The Curse of Low Interest Rates

The Bank of England's Monetary Committee was this week split but Interest Rates have again been held at record low levels of just 0.5%. Surely this is good news for us all and the economic recovery?

The reality is that there is a ticking bomb in the system as those people who either are already on standard variable rate (SVR) mortgages or are due to be on them soon, have a nasty shock in store. The fact is that interest rates will rise - it's just a matter of when not if. SVR today is from 3.5% to 4.95% and many people have budgeted the affordability of their mortgage and lifestyle based on this rate. If base interest rates should raise by just 1%, then it would constitute as much as a 29%% rise in SVR and, therefore, repayments which is a huge increase. And let's face it, given past SVR levels, a 1% rise is trivial.

The saviour for people in this predicament in the past was to grab a fixed rate mortgage around now and lock themselves down on repayments. But the problem is that new fixed rate offers are factoring in what banks think will happen to interest rates and in many instances these deals are unaffordable already for people on SVR. There is a ticking bomb in terms of potential repossessions in the future.

The indicators in the economy are not good. The retail sector is suffering as 4%+ inflation rates hit. Jane Norman, Thorntons, TJ Hughes, Carpet Right, Habitat amongst others have suffered terminally in a raft retail of bad news. And only part of this can blame the internet changing buying habits or out of town shopping growth. You can tell when it gets tough when affluent London commuter towns like St Albans have boarded up shops in the High Street and Poundworld is the most thriving shop. Consumers are already reining in their credit exposure and spending. The news gets worse as only yesterday British Gas spoke of yet another hike in gas prices of around 20% as a strong possibility and we already are seeing upward pressure on food costs.

The fact is that inflation figures are misleading. The real inflation rate amongst people with average or lower disposable incomes is actually much higher as those goods which are increasing in price faster represent a higher proportion of average spend to these people as it may do to richer people. The rising cost of energy hits average incomes much harder than higher incomes as these people may spend the same on energy but it is less of a proportion of their average spend than lower paid people.

And today, Public Sector workers are striking over austerity measures which threaten their pensions which are gold plated compared to the real world of the Private Sector. But here's another reality. The Government does not invest lump sums over the long term 'saving and investing' to pay for Public Sector pensions, they actually come out of the current account paid for by National Insurance. So Public Sector pensions are paid directly out of our taxes, there is no magic fund or annuity to pay this. You and I, everyone, pays for Public Sector pensions directly in our tax bills today - and this is only going to get higher. So while in the Private Sector we have a crisis looming in terms of retirement income, we are paying for the gold plated, premium Public Sector pensions in our tax.

And the Public Sector workers think we will support their strike? They must be joking.

So people stuck on SVR mortgages have it in all directions - higher interest repayments to come, more taxes to pay for Public Sector pensions and the like and higher inflation on staple goods. It's not a pretty place to be. Add in greater uncertainty on jobs, particularly in the banking and retail sectors and the picture is very gloomy.

In many respects, the damage caused by the economic disasters in the financial sector has yet to really bite. The next 24 months could see some very tough times and a band of people are right in the firing line. By keeping the interest rates low to kick start the housing market, many people who got new mortgages based their affordability assumptions based on lower interest rates continuing.

This is the curse of low interest rates.

'Under Recruitment' - The new Vogue or just Age Prejudice?

I am an older member of the UK workforce so I can comment with some experience on a thorny matter.

If I had a pound for every time I have heard the phrase, 'You are over qualified (or too experienced) for a job' I would not be having to apply for jobs again.

It isn't necessarily a money thing although I am sure that plays a part. What is very surprising in all this is that most companies in the UK now have Human Resources or Capital Departments or even Talent Management rather than good old Personnel Managers. These new names are to show just how seriously companies take the quest for the best people.

Then the oddest of things occur. The self same companies tell candidates that they are too experienced or over qualified for jobs. That seems to argue straight in the face of the quest for the best talent for specific roles. It often means that 'Headhunters' who comb LinkedIn each day contact skilled people only to see them turned away. It incentivises such recruiters to pick candidates who are not 'too experienced' or possibly not over a certain age.

Now it could be that recruiting managers fear hiring people who may be as skilled or more so than themselves. If so, then the company has a problem as such managers suppress the potential for new generations of equally or better skilled people coming into the company.

