Laptops. The internet. Wireless access. Cell phones.

These technologies have allowed us the ability to communicate with anyone, any time, from anywhere. We can take a day away from the office, but still be in touch (maybe not such a good thing). You can watch a video of your cashier serving a customer. The status of your bank account is at your fingertips.

Today, we can advertise via the internet. We can broadcast important messages to our clients via email. Potential Vision clients can read all about ICS and Vision even before speaking to us. Demonstrations of Vision can now be done from our office or home with anyone that has a computer and an internet connection.

And when we need to travel for an on-site meeting, we can run Vision on a laptop. No more lugging that big computer. Just turn it on and start your demo. I could say “it can’t get much easier than that”, but I know that the exponential growth of technology would make me eat my words.

Just as technology has changed our sales model, so too has our development process. The choice of languages has grown. And many can co-exist in the same application. Now, developers have “tools” that do the many software tasks that we previously had to write for ourselves. And the development can take place virtually anywhere, not just at your office. Random developers publish free software (imagine giving away your code??). Database application manage so many of the mundane development functions, leaving developers free to focus on the application.

There are user interface experts, database experts, designers, developers. In our day, those jobs were all rolled into one person. Today, even a developer can specialize in just certain types of development.

Technology has changed our lives. It has morphed our business model. This is certainly not a complaint. It is all for the good. Even if I were complaining, there is not much I could do but embrace it.

Here’s to the future…