Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation
Though the likes of cloud industry leaders Amazon Web Services and Rackpace may not yet have noticed, a Minnesota company has been quietly trying to do them one better. VISI, Minnesota’s largest data center services and managed hosting provider, formally announced on December 17 a public beta of its ReliaCloud cloud computing service, whereby any business can now apply to try it out — whether it’s located here in Minnesota or anywhere.
The first offering, dubbed “Cloud Servers,” allows business users to establish an account online. They can then quickly and easily set up one or more computer servers that run in one of VISI’s data centers and are accessible to them and their users “in the cloud” — meaning via any Internet browser anywhere in the world. Customers of the service thereby avoid the expense and work of having to purchase and maintain their own computers servers at their own site. “It’s a pay-as-you-go model,” said Gary Elfert, director of marketing at VISI, which is headquartered in Eden Prairie and has its original data center in downtown St. Paul. The pricing model for these Cloud Servers is by the hour, starting at 5 cents.
Why would anyone be crazy enough to enter a market that is already dominated by notable heavyweights like Amazon? “Though there are some large players already in the public cloud computing marketplace, it’s still a nascent business, and a rapidly growing one,” said Antonio Piraino, Research Director at Tier 1 Research, in VISI’s press announcement. “There’s certainly room for a competitive offering such as ReliaCloud.” His firm has projected that cloud computing services will be a $1-billion market in 2011. … [Read More…]
If you’ve been paying attention to technology rumors, an Apple tablet (i.e., “iPad”) is at the top of many people’s list for most likely rumor to become reality next year. But when I read that iPad prediction along with the number “300,000” as a base for iPhone applications in 2010 as well as an acceleration in something called “socialityc” applications for fusing traditional business applications with social and collaboration software and analytics — and these predictions had come from the well respected, global technology analyst firm IDC — I sat up and took notice.
Why should you care? You might not if you were unaffected by the recent economic downturn or aren’t experiencing any disruption, new opportunities or benefits from the internet or web, but if you have an interest in technology and the opportunities it will represent in 2010, read on.
In their free “IDC Predictions 2010: Recovery and Transformation” (download the PDF) the firm predicts modest growth in the information technology and telecommunications area (and back to 2008 pre-downturn spending levels), and this report is the broad overview prior to their annual “predictions season”, a time of multiple report releases and webinars which, undoubtedly, drives a lot of their revenue in the first quarter.
There are two broad themes for this set of predictions for 2010: The obvious one is the “recovery” theme and the other a more interesting focus on the “transformation” occurring in technology. … [Read More…]
Reinventing education in a time of accelerating change is more important than ever before, especially if you’re at all interested in your kids and our future workforce being technologically savvy and possibly more so than any other workforce in the world.
Normally I wouldn’t do a story on an interesting initiative with a marginally innovative technology perspective, but I’ve been writing for nearly six months for Scholastic, Inc. and their Administrator area online with a blog called “Accelerating Change.” As a consequence, I’ve been deeply involved in K-12 education technology study which has given me a unique perspective and I remain focused on uncovering true innovation or even incremental steps along the way toward true reinvention of education.
The PR gang over at Padilla Spears Beardsley, a group of folks whose quality public relations I’m continually impressed by, sent over some information on a Classroom of the Future initiative and their client, Tierney Bros, whose involvement in this worthwhile endeavor is worthy of note:
“People entering the workforce today are expected to have stronger technology experience and capabilities than ever before. Teachers today face the challenge of keeping pace with the latest technological advances – such as interactive presentation and conferencing technologies – with often limited resources.
For the fourth year in a row, Tierney Brothers is helping prepare the next generation of workers by offering a Tierney Brothers “Classroom of the Future” Technology Grant in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. This unique opportunity gives every school in Minnesota and Wisconsin the chance to receive $15,000 worth of technology, integration and training for their school. Students taught in these classrooms will learn using AV technology similar to systems Tierney Brothers, a leading provider of digital projectors, flat panel displays, systems integration, large format printers, graphic and engineering supplies, and audio and visual communication solutions has integrated into John Deere, Land O’Lakes, Wells Fargo and other businesses.”
Certainly a laudable initiative (especially with our State budget shortfalls) and an obviously smart thing for Tierney Bros to do since they’re in the business of selling this sort of gear in to K-12 education, but I’m doubtful these technologies are truly making classrooms future-ready and instead are putting a shiny new cover on a musty old book.