Or perhaps it is good old age prejudice coming into play in a fairly unsubtle way. Maybe 'Too experienced' or 'Over qualified' are the new euphemisms for wanting people between 25 and 35, the old-style 'golden age' for employees. I wonder what the average age of Google or Microsoft new starters is but that is not to suggest they are doing anything wrong - it's just an esoteric question. The internet age is very geared toward to young, tech-savvy who rate their reputations on the number of likes they get on their Facebook page.

Whatever it is, I have had many debates with companies I work with about hiring talent versus warm bodies. In the strife to become the best in your particular market, it pays to over recruit not under recruit, in my book.

Recruiters, HC/HR/Talent Management and hiring managers have roles to play here but mostly it is a scene set by CEOs and Directors. If you want the best, don't kid yourself when you recruit.

US Debt Crisis is our Crisis too

On one side of our political divide there is an urge to spend in order to boost recovery.

The danger of this is that your spending gets out of control. In the US, they now have $14 trillion of debt. It isn't just that they are fighting two wars, it's about the average spend versus average revenue. The equations are not balanced and no one area of spending is going to solve it. The matter is more about politics and mentality than actual economics as there can only be one answer if you can add up. If the US don't control this, and soon, then they risk going into a debt spiral.

As I blogged yesterday, there will be only one benficiary of that and it would be China as they are the only country financially strong enough to keep lending money to the US. The danger of being hock (big time) to potentially your biggest threat is obvious.

Why doesn't the US deal with the debt? Mention tax rises and American citizens scream 'Tea Party' and that's not a stereotypical joke because it's what is happening. But as the elections approach we have exactly the same scenario as Gordon Brown had, put off the bad news until after the election. Until then, keep spending and pretend it's a strategy to boost the economy. Let the next Government sort the mess out.

And the mess becomes a political hot potato. This Thursday, teachers in the UK will be the first to strike over the proposed amendments to Public Sector pensions. Sitting in the Private Sector we stand aghast at the audicity to do so - and noble, learned people like teachers too. But that is the problem. Raise taxes, cut spending and you risk outrage by decent people. Continue to spend and everyone stands back and points out that disaster looms.

No one is prepared to take the accountability for the past 12 years of idiotic financial spending. In fact, we have set up the banking system with exactly the same scenario to allow it to happen all over again. And next time around it will be harder to get out of the mess, potentially impossible. Take a long look at Greece to see how that affects you and how your amenable friends who lent you the money smile and desert you when the proverbial hits the fan.

I have blogged extensively in the past over the concept of denial. We are all guilty.

Google Apps v. MS 365 - A Cloud of Difference

Google has upped the anti as the intended launch of Microsoft 365 approaches.

For those who read my recent blog, Google use my same argument. Just putting a current product into a hosted environment, amortising the price and calling it somethning different is not The Cloud. MS 365 takes all the features of its point Office products and just sticks somewhere else other than your PC. Like salesforce.com, NetSuite and others, Google designed Google Apps on the web and so it a completely different animal.

To start with, Google Apps is designed for teams not individuals. You do get SharePoint with MS 365 but multiple users cannot work on the same document as it is just a repository for files, with Google you can. In Microsoft world you cannot work with anyone outside your company who does not have MS applications, with Google you can. This is web philosophy versus on-premise, one licence, one user mentality.

Microsoft have always designed with the PC in mind and Windows operating system. The web is different and a hosted solution should be able to be used in exactly the same way with whatever device you work on with. Google has that philosphy. Interoperability between PC, Mac, tablet and phone on the same product with Google. Try that on Microsoft. The web is the platform, not the machine.

I looked at Microsoft 365 pricing. If you are an SME you think it's simple but it isn't. There are around 11 different pricing options with tiers. Google has a single price per month with no commitment of time, you can stop using and paying any time. I am not sure that is exactly right but for simplicity's sake as an SME, it's a peach. And it's remained static for 4 years.

The thing is that MS 365 is still all about using your desktop whereas Google and others use the web as the platform. There is still a cloudy issue on upgrades with MS whereas Google and web based applications deliver refreshed product all the time - Google Apps added 125 new features in the last year alone. And reliability is key. Much has been made of Google's outtages but I sat on a corporate network only yesterday and for the thrid time in two weeks we had a lengthy email outtage. As it wasn't on the web, everyone just accepts it. In Google's case there has no place to hide and that's how they like it. Google deliver 99.99% uptime on the web whereas MS cannot even deliver that on a private network.

Google has the advantage of experience. It was a company born in The Cloud and has grown up in there. I am not the best of fans of the Google ethos at times but when it comes to delivery, they are spot on. In the battle for users in The Cloud, Google has the right philosophy, mentality, products and pricing.

