A feature story for Herman Miller's SEE magazine. It is about space design and how that reinforces and celebrates our local culture of the Pacific Northwest.
A bicycle commuter squats beside a storm-water drain. He’s on a highway bridge that spans a ravine. It is rush hour. A flash storm is drenching the roadway. The man’s arm is fully extended in the drain as he works to unclog it, presumably so others can travel safely across the flooding roadway. There is no shoulder, no room between him and the speeding cars, and I worry about his safety as my husband and I drive by.
This was 5:30 p.m. or thereabouts on May 2 on Southwest Barbur Boulevard in Portland, Oregon.
And this is the Pacific Northwest vibe.
Days later, I call my husband to tell him I just lost my pocketbook and need to cancel all our credit cards. He answers his phone as he walks briskly down Portland’s Southwest Second Avenue to meet the anonymous woman who grabbed my bag off the sidewalk and immediately set out to return it with all my money and credit cards, everything, intact.
This, too, is quintessentially Pacific Northwest, a place where thoughtfulness is pervasive. What recently deceased Aeron chair designer, Bill Stumpf, called civility in: "The Ice Palace That Melted Away."
“Civility is comfort, hidden goodness, social lubricant, personal worth, helping others, play – civility is the joy we take in human achievements and the compassion we show toward our all-to-human faults.”
This pervasive good will of the Pacific Northwest is especially evident in its independent bookstores. Here are two I explored for SEE.
Portland, Oregon, is a righteous, thoughtful place that even Jane Jacobs, one of the most ardent critics of urban planning, admires. In a 2001 Metropolis interview at age 84, the author of The Death & Life of Great American Cities singles out Portland when asked for an example of what’s right with American cities: “There are a lot of constructive things happening in Portland.”
***
One of them is Office PDX (http://www.officepdx.com/). Office is located in a Bohemian neighborhood Jacobs would have loved. Portland’s Alberta community is part early-days SoHo and old-style main street dominated by locally owned and operated businesses. The blocks are short, making a trip to the store an easy stroll from neighboring bungalows. Businesses on Alberta are diverse – the hardware store, food market, specialty boutiques, art galleries and restaurants. And then there is Office.
A boutique and a networking space for creatives, Office sells design and architecture books and magazines, desk accessories, portfolio, presentation and writing tools. Office is 21st-century salon for graphic designers, architects, industrial designers, writers, actors, musicians, artists and other creatives, who come to shop and mix with like-minded people.
John Breen, a celebrated Portland actor who stars in James Westby’s “The Auteur,” a film slated for a Sundance Film Festival debut, likes the personal interaction with the owners, husband and wife Tony Secolo and Kelly Coller. “The experience is important to me,” Breen says. “If you walk into a Borders Books, for example, you will not find people who love books and reading but you will in an independent book store like this one.”
At three years old, Office sits in a 1956 corner store that evokes a mid-century office environment. Its façade is a two-tone brick facade with original metal-framed windows. Garage doors added later allow light into this open-plan store of 1,100 square feet. Even with additions and alterations, we wanted to “respect this history of the building,” Coller says.
Inside, old fashion office furniture and antiques act as props and point-of-purchase displays. The stage is set with Tanker desks and SteelAge filing cabinets, a collection of Kodak home movie cameras, and even Coller’s grandpa’s “Cocktail Culture,” a mixed drink recipe book -- complete with one for Grandpa Nelson’s punch written in pencil on the back of the title page. “Design without pretense – no entitlement, no pedigree; we are not that way,” says Secolo. “We want to get design moving forward.”
Office puts a shoulder to this mission by hosting free events geared toward the enrichment of the creative community. Its June 21 portfolio panel discussion was packed with roughly 75 people who came to hear what some of the city’s top creative directors have to say about how to enter their worlds. Adidas, Nike, Sandstrom Design and Wieden + Kennedy were among the companies represented on the panel. Some of the advice that night: Check the ego at the door. Show us you can listen, collaborate and empathize. Be honest. Be clear about your role. Show you can do more than make something pretty. Show us you can think. Show us you can solve problems. Tell a story visually.
Paul Issac Thomas, a 19-year-old recent graduate of The Art Institute of Portland, a “Design Sorcerer,” according to his card, attended with a handful of students. Afterward outside Office, the Sorcerer said: “This is one of the more Portland places in Portland; it’s by people of design for people of design; it has a genuine feel to it.”
Panelist Luis Rueda, Design Director in Nike Brand Design, says Office fills a void by providing the city’s “very healthy” creative community with unique things especially appealing to them. The owners show “ingenuity and that they care by contributing to the community” through their events, which deepens Rueda’s admiration for this young company. “They fulfill a function and a need.”
