In-Flight Upgrades

I think that all the required technology is already in place to support in-flight upgrades. Here are some examples of what I mean:

Air Travel

You board an airplane. Three minutes before the plane pushes away from the gate, a computerized announcement airs: “There are four unsold seats in first class. Bidding for these seats is now open. Please use the touch screen in the seatback in front of you, along with your credit or debit card, to place a bid.” 90 seconds later: “Bidding has now completed. The passengers in seats 7D, 14A, 3C, and 12A may take their seats in first class.”

The computerized bidding system would simply choose the highest bidder(s).

Shipping

You purchase something that is shipped to you. Initially, you choose the slow-boat shipping. A day or two later, your eagerness to have this item increases. So, you go to the shipper’s tracking site, enter the tracking number, and click Upgrade Delivery Time. After keying in your credit card digits, your package is expedited so that it arrives faster.

I don’t know much about the inner workings of shipping companies, but it seems to me that packages get handled at least every 24 hours during transit. If that is true, there should be ample opportunity to upgrade an in-transit package to a faster delivery service.

I bet shipping companies could get away with charging a premium for these kind of upgrades.

Other Applications?

Well, that’s all I’ve come up with for now, but I bet this principle of in-flight upgrades could be applied elsewhere. It seems to me like an untapped revenue source for companies that deliver a service that takes a while to complete.

Server Virtualization and the SMB (part 5)

Conclusion

“Companies with IT teams of one to four people or firms with 60 or fewer employees often don’t have the level of sophistication required to make virtualization pay,” said Chip Nickolett, president of Comprehensive Consulting Solutions that has helped several small businesses take their first steps into the virtual world. “In these environments, the benefit of virtualization would be marginal at best.”

These are not hard-and-fast numbers, of course. Tiny firms in financial services, law and other sectors sometimes have both significant IT requirements, the budget and the staff required to make virtualization pay big dividends.

The use of virtualization technology is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years, especially among the SMBs. Virtualization vendors, who have primarily been targeting the larger businesses thus far, have now started paying more attention to SMBs. Similarly, SMB channel partners are also developing the required skills to offer virtualization-related services. Thus, many SMBs will start using some form of virtualization in the near future and the use of its technology will be fairly common in the next three or four years.

When it comes to disaster recovery with virtualization, you get what you pay for. If your IT budget is too tight to accommodate the most expensive VMware or Citrix packages, don’t expect continuous availability during a disaster.

Using virtualization for disaster recovery makes perfect sense. Virtual machines (VMs) can be packaged with your operating system, applications and configurations and sent off to a secondary location and take over immediately during a disaster at the primary data center site.

Server Virtualization and the SMB (part 4)

Disaster Recovery

Server Virtualization and the SMB (part 3)

Greater Flexibility

Server Virtualization and the SMB (part 2)

Increase Hardware Utilization