68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
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68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
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Re: 68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
#2Our post on how "rogue" cloud services are making their way into the Fortune 100/500/50 ... a response to 37Signals blog.
Re: 68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
#3> We need better tools that let companies understand and budget for the cloud money they are already spending while at the same time letting end users sign up for the services they need to do their jobs.
This kind of tool would be aimed at precisely the market that would never pay for it.
If employees need to circumvent company policy to use Basecamp, the only way in which such a tool would be used is to identify culprits and get them back in line.
edit: on the other hand I would love a startup to prove me wrong :)
Re: 68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
#4> We need better tools that let companies understand and budget for the cloud money they are already spending while at the same time letting end users sign up for the services they need to do their jobs. This kind of tool would be aimed at precisely the market that would never pay for it. If employees need to circumvent company policy to use Basecamp, the only way in which such a tool would be used is to identify cul…
I'd counter that if Company X learns that they're employees are using Basecamp at $99/mo to actually get things done rather than a much more expensive tool that team members don't want to use, the company has gained a valuable insight into how they can save a lot of money (and make their team's life easier). Call me a dreamer but I believe everyone wins on the cloud.
Re: 68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
#5> We need better tools that let companies understand and budget for the cloud money they are already spending while at the same time letting end users sign up for the services they need to do their jobs. This kind of tool would be aimed at precisely the market that would never pay for it. If employees need to circumvent company policy to use Basecamp, the only way in which such a tool would be used is to identify cul…
I'd counter that if Company X learns that they're employees are using Basecamp at $99/mo to actually get things done rather than a much more expensive tool that team members don't want to use, the company has gained a valuable insight into how they can save a lot of money (and make their team's life easier). Call me a dreamer but I believe everyone wins on the cloud.
I worked at a company that had invested big $$$ into an agile tool without consulting the teams if it was adequate for their needs. For a month or 2, the teams used the tool as required. Eventually, when the boss turned his back, each team quietly found a tool. Because they were being quiet, each team found a different tool from every other team. They were actually tracking their progress in both systems, but the expensive one was only being updated afterwards. Everyone would sit around the easy-to-use tool and plan things, and then 1 unlucky soul had to transcribe it into the crappy tool. This actually sped things up because the crappy tool would waste time x5, where the combination of tools only wasted time x1. (And we usually got a non-developer to do the transcribing, too.)
Eventually, the whole thing came to light and the company was forced to admit how stupid they were being.
See, they had paid for a year's service of the bad tool, and they were adamant that they get their money's worth. They were absolutely blind to how much money they were wasting daily. The sunk cost was sunk. There was no way to recover from that, and the tool just couldn't be salvaged.
Re: 68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd counter that if Company X learns that they're employees are using Basecamp at $99/mo to actually get things done rather than a much more expensive tool that team members don't want to use, the company has gained a valuable insight into how they can save a lot of money (and make their team's life easier). Call me a dreamer but I believe everyone wins on the cloud.
I worked at a company that had invested big $$$ into an agile tool without consulting the teams if it was adequate for their needs. For a month or 2, the teams used the tool as required. Eventually, when the boss turned his back, each team quietly found a tool. Because they were being quiet, each team found a different tool from every other team. They were actually tracking their progress in both systems, but the exp…
Look on the bright side. At least they admitted it.
Re: 68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd counter that if Company X learns that they're employees are using Basecamp at $99/mo to actually get things done rather than a much more expensive tool that team members don't want to use, the company has gained a valuable insight into how they can save a lot of money (and make their team's life easier). Call me a dreamer but I believe everyone wins on the cloud.
I worked at a company that had invested big $$$ into an agile tool without consulting the teams if it was adequate for their needs. For a month or 2, the teams used the tool as required. Eventually, when the boss turned his back, each team quietly found a tool. Because they were being quiet, each team found a different tool from every other team. They were actually tracking their progress in both systems, but the exp…
Curious: after the year of service was up, did the company decide to go with one of the other tools you guys found, or did they keep dropping stupid money?
Re: 68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
#8> We need better tools that let companies understand and budget for the cloud money they are already spending while at the same time letting end users sign up for the services they need to do their jobs. This kind of tool would be aimed at precisely the market that would never pay for it. If employees need to circumvent company policy to use Basecamp, the only way in which such a tool would be used is to identify cul…
My history in IT has been that of circumventing corporate policy for fun and profit:
Scraping the company mainframe for billing data: Increased rev by $1 million fixing accounts incorrectly billed.
Compiling the scrapped data into MySQL: $3 million in lost inventory found.
Waiting 6 months for a site visit so I could tell the COO directly that any employee could dump all the credit cards in our database: Priceless.
Re: 68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
#9My first thought was "is there any actual content in among the buzzwords". My second thought was "what's he trying to sell". Apparently, cloudability is a service that allows you to track your "cloud" spending, which seems totally useless to me. I mean, why should I track SaaS and Amazon S3 backups in the same category, but leave off $1000 Yourkit license in some other category?
Re: 68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless
#10> We need better tools that let companies understand and budget for the cloud money they are already spending while at the same time letting end users sign up for the services they need to do their jobs. This kind of tool would be aimed at precisely the market that would never pay for it. If employees need to circumvent company policy to use Basecamp, the only way in which such a tool would be used is to identify cul…
It depends on who you're circumventing. If you're making an end-run around an obstinate IT department -- a situation we've seen a lot of -- then this is precisely the sort of tool that finance would want to help bring things back into the corporate-governance fold.
If you're circumventing finance, then we may not be a particularly helpful tool for you.