...it is annoying though.
It all started with the Kansas City Cloud Computing User Group which is under the .org top level domain which would suggest some altruistic attempt to educate our local community about modern computing services delivered via the Internet, commonly referred to as Cloud Computing.
Everyone knows the Internet is one of the most disruptive innovations in human history - in short, its development, massive adoption, and the dozens of attributes that make it, well the Internet, have really screwed up and even destroyed many business models and businesses. Pick up a newspaper lately? Me either.
The Internet of the last 20 years mostly consisted of text and links, maybe a picture or two. Web sites like blogs were able to publish content and distribute it on a global scale at almost no cost. This destroyed the capital intensive and complex business model consisting of massive printing presses and complex supply chain distribution frameworks. This Chart of the Day from SAI shows what the total destruction of a business model looks like.
The last decade has been horrible for the newspaper industry - the very foundation on which the businesses were built no longer exists. The businesses are no longer valuable and many printing presses are likely worth more for their scrap metal than printing a newspaper or magazine.
Fast forward to mid year 2011. Today's Internet is MUCH MORE than text, links and some pictures. Today's Internet is full of applications - from Email, CRM , custom applications, pure infrastructure, highly specialized applications, to applications to pop some pigs!
Modern Internet services already dominate our personal computing experience. We use Google.com to find everything under the sun, Amazon to buy just about anything we want, Facebook to connect with friends and family, Craigslist to sell old washing machines, Gmail for personal email, Linkedin for professional networking, Google Maps to check out a street view or get directions - the list goes on and on and on. We live on the Internet.
Internet services are beginning to dominate our business computing as well. Commerce Bank leverages Workday, Perceptive Software runs Salesforce.com and Google Apps, Kansas City Southern Railroad leverages Salesforce.com, St. Luke's Hospital System leverages Postini, Zarda BBQ runs on Google Apps as does the YMCA of Greater Kansas City. Soon Kansas City will be home to the world's fastest Internet and adoption of modern Internet applications will continue to accelerate.
Who's business model does this screw up? Well, if the Internet is now the platform delivering applications the desktop environment simply becomes a commodity. Generally speaking commodities are very inexpensive compared to other goods and services. If you buy nails at the hardware store, you don't care who manufactured them - they're nails. Contrast this to an iPad and you have two extremes.
Everyone knows the king of the desktop is Microsoft - they're king of the hill that is quickly beginning to look more like a molehill than a mountain. Here's another fun chart from SAI.
Look familiar? When the very foundation of your business model is completely disrupted you're screwed. Every business model eventually becomes obsolete.
Microsoft is an extremely competitive company and they're not going anywhere anytime soon. They're sitting on a mountain of cash and have tons of smart employees. But has Microsoft peaked? Absolutely. As the king of the desktop, Microsoft was intrinsically tied to the same destiny and the chart above clearly shows how their Internet services business is doing.
You can't hide from reality but you can try and shut it up and that brings us back to the Kansas City Cloud Computing User Group (kccloud.org). I was excited when I found out about the group. Cloud Computing has the ability to increase the capabilities of Kansas City businesses of all sizes, our nonprofits and other community organizations and our schools. Cloud Computing offers more function at less cost - this is great for consumers.
However, these facts are horrible for Microsoft where these same high costs drive record revenues and profits. In the "user group" I quickly noticed my ability to submit blog posts, videos and events to the site was "broken" - I submitted a trouble ticket to the site's administrator and was told, even though I was a full member, only information from or about Microsoft could be submitted to the "Kansas City Cloud Computing User Group" which is obviously anything but. To their credit, they didn't delete my previous posts but they were quickly buried under fresh content.
I thought about trying to start a real user's group for Internet services but choose to focus my efforts in other areas (these groups take TONS of work to start, build and maintain) and eventually forgot about the censorship ... until today.
Microsoft's Tony Tai wrote an article on the Why Microsoft blog that was blatantly misleading. I don't post there often because it's intended for a Microsoft audience but sometimes I do speak up when the post is so obviously incorrect - it's called lying in grade school. Tony had stated Gmail does not have filtering while it's been a feature for at least 5 years. I pointed this out, he responded and I was looking forward to providing some additional feedback but rather than having a discussion they've decided it's easier to pretend reality doesn't matter and I'm unable to post.
When information was expensive to publish and distribute this type of marketing could be extremely effective but today it's just annoying. The facts are everywhere.
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