38,000 companies across the globe signed up to Google Apps in the last week. I didn't even trial MS 365 as I couldn't see the benefit of just hosting my Office off my PC and being charged more over the 3 years since I bought it. Office hasn't changed an iota in that time and that's my issue.

The Role of the Channel in The Cloud

The role of the Channel in playing in software vendors' strategy in The Cloud is very unclear.

My personal experience at last week's Cloud Computing Forum in Olympia was one of confusion when it came to Microsoft. I got information on both Microsoft 365, the Cloud version of Office, and Microsoft Dynamics for The Cloud. I have even downloaded the Dynamics program and I have been called since installing the trial by both Microsoft and ConsultCRM. Admittedly, Microsoft did back off when I mentioned ConsultCRM but there was no doubt that both vendor and channel were watching who was downloading. It was also obvious that the hosted version of Dynamics and 365 are hosted by Microsoft.

So you have to ask yourself if Microsoft is investing all this money in hosting and marketing to end users what's the point of having channel players in the way of the sale? What value do they add?

In the case of my Dynamics trial I think there is a role for someone to play in advising me how a confusing program works. But given I took a trial with Salesforce.com and within minutes I was working, integrated into Office and had my near 10,000 list of contacts uploaded without a single interaction with anyone, you can see why Microsoft needs to get to a point where the end user performs the sale and the rest is auto-provisioned. There is little room in the world of SME for slicing up the sale to give some margin for just handling the enquiry.

I am told that in the case of MS 365 that Microsoft has had to do a great deal of the running as well as provisioning of the service. Partners have been slow to embrace the product during its beta phase and Go Live is due at the end of June and I know that one distributor has had virtually no sales.

What is going on? How is Microsoft going to solve this and is there a role for channel to play in The Cloud for Microsoft and arguably other software vendors?

For Microsoft, it appears they will be paying a finder's fee to channel members who deliver sales on MS 365. This is mighty precarious as it strongly appears that the contract of sale will between user and Microsoft meaning that in future the channel can be easily hacked out or given nothing for renewals. As one channel player puts it, "We lose control of the client."

So you have to ask yourself, why would a reseller sell MS 365 and risk losing control of the client when they could sell the on-premise solution and get full ownership of the sale?

Again it's an example of a software vendors' lack of strategy and execution in The Cloud. Or it is a warning bell for channel that their future is limited as Cloud adoption takes off?

So the scramble at the show was to interest channel in hosting solutions themselves but there is a problem here. The beauty of Cloud is economy of scale for SMEs and the way it is delivered is for vendors to host the solution with as many users on as possible so that each incremental user uses just a portion of the resources required and forgoes expensive investment in servers and virtualisation at the SME. It's a win-win.

The problem is that if everyone is hosting the same things then the economy of scale gets diluted and pricing will never really get much better. The end user loses out the more companies try to host themselves is my argument. Also, for resellers it would be unclear as to whether they could generate enough sales to make this worth their while. Multiple channels doing the hosting doesn't help the SME and it could be a mug's game for channel at worst, at best speculative for returns.

In all this, where does the distributor sit? There is no stock involved, credit is a new story and Microsoft is generating a dialogue with the end user that argues that resellers should get out of the way. If I were a broadliner, I would be starting to get uneasy about how this all pans out.
Microsoft has argued that one way resellers could keep control of sales is to do Enterprise agreements with large customers. Erm, the big opportunity is in SMEs, guys. The whole point is that SMEs is where the major opportunity lies for The Cloud.

All this points to a cloudy strategy for Microsoft and other vendors. At least Microsoft is doing something is one argument. But the channel must be starting to get worried. It certainly argues that the role of distribution in the future of plain old software sales is limited if this approach goes ahead.

Next up, I will try and tackle the thorny issue of what distributors should be doing.

Comparisons in The Cloud

Hot foot from The Cloud Computing Forum with my free trial of Microsoft Dynamics, I thought I would give the whole thing a go.

So I got my MS Dynamics trial going with a little bit of sweat and some clunky processes of verifications. Finally the beast arrived. Neatly, you can sign in with your MS Live ID.
From there I went about importing my contacts from ACT, my old and tired CRM package. There is a process to follow and I adhered to it religiously. When I viewed my contacts I got loads of blank entries that corresponded to null contacts found in companies. Then you notice that it has picked up first names only for the Full Name. I follow the procedure to wipe out the data and start again. The same thing happened although this time I had carefully followed the mapping of the data columns as per the instructions. I did it again. Same thing.

