The big bad cloud that many IT Professionals are running in fear of or maybe just have no idea how it will impact them took a giant leap forward in my opinion today.
What is so bad about the cloud?
The vision of how this will impact little ole me and Bulletproof is starting to become clear now and my fear of how the Internet will terminate our business model is going away. I now understand clearly the role that IT advisers will have with business in Calgary and Red Deer. It will be a very long time before business abandon their entire investment in LAN solutions, however more and more services will start to go into the web and this shift from the traditional on premise solutions will become less and less – but it will never displace the need for onsite IT as well.
The role as an adviser and manager is crucial
I had coffee with two very good friends today, first was Greg Miller. I met Greg about 18 months ago when he was at Popcorn Technologies. Greg is now a Director, Business Development for DO2. Here is an international firm purely offering services in the cloud to their clients. To the best of my knowledge, this innovative web solution allows firms to submit invoices electronically to their customers. Driven from the customer end, larger Oil and Gas firms right down to the smallest of organizations mandate their suppliers to submit invoices online through DO2′s solution. It is a workflow solution and a solution that saves business money with invoice processing, entirely in the cloud.
Gone are the myths that larger companies are not behind driving cloud based solutions. If firms like Devon, Imperial Oil, Enerplus and others are turning to the Internet to deploy solutions do you think little ole Joe’s Trucking won’t think twice about moving his payroll, accounting and other services to the web.
Scratch another Windows Server sales off our list. How are you going to make up for that lost revenue?
It is time to get real, the cloud is here. During my 30 minutes chat with Greg, I shared Arlin Sorensen‘s business triangle and guess where the Do2 solution fits, smack dab in the middle of process and workflow. Guess what IT Professionals, we need to get on top of this right away? We must know about and understand how solutions like DO2 exist and share them with our clients. It will be better coming from us, trust me…we are their trusted business adviser aren’t we?
My next coffee was with Mike McGovern. Mike and I go back to my days at Merak Projects, now Schlumberger. Mike is now involved with a custom application development firm called Arcurve. Guess what is important to them, cloud based development. Mike and I caught up on the 10 years since Merak, I shared my story on working with the awesome guys at Bulletproof and we discussed app dev in today’s world and how the Internet is influencing the decisions of many of his clients. Again, big business going to the cloud…but wait what Dave West told me…
Even my good buddy David West from eKzact Solutions shared with me at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce 7:15 club today about an increase in web based database solutions in the past few weeks. Small Business looking at moving database solutions to the Internet. Solution that we as IT Professionals used to sell every day to our clients.
What does this mean?
The rate of change is picking up and the cloud integration is here…how is your business going to deal with this? What is your plan?
Do you even have a plan?
Ulistic focuses on serving the needs of Canadian Small Business, REALTORS, and Information Technology firms across Canada and United States. Helping your business understand, deploy and leverage social media, search engine optimization and online communications to generate business opportunities and make an impact inside your community and industry.
