Seth Miller's Posts

June 25th, 2014

Reality check: Outages happen. They happen with on premises systems, and they happen in the cloud. It doesn’t matter whose service it is. We could argue about who’s more reliable, but in the end, assuming that you’re up enough of the time that it’s a tenable solution, we generally judge our providers on how they handle the outages.

November 19th, 2013

CMSWire put together a great panel for a TweetJam last week.  There were 11 of us in all that participated.  There were some great insights from everyone involved.  I definitely recommend a once-over of the Jam, and the recap is a great place to start, and or if you prefer, read all of the tweets here: https://twitter.com/#SocBizChat

Here are the questions that shaped the discussion:

1. Name the top 3 functions of the modern intranet.
2. In what areas do intranets fall short of employee’s needs?
3. What steps need to be taken to keep intranets relevant?
4. Enterprise social networks vs. Intranets – Competing? Merging? Distinct? What’s your take?
5. Looking to 2014, what challenges lie ahead for intranets?

Enjoy!

October 22nd, 2013

On Thursday morning Miller Systems founder and CEO Seth Miller led a panel of seasoned marketing professionals at FutureM 2013 in a session titled “Future of ‘Freemium’: Driving Business or Out of Business.”

From software to journalism, consumers and business leaders expect so much for free. It’s disrupting business models and forcing producers to shift to higher-value/highly-differentiated niches, or switch to other monetization models, such as selling off user data or hocking ads. When the expectation is “free and cheap,” how do you market premium offerings that will sustain a business model?

October 16th, 2013

Miller Systems is excited to announce that we are hosting a panel discussion at this year’s FutureM conference in Boston, which runs from October 16-18.  

Our session, The Future of Freemium: Driving Business or Out of Business?, will be held on Thursday, October 17 at 9:30AM at the Hynes Convention Center.  We’ll be discussing how to maintain value in an instant gratification marketplace with expert panelists from SpiceWorks, ChartIQ and the W3 Companies.

Our own Seth Miller will be moderating the session and will have the unique pleasure of sharing the stage with the following panelists:

Alex Gramling. As Chief Marketing Officer for W3, llc, Alex Gramling directs marketing strategy for the firm’s portfolio companies in the healthcare and technology arenas.

Tabrez Syed. Tabrez Syed is the vice president of Products at Spiceworks, the network for IT that’s transforming how $1 trillion in technology products and services are managed, marketed and sold each year.

Dan Schleifer. Dan Schleifer is the President and Co-Founder of ChartIQ, a mobile-focused social stock charting platform.

FutureM brings a one-of-a-kind experience to Marketing and Media trendsetters by debating the cutting-edge development and future landscape of Marketing. The programs are unique, forward-thinking, and will challenge, integrate and bring to life what tomorrow holds for businesses in the digital age.

As a valued member of the Miller Systems community, we hope you’ll join us. By using the discount code MILLERDISC, you’ll receive a 10% discount on your pass. Register for FutureM today

September 24th, 2013

Seth Miller demonstrates why its crucial to gather all the relevant data about how your systems are used before moving anything to the cloud.

Using cloud based file storage, sync, and collaboration systems is very popular, and a great fit for a lot of organizations of all sorts and sizes. Here’s the catch, though: If you’re in an environment where users are doing more than email and basic office apps, the cloud doesn’t always make sense – and evaluating the viability of a move to cloud can be very difficult.

Sample scenario

Let’s bring this a bit closer to the ground. You’re in IT for a group working in media production.

• You may have as few as 40 or 50 total users – but you wouldn’t know it from looking in the server room. That probably looks more like a “typical business” with 250 or more users. Dozens or hundreds of terabytes, lots of servers (physical or virtual, doesn’t matter).
• You’re dealing with big files (video, high fidelity audio, high res images, etc).
• You’re not 100% Windows at the desktop. You’ve got a split of Macs and Windows, maybe even a few Linux boxes.
• You’ve had SANs/NAS/large DAS RAIDs for many years by the time 2013 rolled around. When GigE LAN became standard, productivity soared.
• Let’s assume you don’t have a multi-gigabit internet connection, for sake of discussion.

My friend, if this all sounds familiar, you are in a textbook high-performance LAN environment. Assuming you don’t have a multi-gigabit connection to the internet, you may have a real problem moving to the cloud.

Cloud migrations always sounds great on paper. This heatmap told us otherwise for one of our clients. Check out our TechRepublic article to see if you might be in the same boat.

September 12th, 2013

Originally published in CMSWire, August 29, 2013

Office 365 has made SharePoint available to the masses due to its aggressive price point.  But is a low monthly cost per user enough for an organization to really facilitate enterprise collaboration and ultimately justify the ROI?  Will SMBs be able to successfully implement and adopt SharePoint Online without substantial investments in expert assistance?

April 10th, 2013

Seth Miller participates in an interview with SmartPros, a leading provider of accredited professional education and training to Fortune 500 companies. Watch as Seth talks about his current perspectives and insights on Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning, including the impact rising technologies such as mobile and cloud are having on BC/DR plans.

October 26th, 2012

On Tuesday afternoon Miller Systems founder and CEO Seth Miller led a panel of seasoned marketing professionals at FutureM 2012 in a session titled “The End of Depth? Marketing Complex Services and Products.” The discussion explored the challenges and opportunities inherent in the high-frequency / short burst world of social communication and marketing, especially as products and services become increasingly difficult to sum up in a few words.

October 19th, 2012

It’s not rocket science these days to create and publish web pages, using relatively simple WCM tools like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. Widespread availability and adoption of free tools like these have removed the barrier to entry for just about everyone who’s interested in publishing anything (no complaints on my end as I type this very post into WordPress).

There’s a trap here, though. The simplicity of creating basic pages like blogs and wikis has somehow led many to conclude that WCM is generally less important than it used to be. One point I’d argue: if you’re trying to foster collaboration and deliver knowledge management via your intranet, your WCM tools and strategy are still very important.

CMSWire recently published my article exploring this idea: The Evolving Role of Content Management in Modern Intranets.

What do you think? Has WCM been completely disrupted by the social web and cheap or free tools? How does your response change in the context of an intranet?

Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated!

October 8th, 2012