Torpedoes in the water!
Several remarkable developments took place this past week that are guaranteed to rock some boats:
1) Streaming gains greater steam. HBO and Apple are near agreement in streaming HBO. The significance is substantial. Subscribers need no longer be directly subscribed to their cable / Fios provider to watch HBO. Arguably, once HBO goes than the others will follow suit, raising the number of streaming services – and with that the death knell of traditional cable / FIOS television viewing rings ever louder. After all, why pay for ‘premium’ cable / Fios service to get the channels for the shows you want to watch when you can simply pay a far smaller fee to simply stream directly. No longer will you have to subscribe to a specific channel and wait for when your show comes on when you can simply stream, pick and choose what you want when you want it?
It should also be noted that this is not only impactful for Apple TV users, but others – Roku top among them – are also going to find this development very fruitful and in turn, continue the growing collapse of traditional television viewing that has been in place now for well over 40 years since cable first started appearing in selected suburban locales.
2) Net neutrality is reinforced. The growing presence of internet streaming perhaps is why some corporate folks are not taking this development too well. Witness Verizon and Comcast’s reaction to the recent FCC ruling regarding ‘net neutrality’, where the cable providers are denied the ability to charge a higher fee for those subscribers who seek faster Internet (ostensibly to stream).
In the meantime, Comcast and Sony continue their sniping, denying PS4 users direct access to view HBO Go (http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/5/8156025/comcast-blocks-hbo-go-sony-ps4) – underscoring precisely why this is a good reason why net neutrality is critical for free enterprise and the curbing of monopolies. While Verizon argues that the FCC is harkening back to the 1930’s with their snide press release written in 1934 type, Verizon is being disingenuous (putting it politely) at best for they ignore the reality that the rules changed back during the Clinton Era and then again in 2007 to account for the reality of DSL (Digital Subscriber Lines) readily brings federal legislation up to the 21st century. With sore losers as these, we should be thankful for the FCC being proactive and progressive.
3) The Growing Presence of Shadow IT. Interestingly, it was revealed our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton allegedly used her office IT services to conduct personal business when in reality, it’s a little more complicated than that (http://www.zdnet.com/article/hillary-clinton-takes-shadow-it-mainstream/). Regardless of your partisan position regarding Ms. Clinton, what’s remarkable is the fact that her home office revealed usage of a home network – something which we’ve written about in the past here on Shockwaverider (“The Office is Dead; Long Live The Virtual Office”). What’s remarkable is that we’re seeing the growth of a phenomenon: the office as no longer being defined by any one location. Consider: what Ms. Clinton basically did was connect her home office to that of her professional office into a network ostensibly allowing her to continue her work away from the main office.
This is nothing new. To a lesser degree many executives practice shadow IT now, taking with them on the weekends home their company phones, tablets and laptops. Now, we’re seeing a new aspect of this trend: creating home networks that in turn, link to the office. This trend underscores an overlooked point: what is practiced or utilized at home inevitably influences what takes place at work. It’s widely known that the growth of iPads and iPhones in the office were largely attributed to executives having their own personal items, only to become enamored of them to the point where they would insist on utilizing the same in the office.
Now take it one step further.
With the rise of Internet streaming, more and more people are finding the need for home networks, whether they did basic such as a Roku or a series of personal laptops and desktops connected via wireless to a single Internet / web portal access point – to something ala Madame Secretary of State, a full-fledged home computer network (for the record, I do the same via a home network, utilizing a 6 terabyte RAID system. It’s really not that hard to do at all and you’ll find a lot of advantages in doing so,…).
Which is apparently what Madame Clinton found, but with the catch of mix and mis-matching: work email spilling over into non-work. It’s always best to practice safe e-mailing. As a former governmental Records Manager, we can expect to see more of these snafus coming up, so expect to see here at Shockwaverider a posting about practicing safe records management in the not so far future.
In the meantime, expect to see more torpedoes and explosions on the horizon as our world continues its evolutionary arc – but have no fear: the Shockwaverider crow’s nest is always on the lookout,…
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