Rueda learned of Office through word of mouth and stopped in with his wife, Cindy Sato. “Office is representative of a whole feeling spreading from city to city in Oregon around environmental issues,” Sato said. Sato, an Event Planner at the Tiger Woods Conference Center, purchases from Office regularly and recommends them to others because Office meets and exceeds the competition in service and the quality of its offerings.
Sato recently needed 100 Moleskine notebooks for an event and was told by a national chain she could only buy bulk quantities starting at 500 per. Secolo ordered the 100 books for her. “If you need it, he gets it,” she said.
Office is more intellectual and cultural habitat than store. People in the Pacific Northwest rally behind it for very personal reasons: the experience, the service, the genuine atmosphere, the unique poignant offerings, community involvement, the environmental impact of doing business locally. It seems to me Office devotees are looking for heroes and soulmates, they want to do business with people like them.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, my husband and I were walking our dog and noticed a homemade bench on a neighbor’s corner property. The bench was at street level, down a slope on this half-acre property on SW Ridgeview Lane. I wondered aloud why they put it there so far from the house they’ll never use it? My husband walked over and sat down. “It’s for us,” he said.
Take a drive to Seattle?
Seattle seduces you with its great cosmopolitan energy and heavy sustainable undertow. Coming upon it, you see the blown-out tires and other garbage on bumpy roadways separated by misaligned Jersey barriers. Seattle is an abrupt vertical city topped by the landmark Space Needle tower. It has the dog-treat bakery, the fashionable shops, world-class art museums and galleries, a public library designed by starchitect Rem Koolhaas. Seattle is also home to a little bookstore that commands an inordinate amount of affinity.
***
Imagine Oscar Wilde as the proprietor of a bookstore that caters to subjects that interest you most. He alone picks the books he allows into his store and is generally there, matching requests for new knowledge with new works that push the future forward.
If you can visualize this, you are close to understanding Peter Miller, the namesake and owner of Peter Miller Architecture & Design Books & Supplies (http://www.petermiller.com/).
The single-location store on the 1900 block of Seattle’s First Avenue comprises roughly 7,500 titles. “They come here for optimism; that the world isn’t just down to Boeing and Safeco,” says Peter Miller, the namesake and owner of this 30-year-old, single-location bookstore on the 1900 block of First Avenue in urbane downtown Seattle, Washington.
The store of roughly 7,500 titles –such things as Luis Barragan’s “The Eye Embodied,” from the Netherlands, “New Cityscapes,” by Jan Gehl, of Copenhagen, and “Wood Design Awards, 2007,” a book from Toronto.
“They come here for confirmation that design matters and courage matters and color and history matter,” Miller says. “We are a store based on this is apparently so…Architecture is the great labor of trying to get it better. Our job is to be open and well designed, that the selection be correct.”
And the patrons at Peter Miller Books? The group below would make quite the dinner party, especially if you tossed in Peter, but they were random shoppers at Miller’s 1,500-sq. ft. store on a sunny Saturday afternoon in June.
An architect from Mithun and her architect husband from NBBJ.
A creative director for Tommy Bahama.
A history professor and author from Washington State University.
The CEO of a software company and his girlfriend -- a product manager for a neuroscience company developing a brain stimulator that promises to repair the neurons from such things as Alzheimer’s disease and stroke.
Lynn McBride, an architect with Mithun, and her husband, Damien McBride, of NBBJ were at Peter Miller Books looking for inspiration for a new home, a forward-reaching home, a sustainable home, they will design and build together and for the latest resources on Spanish architecture. They will lead a class of Montana State University architecture students through Spanish cities this summer and, while they have done it in years past, they came to Miller’s store to refresh their curriculum.
Asked why here when there are so many bookstores in Seattle vying for this architecture town’s architecture community, Damien McBride says, “Just any architect automatically knows what it is and where it is. You mention Peter Miller, you know that’s all you need to say. He caters to forward-thinking architects.”
Lynn, who designs skyscrapers for a living, adds that people in architecture, firms, principals included, will send people to “go see Peter” as a project resource. They say Miller is a resource for the leading edge of architecture and that while the momentum around sustainability is growing stronger – even within the last 18 months, that there isn’t even a name for this movement yet.
Fritz Levy is a retired professor and author taught history at Washington State University for 45 years. He has been a store patron for as long as Peter’s been in business. “Peter knows his books,” Levy says. Miller placed a book in his hands that day: “Who Are You; the history of the surveillance state,” by Mark Kyburz. “You would think Seattle isn’t big enough to support a place like this but I’m sure Peter’s not just doing this for love.”
“At the moment it seems that they can have a Peter Miller Books but this is not a country at a great moment for its education or its retail,” Peter opines. “The Internet is a powerful, suburbanizing force yet the downtowns are increasingly finding people to go into them. The humans want something.”
