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Cloud applications and Microsoft Office

One of the big changes when your startup gets acquired is that the software and hardware that a big company standardizes on is rarely the software and hardware that you would pick for a startup. Startup solutions are low cost, easy to use and easy to maintain – Google Docs, Google Apps, AIM and Netsuite did just about everything for us – we were close to 100% in the cloud.

Ingram, on the other hand, is a Microsoft Exchange shop, so after dragging my feet for awhile, I’ve finally moved to Microsoft Entourage on my MacBook and use Exchange on my iPhone 3G for intracompany communications.  Although I’d forgotten the sense of security that you get when you use a software email application, I find that I am missing all my cloud applications - especially Gmail.

The big change is speed. Exchange and Microsoft Office have far more features, and are more compatible with the millions of docs out there, but you have to wait. for. everything!

A Significant Post

Sol Young, one of my colleagues, commented that my sparse posting makes me look "executive" - thanks, Sol :-). So, I'm posting to let people know that all the action is on twitter and friendfeed.  Being results oriented, I've noticed that twitters and friendfeed posts are much more likely to start interesting conversations, and are also effective ways to create new ties with people that you're working with. Blog posts, at least for me, tend to turn out to be set pieces that take longer to write and edit, so I don't write them unless I have to give a presentation or talk that justifies the extra time.

Having said all that, I want to let everyone know that Ingram Digital, our partners for the last two years, has acquired the iofy platform and the iofy development team! More to come about this, but we're all excited about the opportunity to grow our platform with Ingram's people and resources.