Cloud brokers & consultants like to talk alot about 'demistifying the cloud'. There's alot of whitepapers, case studies & cloud blogs on 'what is the cloud'. Marketing people almost soil themselves in delight at the prospects of how much money they can make from some of the cloud sales campaigns they design, complete with resplendent back slapping over well-earned cocktails on a Friday evening after work.
The I.T. industry is getting drunk & high of its own spin & the slap-happy tags of 'As A Service' onto things. But recently, I do believe this merriment has gotten to the stage of 'wasted'. That point of drunkeness where even the smallest task is nigh on impossible. I'm talking about the recent love affair with 'Bring Your Own Data' being slapped on as a marketing tag. Which usually comes now with a side order of 'all you can eat data'. Now sure, 'all you can eat data' is nothing new. Anyone who's worked in telecoms has had this phrase bandied about in meetings, internal memos etc..
But, this was never a phrase much seen in marketing. It would usually appear under 'unlimited data' with an asterisk pointing to small print telling you fair usage limits applied. The actual phrase 'all you can eat data' in the cloud is being used, & being used as its considered 'disruptive' & to make it stand out from the traditional straight-edged I.T./telecoms marketing speak of 'unlimited data'.
Okay, so disruptive marketing in the current I.T. services market is nothing new. But slapping 'Bring Your Own Data' on as a marketing piece frankly just shows both how desperately stupid marketing people are about the cloud, & also how incredibly badly those in the Cloud space have been about educating their customers, & also why the cloud space is so small right now. And this really shows in our nearest trading partner, the UK.
A new survey reveals that the current cloud computing services market for UK SMBs is worth £660m. According to the region-by-region reports done by the British Government that were published in October 2010, the total number of small to medium businesses in the UK is somewhere close to the order of 4.7 million. If you were to just take a pure average on that, the survey shows SME/SMB spend on cloud in the UK is currently valued at approx. £150 per year per small company. That's barely even the cost of a few Google premium mail accounts.
Stupidity such as 'Bring Your Own Data' is not marketing people being smart, or driving business into Cloud companies. In fact, the entire prospect of what the cloud offers, whether it is PAAS/SAAS/IAAS was always based on 'Bring Your Own Data'. It is in fact a fundamental of it. Calling it BYOD is stating the bloody obvious, & fooling no-one.
For example, in an IAAS scenario, you're asking people to bring their own data to your cloud facilities, otherwise they'd be bringing their own hardware & data & it would be classed as colocation. In the scenario of SAAS services, of course they're bringing their own data - whether they are a start-up, OR an established company. The same even goes for PAAS; you're bringing your own data to plug into a platform to generate systems in the cloud.
The marketeers in the Cloud have become too drunk off their own illusions of success that they can slap 'As A Service' on things, found a new cow to milk that upon inspection, even at possibly the biggest cross section of the potential market for Cloud, even just within the UK as an example they've made a cloud market worth roughly the same as the shared hosting market four years ago (i.e. pre recession/global market meltdown).
Success? I think not. Cloud marketeers need to get their heads out of the clouds, back onto a footing of reality, & actually engage with the prospective customers. The excuse of 'people won't pay' doesn't wash. They will. People look for cheap services because there's nothing to make them see beyond the value of the cheap services. And it's really a message that is crucial right now as the world still recovers; LOOK AFTER YOUR CUSTOMERS.
Slick marketing & corny chat-up lines like 'Bring Your Own Data' are like the prawn cocktail; dated, & no-one's really buying them. Return to basics, & bring your customers along with you, & give them the value they will pay for, & get rid of silly marketeers who are damaging the growth potential of the Cloud. You'll save yourself money too in the process that you can spend properly on your customers.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Clouded Issues gets shortlisted for the 2011 Eircom Spiders 'Big Mouth' category award
Wow, that title is a mouthful - but yes, I am extremely proud to announce that 'Clouded Issues' has been shortlisted for the Big Mouth award at the 2011 Eircom Spiders, & is flying the flag for the Cloud in Ireland at the awards being the only Cloud blog shortlisted. I'd really like to take the time to thank everyone who has been involved in my journey in the cloud who has in effect made the nomination possible, & the people who went out of their way to have me nominated in the first place. I am grateful beyond any words I could ever possibly express for that kind of support.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Episode 13: Where all for one leaves you on your own.
