Let's put it on the table - disconnected products are lame! THEY ARE A PAIN!

They require me to do the heavy lifting. I have to understand their every need, to learn arcane ways to interact with them, and heaven forbid if they have a flaw - I will have to live with it until the end of time.  A prime example: my high-end HD TV that chooses to lose its noodle every time the game get's close! How does it know?

Disconnected products are all little islands - they barely interact with me and hardly ever with each other. I want to corral them, to organize them, to turn them into an army that works with relentless efficiency, doing the things that I want them to do - when I want them to do them...I WANT MY PRODUCTS TO BE CONNECTED!

To be fair, today's products do amazing things, but the avalanche of complexity has caused a great disconnect between the user and the maker of the product. Users want a better product experience. Makers want to differentiate themselves from their competition and sell more product. So, where do we meet?

We meet in the cloud! I want to utilize the infinite possibilities of the cloud to teach my products new tricks! To teach them my likes and dislikes... to get them to play well with others... to evolve...

Instead of putting more complexity into my product - into a platform that can't handle and organize it - utilize connectivity to leverage capability in the cloud and give me the reigns! And here is the amazing thing: I, the consumer, will actually pay for you to give me the reigns! If it creates value, makes my product better, makes it more useful, solves problems for me, I will gladly pay. The iPhone is a perfect example of this. Today, this platform has more than 200,000 applications and has sold more than 1 billion devices. It has changed the game.

Your product, too, can become a cloud-based platform. Medical devices? Yes. Industrial machines? Yes. Consumer products? Definitely yes.  Join me on my crusade. Let's rid the world of lame disconnected products! Connect them today! http://developer.axeda.com.

Dale