To say I am an avid reader is putting it lightly – I am an editor and an English major after all. For the most part in my post-college years, I have stuck with easy or interesting reads; however, near the end of last year I decided to reconnect with some classic literature.
My choice was The Count of Monte Cristo, hailed by many an English professor as an all-time classic by Alexandre Dumas. And no, this was certainly not an abridged version – I read the full, unabridged 1,300-plus pages (translated to English, of course), in all its glory. It took me the better part of two months to finish, and I am a fast reader.
I realize how much people love this book, and in some ways it really is great, but there are a host of reasons to dislike it as well. If you read the unabridged version, it is abundantly clear that the book was a serial – that is, it was released one installment at a time to a hungry audience that was devoid of the simple pleasures in life that we enjoy like Netflix and smartphones. And like many writers in his day, Dumas was paid by the word; thus, it made economic sense for Dumas (and Dickens and Melville and a slew of others) to be verbose or to go off on tangents. There are a ton of plot twists and exposition in the middle of The Count of Monte Cristo that, to be frank, was just plain unnecessary. I realize at this point I should be labeled a blasphemer by the literary world.
Ironically, this column is starting to read like a serial, so I will get to the point: In today’s fast-moving, information-first world, as a business owner or manager, it is imperative to question the “classic” way of doing things. Sure, some bookworm at the head of a classroom lecture hall can stand in front of you and with a straight face, hold up the “classic” as the standard by which all of us should strive to attain; but we here in the real world know better.
It is a particularly appropriate theme in this issue of SD&I – which takes the opposite approach of holding up those companies on the cutting edge of technologies and service offerings as the standard by which we all can endeavor to achieve.
These companies have gone far beyond the “classic way” of doing things. They are on the forefront of smart technologies for the home and business; they are leaders in combining IT and security into one, cohesive service offering; and they are embracing the cloud by encouraging every customer to move to hosted and managed services.
Frequent SD&I contributor and security industry consultant Ray Bernard really summed it up well in his article in our March issue (read the full piece at www.securityinfowatch.com/12308761): Recently, the Senior Manager of Global Safety & Security for a multi-billion-dollar global technology firm told me that “integrators need to figure out how to add value in the ‘as-a-service’ paradigm,” and that “more and more security platforms will have ‘as-a-service’ and cloud components.” His concern is that integrators view physical security system Software-as-a-Service and Hardware-as-a-Service offerings as just a newer kind of thing to mark up, sell, and install – just like they have been doing for the last 20 or more years.
Of course, avoiding the “classic” goes further than the cloud and IT and technology for your customers. If your company is using excel spreadsheets – or heaven forbid, pen and paper – to financially manage your company in this age of recurring revenue management, you are dating yourself and putting your very company at risk.
If you find yourself saying, “we do it this way because that’s how we have always done it,” you have fallen into the “classic” trap. Outside of a lecture hall, that’s the last place you want your business to be.
Paul Rothman is Editor in Chief of Security Dealer & Integrator (SD&I) magazine. Access the current issue, along with full archives and subscribe link at www.secdealer.com.