Later, Peter is fielding customer requests. It is apparent how very special it is to buy a book from Peter Miller. He came to Seattle in the 1970s from Connecticut with a master’s in English from Harvard University.
Chris Wood is the CEO of Clario, a software company with a technology that translates two-dimensional, microscopic images of things that can kill you into 3-D so radiologists can identify them at a stage when there’s still time to save you. He bought a tres expensive Italian leather bag, a Nava. As he waited for his credit-card purchase, Miller approached to say the Italians are not known to be workaholics, and they didn’t intend the bag to hold a laptop and “a ton of bricks” so ‘don’t fill the bag with too much; you’ll break my bag.”
Wood loves this store. “It has what’s hot now. If you ask people in Seattle, who have lived here, for an interesting Seattle story, Peter Miller will come up. It is iconic. The design is right. The location is super.”
Wood was with his girlfriend, Sara Larsen, a product manager for Northstar Neuroscience. “I don’t walk around and look,” she says. “I come in and ask the people here for a good book.”
Greg Quist, a creative director with Tommy Bahama, has been coming to Peter Miller Books for decades. He especially likes the size of the store. “It’s small enough; sometimes too much is too much and there’s always something new.” He says he might find some good books at other bookstores but compared to Miller’s store, it is more or less a rummage through a lot of so-so books to find a good one.
Don’t call his books eye candy. “It should be good food. Very fresh salad. It should be clean. It should be well cooked and have wine that goes with it –not fusty and stupid and bored.
“Seattle’s a company town; it exports an astonishing array of franchises: Nordstroms, Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, but it is also a remarkable town for its humans,” Miller says. “I have the most remarkable customers I could have; they should have the best bookshop possible, that’s what they should have.”
As for the analogy to Oscar Wilde, Peter says: “but not Oscar Wilde, too many cats and sofas and literature asides and such!”
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Friday, February 2, 2001
Introduction to The ASP Survival Guide
My thoughts on the enterprise application service provider market. This is the forward and introduction to a macro report commissioned by Zanthus.
The unprecedented economic high of recent years, most notably between 1998 and 1999, gave some the impression a new economy had permanently replaced the old economy. When you get to a granular level of how technology has impacted business it’s easy to understand why this speculation occurred. Rather than a grand hoax, the new economy was premised on the notion of ever-improving efficiencies. With technology’s impact compounding slowly at first and then more intensely by the late 1990s, old economy companies were temporarily eclipsed by new economy upstarts. Without investors requiring immediate profitability, many businesses, including many application service providers that focused on accelerated growth strategies or failed to focus at all.
ASPs deploy, host, manage and rent access to software from a centrally managed location. ASPs allow customers to rent software electronically, via the Web, as an alternative to buying, installing and maintaining it themselves. In many ways, they are the software industry’s revolutionaries; they came on the scene three years ago to shake up the IT outsourcing establishment. They are widely viewed as a sign of the beginning of the end of software purchasing as we know it; but whether they can survive as a separate industry in defiance of the IT powers is questionable.
Today, we see very few thriving independent enterprise ASPs, while other IT outsourcers fold ASP services into holistic, or all-encompassing solution sets. Many of the successful enterprise ASPs today are linked in one way or another to powerful pre-established players.
The ASP Survival Guide: Enterprise Workflow Solutions reveals the market penetration strategies of a small group of companies offering corporate IT departments an alternative to high-cost, complicated-to-manage client/server systems. The report explores the prevalent reasons why some enterprise ASPs are succeeding and others are failing. Despite a lot of bad publicity, domestic enterprise ASPs led in worldwide revenue for this market, with analyst projections showing industry growth of up to 200% from 1999 to 2000. As for the headline-making failures, the shocking truth is many ASPs tripped over rudimentary business problems both strategic and tactical; they adopted unpromising business models; selected the wrong partners; failed to execute, managed cash flow poorly, and lacked a differentiated market focus.
The report goes on to observe critical questions of perception such as: will the recent spate of business failures create a credibility issue for otherwise healthy enterprise ASPs?
In this ASP Survival Guide, Zanthus treats the enterprise space as a market separate and apart from the small- to medium-business market (SMB) because of fundamental differences in customer support and service.
Enterprise ASPs work with more robust, scalable, complex and tailored applications than the lighter, cross-industry applications typically offered by SMB ASPs. Also, companies in the US $100 million revenue range typically have demanding integration needs associated with complex legacy systems. The result is a considerably different set of market dynamics and compensatory survival strategies.
