Today everyone is a generalist, a deliberate move on the part of most as a reaction to the economic times.

The problem now though is that the market needs specialist and they aren’t there.

So, the cycle of groups splitting off to form new ‘specialist’ companies will gain momentum, until next time.

Cynical perhaps, but this is one of the life cycles of our industry!

Never get lazy with your audience. Complacency is the merit badge you get for winning a marathon in your comfort zone. About ten years ago, U2 learned this lesson the hard way. Their album, Pop, sold fewer copies than any other record in their catalogue. As a result, the group made a public declaration:
“Our band is reapplying for the job of the best band in the world.”
But this wasn’t bravado or a publicity stunt – it was pure conviction. They sincerely wanted to squash the complacency they’d built around themselves.
So they worked their tails off. And a year later, their tenth record, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, sold over thirty five million copies and won seven Grammies. All because they rooted out any sense of entitlement and got back to work.

That is, being proactive in the way you honor, recognize and thank the people whose relationships are essential to your existence

However, our business has certainly picked up over the last 3 months and we are seeing growth in our market. This justifies to me the decision we took last year to retain all staff in spite of the down turn and invest in training where we had spare capacity.

In the specialist field in which we operate, we live or die by the quality and commitment of our staff. In turn, they rely upon our commitment to them. So, rather than having to struggle to replace staff, we can now focus on expansion across the region with the resulting benefits to our customers.

Outside of specific requirements most products are the same, designed for the same job to get the same results. Obviously some are better designed and more robust, but all in all not a lot between them.  One product may have a new feature today, but within a very short period of time others will have a me too but bigger, better and faster.

So if there isn’t a lot between them, why do some installations succeed and other fail miserably?

It comes down to design, implementation, support and people. Any solution that stems from a bad design, or is badly implemented, or heaven forbid is badly supported, is doomed to suffer problems. That being said, even if you get all of the above right but the attitude of the people involved in the ongoing operation is lacking, it is ‘good night Viena’.

Even badly designed and poorly implemented solutions can be resurrected with good support and a supportive operations teams, but poor support or operational muppets will always cause problems.

It is like the single ‘pain’ of glass. Instead of the features and fiz, look at the vendors ability to support because at the end of the day this is one of the major factors in success. Forget about the success stories, ask them for a couple of failures that they have resurrected, or not – that will get their attention!

Most of our staff and a group of customers got together at IDATA for a pre-show ‘rev up’ and then moved on to the show. Apart from a delay with the bus stuck on the harbour bridge, we had a bloody good night.

It was great to see ease with which everyone mixed and to be able to enjoy good company outside of business.

Thank you all for stepping out.

As we all know, any well designed and well implemented archive system needs little administration if the policies are set correctly. I have seen very few organisations where the backup administrator and archive administrator are shared in a single role.

So apart from ‘sizzle’ what is this really about? I am put in mind of Alice in Wonderland and what she found through the looking-glass – all a bit frightening.

On reflection I was asking the wrong people.

This is a question for our customers and I am trying this as the forum for this discussion.

Michael Leonard-Smith