“The opportunity to boost broadband speed drives more broadband households to switch providers, or broadband churn, than do lower fees, according to new research results from Parks Associates.” [telecompetitor]

“Nine percent of U.S. broadband households switched providers in the past 12 months.”

“While 43 percent of subscribers do not know their current broadband speed, they do know about the experience that they have online, particularly as it relates to digital media.”

Even When They Don’t Know Their Internet Access Speed, They Know When the Experience Requires More Bandwidth, writes Gary Kim.

New habits, new gadgets = speedy broadband is a requirement at home.

“”Very high speed services, including gigabit-speed offerings, will be the next stage of competition among operators,” notes the research firm. “Though few consumers today actually need that level of throughput, consumers are willing to pay to ensure that they do not encounter slowdowns or other performance problems.”” [DSLR]

““Consumer expectations for their broadband service are changing as they add more devices and adopt new habits,” Sappington said. “For example, 34% of consumers who regularly watch Internet video on a tablet plan to upgrade their broadband service. What was fast enough yesterday could be too slow today – it all depends on the quality of their experience and new devices in use.” [PARKS]

Tom Peters again in his Excellence No Excuses ebook (844 pages btw).

“Moore’s Law and the Second Half of the Chessboard.”

““Change” is not the issue — change has always been with us. But “this time” may truly be different. The ACCELERATION of change is unprecedented — hence, the time for requisite action is severely compressed.” – Tom Peters

People First. We live in the Connection Economy, which means that through social networks – LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, snapchat – we are connected to more people than ever before. News travels fast. So fast!

BFO* #1: If you (RELIGIOUSLY) help people — EVERY SINGLE PERSON, JUNIOR OR SENIOR, LIFER OR TEMP — grow and reach/exceed their perceived potential, then they in turn will bust their individual and collective butts to create great experiences for Clients — and the “bottom line” will get fatter and fatter and fatter. (ANYBODY LISTENING?) (PEOPLE FIRST = MAXIMIZED PROFITABILITY)

The “People FIRST” message is 10X more urgent than ever in the high-engagement “AGE OF SOCIAL BUSINESS.”

WE ARE/BECOME WHO WE HANG OUT WITH. <- Jim Rohn said that we would be the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. That means that if you want to be better, get better, be choosy about who you spend time with.

Customer Entanglements — read these and try one or 2!

Yesterday Tom Peters released his collected works from 2014 (in his favorite form: PowerPoint). The email recipients crashed dropbox. It become a blog post with links from his company website.

I am going through them, but Chapter FIVE: Tech Tsunami/Software Is Eating the World++ was pretty scary to me. Read it here.

The other good chapter is on Brand You, a book he wrote in the 90s. He talks about Project work and how to make it significant for employees. It should be a must read for project managers and managers. Read it here.

After 11 years, one guy gets an FBI NSL (National Security Letter) Gag order lifted.

“For more than a decade, the government has refused to allow Mr. Merrill and other NSL recipients to tell the public just how broadly the FBI has interpreted its authority to surveil individuals’ digital lives in secret using NSLs. Tens of thousands of NSLs are issued by FBI officers every year without a warrant or judicial oversight of any kind.

The letters demand disclosure of user information and are almost always accompanied by complete gag orders. Today’s decision will finally allow Mr. Merrill to speak about all aspects of the NSL and, specifically, to inform the public about the categories of personal information that the FBI believes it can obtain using an NSL.” [Calyx Institute]

That is a lot of legal fighting over a really big issue.

“In 2001, the Patriot Act expanded the FBI’s authority to unilaterally demand that businesses and ISPs turn over user records — and never talk about the request — simply by sending a National Security Letter (NSL) claiming the data was needed for national security purposes.” [DSLR]

The judge’s decision is here.

In 90 days, we will hear what the FBI gets from these letters; probably way more than they should.

Or view it now at Yale.

Got this in my morning email.

Today, Parallels Holdings Limited (“Parallels”) announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell the Odin Service Automation platform along with associated cloud management technologies, intellectual property, and the Odin brand, to Ingram Micro. The transaction is expected to close in December 2015.

The remaining service provider businesses – Plesk and Virtuozzo – will be split into standalone companies, operating under the Plesk (www.plesk.com) and Virtuozzo (www.virtuozzo.com) brands, respectively. Both businesses will continue to be owned and controlled by Parallels Holdings Limited.

I’m also excited to introduce the new leadership of Plesk and Virtuozzo. The Plesk business will be led by Nils Hueneke, a longtime leader within Parallels and Odin and a veteran in the hosting and cloud business. Virtuozzo will be led by Rob Lovell who re-joined Parallels in October and most recently held leadership positions at Colt following Colt’s acquisition of ThinkGrid where he was founder and chief executive officer. I’m confident that under the leadership of Nils and Rob, Plesk and Virtuozzo will accelerate their pace of innovation and will sharpen their focus on delivering the best solutions for our customers and partners.

For more details, I encourage you to read the news release and FAQ.

Birger Steen, CEO

Earlier this year Parallels split the company in 2 and renamed the SP business unit ODIN. In 2014, Ingram adopted ODIN (then called Parallels Automation Platform) as its Core Cloud Services Platform. Not even a year later, they buy the whole thing after Parallels Holdings splits it out. Nicely managed.

Apptix, Sprint and other SPs use ODIN. I wonder what happens to them. At least, Plesk is still standing. BTW, so is Platypus.

Ingram is betting heavy on being a cloud services provider — not a broker or distributor like it is with hardware. Read the press release: “Earlier this year the channel was set abuzz by the announcement from Ingram Micro that it was entering the cloud service provider space with three new Ingram Micro-branded and hosted cloud solutions: Ingram Micro Hosted Exchange, Ingram Micro Virtual Private Servers (VPS), and Ingram Micro Web Hosting.”

ODIN/Parallels was the platform that allows Ingram VARs to order, provision and bill services like a web hosting account or an Exchange inbox. It is like the kiosk software. Now they own it.