The Survival Guide is the result of six months of study ending in November 2001. It includes commentary with a range of key industry players and observers: senior executives from enterprise ASPs and their customers, venture capitalists and noted analysts and the best insights of Zanthus analysts. Content is organized by topic in the following ten sections:
1.0 Distinguishes enterprise ASPs from the SMB market and defines enterprise applications
2.0 Discusses the top competitors for enterprise ASPs, including systems integrators, software vendors and telecommunications companies
3.0 Assesses the impact of consolidation on the IT outsourcing market with special attention to enterprise ASPs
4.0 Builds on the ASP value proposition, highlighting the benefits most important to enterprise customers
5.0 Provides insight into how enterprise ASPs should prepare for future challenges, including integration across legacy systems, infrastructure management and customization, financing and the prevailing gloom around the ASP model
6.0 Enumerates the overarching strategies for success including adopting a vertical focus, streamlining of infrastructure deployment, customization and infrastructure processes
7.0 Brings the enterprise ASP market to life in three case studies:
7.1 eCenter: Is this PeopleSoft’s big return from a nearly fatal ERP strategy?
7.2 Is Qwest Cyber.Solutions, and infrastructure owners in general, well-suited to provide ASP solutions?
7.3 Why didn’t AristaSoft’s tight vertical focus and strong financial backing save this once promising company?
In the aftermath of the new economy, profitability is once again a requirement across industries. The ASP market will continue to consolidate as the market matures slowly. The years ahead will see the falling out of weaker companies but these failures shouldn’t obscure the value Web-based application provisioning brings to enterprise customers. Adopting ASP services remain a cost-effective alternative for companies struggling to maintain complicated IT infrastructure on their own.
Forward: Technology’s Compounding Impact
At the US $25 billion global enterprise Lockheed Martin it’s no mistake a recent annual report begins by affirming the cyclical nature of technological innovation and real profits.
The Bethesda, Maryland, aerospace and technology services company has a history of improving business processes and solving problems with technology. Among the most prominent solutions is its Missiles and Fire Control division’s Internet-based procurement system. Developed in 1997, it saves Lockheed Martin millions of dollars every year by speeding up the procurement process from 16 to only five days.
According to Lockheed Martin’s Robert Proffitt, the manager who spearheaded the initiative, the resulting e-procurement system reduced cycle time by up to 50% and cut costs by 25% to 50% for its customers.
It can be argued that the economic boom of the late 1990s was a direct result of IT investments like this one. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’ recent Survey of Current Business states the ‘IT revolution’ improved corporate productivity, rates of return, and the value of capital investments. Bureau economists surmise direct contributions of high-tech products to real GDP growth averaged an impressive 29% in the period between 1995 and 1998.
While economists find it difficult to quantify spillover effects (there’s no clear empirical evidence because adequate statistical measurements don’t exist at this time to directly link purchases of IT equipment to productivity growth across all industries) this view is supported by findings the industries most closely associated with high tech tended to have above-average productivity growth. If this relationship between innovation and economic rewards truly exists, it helps explain why the enterprise ASP market is buckling despite the inherent promise of the idea and recent market growth estimates of up to 200%.
Further explanation lies in a more expansive discussion of compounding advantages. To comprehend the ASP market’s troubles is to look beyond the scope of the market altogether. Jared Diamond makes the case that compounding advantages are a recurring theme over the entire course of human history in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel; The Fate of Human Societies (1997). Wealth and power are distributed as they are now, Diamond asserts, because human development on some continents enjoyed early advantages over others, starting with east-west axis; the proliferation of species suitable for domestication (among them, the horse) and farming. Sedentary stratified societies flourished as a result and with that came such things as writing, political organizations, guns, swords, and ocean-going ships. Innovations rather than racial differences provided some with a higher platform of further advantages from which they were able to conquer and absorb the best of others, and, many times eliminate them in the process, with warfare or, unwittingly, through the introduction of deadly diseases.
The author’s sociological analysis of the last 13,000 years has a special significance for ASPs as they struggle in the nascent market. Like past civilizations, independent ASPs face severe competition from a variety of powerful companies. Companies such as IBM and EDS compete on scale, reputation and breath and depth of products and services offerings. They have made strides to either participate in or closely monitor the Web-based subscription model in its first years. In fact, today, few genuinely independent ASPs remain, with most strongly backed by established players in one form or another. This category includes the likes of PeopleSoft’s eCenter and Qwest Communications’ Cyber.Solutions.
In the future, their advantages are likely to be increased as the knowledge they have gained through either market participation, acquisition or close alliances with profitable ASPs is only compounded by the ASP market’s recent bad luck, namely, attrition and resulting credibility issues.
Taking advantage of the ubiquity of the Internet, the ASP model promises a faster, always-on subscription-computing environment for: faster rollouts for complex IT systems; inexpensive upgrades and expertise in supporting IT systems; and amortized payments as opposed to upfront capital outlays for software and hardware.
The enterprise ASP is anything but another mirage of a speculative climate. With that said, the next few years are likely to bring an end to the revolutionary ASP market but not its revolution in software provision.