Annoyed, I turned to Salesforce.com. I signed up for the trial of the Group version although it is arguable that as a small, small company I only needed the entry level Contact Manager. The sign up took seconds and I was provisioned immediately. I pressed the button for Outlook synchronisation and a small program was downloaded and then I followed the steps. Outlook was synchronised with some errors which I manually checked and corrected - that took about 30 minutes in total.

Then I uploaded my ACT from the same file I used on MS Dynamics. It worked. Nothing more to say than this. All my contacts were there as required. I had a little tweaking to do on some accounts where contacts were not assigned but that took about 10 minutes in total which for 9,500 contacts in total isn't bad.

Salesforce allows you to send emails and it records them. But if I am honest that functionality is better in ACT where you use native Outlook and a copy is recorded in ACT. For Salesforce, you have to use its editor and it's not as nice. Plus it makes nothing ad hoc. Even scheduling meetings seems to not affect the Outlook calendar. What this forces you to do is to work entirely in Salesforce and I am a little uncomfortable with this and can see why salespeople rebel against the time taken to do things in Salesforce.

By this time MS Dynamics has been ditched. I can't see where it links with Outlook and although the tabs on the left are good, it is not as intuitive as Salesforce which has everything you need to work a contact or opportunity in front of you.

Then came the price. I could have started on a special offer on Salesforce Contact Manager at £1.20/user/month but I splashed out and did the next offer for Group at £10.20/user/month. The comparable offer on MS Dynamics is one flavour at £22.75/user/month for this month, £29.50 after the end of June.

No brainer - Salesforce wins it.

And here is the issue for Microsoft in The Cloud. Everything is about getting the same product down into The Cloud and amortised on price. There is no understanding of the different needs of an Enterprise of one man or 10,000. The price and product is the same. But the businesses are radically different.

One size does not fit all, sadly. Whereas Salesforce does escalate to a high price, that depends on the user status in a very hierarchical fashion and you go into the realms of unlimited customisation. But for me, Salesforce Group is perfect and I am working happily in it as we speak.

This is where Microsoft's strategy is critically flawed. Businesses of my size do not compare with the likes of BP International. My requirements are simple and limited. Salesforce Group gives me a raft of features perfect for my business. MS Dynamics is clunky and overloaded while making it difficult for a user to get started. I don't want to have to be trained to do something as simple as inputing data, thanks, or importing a .csv blinking file. If that isn't easy, then you are onto a losing battle with SMEs.

Salesforce has cracked it. It worked perfectly on my iPad and I don't have to worry about file management. It also has a custom app for iPhone which works on iPad. Then it has something called Chatter which is free and is an imbedded Twitter type application which allows you to create working teams on accounts or groups of accounts from people within your company or even outside. People then see updates and you can 'chatter' any news or success or share ideas as well. It's a neat function and this works on iPad and my Android too.

The Cloud isn't just about sticking an application in a hosted environment. It's about solutions. Microsoft is using old mentality to try to get into The Cloud. Microsoft should take a leaf out of the books of the likes of Salesforce. To make matters worse, salesforce seemless links into Google Apps which are free.

They are already there and doing it brilliantly. They are the benchmark.

The Cloud is Cloudy with Outbreaks of Common Sense but Mainly Confusing

Olympia first thing, breakfast at El Mundo. West End prices and microwaved bacon like leather, tough on the teeth. It's a fortifying start to a day full of questions.

I am hoping to see vendors, hosting companies, resellers make sense of The Cloud. So far, it's a very confusing picture. First sense is that the Forum is small and not many players and punters alike. There is lots of talk about infrastructure to build your own hosting set up - which sounds expensive. Some are talking about co-hosting facilities to serve applications from. Again this seems expensive for resellers.

I make a beeline for Microsoft. They should know what they are talking about or at least that's what one of their senior directors tells me. Their stand is large in comparison to others and around the edge are several of their partners including the likes of Trustmarque, Dimension Data and more.

I first go to Core.GB and get a quick talk through MS 365 by a young Irish techie. You can get a 25 user beta trial which will probably last up until September. What MS 365 offers is a hosted solution for your email, calendar and, at minimum, web based Office Apps based on a SharePoint back end (I knew they would find a use for SharePoint in the end). So if you are a 10 person company you would pay a miserly £4/user/month and you can have your company domain hosted for email (even the website although that's really naff) and everyone gets a 'Lite' browser based version of Office which allows you to create and edit documents. Well you can edit documents so long as you have web access, of course, but documents are synchronised to the SharePoint back end. So you get a central document storage area which everyone has access to and sees - so no private document area.