The online world is lousy with a multitude of social media services, RSS feeds, and assorted apps with which to interact. So, it’s no surprise that many have looked for the “better mousetrap” to wrangle it all.
Some of the leaders in this space, Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, and Tweetie do a solid job of supplying the ability to manage some of them, but not all…in ways that are convenient, but not overly customizable. Enter local start-up Spice Apps and their first tasty offering…Clove.
I sat down with principles Tim Erickson and Craig Condon as well as Kim Garretson, a veteran of the VC scene in the Twin CIties, to talk about what makes Clove special.
A quick word about my interviewees…While I’m not someone who worries too much about things like age, listening to Erickson and Condon talk about their launch of Clove, their enthusiasm and obvious intelligence makes it easy to forget these recent graduates of The School of Environmental Studies, or as they call it “zoo school”, are just 19 years old. … [Read More…]
The relatively new mobile group Mobile Twin Cities, self described as “a group of technology enthusiasts…meeting to discuss trends and software on all mobile platforms.”gathered last night at the Refactr offices in Minneapolis. This group founded and organized by local developer Justin Grammens of Recursive Awesome (Full disclosure; Justin and I are also partners at Localtone Systems) hosted a night of mobile platform demos which was dubbed “Demo-licious”. Judging by the larger than normal crowd, that included developers, designers, marketers and mobile enthusiasts it was a great success. The mantra that Justin continues to chant “No programming experience needed! Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, Symbian and Windows Mobile enthusiasts are all welcome.” seems to be working.
The evening was chocked full of demos of apps and projects that leaves little doubt that mobile development in the Twin Cities is more than warm, if not downright HOT! I would like to have seen more apps that reach more phones and platforms than just iPhone and Android, but the evening didn’t disappoint in highlighting some useful or potentially useful tools.
Following Breon Nagy’s demo of the latest Android device, the Motorola Droid (which I finally got to play with…nice phone, slide out keyboard ain’t great.), from the evening’s sponsor Verizon. Here’s the run down of demos...
MixMobi-Lisa Foote and developer Kelly Heikkila presented this DIY mobile couponing application. You can see a complete Minnov8 walk-through in our earlier post about MixMobi.
Sudden Deals-Julian Reytel walked the group through this SMS based discount service. Based on geographical location a user can be alerted about special discounts from participating businesses. It’s currently limited to restaurant and bar businesses. I would suggest there is much more potential opportunity awaiting Sudden Deals beyond these two verticals. Perhaps malls, shopping areas or even shopping circulars offer a more diverse number of consumers.
3D Light Racer-Robert Green the group’s gamer extraordinaire and owner of Battery Powered Games (fun t-shirt as well) showed off just one of his latest game apps. Think Tron for you Android device. I heard many hushed comments behind me about how addictive this game is…. [Read More…]
After a long bout of scheduling conflicts and Swine Flu, we finally caught up with David Womeldorf, VP for Redliner.com. Redliner is led by CEO Jerry Grabowski, and brought to life by a small team of experienced developers. With a decade of previous web/tech startup experience, David joined the Redliner team approx. a year ago, back when this technology was still in concept form.
Plain and simple, Redliner is a document collaboration, group editing and approval solution. There’s only so many ways to make this space sexy, but after experiencing it and playing around for a while, I’m not going to lie – I’m a little turned on. And this baby is still in beta!
Let’s start with the dashboard:
At their latest Bloginar gathering WCCO-TV previewed The Wire, a site that will allow users to see a story develop over time. It also allows staffers and users to interact and contribute to stories as they do develop. I had a chance to sit down with WCCO’s Director of New Media, John Daenzer to talk more about what WCCO hopes to accomplish with The Wire and to get a pre-launch walk-through of the service.
The origins of The Wire can be traced to a huddle with WCCO Brand Director Casey Kespohl nearly two years ago. “We had been thinking about creating some sort of environment to engage people more in not only news gathering but local news and information.” says John. “We didn’t know what it was.” (To see what it is right now, take a look at this screencast and commentary by John. Note: There is also a list view of The Wire in the offing.)
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfp1i6vOjdM
The launch date for The Wire, built in collaboration with the Nerdery at SierraBravo, was originally slated for November 1st, but that obviously will be pushed back as they continue to secure funds to develop it.
At the mention of funds I realized that my conversation with John sounded more like one I might have with a start-up rather than one I’d have with a Director of a department for a large media organization. Admittedly, funding for these sorts of projects, even at the corporate level, is tricky. As a former employee of CBS myself, on the radio side, I can speak from experience, and I’m sure it’s true at many companies, securing a budget for a project that deviates from “traditional” business development is almost more difficult than getting funding from complete strangers.