Over the horizon, we’ll see the ASP market’s demise as well as an end to purchasing software as we know it. That’s the paradoxical state of application service provisioning today.
The unprecedented economic high of recent years, most notably between 1998 and 1999, gave some the impression a new economy had permanently replaced the old economy. When you get to a granular level of how technology has impacted business it’s easy to understand why this speculation occurred. Rather than a grand hoax, the new economy was premised on the notion of ever-improving efficiencies. With technology’s impact compounding slowly at first and then more intensely by the late 1990s, old economy companies were temporarily eclipsed by new economy upstarts. Without investors requiring immediate profitability, many businesses, including many application service providers that focused on accelerated growth strategies or failed to focus at all.
ASPs deploy, host, manage and rent access to software from a centrally managed location. ASPs allow customers to rent software electronically, via the Web, as an alternative to buying, installing and maintaining it themselves. In many ways, they are the software industry’s revolutionaries; they came on the scene three years ago to shake up the IT outsourcing establishment. They are widely viewed as a sign of the beginning of the end of software purchasing as we know it; but whether they can survive as a separate industry in defiance of the IT powers is questionable.
Today, we see very few thriving independent enterprise ASPs, while other IT outsourcers fold ASP services into holistic, or all-encompassing solution sets. Many of the successful enterprise ASPs today are linked in one way or another to powerful pre-established players.
The ASP Survival Guide: Enterprise Workflow Solutions reveals the market penetration strategies of a small group of companies offering corporate IT departments an alternative to high-cost, complicated-to-manage client/server systems. The report explores the prevalent reasons why some enterprise ASPs are succeeding and others are failing. Despite a lot of bad publicity, domestic enterprise ASPs led in worldwide revenue for this market, with analyst projections showing industry growth of up to 200% from 1999 to 2000. As for the headline-making failures, the shocking truth is many ASPs tripped over rudimentary business problems both strategic and tactical; they adopted unpromising business models; selected the wrong partners; failed to execute, managed cash flow poorly, and lacked a differentiated market focus.
The report goes on to observe critical questions of perception such as: will the recent spate of business failures create a credibility issue for otherwise healthy enterprise ASPs?
In this ASP Survival Guide, Zanthus treats the enterprise space as a market separate and apart from the small- to medium-business market (SMB) because of fundamental differences in customer support and service.
Enterprise ASPs work with more robust, scalable, complex and tailored applications than the lighter, cross-industry applications typically offered by SMB ASPs. Also, companies in the US $100 million revenue range typically have demanding integration needs associated with complex legacy systems. The result is a considerably different set of market dynamics and compensatory survival strategies.
The Survival Guide is the result of six months of study ending in November 2001. It includes commentary with a range of key industry players and observers: senior executives from enterprise ASPs and their customers, venture capitalists and noted analysts and the best insights of Zanthus analysts. Content is organized by topic in the following ten sections:
1.0 Distinguishes enterprise ASPs from the SMB market and defines enterprise applications
2.0 Discusses the top competitors for enterprise ASPs, including systems integrators, software vendors and telecommunications companies
3.0 Assesses the impact of consolidation on the IT outsourcing market with special attention to enterprise ASPs
4.0 Builds on the ASP value proposition, highlighting the benefits most important to enterprise customers
5.0 Provides insight into how enterprise ASPs should prepare for future challenges, including integration across legacy systems, infrastructure management and customization, financing and the prevailing gloom around the ASP model
6.0 Enumerates the overarching strategies for success including adopting a vertical focus, streamlining of infrastructure deployment, customization and infrastructure processes
7.0 Brings the enterprise ASP market to life in three case studies:
7.1 eCenter: Is this PeopleSoft’s big return from a nearly fatal ERP strategy?
7.2 Is Qwest Cyber.Solutions, and infrastructure owners in general, well-suited to provide ASP solutions?
7.3 Why didn’t AristaSoft’s tight vertical focus and strong financial backing save this once promising company?
In the aftermath of the new economy, profitability is once again a requirement across industries. The ASP market will continue to consolidate as the market matures slowly. The years ahead will see the falling out of weaker companies but these failures shouldn’t obscure the value Web-based application provisioning brings to enterprise customers. Adopting ASP services remain a cost-effective alternative for companies struggling to maintain complicated IT infrastructure on their own.
Forward: Technology’s Compounding Impact
At the US $25 billion global enterprise Lockheed Martin it’s no mistake a recent annual report begins by affirming the cyclical nature of technological innovation and real profits.
The Bethesda, Maryland, aerospace and technology services company has a history of improving business processes and solving problems with technology. Among the most prominent solutions is its Missiles and Fire Control division’s Internet-based procurement system. Developed in 1997, it saves Lockheed Martin millions of dollars every year by speeding up the procurement process from 16 to only five days.
