#shass

I'm 100% flummoxed by reactions to a post I made yesterday. Like, I have literally been staring on and off for about 24 hours trying to make heads or tails of it, but I'm really no closer...to anything. I am literally a cartoon of a genuinely baffled person right now.

I took this as a joke, and I responded with something I thought was funny.

I dashed off a quick response to this reblog, which I assumed was basically informing me my joke was crappy, with a request for more info on more colleges, but after a second reblog, apparently they are very angry that I have failed to defend myself adequately against an accusation of some kind.

I literally have no idea what that accusation was, or is, or could possibly have been.

This subsequent reblog by the original responder sheds absolutely no light on things for me.

As someone who once was tasked with promoting a 9-credit-per-course Honors Interdisciplinary Western Civ program to random students in an auditorium at like 8am with a surprisingly large turnout, the Shass promo team positively squealing, "watch our video for Winston Churchill!!!" is really, really funny to me.

It's funny to me because 1. he never went there, 2. hes' talking really generally about something random at MIT, and 3. they're practically doing a pee-pee dance about it.

The Presidential Shass

I've been thinking quite a bit on Michael Dell's quote when he was asked what Steve Jobs should do with Apple back in 1997.  It's ironic that the tables are now completely turned.

Whereas Dell was on top of the world back in 1997, it's now staring down a very different and bleak environment. However, not all is lost, at least not yet. This is Michael Dell's chance to show the world that he too can pull a rabbit out of a hat like Steve Jobs.  The way to do it is right under his nose.

He needs to think in bold terms with technologies today, which when put together the right way, brings about a futuristic product.  It's about out-maneuvering Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

So how do you do that exactly? Well, how about an old idea that was talked about ad nauseam by Larry Ellison about 15 years ago, the thin client? Like Apple's Newton that was too early for mass adoption, the corporate thin client, when Larry talked about back in the late 1990's, was also too early to be feasible on a massive scale.  It's still a bit early for that type of a thin client to bring the experience that users expect from decades of fully spec'd desktops, but a hybrid is well within the reach of today's technology.

If you think about how all the buzziest, hot technologies developed today; cloud, virtualization, SAAS, mobile, etc., you come to the inevitable realization that the pieces are now in place to make the thin client that Larry talked about one step closer to reality, but on a much larger scale.

Michael Dell wants to move towards IBM and HP, I think that's uninspiring. Instead, he should use his current Wyse product line to launch the future of PCs.  Imagine an inexpensive Dell computer you buy from a store, their website, or by phone that's limited in hardware customizations just like Apple computers.  However, these computers are light PCs with all software loaded when you get them home/to the office.  You must then connect the power cord and a network cable to download and configure the rest of the software to allow you full access. The initial setup walks you through the type of software you wish to rent and allows you to customize it just like the PCs of today.  The big difference is that instead of having your files and profile stored only locally on your hard drive, a copy is also stored in the cloud. There are many benefits in doing this.  One is that it gives Dell complete knowledge of what software is being used on that PC so if something goes wrong, their phone technicians can very easily diagnose any problems that the user is having without actually having physical access.  Second, since the entire hard drive is essentially replicated on Dell's server farms, clients can feel secure knowing that their data is backed up fully.  Also, if you lose/break/sell your hardware or if it's stolen, you can easily go buy another and everything can be restored just like an iPhone.

A thin client is not just for corporations. It's perhaps even more important for consumers as they want machines that are low maintenance and as the hundreds of Apple stores around the world can attest to, easy to get help when needed.  Here's where Dell's future PC can beat Apple at their game as well. Since help is only a phone call away, you save your customers a trip to a store where you have to wait for a Genius. A simple phone call to Dell and their technician can essentially replicate your complete user environment on their console to troubleshoot your problem, fix the error, and push the solution to your PC without you having to do anything but call them.  In the event of a hardware problem, the Dell technician can easily diagnose that as well using utilities while you wait on the phone.

Although Dell can do some of this already with their remote management software, it's still far less capable and less integrated than what I'm proposing. They need to actually make the command and control software an integral part of the experience where it's hidden until the customer runs into problems.

I call this hybrid system SHAAS (Software/Hardware As A Service).  Dell can chose to sell the hardware upfront or they can break the hardware price down over the life of the contract as the users rent the software including the OS and any productivity suits.  A monthly price of $30 - $50 will give users an experience that's lightyears better than what Dell is delivering to them currently.  It also gives Dell a way to shift towards a service model.  As we can see from Apple's example, consumers no longer want just good hardware, they also want great service. SHAAS marries the two to allow you deliver both in a single package.