can purchase System Access Mobile for $299 ($200 off the regular price) until April 30. System Access Mobile is state-of-the-art accessibility which can be used on a home computer or from any computer simply by plugging a thumb drive in to an available USB port. It runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, and gives users full access to all the social networking, pod casting, twittering fun of modern Internet use while delivering full accessibility to the most widely used business applications including Microsoft Office. It can be trained in a tiny fraction of the time it takes a new user to become familiar with a traditional (titanic-like) screen reader. And, while those old style behemoths continue to gobble dollars with Software Maintenance Agreements, System Access Mobile has done away with these costs for maintenance. Buy the software once and we keep it up-to-date forever at no cost to the user.
We figure realistically that a Voc-rehab can serve four newly blind individuals with System Access Mobile for every one served with a traditional screen reader. How’s that for stretching those tax dollars?
And of course, that’s not all. We offer our Voc-rehab trainers and blind field support technicians the power to train remotely with Remote incident Manager (RIM). We open up scarce technical jobs for blind IT professionals by promoting Remote Access Manager to businesses with large intranets. These products deliver accessibility at a cost that is comparable to any mainstream corporate intranet application.
Look around. While the competition is selling luxury staterooms on the Titanic for thousands, we are providing fast, safe accessibility at very affordable prices. We invite any agency to put our products against the competition in a cost-benefit analysis. And isn’t that what the agencies should be doing? Why, I bet that would even please the grumpy old misers at the Tax Day Tea Party. How could you be against doing more for less?
Today is also the 97th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The largest, most luxurious ship ever built sunk on its maiden voyage after hitting two icebergs late on the night of April 14th. It sank two and a half hours later, early in the morning on April 15th and more than 1500 people were lost.
What do these two things have in common other than April 15th?
While conservatives protest too much spending, blind people everywhere are protesting too little. As large as President Obama’s budget is, it doesn’t have much in it for us. The agencies that serve the blind population are being squeezed, and forced to operate with less funds and more demand. That means fewer blind people achieving independence.
One of the reasons that fewer and fewer blind people are being served is that government agencies insist on investing in the Titanic. They buy the biggest, most bloated products, build on obsolete technology, and they continue to pay for such technology long after the initial purchase. But these products are not in tune with today’s environment. They aren’t nimble enough to avoid the icebergs, and it takes weeks or even months for users to become familiar enough with such huge and ponderous technology to even attempt to navigate the waters safely.
So we thought, why not sink the Titanic and put what money we have in state-of-the-art technology that is cheaper, easier to learn and allows government to do more for less? While state agencies and NGO vision support organizations are hanging on to their tickets aboard the Titanic amid shrinking budgets, we are offering seats on the lifeboats.
Any user who currently owns a screen reader and finds himself in the unfortunate predicament of not having the latest Software Maintenance Agreement for the product can purchase System Access Mobile for $299 ($200 off the regular price) until April 30. System Access Mobile is state-of-the-art accessibility which can be used on a home computer or from any computer simply by plugging a thumb drive in to an available USB port. It runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, and gives users full access to all the social networking, pod casting, twittering fun of modern Internet use while delivering full accessibility to the most widely used business applications including Microsoft Office. It can be trained in a tiny fraction of the time it takes a new user to become familiar with a traditional (titanic-like) screen reader. And, while those old style behemoths continue to gobble dollars with Software Maintenance Agreements, System Access Mobile has done away with these costs for maintenance. Buy the software once and we keep it up-to-date forever at no cost to the user.
We figure realistically that a Voc-rehab can serve four newly blind individuals with System Access Mobile for every one served with a traditional screen reader. How’s that for stretching those tax dollars?
And of course, that’s not all. We offer our Voc-rehab trainers and blind field support technicians the power to train remotely with Remote incident Manager (RIM). We open up scarce technical jobs for blind IT professionals by promoting Remote Access Manager to businesses with large intranets. These products deliver accessibility at a cost that is comparable to any mainstream corporate intranet application.
Look around. While the competition is selling luxury staterooms on the Titanic for thousands, we are providing fast, safe accessibility at very affordable prices. We invite any agency to put our products against the competition in a cost-benefit analysis. And isn’t that what the agencies should be doing? Why, I bet that would even please the grumpy old misers at the Tax Day Tea Party. How could you be against doing more for less?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