According to Lockheed Martin’s Robert Proffitt, the manager who spearheaded the initiative, the resulting e-procurement system reduced cycle time by up to 50% and cut costs by 25% to 50% for its customers.
It can be argued that the economic boom of the late 1990s was a direct result of IT investments like this one. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’ recent Survey of Current Business states the ‘IT revolution’ improved corporate productivity, rates of return, and the value of capital investments. Bureau economists surmise direct contributions of high-tech products to real GDP growth averaged an impressive 29% in the period between 1995 and 1998.
While economists find it difficult to quantify spillover effects (there’s no clear empirical evidence because adequate statistical measurements don’t exist at this time to directly link purchases of IT equipment to productivity growth across all industries) this view is supported by findings the industries most closely associated with high tech tended to have above-average productivity growth. If this relationship between innovation and economic rewards truly exists, it helps explain why the enterprise ASP market is buckling despite the inherent promise of the idea and recent market growth estimates of up to 200%.
Further explanation lies in a more expansive discussion of compounding advantages. To comprehend the ASP market’s troubles is to look beyond the scope of the market altogether. Jared Diamond makes the case that compounding advantages are a recurring theme over the entire course of human history in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel; The Fate of Human Societies (1997). Wealth and power are distributed as they are now, Diamond asserts, because human development on some continents enjoyed early advantages over others, starting with east-west axis; the proliferation of species suitable for domestication (among them, the horse) and farming. Sedentary stratified societies flourished as a result and with that came such things as writing, political organizations, guns, swords, and ocean-going ships. Innovations rather than racial differences provided some with a higher platform of further advantages from which they were able to conquer and absorb the best of others, and, many times eliminate them in the process, with warfare or, unwittingly, through the introduction of deadly diseases.
The author’s sociological analysis of the last 13,000 years has a special significance for ASPs as they struggle in the nascent market. Like past civilizations, independent ASPs face severe competition from a variety of powerful companies. Companies such as IBM and EDS compete on scale, reputation and breath and depth of products and services offerings. They have made strides to either participate in or closely monitor the Web-based subscription model in its first years. In fact, today, few genuinely independent ASPs remain, with most strongly backed by established players in one form or another. This category includes the likes of PeopleSoft’s eCenter and Qwest Communications’ Cyber.Solutions.
In the future, their advantages are likely to be increased as the knowledge they have gained through either market participation, acquisition or close alliances with profitable ASPs is only compounded by the ASP market’s recent bad luck, namely, attrition and resulting credibility issues.
Taking advantage of the ubiquity of the Internet, the ASP model promises a faster, always-on subscription-computing environment for: faster rollouts for complex IT systems; inexpensive upgrades and expertise in supporting IT systems; and amortized payments as opposed to upfront capital outlays for software and hardware.
The enterprise ASP is anything but another mirage of a speculative climate. With that said, the next few years are likely to bring an end to the revolutionary ASP market but not its revolution in software provision.
Over the horizon, we’ll see the ASP market’s demise as well as an end to purchasing software as we know it. That’s the paradoxical state of application service provisioning today.
Thursday, September 10, 1992
Brother & Sister Face Eviction After Relative's Death; City to Decide Their Fate Thursday
A feature from my days as a newspaper reporter in New York City.
BY VIVIAN SCHLESINGER
ADVANCE STAFF WRITER
Staten Island Advance
Janet and Gary Shouldis have dodged homelessness since they were old enough to walk.
Now 20 and 17, respectively, the sister and brother fear what they escaped in childhood could become a reality as they become adults. And whatever the outcome of their soon-to-be-decided fate, one thing is clear: The city Housing Authority will play a major role; a hearing with the agency will be held Thursday in Manhattan.
The Shouldises were deserted by their mother as preschoolers. When Miss Shouldis was 7 years old and her brother was 5, their grandmother took them in. Their father, who remains in contact with them, has a gambling addiction that continues to prevent him from supporting them, according to his children. And when their grandmother died last March, the Shouldises were threatened with eviction from their home of 12 years, an apartment in the Todt Hill Houses in Castleton Corners -- one of the city Housing Authority's subsidized housing complexes. For the apartment, they pay a rent they can afford on Miss Shouldis' salary. She makes $5 an hour as an attendant at a fast-food stand in the Staten Island Mall in New Springville. "I wouldn't have anywhere to go. I wouldn't know where to go," Miss Shouldis said on a recent evening as she sat at her kitchen table.
Because the siblings' grandmother, Helen Shouldis, did not list them as tenants when she took them in, the city Housing Authority said it will likely evict them. So far, Housing Authority officials have determined the two have no "survivors' rights" to the apartment.
The Housing Authority's public relations office was unavailable for comment on the situation.
