It seems that, finally, the days of the old PBX in Barbados offices may be numbered.
The two companies more determined than ever to make this happen are Digicel, which launched its new business division here last week, and Columbus Networks, a sister company to the Flow cable TV company which just had its official launch last week.
Listen, they are coming for your outmoded, passé, costly PBXs, my friends, as they try to entice you to purchase new services in the cloud.
At both the Digicel seminar and a Columbus seminar in recent days, I have been exposed to the language of the “cloud” more than any non-technical business person should be, perhaps in an entire lifetime.
Of course, the lunch afterwards almost made up for the onslaught of cloud concepts coming at you like loaded missiles. I won’t repeat any of them here for fear you might stop reading this column.
Suffice it to say it was heavy lifting. As my eyes glazed over I got to thinking that unless the CEOs could explain things to me I would forever continue to think that clouds were only places where angels treaded and played harps.
Not so, I learned from the execs, who still speak English, well, Irish.
The clouds of the digital revolution are becoming almost infinite storage bins for all of the information being generated by mankind and for much of what was generated before in times gone by.
In many ways it works wonders for me as a small business owner.
Technology allows me to work at home, in the office, in the coffee shop, at conferences, on the road.
Therefore, outsourcing your electronic storage and with it, your telephone system, and, increasingly, your software to the cloud can make doing business much easier.
Let someone else have the hassle, you think. It works for companies of all sizes.
On the other hand, if you take a logical argument to its extreme it becomes illogical.
For example, I do not like to lease my vehicle. Others do. I also want to own, not rent the premises I work in. Others prefer to rent. Some big companies sell off their buildings and then lease them back. It’s all about what is your core business.
In software, we are being told by Adobe and Microsoft, for instance, that we don’t need to buy software from them anymore. We just rent it every month and therefore don’t have to worry about paying for upgrades to keep up with the times.
The good thing about all this is that it is getting easier to set up an instant business without owning anything. All you own is the idea and a credit card account.
Having got rid of the need for bricks and mortar, we are now getting rid of the need for filing cabinets, hard drives and servers, and even mice as we point to what we want on our tablets.
On the other hand, you could see this as a dumbing down of the consumer to the lowest common denominator, where he or she just says, like a toddler, “I want that,” and it comes to pass.
No understanding is needed of anything beyond what you do to make the money for your business.
In doing so, we also outsource more and more of our judgment, and our ability to make basic decisions. The logic of this approach means we won’t own anything, which might be fine until the credit card dries up, and then we will all begin to sing, I Who Have Nothing.
All this is ironically happening at the same time that we are being told by the central bank governor to get some renewable energy generation going in our own homes in order to become less dependent on fossil-fuel using and foreign exchange spending utility companies.
As we are being told to try to get off the electricity grid, we are being invited to climb onto the cyberspace one.
The promise of the cloud seems at odds with this more self-resilient approach. We will all have to decide how much of our business activity is processed, generated, and stored on the cloud.
As for me, I am not throwing out my little server and hard drive just yet.
But I gave up the PBX a long time ago and do almost all of my work via the Internet, so my business has, you might say, one foot on terra firma and the other in the cloud.
Which is coincidentally what many have always said about me.
Noteworthy:
Buttressed by his principles
Alair Shepherd, QC, one of Barbados’ best known members of the legal fraternity, says he has apologized for an incident in which he was involved which apparently took place in the corridor outside a judge’s chambers.
According to the DAILY?NATION of Tuesday, April 16, “Last Monday, (April 8), Shepherd had an outburst before the judge. He then backed Justice Richards, raised his robe and bent over.”
Despite his apology, the Queen’s Counsel nevertheless refused to turn his back on the principle of the thing.
He may have bent, but he is not broken.
The display of the posterior came, he intimated, as a result of mounting frustration over delays in the administration of justice.
The learned QC said he wanted to put the matter behind him. But, and this was a big ‘but’ (sorry, I couldn’t help it), if the Bar Association wanted to get to the bottom of the matter via some tribunal or other, “I will defend my position,” he told THE NATION.
He is therefore prepared to defend his position on why he assumed that particular position on an otherwise routine day in the halls of justice.
Any tribunal hearing the matter would have to take into account all of those frustrations he was feeling over the delays before making any judgment on “everything I did,” he told the newspaper.
Thus buttressed by his principles, Alair Shepherd, QC, is willing to stand behind the display of his behind to the judge.
Whenever this matter is finally settled I hope it will not have reinforced the stereotypical view that “the law is an ass”.