Powers Unfiltered

An entrepreneur’s journey into grid computing and partnering with Microsoft, by John Powers

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Entries Tagged as 'Customer Service'

Digipede Network 2.4 — Beyond the Press Release

July 2nd, 2010 · 1 Comment

As many of you probably saw (thank you, Google News Alerts), Digipede has just released a new version of our award-winning grid computing software, the Digipede Network.  Whew. One of the most painful and joyful events in the life of a software company is the release of new software.  While this seems like an obvious […]

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Tags: Cloud computing · Customer Service · Grid applications · Press coverage · Usability

Digipede Network V2.1 — Beyond the Press Release

June 5th, 2008 · No Comments

Releasing software is hard. Sure, the individual steps like specifying, developing, testing, documenting, and planning support for new software features are difficult enough — but the discipline of knowing when to STOP adding features, and to focus instead on finishing a complete, polished, release-ready product is tougher than it sounds to those outside the industry. […]

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Tags: Customer Service · Entrepreneurship · Grid applications · Growth · Partnering with Microsoft · Usability

Two Weeks Later

January 23rd, 2008 · 3 Comments

For the folks following our Adventures in Partnerland, here’s an update. About two weeks ago, I wrote a post here about how the persistent technical difficulties with the Microsoft Partner Program Web site (partners.microsoft.com) had spilled over from every-day inconvenience to genuine negative impact on our relations with our customers. I howled, because I think […]

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Tags: Customer Service · Partnering with Microsoft

Hey, Microsoft — get off of my cloud

January 8th, 2008 · 5 Comments

All my regular readers know I use the Microsoft partner Web sites fairly often, and that I experience frustrating time-sucking issues almost as often. Believe me, I spare my readership the great majority of my experiences with the unending nightmare that is the Microsoft partner online world, and when I do raise these issues I’m […]

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Tags: Customer Service · Partnering with Microsoft · Usability

DeadMeeting

May 15th, 2007 · No Comments

I post a lot about our experiences as a partner and customer of Microsoft, and anybody who cares to go back and count knows that most of my posts are positive.  For whatever reason, my complaints / rants tend to get more attention, so I want to re-iterate – our experience with Microsoft is on balance […]

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Tags: Customer Service · Growth · Partnering with Microsoft · Usability

What are they thinking?

May 1st, 2007 · 1 Comment

OK, I’ve posted about our positive experience at a recent Microsoft conference, and I meant every word of it — it was a great event, and we had great treatment by all the Microsoft folks in attendence.  Now I want to address an issue about how policies attributed to Microsoft Legal have the (possibly unintended) consequence of reducing […]

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Tags: Customer Service · Events · Partnering with Microsoft

Siber Systems Rocks

March 1st, 2007 · 1 Comment

I use a password manager and form-filler-outer called RoboForm.  It is by far the best solution I’ve found to creating and remembering multiple non-trivial passwords.  (Like much of the reliable technology I use, this was recommended to me by Robert Anderson, who is almost as good at finding technology that works as he is at […]

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Tags: Customer Service · Usability

Growth: Part One — Growing Pains at Velocity Micro?

February 11th, 2007 · 16 Comments

I’ve planned a series of posts on the opportunities and perils of growth, with non-Digipede examples.  Here goes. The first example comes from, of all places, my new home PC. Last summer, my reliable old Gateway began to suffer from the same fate that eventually afflicts every PC — it was getting old, slow, and […]

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Tags: Customer Service · Entrepreneurship · Growth · Startup Life · Usability