Gouged

After the Christmas / New Year break many traditional retailers started to mount a campaign to lobby the Australian Government and people that a greater duty should be imposed on goods purchased overseas on the Internet. Their reasoning? These overseas purchases where not being charged the Goods and Services Tax (GST = 10% on top of price). They claimed this to be grossly unfair and made them uncompetitive.

Initially Gerry Harvey, owner of Harvey Norman department stores took the lead role but was resoundingly shouted down by social media. You can read about that here. Well Gerry, let me share with you my own experience and why you are living in the past.

I was after some SharePoint 2010 books. I keep my reading list at www.goodreads.com (you can connect with me there if you want and view my lists and reviews. Just use director@ciaops.com to connect) so I did a look up of the book I was interested in on Amazon.

I like Amazon for many reasons but one is the reviews. I checked out the reviews and ratings, then judged the book to be a good investment. However, instead of buying it through Amazon I usually try and support an Australian business. So I looked up the same book there.

Ah…the same book is over TWICE as expensive from an Australian business. SAY WHAT?? (the clean version of my initial reaction). Ok, maybe that’s an anomaly. Here’s my second choice, firstly on Amazon

then locally

this time almost THREE times as much! Again – SAY WHAT??

Look, I appreciate that there are different publishing laws, sellers, shipping etc involved here, however at a current exchange rate of about one Australian Dollar to one US dollar, guess what? As the customer I DON’T CARE. I’m prepared to wear a small mark up to support an Australian business, but really TWO and THREE times as much? I’m afraid not.

Amazon will probably deliver just as fast, provide better customer service, reward my loyalty and even give me the option to download it electronically on to just about every device I own. You local resellers just don’t get it do you? How can you afford to be so much out of whack with international offerings that are geared to World market? You are putting yourselves out of business at these rates and I honestly say good riddance. If you are going to be THAT uncompetitive you don’t deserve to be in business because somewhere along the line SOMEONE is ripping me off and as a customer I DON’T CARE! You think that I’m not smart enough to use my computer and make a few comparison eh? Well I ain’t too stupid to waste my money on what is essentially an identical article at a 200% and 300% mark-up.

If you still don’t understand why I’ll be taking my business elsewhere (roll on Amazon) and unlikely to return I’d suggest you read

but make sure you get it from Amazon (above)

because locally it is still 2.5 times more expensive!

I said that too!

Here’s an article about the move to Cloud computing and the challenges it presents to resellers from SMB Nation Fall 2010 (which I presented at).

http://rcpmag.com/articles/2010/12/01/bracing-for-a-cloudy-future.aspx

I suppose that I’m one of the several (un-named presenters) that concluded:

“Many such companies currently earn much of their income deploying and maintaining hardware. Thanks to the cloud, however, that’s a doomed business model, according to several conference presenters.”

My friend Karl Palachuck lays it out even more plainly:

“Ninety percent of your clients have bought their last server, and they’re moving to the cloud with you or without you,” he warned his audience.

and I totally agree with him, especially in light of the imminent release of Office365. A great example is that when Office365 is released it will give all businesses access to the enterprise version of SharePoint for a few dollars a month. That is a huge amount of power and functionality for no upfront cost and a small ongoing monthly amount per user.

When you combine Office365 with Windows InTune it allows the deployment of the latest version of Windows and Office to a customers desktop for a single monthly cost. It also means that as new versions become available subscribers are eligible for updates automatically. This is effectively giving even the smallest business access to the benefits of volume licensing.

You can access my presentation from SMB Nation here:

http://www.ciaops.com/storage/docs/gs103.pdf (6.3MB)

but honestly if you are not looking to the benefits the cloud can provide then I suggest you take a look at this video which demonstrates how even 10 year olds understand the benefits:

<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-VJeEcPZMSJA/UP8XxmSYLJI/AAAAAAAAHyQ/l5Ms1IJj8oI/video4ea9cdd5a065%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('14a4c886-f84a-4496-a980-9c7014bae36d'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "

http://www.youtube.com/v/_eq3Sj1GGs8?hl=en&hd=1“;” alt=””>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eq3Sj1GGs8

This video certainly makes me feel old and I reckon I understand the benefits of the cloud, but I’d hate to think what it makes you feel if you only starting to come to terms with what the cloud offers.

Facebook effect

When I give presentations to technology types I am always amazed at how many have never heard of docs.com. Docs.com is a collaboration between Microsoft and Facebook to allow the creation (using Microsoft Office Web Apps) and the sharing (using Facebook) of these Office documents for FREE. To get an idea have a look at my docs.com stuff at:

http://docs.com/@ciaops

Why would Microsoft want to do this you may ask? Firstly, most ‘younger’ people don’t use desktop applications anymore to create documents they use ‘cloud’ based alternatives. Microsoft realized that if it didn’t provide something to keep these people using Microsoft products they would lose them forever and potentially forgo future revenue as they moved into business and continued to use the same non-Microsoft ‘cloud’ products they use now.

Secondly, Facebook is really starting to become a very powerful feature of the technology landscape. Like it or not it is perceived as the place to be these days. This is further evidenced by the recent high profile defection of Lars Rasmussen (of Google Maps and Wave fame) and Kate Vale (Google’s first employee in Australia) to Facebook. You can read about these moves here:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/why-i-quit-google-to-join-facebook-lars-rasmussen-20101101-1799q.html

and

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/giant-flaw-pair-put-finger-on-google-brain-drain-20101101-179mk.html

Microsoft already owns a small percentage of Facebook and that is looking like a smarter and smarter move every day as Facebook continue to vacuum up all sorts of technology companies as it seeks to continue to grow and monetize its more than 500 million users.

Here is another interesting article “Google: The Search party is over” which details how Google is not only facing maturity in its major product (search), but also a brain drain to ‘hipper’ companies like Facebook. A few years back people considered Google untouchable, oh how times change eh?

All this makes for interesting reading and seems to indicate the way forward at this stage will involve Facebook. I would say that if you are pondering the ‘cloud’ then I think you should take a look at what docs.com (and Facebook) can do and where it may fit, because if you aren’t I’ll bet your customers and competitors are.