Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > Bob Proulx wrote: > >Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > > > What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an > > > Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either > > > on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to > > > use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a > > > warrant? > > > > One of my clients switched from a classic local imaps mail server over > > to Gmail. The logic was the same as all of your reasoning. Even > > though I have reservations and I won't be using Gmail I didn't oppose > > them switching. It would be inefficient for me to work against the > > massive corporations of Google and MS. It is all just as you said. > > > > Once some technology goes to the masses it becomes a cost margin game. > > The cheapest product that can be offered will win regardless of > > quality. Which means that by most measures of quality it will suffer. > > But it will be impossible to avoid. Gmail and MS Outlook 365 have a > > different cost model. Users agree to be the product sold to > > advertisers. Margins like that mean that small IT companies cannot > > compete. It would stress me out to try. > > Hey Bob I think you missed something in my OP. The customer leaving ISN'T > paying LESS to gmail. They are paying slightly more, in fact.
Hmm... Maybe I did since I assumed Google and Microsoft and others were going to be to be the lowest cost. But you were also asking what other people do. What I do is that I sidestep the issue by doing something else. And as to your next question I think that yes in ten years almost all general consumers will have their email box at one of the big box companies. Which of course means that everyone will too because if you and I personally do not everyone we correspond with will and so a copy of our messages will be there regardless of what we do. That is bad. I will continue to support the free(dom) software side of things and hopefully that day will be further off. > I don't have a problem flying under gmail and office 365's prices on > mailboxes. I tip my hat to you for being efficient. That is quite hard to do. I can't do it. In this case I wasn't selling email services. I was simply doing some admin work upon the customers servers. But I wasn't in a position to dissuade them with a counter offering. And so off to Gmail they went. And then half of them later to Outlook. > Yes there are customers out there going to the "free" gmail. No, I don't > attempt to compete with that. But this wasn't that situation. I think it might also be a cultural thing developing. Some of these service companies are so large that they are becoming embedded in the culture. You wouldn't think of baby food without thinking of Gerber. You wouldn't think of mayonnaise without thinking of Kraft. These days when people think of email I think most of them think of something that happens on a web page. These days when people think of email they think of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, others on the Internet as a Software As A Service over a web page and not of smtp port 25 arriving to their personal desktop. I was in a planning meeting with someone a week ago. We were talking about networking and firewalls and routing and infrastructure improvements and that type of thing. The servers send system email notifications (root mail) but do not receive any email. Several times other people kept raising points that I couldn't block their email. I pointed out that Gmail uses https over the web. Blank stares. Isn't that email? No, that is the web, they use a web browser for it. Ten minutes later basically the same conversation again. And then yet again later. To them email is a Gmail web page. It is hard for me in a few minutes to educate someone who has learned something repeated over a decade. > In other words, the gist of your argument is, if you can't beat them, go > elsewhere. Yes. But I didn't say they were unbeatable. You asked what other people do. I told you what I do. > That's fine if you want to do that. But my question wasn't that, my > question was, essentially, how are other people beating them? Your > not really even trying to answer my post. On the contrary. I was trying to answer your post. I may have misunderstood what you were asking. You had asked what do other people do. I told you what I do. Perhaps you should have asked a different question? :-) > I don't subscribe to the theory that any one company is unbeatable. People > used to think of IBM like that until Microsoft proved them wrong. Then > people used to think of Microsoft like that until iPads > and Android proved them wrong. But I can tell you this - Microsoft > tried a lot of things before hitting on the combination that worked against > IBM and Google tried a lot of things before hitting on the combination that > beat Microsoft. There is a combination out there that will beat Gmail it is > just a matter of figuring out what it is. I don't think they are unbeatable. They will eventually get beaten. It is the lifecycle of these things. All things in time. If you have a process to beat them then that is very good for you. I wish you luck! :-) > You can believe that email providing is a lost cause then try going into > system admin work. But there's a lot of people already operating > in the system admin workspace, so your just exchanging one set of > competition problems for another. I didn't say it was a good plan. It is good for me. It might not be good for you. But you didn't ask that. You asked what other people do. You can't then turn around and poo-poo what other people tell you they do. That isn't sporting. > One other thing I will add to the narrative. I followed up with the > customer who is leaving and found some other things to add to the pot. It > turns out this customer had not upgraded any of their PC workstations, > everything they had was still on Windows XP, and Office 2003. One of their > biggest reasons for going to Google Apps is the idea that doing this would > allow them to avoid the cost of buying 20 copies of Office 2013. When I > pointed out that they were still on Windows XP that was not supported and > they would have to address the cost of buying new PC gear and operating > systems for it, they said that they were hoping to get another year out of > their existing hardware. And yes, this was straight out of the mouth of the > business owner. It is hard times for a lot of businesses right now. I know one lawyer client who says their revenue is down half of what it was last year this time. They were holding off on their MS Windows XP upgrades just trying to squeeze some time so that they could continue making their house payments. This is just a small time country legal office with two people in it. Do you upgrade your computer systems or do you make your house payment? I would hold off making those upgrades too. The point is that there isn't one size for everyone. Individuals need to make the best decision they can given their unique environment. Meanwhile my free(dom) software clients seem much better off. They stay updated to the latest GNU/Linux. For my part I am a Debian type of guy but I support Ubuntu and CentOS clients too. Most of my expertise and work these days comes from the free software side of things. Obviously from a financial view upgrading GNU/Linux to the latest is without license cost. So free(dom) software clients don't need to make the house payment versus software license fee tradeoff. > So in the long run, there's 2 takeaways here. The first and most important > one - one that I have to keep reminding myself - is simply that some > businesses just don't value email, or computer technology. They regard all > of that stuff as a cost-suck and drain that does not contribute to their > bottom line. So any possible way they can skimp on that they believe is a > good thing. Trying to sell technology to those kinds of customers is, in > the long run, a waste of time. Even if you have the lowest prices in town > and give them everything for it, they will never value it - thus any amount > of money you charge them will be too much money. It is far better to find > your customers who value what you do for them and spend your time helping > them. I have heard it described as clean water. Around here everyone has grown up with clean water from the indoor water tap. We expect it. We expect the cost to be so low that we don't think about it in the financial budget. It is cheap. It is everywhere. We give it away. But ever so often there is an event that occurs that causes that water to be hazardous. Hopefully it is just a boil order but recently there have been some notable cases where boiling isn't a suitable treatment against the contamination. When the tap water isn't drinkable then there is an outcry. But only then and not before. People expect a lot of things such as email and so forth to be just like water from the tap. Ubiquitous. Reliable. Safe. Cheap. And then raise an outcry when there is an event and it is not but only then. > The second and less important takeaway is that one of Google's marketing > strategies is the "all in one" In other words they produce a compelling > story that they are a one-stop-shopper. Email is just a part of what they > sell, they also sell a replacement for Microsoft Office, indeed a > replacement for all your business digital information handling. As a > technical person, I know how absolutely ridiculous this is, and my blinder > is that I assume that any customer out there would also immediately > understand how ridiculous the supposition that you can replace a > locally-running word-processor and spreadsheet with a java app running in a > web browser is. But the problem is, there are some customers out there who > are just - du-uh um! Never underestimate how stupid some customers can be. I have long said, "Never call someone a fool but instead sell them something." My friends will back me up on this! :-) But if it works for them then it works for them. It wouldn't work for me. It wouldn't work for you. But the world is a more interesting place than just you and me and other people are different. If it works for them to have their data only on the remote end of an Internet connection then it works for them. The entire Google Chrome OS is based upon that business model. With seven billion people on the planet there will be enough people out of that set who will make that a workable business model. I don't call it ridiculous. It is simply targeting a specific market segment. I don't like it. But I am not fond of the color turquoise either. And yet other people like turquoise. What fools they are! :-) Bob