The trouble is that Google do this for free.

This is the basic level and is very similar then to Google Apps in terms of capability. If you then pay £8/ user/ month extra, you can have the full versions of the MS Office Suite. I assume that you can then have your usual private document stash and the SharePoint back end for everyone to use. For the mathematics gurus this all then works out at £144/user/year. I didn't get to know how much storage space this gives you. Also, you can add, at further cost, an automated back up and data management facility.

So for a 10 person company this equates to £1440/annum for a full solution of MS Office, hosted in The Cloud. Don't tell anyone, but Core's young Irish demo person could not access the MS 365 portal for his company - a rather terminal looking screen came up which was very disconcerting for a punter like I.

This all sounds decent value for a fully hosted, maintained and supported solution. Companies like Core and Trustmarque, clustered around the MS stand offered the same. The added value service over just going to MS is that they might do the email migration from your current provider and set up the SharePoint back end to your liking, plus then do first line support. What margins the reseller makes, goodness knows. And where was the Distributor in all this and why should they have a slice of the action, you may ask? Credit risk management, as the solution is bought from MS? As I have said before, the beauty of The Cloud is that if you don't pay, you don't get. Resellers or MS who are not paid in any month have the option to simply switch off the service and effectively cripple the non-paying users' company.

You have to worry about Distribution in this simplified world. For the user, there are still many questions which remain unanswered by Microsoft. There is a lack of clarity on upgrades, some one year fudge was mentioned which I didn't understand. Disk space allocation - what do you get, how can you flex it and how do you manage data that spirals out of control? Interoperability between applications? There should be answers to all this ready as this is what SMEs need from The Cloud. Peace of mind at a set monthly cost that only grows in line with their requirements.
To be clear, The Cloud is NOT about just sticking current applications on a co-hosted site and then charging in a different way. The real Cloud is about having an entire solution provided - the whole service is not just about being robust it is about scalability and usability. Answers need to be ready.

OK, nirvana time. Who can serve my Office applications and backend accounting from one source, manage it for me and send me a single monthly bill? Let's lob in CRM and mobility for good measure.

Back on the MS stand and this time I get to meet 2 companies. First is Program Framework who know their MS 365 - "You get all this and guess what the price is?" I ruin the lady's day as I already know. For some reason they glibly say it's all incredibly cheap but no one I have met has done a cost of ownership analysis over a 5 year period and floored me with the comparison toi buying the normal licences. So I pose the question - can I get 365 and CRM? Ah yes, you can get the CRM via our partner over here ConsultCRM. Here I am told by a very professional guy that MS Dynamics fully hosted is £22.75/user/month and will go up to £29.50 after June so buy early while the cakes are hot. I can't seem to buy MS 365 and Dynamics from the same company let alone get it on the same contract. And as for back office functions like accounting, perish the thought.

I mention NetSuite and the man shivers as all his comparisons are for Salesforce.com (again it's point products in a world where SMEs want solutions) and say I can get back office and CRM in one solution, one price. The man is floored. There is no answer. I am slightly floored too as I am not sure if I was right. What was disconcerting was that he didn't know if I was right or not.
There is a huge ignorance about the main players who already have credence and market share in The Cloud. There is an automatic assumption that MS will come in and change the world. Is this true or is there an opportunity for companies like Salesforce.com and NetSuite to clean up and take advantage?

Again, where are the Distributors? Not a single stand from a Distributor at the event. Arrogance? Hubris? Ignorance? Who knows?

There you go, I'm not so daft. NetSuite - accounting, CRM and eCommerce in one solution in The Cloud (http://www.netsuite.co.uk/).

Salesforce.com starts $2/user/month but is better at $15/user/month rising to $65/user/month and territory management etc goes much higher up to $250/user per month. It's hard to compare like for like but in my opinion for an SME's needs Salesforce.com would suffice at $15/user/month while MS Dynamics will be £29.50/user/month. Both offer decent MS Office integration. Go figure. Stop Press* - I did my free trial sign up to Dynamics and imported my text file from Act. Nightmare - complete khazi. Did the same for salesforce.com last yera, worked first time and looked great. Dynamics looks naff, you have to be honest.

It appears that MS is putting a finger in the air on pricing and is trying to charge SMEs enterprise-grade pricing. It really is a poorly thought through strategy, based on poor research. Current Cloud players have worked out how to get SMEs bought in at a sensible price and take away the fear factors. Microsoft have much to learn in this market.

