Goodbye VC & Angel Investors! Welcome Bootstrapping!

Traditionally start-up Business has always started by fire in the belly by the founders and money from an Angel followed by a VC (venture capital) ;  the cloud is changing this paradigm.
The cloud allows start-ups to validate their business potential and also run a business pilot by financial leveraging on a simple credit card.

Make a little, sell a little, take small steps. 

3M Corporation Creed  

The initial cost of  start-ups are going South as the Cloud offers a medium for building any business quickly, economically and reliably. Once the revenue model is validated the business can quickly ramp up with ease.
Secondly large sales teams are passe,what you need is focused sales team who can leverage on the social networks offered in the cloud, voice communication offered on the cloud, video conferencing offered on the cloud plus not to forget all the software solutions needed by a business for collaboration, execution and customer fulfillment. Finally human contact will be  required with a small sales team, but this will be for closure rather then building the sales funnel.
New start ups are learning to bootstrap their business with no interference from angel investor's or VC's who are  keen on multiplying their money and jumping ship or changing the founding team in times of adversity
Welcome Bootstrapping the future  for start up business and thank the Cloud for making this possible.

This post  is inspired by a conversation with an acquaintance who is bootstrapping a data backup business on the cloud with no borrowings from angels or VC fund managers.

Cloud and Religion

All Religions of the world including the atheist need a forum to propagate their beliefs and get more converts or followers as you may want to call the new initiates.
Twitter is almost organized like a religious body with followers and following, so now you have the Vatican and the Dalai Lama twitting. A great way got for their follower to  keep connected and also to attract new followers.

Cloud Adoption is the path for any new religion.

One of the significant costs of any religious order is the economics of propagation and sustenance, we know large sums of money have been spent by various religions in sustaining and propagating their beliefs.
Religions that did not propagate or convert are slowly dying, Zoroastrian religion more popularly known as Parsis is an example of a dying religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsis
The cloud which support the social networks is one of the most economical mediums to start a religion and induct new followers, one could use Google+ which includes circles of influence and video to take the religion to the digital literate anywhere in the world .
Religion has always been an important social glue to keep people together . We will see new messiahs emerge in the cloud, may they light the way for millions with their new religious doctrine.
The Cloud will be the new medium like the printing press was for Christianity and the Bible! Many religious leaders/organizations continue to use the press for propagating their beliefs and holy books. As the Digital Divide is bridged the Cloud will emerge as the chosen medium to take the message of religion to millions of people in our planet.

Use the Cloud to Understand the Benefits

I met my good friend this evening who has become a  cloud computing fanatic in a very short period.
For someone who had a dim view of cloud computing this sudden transformation came as a surprise.
I asked him what  brought about this change !
The answer was simple he started using the Cloud extensively for his work and even started signing up with various cloud service vendors to understand their service levels and benefits and Eureka he was converted to the cloud.
Today he understands the benefits  of the cloud and he does More with Less for his projects which needs him to deliver significant computing provisioning  at short notice for his clients.
He achieves this and  saves money by using the cloud with the help of his credit card..
He was keen to share with me what he has learnt on his cloud surfing adventure and I look forward to share his experiences in this blog sometime in the future.

My advice to the readers of my blog is start Using the Cloud, get those credit cards out and sign up with any of the cloud service providers based on your needs.
Start stress testing the cloud, try a cyber attack on your applications on the cloud, try seeing how it works for you. Run a whole pilot exercise on the cloud and  you would be astounded by the outcome.
If you are not converted as a "Cloud Computing Fanatic" please send me an email, for those of you who get converted keep using the cloud and spread the message to your friends and  your digital community.

Banking on Digital Money, Cloud & Mobile

When the world decides to Bank on Digital Money we will Go Green and change the way we handle Money!

Will Banks change to Digtial money, in the last five decades I have see the face of Banking change globally and Digital Money will also be the future of Banking.
My first experience with Banks was when I  operated a Children's Saving Account with a Bank in Bangalore. I could not  see the bank employees face at the teller for many years, I was too short to reach the window. But my father persisted that I learn how to Bank and he taught me to get my bank statement (held in little note book called a passbook) manually updated from huge paper based ledgers. The bank used to  give me a nice metal token when I had to withdraw money, the process of getting your money from your Bank those days did take a while, so I always carried a  book with me. Most of this remains true even today for traditional brick and mortar banking in India. 

My first tryst with electronic banking was when I joined the local partner of Unisys in India and had to support Unisys Banking Solutions. 

My first usage of electronic banking was at Adelaide, Australia (1990) where the Unisys solutions were used for retail and wholesale banking. I opened a bank account at Adelaide and closed my bank account in Sydney before I left Australia; this was not possible in India even in 1990. 

Later I learnt how to use ATM's in a Building Society in UK  (1991) where you could not only withdraw money from the ATM but also manage the money you had with the Bank. Today I do most of my banking on the Internet and Mobile Banking is already making its entry into India.

The global electronic banking experience motivated me to join the team setting up India's first automated Exchange targeted at SMB companies know as the OTCEI, we used dial up phones to put through stock transactions on an X.25 overlay network known as I-net, and our brokers could trade. We could reach  pan India with technology, but unfortunately the Indian Banks were not geared for T+1  settlement cycle, we had to lean on Citibank India  for a pan India electronic clearing network in 1992. I cite the OTCEI example for the skeptics who believe that technology cannot be harnessed in developing or under developed countries.

The photo above captures the sunrise of Banking on Digital Money,Cloud and Mobile,
but we see an eclipse starting at the top of the photo, because of resistance to change by Bankers.

