End Of Summer, End of Days - What Next?

The 23rd of September, fall equinox, was the last day of summer up here in the northern hemisphere.

The Spring Equinox seems like decades ago.  Remembering the Turn that was Summer 2011 one can barely imagine what the next 3 months will bring.

What about the next 12 months?

Unemployment is still up.

Gold is way up.  HP down.

Since 2007, that will be five years ago pretty soon, the only aspect of our world that has steadily increased is the use of technology.  Our technology has forced the growth of content faster and faster.

There isn't today and there never will be, a paperless office - Less paper, but never paperless.

The social networks carry more and more.  Netflix is chewing up bandwidth,  FB has become mundane.  Tablets shipping everywhere, $99.

The Apple store at Fashion Island was packed on a Tuesday afternoon.

Droid, Win8, HP is out, no their in, no their out, wait...we don't know, iPad 2, iPhone 5, thin client, zero client - and the cloud.

That always growing, ever changing "cloud" - Google, Salesforce, Box, on and on.

What about managed print Services(MpS) or selling copiers?  With all this cool stuff going on, you're selling copiers?

Really?

ECi and Digital Gateway - Merging/Acquired/Transforming/Converging

The Transformers keep on coming.

Reliable sources report that Digital Gateway and ECi will become one - no details yet.

Digital Gateway, the 2011 MPSA Leadership Award, is a class-act and infrastructure pillar in our little industry.

Indeed, I use it everyday in my practice.

ECI is a legacy application in imaging - we all know both.

Expect more details in the following days.

The "Transformation" moves forward...

Thank you, "Deep Throat".

Your World: Do I need to Draw you a Picture?

Tell me again, what do you sell?

My Dad still buys a newspaper.

When HP loses PSG, really, it won't be that bad.

Manged print Services, the Economy and Layoffs.  Do you see it?

Click to email me.

"Dear Steve, I've never owned a Mac, or an iPhone and I don't have an iPad..."

I don't even know you, but you seem to know a great deal about me.

So Steve, thank you for my Droid X.

Thanks for forcing Microsoft to integrate a mouse, even if it was on DOS 4.0.

Thank you for getting IBM to utilize 'preemptive multi-threading in OS/2 even though it was a doomed OS.

Thanks for pushing the 3.5" floppy.  Thanks for letting all the peripherals that attach to the Lisa automatically connect.

Thanks for AppleTalk.

Thank you for seeing I really only wanted three or four songs from an album.

Thank you for disrupting the music industry - giving us Lady Gaga and incredible, mind-blowing live shows. (figure it out)

Thanks for recognizing a dwindling need and not allowing the iPad to print.

You beat the PS/2 and helped IBM find a new way.  

You destroyed the music industry and helped them find a new way, giving us immediate access to the music and artists we, the people, wanted to hear, at 99 cents a pop.

Sony, because of you, experienced the stink of defeat, the folly of internal business silo and they found a new way.

"The Sky will Blow The Heavens into Stars" - The Future of our Imaging Industry, Xerox, IBM, HP, Content

2011

Autonomy Corporation

"Autonomy is the market leader in the provision of software that automates the analysis of unstructured data, whether in the form of text, audio, images or video." - UBS, July 2008

The other day, I sat in on a webinar.  The fine folks at Lyra were presenting "Printing supplies market trends MPS" - yeah, I know, who the hell would sit in on one of these?

MpS Geeks, that's who.

Of course, the data presented has been fodder for DOTC for the past year; we will never get back the placement levels of 2008, A3 devices are dying(ahem), any recovery will be linked directly to the surviving dealership's ability to focus on workflow, not the box. We know this, correct?

Then a funny thing came up - OEMs are "rationalizing" their fleet offerings.  They are narrowing down the number of models.  

Shrinkage.

The Summer of 2011: Integration, Re-Imaging, User MpS Profiles and DOTC Members Only

Optimize Everybody...

Oh boy, I am in the middle of the Anthony Robbins "Ultimate Edge...blah blah blah..." -  it's good, really, I mean it and someday I want a place on Fiji right next door.  So what better way than to study the dude.

He's humongous, you know.

Perhaps you don't know Anthony Robbins or what he does - in a nutshell, he helps point out the obvious to the oblivious.  He sounds sincere, is the consummate selling professional - always closing - and makes an impression.  He attracts - I guess that is one reason he has 'handlers' - huh.  Well, the material I am visiting is dated and timeless pointing out how so unaware we walk through Life.

The waning days of Summer 2011 entice a review of my journey these last 90, a Quarterly Review of sorts - who says our clients should be the only ones to get QBRs?  

This summer has been about breaking through Stage 1 and Stage 2 - wait, that's not 100% - before I could breakthrough, I needed to 'remember' Stage 1 and Stage 2...so yes, now I see S1/S2 completely.  Table stakes.  Temporary.

You can really change, by letting go of the restrictive patterns of our past and you can't let anything go until you remember.

MpS changes all of us, by making us aware, and helping us remember.

Anyway, this summer has been about integrating an MpS Practice into a VAR/MSP's Infrastructure, recognizing End-User's behavior, and Re-Imaging.  

Interesting thoughts. Everything starts with a thought.