Cons, Software as a Service, and Education

It's certainly no secret here that I love software–as–a–service (SaaS).  You've seen my drooling love statements about Salesforce, my predictions of the CorpTechPocalypse.  It's kind of apparent I'm onboard with moving things into the clouds and services as its faster, cheaper, and let's be honest, kind of cool.

Lately I was working with the service known as Zendesk, a rather nice SaaS provider that provides, simply, a support system – tickets, knowledge bases, etc.  Zendesk lets you create instant support for your company with a few minutes of setup.  You can see why they've attracted some investment as of late.

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Best BorderStop

So Borders is bankrupt. No surprise, no one is saying, “oh, I didn't see it coming,” and no one is really saying much of anything. We knew thugs weren't good, we suspected the worst, and were pretty much getting it. There's just no surprise, just a kind of sadness.

So I'm asking myself this; what happens next to Borders?

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The Power Of Indespensible

Quick; I want you to imagine the makers of smart phone or console that refused to have Netflix on it. Wait, or maybe they decide they don't want any Facebook technology on it. Or maybe, just maybe they don't want anything to do with that whole "Twitter thing."

Can you see it? Nope, neither can I. And why can't I see it? Because Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other companies have made themselves more or less indispensable to large customer bases. They're not going anywhere, they've learned from the mistakes of their predecessors (such as Facebook learned from MySpace and Netflix learn from,well, everybody), understand that they can make up the infrastructure of people's lives.

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