With the advent of Digital Money the way we bank will change forever, imagine if Central Banks did not have to print money and the economics of printing and transporting cash changes.  

Digital Money is a reality and has been successful in many countries but the cost of technology for transaction still remains an issue for poorer and developing countries.  

If we can roll out the Banking applications on the Cloud, Temenos has already shown us how to do this, then banks in poorer countries could harness the cloud and deliver banking on Mobile devices to their customers. 

Add a robust wireless network and we have Banking on Digital Money working on the Cloud with the mobile as the end point device!.

This would be the future,where we can discard our credit cards, bulky wallets with travelers cheques and cash and commercially transact from our mobile devices.
Imagine  more than half of the population of the world which is un-banked can now handle money and understand finance; imagine the cultural changes this transition will bring about !

Information Security will continue to be a barrier, but Banks have continued Banking even with many security breaches in conventional banking. Security solutions will be found  for Secure Banking on Digital Money on the Cloud and Mobile Device.
Many countries have demonstrated the success of Mobile Banking, but Digital Money will change the  face of Banking as we know it today.
The potential of Digital Money banked on the Cloud & Mobile in tandem with a robust wireless network is Immense!

Note this blog is inspired by Mr. Krishna Kumar's article "  Mobile Commerce Awaits a Rural Destiny in India."

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#Apple and HH The #Dalai Lama and #Android !

The connection between Apple Computers and Dalai Lama seem to be an outlier.
Apple is in the forefront of the Cloud Computing Revolution in the Valley while His Holiness The Dalai Lama preaches peace to  humanity from the valleys of Dharmashala and Bylakuppe in India.
The risk for Apple is its products  are made in China and if the Chinese shut down its supply then there will be no Apple devices for the world to use.
Last week President Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama and the Chinese have not appreciated this meeting with the Tibetan Spiritual leader in exile.

Photo: Courtesy Coloribus

http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/prints/apple-dalai-lama-1143705/

Given its economic might, China  may stop all shipment of Apple equipment to the world, this will put an end to Apple's supremacy.

Compare this to Android which already has a significant market share and is licenced  by Google, the Android operating systems is licenced to a number of handset manufacturers and thus Google runs no risk of the Android or its applications in the Android market place in the cloud being affected by the Chinese.

The Android is manufactured all over the world, though there may some risk because of Chinese supply; it may not be as critical as the problems that Apple would face if the Chinese shut down their manufacturing for the US company Apple. 

It is time that Apple fixed this risk, Apple's  fans and  customers deserve this for their loyalty to Apple products !

Footnote: Apple had already appeased the Chinese by blocking the Dalai Lama from the Iphones in China read this article
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/bad-apple-censoring-dalai-lama-china-iphone-apps
But this may still not be enough  to prevent the Chinese from stopping shipment of  Apple Phones.

Demise of Messaging is the Advent of Computing

The fortunes of the glorious mobile telephony and  messaging companies RIM the makers of  Black Berry (BB) and Nokia the other awesome company are suddenly losing market share and their bottom lines are hurting.
The new stars are Apple and Samsung, what a difference in about two years, the tablet has come to rule and the handheld mobile is also used for telephony and messaging.
The hand held device is today's replacement for the laptop and heralds the end of tired shoulders and still better laptop burns on where the laptop normally rests.
This is truly the demise of messaging and the advent of computing, with the three pieces the cloud computing service provider, the telco who provides the bandwidth and the endpoint device provided by Apple, Samsung and few others who are ready to ride this change into the world of tablets.
The world is changing and what has this to do with the cloud, the power of these tablets are derived from applications from the cloud, the Facebook, Linkedin and the numerous Apple and Android applications available on the cloud.
Apple has become bolder and launched its icloud, what a way to disrupt the way the world computes and entertains itself.   Samsung already leverages on the cloud offering from Google.
Apple has tried to restrain Samsung with help from the U.S. courts, the marketing warfare is becoming bitter, the swords are out for battle between Apple and Samsung.
Why should Apple be so worried about Samsung, this is because Samsung has succeeded so well without owning the operating system. Samsung owes its tablet success to the Android operating System and to a significant extent to the cloud applications hosted by Google.
Apple has two adversaries Samsung and Google to fight and to add to its woes there are more applications available in the Android marketplace, Apple understands in the long haul it may lose to the Korean giant Samsung which builds its products itself unlike Apple which is dependent of China .
Apple has to beat  the Korean giant Samsung at the earliest to sustain its dominant position.
The next wave of tablet users are not going to be the brand conscious individuals with deep pockets which has been Apple's consumer base, it is going to be users who expect "More for Less" from their devices and investments. This is where Samsung will score over Apple !
This competition will take cloud computing to the next level, with cheaper, faster and better handheld devices from both Apple and Samsung.  This heralds a new epoch in evolution of the  Cloud.
What is left in this game is the consolidation of the internet bandwith providers on wireless the Verizons and others, the next battle will be in owning this wireless bandwidth which is not finite.
So it is time for better compression technology and better bandwidth utilisation from Telcos, Microsoft has done some innovation in this by using the unused TV bandwidths, but they will need to find the telecom carriers to finally move into this spectrum.
These disruptive changes will leave many great companies like RIM, Nokia and Microsoft gasping for breath, the new leaders will be Apple, Samsung, Google, Amazon, Verizon and many more who have matured in offering cloud computing services and support.
 The battle is moving to the next level when the biggies like Dell, HP, IBM & Cisco catch up by acquisitions or launch of new cloud services, this is good news for cloud computing and the customer.