A friend of mine, who owns a small graphic design and web development company, called me a while back and asked if I could help him put together a new professional proposal for a customer who wanted a decent size project done. Being the good friend that I am (and the fact he lives at the beach) I loaded my daughter in the car for a Sunday afternoon of sun, sand and proposal writing.
I figured we would be better off if we could create some boiler-plate that helped him to create professional proposals quicker in the future. We spent most of the day working on the skeleton for his template. As most small/medium business owners do, he jumped right to the what he is quoting part and started working... Cool your jets turbo, we need to back up a few spaces...
My opinions on many things about the technology industry, raising three daughters, volunteering my time and anything else that strikes my fancy.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
I just got this letter from LinkedIn
Dear Jeff,
I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn's first 100,000 members (member number 3XXXX in fact!). In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are the innovators, those who help lead the way. That was you.
We hit a big milestone at LinkedIn this week when our 100 millionth member joined the site.
When we founded LinkedIn, our vision was to help the world's professionals be more successful and productive. Today, with your help, LinkedIn is changing the lives of millions of members by helping them connect with others, find jobs, get insights, start a business, and much more.
We are grateful for your support and look forward to helping you accomplish much more in the years to come. I hope that you are having a great year.
Sincerely,
Reid Hoffman
Co-founder and Chairman
LinkedIn
I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn's first 100,000 members (member number 3XXXX in fact!). In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are the innovators, those who help lead the way. That was you.
We hit a big milestone at LinkedIn this week when our 100 millionth member joined the site.
When we founded LinkedIn, our vision was to help the world's professionals be more successful and productive. Today, with your help, LinkedIn is changing the lives of millions of members by helping them connect with others, find jobs, get insights, start a business, and much more.
We are grateful for your support and look forward to helping you accomplish much more in the years to come. I hope that you are having a great year.
Sincerely,
Reid Hoffman
Co-founder and Chairman
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Do you have a private cloud?
 |
| Now that's a cloud! |
A private cloud has a few features that make it a private cloud. A virtualized infrastructure is the foundation upon which you can build. It is only the foundation. So let's say you have a bunch of management tools that make your virtual infrastructure easy to manage, easy to deploy new machines, easy to patch, resilient, reliable and scalable. What you have is a really well managed virtual infrastructure... which serves as... a foundation for a private cloud.
Read on to see what else it takes.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Cost savings is old hat
But if savings is old hat, why is it still so important?
A few days ago someone asked me the question, "What is better for a business saving $50M or making $50M?" It's an interesting question and one with way too many facets to answer here, although you can feel free to discuss it in the comments below. My answer to the question was... It depends. First off, how much profit do you make on the $50M? Second, how important is the savings on the bottom line vs. the increase in revenue? I seem to always be the guy that answers a question with a question... So far in my life that has not been a bad thing.
At the end of the day, saving $50M hits the books the same as making $50M in additional PROFIT... Wrap your head around that for a second. I have however worked for enough people to know that having $50M of additional revenue is important too the company valuation. If the cost of doing business was not out of line with where it is expected to be (in other words, no one is expecting to find $50M in savings) then making $50M in revenue is a great thing.
The real answer is this:
Find all the savings possible that allow for increased revenue and you have a winner of a project. That's really where every employee's head should be at... "How do I do my job more efficiently and effectively?"
If everyone thinks this way you end up making another $50M and saving another $50M... at 10% profit that's $55M on the company bottom line. All I can say to that is "Yay!"
A few days ago someone asked me the question, "What is better for a business saving $50M or making $50M?" It's an interesting question and one with way too many facets to answer here, although you can feel free to discuss it in the comments below. My answer to the question was... It depends. First off, how much profit do you make on the $50M? Second, how important is the savings on the bottom line vs. the increase in revenue? I seem to always be the guy that answers a question with a question... So far in my life that has not been a bad thing.
At the end of the day, saving $50M hits the books the same as making $50M in additional PROFIT... Wrap your head around that for a second. I have however worked for enough people to know that having $50M of additional revenue is important too the company valuation. If the cost of doing business was not out of line with where it is expected to be (in other words, no one is expecting to find $50M in savings) then making $50M in revenue is a great thing.
The real answer is this:
Find all the savings possible that allow for increased revenue and you have a winner of a project. That's really where every employee's head should be at... "How do I do my job more efficiently and effectively?"
If everyone thinks this way you end up making another $50M and saving another $50M... at 10% profit that's $55M on the company bottom line. All I can say to that is "Yay!"
Friday, March 11, 2011
Article on leaving a legacy
Here is a link to an article I did on updating software and systems to avoid leaving the wrong kind of legacy behind...
http://www.cioupdate.com/features/article.php/3927336/Dont-Let-Your-Legacy-Be-Your-Legacy.htm
Hope you enjoy it.
http://www.cioupdate.com/features/article.php/3927336/Dont-Let-Your-Legacy-Be-Your-Legacy.htm
Hope you enjoy it.
The Value of Partnership
It never fails to amaze me how many people buy products and services based solely on price.
I think my favorite quote on this subject is from Warren Buffet (Kind of a smart businessman) who said, "Price is what you pay, Value is what you get." Somehow we forget that and price seems to be the thing we react to the most instinctively. In reality we all know that paying $1.00 for something every month for 12 months is more expensive than buying a better quality thing for $6.00 that lasts 12 months. Yes the purchase price is 600% higher, but the TCO is 50% lower.
That is the value aspect of things.
In my industry (Technology) so many things are purchased based on price alone. My goal is to make sure the value of my offering is higher than the purchase price and higher than the Total Cost of Ownership. My solutions might cost more up front, but the TCO is always lower than the value the solution brings. I also strive to ensure the value a solution brings is higher than the value of my competitors offerings. Not many people are good at comparing value to value (as opposed to TCO to TCO or ROI to ROI) but that is why I think partnership is do valuable!
Who else is really going to help you figure out the best way to spend your money, even if it's not with me.
I think my favorite quote on this subject is from Warren Buffet (Kind of a smart businessman) who said, "Price is what you pay, Value is what you get." Somehow we forget that and price seems to be the thing we react to the most instinctively. In reality we all know that paying $1.00 for something every month for 12 months is more expensive than buying a better quality thing for $6.00 that lasts 12 months. Yes the purchase price is 600% higher, but the TCO is 50% lower.
That is the value aspect of things.
In my industry (Technology) so many things are purchased based on price alone. My goal is to make sure the value of my offering is higher than the purchase price and higher than the Total Cost of Ownership. My solutions might cost more up front, but the TCO is always lower than the value the solution brings. I also strive to ensure the value a solution brings is higher than the value of my competitors offerings. Not many people are good at comparing value to value (as opposed to TCO to TCO or ROI to ROI) but that is why I think partnership is do valuable!
Who else is really going to help you figure out the best way to spend your money, even if it's not with me.
What was important will always be important
This is a lesson many have learned the hard way. Some people call it basic training, the fundamentals, blocking and tackling... No matter how you say it, the foundational things we learned in our earlier days are the things that are still important today. We tend to spend too much time wrapped up in the details of the complexity of things without regard for the basics. Thus we build a really solid whatever on top of a weak foundation. Every idea worth investigating is worth planning from the bottom up and the top down.
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