Why Your Organization Better Jump Into Cloud Computing

Let’s say you’re like many small to medium sized companies with information systems comprised of a variety of pieces. You have one or two in-house servers, a number of laptops and PC’s, a Microsoft operating system, desktop applications like word processing, spreadsheets, Outlook and perhaps a third party proprietary Intranet application accessed over the Internet. This is common for many small to mid sized organizations.

Trouble is, if you take a moment to calculate what the cost of all this technology and maintenance is for your company you might be surprised. Upgrades, hardware maintenance, software licenses all add up. Don’t even mention that you are unable to really manage what folks are up to on a day to day basis.

To make this more challenging your people aren’t able to take full advantage of things like their smart phones, mobile internet access while they are on the go or at home, social media, and other advancing technologies. This would help them be more productive in serving customers or developing new business.

To make it even more alarming, what is you ARE relying on a third party vendor, which might have financial issues you are unaware of given today’s environment, to manage and host your Intranet content or business systems based on a proprietary infrastructure? You may have some real trouble ahead. What happens if they fold ? What upgrades are they making to adopt new tools ? What is your EXIT strategy ?

You have a problem that deservers consideration. The good news is there is a solution. You just need to gather the will to understand the tremendous risk and opportunity that  all organizations face today around their information systems.

With all of the advancements in technology available to organizations today, particularly with the cloud, you really really have to sit down and take account of how you are using your IT and strongly consider shifting your strategy to the cloud....Entirely to the cloud. Sooner not later would be a very good idea.

Watch Mark Benioff CEO of salesforce.com explain the cloud, technology and what is happening and why you should jump in. Don’t wait and let your competitors beat you to the punch.

IPad - Implications for the Publishing Industry

There is a revolution emerging in the publishing business.  VIVmag, a digital lifestyle magazine available online, will introduce an iPad version of its content when the Apple device is released next month. The implications of this type of content delivery become pretty clear when you look at what the "magazine" (if you can call it that) will be like. Its shown in the video below.

VIV Mag Motion Cover - iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

The video offers a user experience preview that readers can expect for iPad versions of digital "magazines". Like the video from Wired released last month, this and other magazines are getting ready to offer touch and video among other ground breaking experiences.

VIVmag’s chief marketing officer, said the magazine planned to make its digital issues interactive with video and full-motion advertising, including a Fandango HBO “Sex and the City 2″ advertisement and interactive spreads for Kia Motors and Estée Lauder.

This type of super interactivity isn’t going to come cheap. The magazine cost $36 for a yearly subscription of six editions, or $6 an issue. “It is an expensive process,” CMO Mullen said. “It takes the same amount of time to create as a print edition, but we’re creating a living product that is fully dynamic.” This behind-the-scenes video about the creative process used to deliver the digital content gives one an idea of what it takes.

Watch this video from Wired on the new world of publishing.



Price of Content Continues to Fall

Dan Nosowitz of Fast Company recently reported that Universal Music Group (UMG) one of the four major labels, is reacting to declines in CD sales by slashing prices.  With sales down 15.4% this year and digital sales nearing the volume of physical sales, revenues are plummeting for hard copy CD's. Retailers and consumers are looking for lower prices for the format, and the labels have responded slowly, only having droped pricing from $18 to $13 in 2003.

Now, UMG is discounting the price of the dying CD format, to $6 and $10 for single-disc releases. The announcement is making the other labels concerned as they'll have to follow UMG's lead. Given CDs have few years left anyway the long-term result of the discount is irrelevant.

In certain respects CDs are superior to music purchased from digital retailers like iTunes, Zune, and Amazon. They come with album art and a booklet and rarely have DRM, and they're encoded in high-quality lossless WAV files that can then be ripped in any format. If the choice is between a $6 CD or a $9.99 iTunes album, the CD is unquestionably the superior choice, putting convenience aside.

What is really at play here however is the drop in retail value for content. With Spotify and Pandora's technologies coming mainstream and hard copy content being sold at increasing discounts the bottom line is that the market is valuing content at a lower price. This has significant implications in the long run for labels.

While this is an encouraging show of flexibility from rigid major labels, it's not going to change the basic fact that the move is just delaying the death of a format. The cut isn't going to make CDs: viable. it'll just make CDs somewhat more desirable for a couple of years until digital firmly buries physical.



Technology's Impact on the Fitness Industry - IHRSA 2010

At IHRSA 2010 in San Diego last week I had the chance to share views with leaders on where the fitness industry is heading and how technology is at the forefront of its future. The presentation and my video recap are included below.

The presentation was broken into 4 key parts. The first section recaped the increasingly rapid exponential advancement of technologies and what the key trends specifically are, with examples of how those trends are starting to impact the business today. Next, was a review of the tranformation of business models which are being greatly impacted by lower communication and storage costs in addition to the ubiquity of the Internet which is increasingly shifting power to buyers away from sellers. A focus of this section was how bricks and mortar business models are all suffering from declines in margins as costs have surged and pricing power has diminished. Additionally the concept of the "long-tail" was shared. Third, was coverage of innovation, including the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovations. This section of the presentation addressed business model innovation and relied on key concepts of C.K. Prahalad and others. Finally, my predictions for the fitness industry were shared: non-facility competition will surge in the coming years; bricks and mortar fitness businesses will deliver new models that merge the digital and physical worlds for higher levels of customer service at lower costs; wellness will become increasingly mainstream as the "long tail" of the fitness industry; and the future of the extant industry in general will largely be dictated by its present leadership changing its mindset. As I pointed out, the top 10 vaccum tube companies did not participate in the transistor revolution.

Please review the presentation below and see my video recap. Thanks IHRSA for inviting me to contribute.

Impact of technology on fitness industry - IHRSA 2010

View more presentations from Bryan ORourke.

The Embedded Internet - 15 Billion Devices by 2015

The embedded Internet is preparing to transform the world. An era of intelligent connectivity is emerging and according to "Gantz, John. "The Embedded Internet: Methodology and Findings." IDC. January 2009." the industry is about to hit the fast-forward button.

The Internet has grown from its infant beginnings to a global network, defeating old boundaries, stimulating new models, and releasing opportunities for organizations globally.

The Internet is evolving again, to the embedded space. Intel Vice President Doug Davis cites the IDC prediction of 15 billion intelligent, connected devices by the year 2015, that is how big its going to get.

Leveraging the power of Internet connectivity to a limitless variety of embedded devices, many communicating machine-to-machine without human intervention, has more far-reaching implications than most can imagine.

How many of these breakthrough solutions will you create? Think about 15 billion intelligent devices connected to each other. Information technology and the Internet is on the threshold of something new.

If Internet-connected PCs and phones were transformative, imagine what happens when the Internet connects cars, home media phones, digital signs and shopping carts, mobile medical diagnostic tools, factory robots and intelligent wind turbines.

Driven by breakthroughs in microarchitecture and process technology, applications can now deliver scalable intelligence and connectivity to billions of new intelligent, connected devices.

Another huge shift is about to happen....again.....