The Recreational Traffic Impact

I've been working in Network Management for almost 10 years and there has always been an impact of recreational traffic on business networks. 10 years ago Peer 2 Peer applications like Napster flooded the Internet with huge amounts of traffic and many business had to quickly react with control methods or policies restricting or controlling the impact of this traffic. It was fairly easy to do because most P2P traffic was illegal, so a policy restricting it was pretty easy to implement and enforce.

Today, applications like YouTube(TM), Facebook(TM) and MySpace(TM) pose a whole new challenge. The latest workforce generation has adopted these social media applications as the standard and common form of communication. Taking away Facebook is the equivalent of taking away their access to food and water, not good for health or business. So how can companies ensure that Facebook and YouTube are not impacting the performance of the business?

Policies and procedures can help, but only as much as the enforcement, and you risk alienating the new workforce. Traditional web filters and network shaping solutions can be part of the solution, but are often reactive and only provide value if they can properly classify the traffic.

At Vineyard Networks we're starting by providing visibility into the network utilization at the application level, but even I'll admit that this is an evolving market with evolving demands and requirements. As hundreds, even thousands, of new social media applications storm the market we are going to see a new evolution of solutions to manage and maintain network and application performance, and I'm very excited to be in the game.

Vineyard Networks to ROUND 2 of the New Ventures BC Competition

I've got to admit that I'm excited to be part of the competition.  If you take a look through the list of companies that have been promoted to round 2, it's pretty fascinating.  Just 5 years ago how many companies on this listed would be listed as "clean technology"?  I'd say probably almost zilch.  This year it's 17%, and 3% more in bioenergy.  There's a lot of new interest in cleaning up our planet and renewable fuels, and that's great to see.

There's also a lot of interest in communication.  Almost 60% of the companies are in the IT or Internet/Media category.  Over the last 10 years recreational and business communication demands and technologies have exploded, and looking at these numbers they're still exploding.  Being in the Network Management space, we are constantly investigating how people are using the Internet to communicate, and new recreational and business applications appear every day.  It's also the extension of the Internet to the mobile user.  We're connected and communicating 24 hours a day from nearly every location on the globe.  What an exciting time to be building new technology.

Well, here's my official best wishes to everyone in the competition this year.  I am looking forward to learning more about the exciting business ideas coming out of British Columbia and meeting over a hundred fascinating people and companies.  And of course, we're here to win.

The Scooter Chronicles

I bet every boy dreams of riding a Harley around town, the low rumble of the engine and gleaming chrome the envy of everyone you pass.  I know I did, so I decided to make the move to two wheel motorized transportation.  I couldn't find a Harley that I really loved, so I got a Yamaha.  Not just any Yamaha, a Yahama BWS 50.  BWS = Big Wheel Scooter, and 50 = 50cc.

I had a big wheel when I was a kid and that was a great experience as far as I can remember, so why not get another big wheel, this time powered by a 50cc high performance racing engine.  Sure it's not the fastest thing on the road, and after only two days of riding I've been mocked by teenagers driving moms minivan as many times, but that's not going to get me down.  Here's my top 10 list of why my new scooter rocks.

The Official Top 10 List of Why Scooters Rock

10.   My kids think it's awesome, and love to come along for rides

9. Takes up very little room in the garage

8. Top speed of 75kph prevents speeding tickets

7. This morning it cost $4.00CDN to fill up

6. The open road and the wind in my hair (okay, on my helmet)

5. Walking into a restaraunt in leather with helmet, yeah, that's pretty cool

4. 3x better gas mileage then a prius, that's green

3. You never have any parking issues

2. No oil changes and very little maintenance

1. 150MPG (that's not a typo, check it out at here)

So, with a list like this out on the Internet, don't be suprised if you start seeing scooters pop up all around.

SVIA Reception

Congratulations to all the winners last night at the SVIA's.  What an amazing ceremony and hats off to OSTEC for putting on such a great event!  In particular I think it's worth mentioning (again) the amazing job that SW Audio/Visual did.  The presentations were great, the lighting/AV was amazing and it was a lot of fun to be a part of.

It was mentioned a couple times last night, but I'm going to mention it again.  How about we spend the next week talking about the amazing companies that were showcased last night and how they are succeeding today, and let's take a week to stop talking about what the market did or how many jobs were lost or whatever.  I'm ready for a week of positive, spirited discussion on how people are making things happen!  Hope you'll join me.