In search of answers it suddenly struck me that it is who is not here that is more significant than who is. After all, there are only so many hosted centres, infrastructures, security identifiers and mail traffic optimisers that you can buy. Where are the Distributors? No one here. Not one. Where is NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Taleo, Workday.com and more? Where is VMware or EMC, Oracle (OK, they have a cubbyhole meeting room if you look hard)? Where is the largest of them all - Google? This, clearly, is not an end user solutions event.

So a quick chat with a friendly MS Consultant and you get honesty if total confusion at the end of it. Office 365 does not communicate with MS Dynamics hosted version. Oops, that wasn't clear before. MS is looking at a PBX system in partnership with BT offering the Lync service which can route calls. But where does this leave the recent acquisition of Skype which has got a strong following in consumer but is creeping into the corporate market place? Can't Skype build in a virtual PBX facility on top of its other features? Where is RingCentral or BT at this show? On the wandering phone front for SMEs, Vodafone offer a virtual PBX based on mobility, but wouldn't it be better if this is fitted into real office applications too? Where was RIM?

It strikes me that some of the big players either don't think The Cloud is a serious proposition or that they they don't have a solution that they can articulate? It seems the buzz of this show is backbone facilities which if you are a reseller will scare the hell out of you in terms of investment and management. Maybe the REAL Cloud application providers have moved on as Marc Benioff suggests. Maybe The Cloud is really passé after all.

There was an absence of Social Media sites like LinkedIn or Facebook. The Cloud embraces it all and there seemed to be key elements missing at this Forum.

So where does this leave the market and the channel? As I have said before there is room for a player to come from left field. It's not about simple aggregation - it's about providing best in class end to end solutions that work, on one bill. Microsoft is putting just a toe in the water, the story is rubbish for SMEs and the resellers have no idea how to articulate the proposition. If anything, they seem to augment the status quo. There is no leadership by Distributors and each vendor is waiting for the other to deliver some kind of strength of proposition. It's a waiting game with some posturing. Little leadership.

To be frank, I thought Microsoft's strategy was based on the status quo with amortised pricing. Where was the real value proposition? Where was the enthusiasm? Where was the research and the competitive positioning? Where was the end to end strategy for solution provision to SMEs?
Oh for Salesforce.com and NetSuite at this show to illustrate how to deliver Cloud solutions in a world class form. Be off with you, purveyors of Private Clouds, hosting facilities and analytical tools. Users want solutions. Think of The Cloud as the telecom cloud - no one worries how calls get to phones they just want applications, robustness, security and sensible billing and costing with scalability. Come on someone, just do it. The time is right.

A Funny Turn

"Not in my lifetime," said a very tall man from a large Building Society who wished to remain anonymous but whose branches are nation wide. He was answering my question: was he planning to use The Cloud to host any of his core business applications? However, his company is already using The Cloud in varieties of ways, not least in many of the third party facilities they may have such as Clearing Systems, internet banking portals, feeds to IFAs and their networks etc. They might even look at communications, in terms of video conferencing or PBX. He confessed they may look at the concept of Private Cloud and the idea of getting some back end scalability. But when I indicated that all these networking, infrastructure and optimising companies were looking for him to part with vast sums of cash, he laughed. "Not in my lifetime," he said. That was bad news for some - he was younger than me for sure.

It augments the view that much of this forum is missing the point. Already The Cloud is becoming synonymous with parting with vast sums of cash, incredible complexity, management and data issues, security, archiving issues and much more. It must be scaring the heck out of companies. Particularly SMEs. Big boys tackle such issues daily and throw vast sums at it, this is just a different question in a different space. To some extent I was failing to see the compelling advantage to a large company in utilising The Cloud such was the complexity of offerings and issues to consider and prices. It was as if the vendors were vying to present a combined business case against The Cloud.

But SMEs are being glossed over, yet this has to be the easiest of sells. Scalability without critical mass is crucial for SMEs with smoothed costs - Cloud based solutions present the perfect solution. Yet whenever I mention I am a 10 man company (which is a gross exaggeration) their eyes gloss over an they can't wait to get shot of me. That's because their selling model doesn't account for SMEs. The same for Distributors and the same for vendors. Therein lies the rub. Cue Apple, Google and Amazon - fill your boots, chaps. Volume, monthly, high margin transactions? We'll have some of that.

The gap in the market is for serving SMEs with gold plated solutions with one bill, one support line - everything working, robust and secure. Who cares what back ends all that in all honesty. That's why we call it The Cloud.