Helen Shouldis was 62 years old, widowed and had already raised 11 of her own children when she took the two grandchildren in. While she became a mother to them, feeding and clothing them, paying for their education, Mrs. Shouldis never officially became their legal guardian, Miss Shouldis said. Mrs. Shouldis neglected to do this for fear she and the children would be ousted from her two-bedroom apartment, according to an uncle, Robert Shouldis.
Miss Shouldis is currently her brother's legal guardian. Their father remained their legal guardian throughout the time they lived with their grandmother. But the Shouldises remain optimistic because officials have asked them to prove they lived with their grandmother and they feel they can.
The brother and sister's address is shown as their grandmother's apartment on school documents. And letters from neighbors and school officials state Mrs. Shouldis cared for the children while they lived with her for the past 12 years.
The Shouldises' uncle helped them compile the documents. And he will accompany the siblings on Thursday to what will be their last city Housing Authority hearing. Slated to be held in Manhattan, the hearing will give the Shouldises an opportunity to ask to stay in the apartment for which they pay $277 a month in rent. If they are not allowed to remain, officials told them they will be evicted in April, the brother and sister said. "They need the apartment. They can't be paying a $600-a-month rent. You're (the city) going to make homeless here," said their uncle. He sat across from his niece at the kitchen table.
Shouldis said he was bitter because he felt as though his niece and nephew were being put out into the street, possibly to make room for someone on public assistance. He argued his mother took on a financial burden that would have been passed along to the taxpayers and said the situation is an example of the self-defeating rules built into the welfare system. "It just seems unbelievable, like a slap in the face all around," Shouldis said.
The Housing Authority has placed at least 181 families on public assistance in Staten Island's 11 subsidized housing complexes over the past four years as part of an effort to empty the city's "welfare hotels," according to authority spokesman Fred Taylor. Meanwhile, thousands of working poor families have been on waiting lists for apartments in subsidized housing. Some have waited for more than 10 years, authorities said.
The late Mrs. Shouldis, a retired radiology clerk, a grandmother to 27 children, brought up Miss Shouldis and her brother without public assistance, her granddaughter said.
St. Teresa's School principal Sister Mary Joseph Deasaro said Mrs. Shouldis was the only person she contacted about her grandchildren when they were students at the Castleton Corners grammar school. Mrs. Shouldis paid the children's tuition, bought their books and uniforms and was involved in school activities, Sister Mary Joseph recalled in a recent telephone interview. She characterized Mrs. Shouldis as "very active" in school functions. She said she was a member of the PTA, went on field trips and was a schoolyard recess attendant. Of the children, Sister Mary Joseph said: "Always helpful; they got that from their grandmother."
When Mrs. Shouldis died last March at age 76, things changed rapidly for her grandchildren. In early April, Miss Shouldis found out she and her brother were to be evicted. She had to leave college to work to pay the bills. Miss Shouldis was a freshman nursing major at the College of Staten Island. Now, as a food attendant, she works from 27 to 30 hours a week. Recent cutbacks in hours prevent her from working a full-time shift, she said.
She requested an official hearing on the eviction, and in the fall, she was informed in writing by a Housing Authority official that she and her brother did not have a claim to the apartment based on "survivors' rights."
According to an Oct. 16 letter from Housing Authority district manager John Costello, "a remaining family member" -- one who may remain after the lease holder dies -- has to be either a family member at the time of the move-in, born into the family after the moving or receive written approval from the project management.
"As you can see (your situation) does not meet the guidelines of a remaining family member," Costello said in the letter.
The younger Shouldis is a student at Susan Wagner High School, where he is also a pitcher on the baseball team. He is hoping a good season will get him into college on a scholarship. Without a scholarship, he won't be going to college, said Miss Shouldis, adding that she is anxious to continue her education.
Alas, a happy ending!
Eviction Threat Lifted for Sister, Brother:
Advance Story Brings Wave of Support
VIVIAN SCHLESINGER
ADVANCE STAFF WRITER
Staten Island Advance
Calling it the "humane thing to do," city officials yesterday decided not to evict a young Castleton Corners woman and her 17-year-old brother from public housing.
The decision came two days after the siblings' story appeared in the Sunday Advance. The story set off a wave of public support for the pair.
"I am so happy right now," said Janet Shouldis, 20, after returning from work to receive word that she and her brother, Gary, would not be evicted from their Todt Hill Houses apartment over a technicality in housing regulations.
"I was just crying, to tell you the truth," said the siblings' uncle, Robert Shouldis, 15 minutes after he heard the news. Gary Shouldis declined to comment.
The city Housing Authority, which operates the city's public housing, decided to give the Shouldises a lease after reviewing their case."Since we permitted their residence for this length of time, it is in our best judgment to permit them to stay," said authority spokesman Val Coleman.
