What a difference a year makes…

For what its worth, if you’ve ever wanted to visit Florida, this would be the time. The weather is absolutely phenomenal. But if you have to be stuck indoors, looking at the world through the web eyes, the world seems quite a bit different today.

Last year at this time there was all the speculation about Vista and this myth of Web 2.0. Apple was just transitioning to Intel, with mixed fanbase feelings and Microsoft was just trying to get Zune up and running. Google was buying up the universe and the headline read: “Dot-Com Boom Echoed in Deal to Buy YouTube”

And a year later? Facebook domination. Mac now close to 10% market share. Google quarterly profit swells 46 percent. iPhone is easilly a product of the year. Nearly everything people talk about is Web 2.0 and people are actually making money on it. And Microsoft.. who? Oh yeah, same as the above – still questions about Zune, still speculation about Vista, little to no excitement about 2008 which launches in less than five months. Might as well be year 2800.

And don’t get me started on BlackBerry, the virtual hostage of 2004–2006, has come back so hard that if Jesus were to come back his first act would be to turn his Windows Mobile phone into a BlackBerry! Hallelujah!!

Why is this relevant? Well, its relevant because its here and now and our clients are reading about it. So if you’re a one trick pony (you know, “we sell and support SBS networks… Microsoft… MCSE..”) the world has all of a sudden grown tremendously to include the toys and solutions that your customers are reading about. Now, in the short term it may be easy to ignore and say “We do X, only X and X alone” but as those customers read, travel, get marketed to they will start to get curious. The business, at times dominated by Microsoft, HP, Dell, IBM and the telco’s is now opened up to Google, Web 2.0, Apple, BlackBerry, Cisco/Avaya..

And if you can’t answer their questions about those products, someone else will. And perhaps it also signals the return to the premium fee for the knowledge beyond what has already been consolidated and automated.