John points out that balancing the time and resources that will be spent on what WCCO traditionally does versus developing new avenues is a constant challenge. “My boss says we’re like scouts on a pony that rides ahead on the road to find new things…coming back and reporting what is a good road and what is not.” noted John. “The Wire is a road we’re riding down.”
This securing of funds continues to strike me and John makes no bones that WCCO is open to outside money to complete the building and launch of The Wire. “We are actively seeking a sponsor to help build and launch The Wire. If you’re XYZ telecom, you’re not just looking to throw money around. You spend very carefully and strategically, especially right now.” He continues, “We believe we are going to find a company that believes something like this will benefit our community — and benefit the sponsor financially.”
Funding will also be determined by the return…the monetization of The Wire. Beyond the more traditional advertising and ability to purchase an event on the timeline, John and his team have considered other opportunities. In fact, when I threw out the concept of selling a white label version to other media outlets it was obviously not a new idea inside the building. John noted that other CBS owned stations that have heard about this have expressed interest. “When can I have it?” is how John describes their excitement. He goes on to say “My visceral response is ‘How much money do you have to help me build it?’ Within CBS it’s all the same pot…Getting money from other stations within our family is not really worth it. Now outside…we haven’t really gone down that business model yet.”
Even though they haven’t acted on that new business model, it’s quite refreshing for a media fan like me to hear a company looking beyond their safety zone to examine the core vs. growth strategy. “I think it’s a great reflection of our leadership. I’m proud to be part of that.” says John.
An equally exciting statement that John made along this ‘start-up vibe’ was that of dealing with competition. “This past Tuesday (at the Bloginar) I was asked why I was showing this, now somebody could steal it.” He goes on to say, “We have to worry about what is best for us and good for users and do it in a way that we think is best, as quickly as we can.” In fact, in regards to The Wire, WCCO plans on welcoming input from who most would consider competitors. In our walk-through he even notes posting items to the timeline from (gasp) other TV stations. Imagine a story from KARE11 being posted on WCCO’s Wire.
Start-up thinking and collaborating with competitors…from a traditional media outlet? Now that is innovation.
I’ve recently started a quest; Find social media success stories that have nothing to do with Motrin Moms or Domino’s Pizza. Face it, though these are interesting examples of the importance of listening and reacting to the conversation,these examples are just plain old! By the way, if you’re doing a presentation on social media and brands any time after today, please delete any reference to these two brands or you will be officially labeled, by the official Labeling Office of the Web (LOW), as “old school”.
As part of said quest I called the folks at Best Buy to check on the health and/or success of Twelpforce.
For the sake of transparency I count many at Best Buy as friends. That said, my first of impression of the name of this initiative and it’s marketing campaign around the Twelpforce didn’t rank high on my cool-o-meter. To me social media is all about one-to-one contact and I didn’t necessarily think a TV add depicting a stadium of Blue Shirts (Best Buy employees) yelling out answers as the best way to showcase a concept and effort that is so darned positive and forward thinking…just sayin’.
I was curious and anxious to have the conversation. John Bernier, a Social Media Manager at Best Buy, and the one overseeing the Twelpforce initiative was happy to spend some time talking about it. This in itself is a good sign that a level of success is being attained. … [Read More…]
Got a nickel? Then you have a server for an hour, my friend. Visi.com, Minnesota’s largest Internet services/hosting firm unveiled on Wednesday morning its all-new brand of cloud computing services, dubbed “ReliaCloud,” with pricing starting at 5 cents per hour for its first offering, called “Cloud Server.” The breakfast seminar, “CloudVision,” was held at The Metropolitan in St. Louis Park, and was sold-out, with more than 200 IT and business executives attending. (Tweets are archived at the hashtag #cloudvision, including my own.)
The seminar featured talks by Mike Sowada, CEO of Visi, shown here on stage. (Photo courtesy of Charles Robinson.) Visi is the state’s largest Internet services and hosting firm, with data centers in both St. Paul and Eden Prairie. A talk followed entitled “Cloud Computing as a Business Advantage” by Chris Howard, a VP at analyst/research firm Burton Group. Jason Baker, CTO of Visi, wrapped up the event by presenting the first details of his firm’s new ReliaCloud offering, which included a live, online demo by product manager Johnny Hatch that came off flawlessly. I captured a few of the key slides for you… … [Read More…]
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