Consolidation in the Irish datacentre & hosting industry is something that those in it have spoken & written about over the last number of years. In the last number of years in the Irish market, we've seen the likes of Novarra bought by DigiWeb, Register365 bought by Namesco, Hosting365 by SunGard, Aventure by DediServe, & recently, one of the biggest buyouts of DEG by Telecity Redbus.
As is natural in times like this, the merging/buyout of companies competiting by each other is a natural course of evolution in the market. Less competition tends to make alot of people nervous, especially in trying financial times. But then there's others who view these buy-outs as important for securing services held by customers by them not waking up one morning to find their service provider is closed, in administration & their business as a result is in limbo. In the end, in either circumstance, the customer actually loses.
Yes, you read that right. The customer loses. Forget the fact competition evaporates into a consolidated & captive market, the real loss is diversity of solution & redundancy. In Ireland, the managed services industry has been extremely poor at promoting redundancy in solutions. It was common when customers suggested to one of their providers they were seeking an additional back-up, or co-existing solution in another provider's centre to provide some level of redundancy that a provider would put the customer wish first, & a sense of betrayal felt.
For a long time in the Irish market, the customer was not the focus of the business, & that was obvious from the number of failed companies, companies whose customers left in their droves to other providers, & the fact that in the last few years even with so many of the small companies being bought out by bigger companies, the big boys have been totally incapable of dominating the market, & that smaller players have entered & been so successful.
Apart from the frequent criticisms of extremely poor customer care being levelled at some of the big players; horrendous contractual terms, complete inflexibility in the solutions to serve the customer in the way they want & need, horror stories of entire systems not working, & support that just never gives answers, with no real support. Sure, some of these complaints existed before consolidations happened, but afterwards, many have spoken to me of worsening service levels.
But the single biggest complaint many have had is the complete inability due to the sheer myriad of cloud solution platforms used by different service providers meaning people cannot obtain true redundancy. Performance of high-read software systems on many of the virtualisation platforms used has proven hugely problematic for many who have 'been around the houses' in the cloud in Ireland. Moving away from a cloud provider leaving contractual disputes aside proves the most problematic when trying to extract your data to move, or diversify with another provider due to vendor platform lock-in.
Cloud right now in Ireland should be a total no brainer. Traditional services shouldn't stand a chance on the cost argument, or the resilience argument. Cloud providers should be 100% customer focused. The customer is absolutely king right now, but they're not. Ireland yet again continues to prove that customer service in our country is given absolutely little consideration as a factor, along with the customer coming first.
I remember many years ago going into a store to buy a brand new electric guitar, & sure I wasn't parting with two grand for one, it was around 800 to 900 euros for the one I wanted. The first store I went into, I was going to pay the asking price of the model I wanted, & I asked about a case of some kind for it to be thrown in for free (just a simple soft case - they maybe retail for 20 to 25 euros) since it was a mid-range model. I got told in the store that if I bought a Rolls Royce would I expect a garage to be thrown in too?
And sure, you migt read that & think, you can't expect something for nothing. The four other Irish stores that carried the model I wanted gave me the same run-around. At first I thought to myself, maybe I shouldn't expect a garage to be thrown in. Then I said to myself,I'm sure there's someone out there who will. So after a short online search, I found & rang a store in Glasgow, Scotland who not only had the guitar, but were willing to throw in a hard case for free, & ship it for much less than the guitar on its own in a cardboard box here in Ireland. Just to be clear - this wasn't a scale/purchasing power issue. The store was much smaller than the ones we have here in Ireland.
The day after it was delivered, I got a call asking me if I was happy with everything, & was there anything further they could do for me. All this for a guitar I in the end picked up for 670 euros, hard case included. The end result? I have never bought a single guitar here in Ireland after that. In fact, the company I bought from in Glasgow, I've since bought two other guitars from.
Earlier in the year, I went into a very well known store that has pretty much taken over as a guitar megastore in Dublin for another guitar. I was almost laughed out of the store over a discount on a guitar I know they have a huge markup on. The end result, I bought it in from the same store in the UK at a saving of over 300 euros. Again, I received my call the next day thanking me for another purchase & asking me if everything was okay, & even had some on-the-phone support given to me regarding a set-up issue I had with a feature on it.
Consolidation is fine, as long as the efforts on customer service, customer satisfaction & meeting the needs of the customer get concentrated. In Ireland, it's a lesson we still need to learn. Shop around, demand more & don't accept the same-old same-old. It's hard to earn money as a business today. When you go spend, always remember, a fool & his money are easily parted. You cannot afford to be fooled more than once in the Cloud in these times, so keep your feet on the ground while your head is in the clouds.
