Technology — the train that doesn't stop
Have you been keeping up with the digital Joneses? Technology has changed a bit over the years.
I was born in the late 1970s, just before anyone ages me too much. As a result, I have now found myself in my sixth decade. At the time of my birth, most houses had at least one television; however, you could watch only three channels. There was no way to record TV shows in your home; therefore, you watched what was on when it was on. Over the proceeding 40–something years, technology has leapt forward.
The '80s saw the war between Betamax and VHS for the prime spot below our televisions, and towards the end of the decade, saw tapes replaced by CDs. I can still remember the first CD player that came into our house. It was several months before the first CD arrived to play on it. Computers were something most people didn't have, although, in our technology-loving family, we made a commodore journey through the 80s.
It was in the 90's that the internet arrived for us. I remember getting it installed and the IT guy leaving after showing us how to "connect". Once he left, we went through the whirling and whizzing of our 9600 Baud modem, getting online only to look at each other and ask, "What do we do now?".
The '00s saw the internet take over. I had my first PDA around 2004 and purchased my first iPhone around 2007. By now, that large desktop computer and slow, noisy modem had been replaced by an 11.5cmX6cm Apple phone. By now, we all know how to use the internet.
I also remember working in Belfast in the early '00s when Microsoft announced. NET. I had a chance to play around with VB.NET in a beta form and saw a massive jump from the VB6 I used. Little did I know where that journey would go as we now find ourselves with .NET 7, Microsoft's latest STS release.
Then, in the 10's, a new term came about. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter were all household terms. Most people had a smartphone. However, if you were running a company, you still hosted everything in your office building and software was only accessed if you were in the physical office. The internet had not truly touched this aspect of our lives, but now people were talking about "the cloud".
The Cloud
I started playing around with Microsoft's Azure cloud while working with Nitec in 2015. Looking back, what has changed and improved in those short 8 years is impressive. Not only does this train not stop, but it also seems to be speeding up.
From something that didn't exist just a few years ago, Microsoft reported revenue upwards of $43 billion in the last three months of 2020 for their cloud business. According to their statistics, 63% of enterprises are currently running apps on Microsoft Azure, and another 20% experimenting with it. Commonly when we see what enterprises are doing, we know that SMBs must wait to catch up. But the natural beauty of the cloud is that it's already democratised by nature. In the same way, it is available to enterprise-level organisations. It is open to SMBs.
Jump on the Tech Train
If you are a Nitec company, you are most likely benefiting from this with Microsoft 365 or managed backup. Now the rest is available, so just as we had to move from tapes to CDs to digital music, I encourage you to look at how you can get your business up to the front carriages of this never-stopping train and avoid getting left behind.