As is natural in times like this, the merging/buyout of companies competiting by each other is a natural course of evolution in the market. Less competition tends to make alot of people nervous, especially in trying financial times. But then there's others who view these buy-outs as important for securing services held by customers by them not waking up one morning to find their service provider is closed, in administration & their business as a result is in limbo. In the end, in either circumstance, the customer actually loses.
Yes, you read that right. The customer loses. Forget the fact competition evaporates into a consolidated & captive market, the real loss is diversity of solution & redundancy. In Ireland, the managed services industry has been extremely poor at promoting redundancy in solutions. It was common when customers suggested to one of their providers they were seeking an additional back-up, or co-existing solution in another provider's centre to provide some level of redundancy that a provider would put the customer wish first, & a sense of betrayal felt.
For a long time in the Irish market, the customer was not the focus of the business, & that was obvious from the number of failed companies, companies whose customers left in their droves to other providers, & the fact that in the last few years even with so many of the small companies being bought out by bigger companies, the big boys have been totally incapable of dominating the market, & that smaller players have entered & been so successful.
Apart from the frequent criticisms of extremely poor customer care being levelled at some of the big players; horrendous contractual terms, complete inflexibility in the solutions to serve the customer in the way they want & need, horror stories of entire systems not working, & support that just never gives answers, with no real support. Sure, some of these complaints existed before consolidations happened, but afterwards, many have spoken to me of worsening service levels.
But the single biggest complaint many have had is the complete inability due to the sheer myriad of cloud solution platforms used by different service providers meaning people cannot obtain true redundancy. Performance of high-read software systems on many of the virtualisation platforms used has proven hugely problematic for many who have 'been around the houses' in the cloud in Ireland. Moving away from a cloud provider leaving contractual disputes aside proves the most problematic when trying to extract your data to move, or diversify with another provider due to vendor platform lock-in.
Cloud right now in Ireland should be a total no brainer. Traditional services shouldn't stand a chance on the cost argument, or the resilience argument. Cloud providers should be 100% customer focused. The customer is absolutely king right now, but they're not. Ireland yet again continues to prove that customer service in our country is given absolutely little consideration as a factor, along with the customer coming first.
I remember many years ago going into a store to buy a brand new electric guitar, & sure I wasn't parting with two grand for one, it was around 800 to 900 euros for the one I wanted. The first store I went into, I was going to pay the asking price of the model I wanted, & I asked about a case of some kind for it to be thrown in for free (just a simple soft case - they maybe retail for 20 to 25 euros) since it was a mid-range model. I got told in the store that if I bought a Rolls Royce would I expect a garage to be thrown in too?
And sure, you migt read that & think, you can't expect something for nothing. The four other Irish stores that carried the model I wanted gave me the same run-around. At first I thought to myself, maybe I shouldn't expect a garage to be thrown in. Then I said to myself,I'm sure there's someone out there who will. So after a short online search, I found & rang a store in Glasgow, Scotland who not only had the guitar, but were willing to throw in a hard case for free, & ship it for much less than the guitar on its own in a cardboard box here in Ireland. Just to be clear - this wasn't a scale/purchasing power issue. The store was much smaller than the ones we have here in Ireland.
The day after it was delivered, I got a call asking me if I was happy with everything, & was there anything further they could do for me. All this for a guitar I in the end picked up for 670 euros, hard case included. The end result? I have never bought a single guitar here in Ireland after that. In fact, the company I bought from in Glasgow, I've since bought two other guitars from.
Earlier in the year, I went into a very well known store that has pretty much taken over as a guitar megastore in Dublin for another guitar. I was almost laughed out of the store over a discount on a guitar I know they have a huge markup on. The end result, I bought it in from the same store in the UK at a saving of over 300 euros. Again, I received my call the next day thanking me for another purchase & asking me if everything was okay, & even had some on-the-phone support given to me regarding a set-up issue I had with a feature on it.
Consolidation is fine, as long as the efforts on customer service, customer satisfaction & meeting the needs of the customer get concentrated. In Ireland, it's a lesson we still need to learn. Shop around, demand more & don't accept the same-old same-old. It's hard to earn money as a business today. When you go spend, always remember, a fool & his money are easily parted. You cannot afford to be fooled more than once in the Cloud in these times, so keep your feet on the ground while your head is in the clouds.
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