The Shouldises have lived in the Todt Hill Houses since they were children. Coleman said the Shouldises would be expected to pay 30 percent of their income in rent -- which is considerably lower than what they now pay, $277 a month.
Today, Miss Shouldis will meet with the Todt Hill Houses manager to draw up a lease, she said.
Abandoned by their mother as children, they were taken in by their grandmother, Helen Shouldis, who lived in the apartment complex. For 12 years, Mrs. Shouldis fed and clothed her grandchildren without public assistance. When she died last March at age 76, Housing Authority officials told the brother and sister they would be evicted because their grandmother had never listed them as tenants. But the Shouldises didn't have anywhere to go or an income that would sustain them. For a year, the Shouldises waged a private struggle with the Housing Authority in which their requests for a lease were denied twice. Officials told them they had no "survivors' rights" to the apartment, according to letters and records Miss Shouldis provided to the Advance.
During that time, Miss Shouldis took a leave of absence from college to support herself and her brother. She continues to work at a fast-food counter in the Staten Island Mall in New Springville.
Going public as a last recourse, the Shouldises' story was chronicled in the Sunday Advance -- four days before they were slated to attend a final hearing on the matter in the authority's Manhattan offices.
Support calls flowed into the Advance offices for two days after the story appeared. More than 50 Staten Islanders offered jobs, money and political might. Three lawyers offered to represent the brother and sister free of charge. Island business people offered to help Janet get a better-paying job. One woman said she would consider taking the Shouldises into her home. Others wanted to contribute money toward their college educations.
City Council President Andrew Stein had a letter of support hand-delivered to Housing Authority Chairwoman Sally Hernandez-Pinero on Monday morning. Assemblyman Eric Vitaliano also wrote a letter of support. And North Shore Councilman Jerome X. O'Donovan pledged to attend the hearing to testify on the Shouldises behalf. Others called to express their empathy and outrage or offer advice on financial aid for college. Miss Shouldis still has to find a way to pay her college education while supporting herself and her brother.
Bob Catherwood, of Great Kills, called to say he would be rooting for Gary Shouldis this baseball season. Gary, a pitcher at Susan Wagner High School, is hoping a good season will bring him an offer of an athletic scholarship, his sister said. "I'm just hoping and praying that her brother makes it," Catherwood said, adding, "These kids deserve an award for staying off welfare the way they did."
Aside from the emotional support and the political pressure, the Shouldises thankfully declined the offers of assistance.
BY VIVIAN SCHLESINGER
ADVANCE STAFF WRITER
Staten Island Advance
Janet and Gary Shouldis have dodged homelessness since they were old enough to walk.
Now 20 and 17, respectively, the sister and brother fear what they escaped in childhood could become a reality as they become adults. And whatever the outcome of their soon-to-be-decided fate, one thing is clear: The city Housing Authority will play a major role; a hearing with the agency will be held Thursday in Manhattan.
The Shouldises were deserted by their mother as preschoolers. When Miss Shouldis was 7 years old and her brother was 5, their grandmother took them in. Their father, who remains in contact with them, has a gambling addiction that continues to prevent him from supporting them, according to his children. And when their grandmother died last March, the Shouldises were threatened with eviction from their home of 12 years, an apartment in the Todt Hill Houses in Castleton Corners -- one of the city Housing Authority's subsidized housing complexes. For the apartment, they pay a rent they can afford on Miss Shouldis' salary. She makes $5 an hour as an attendant at a fast-food stand in the Staten Island Mall in New Springville. "I wouldn't have anywhere to go. I wouldn't know where to go," Miss Shouldis said on a recent evening as she sat at her kitchen table.
Because the siblings' grandmother, Helen Shouldis, did not list them as tenants when she took them in, the city Housing Authority said it will likely evict them. So far, Housing Authority officials have determined the two have no "survivors' rights" to the apartment.
The Housing Authority's public relations office was unavailable for comment on the situation.
Helen Shouldis was 62 years old, widowed and had already raised 11 of her own children when she took the two grandchildren in. While she became a mother to them, feeding and clothing them, paying for their education, Mrs. Shouldis never officially became their legal guardian, Miss Shouldis said. Mrs. Shouldis neglected to do this for fear she and the children would be ousted from her two-bedroom apartment, according to an uncle, Robert Shouldis.
Miss Shouldis is currently her brother's legal guardian. Their father remained their legal guardian throughout the time they lived with their grandmother. But the Shouldises remain optimistic because officials have asked them to prove they lived with their grandmother and they feel they can.
The brother and sister's address is shown as their grandmother's apartment on school documents. And letters from neighbors and school officials state Mrs. Shouldis cared for the children while they lived with her for the past 12 years.
The Shouldises' uncle helped them compile the documents. And he will accompany the siblings on Thursday to what will be their last city Housing Authority hearing. Slated to be held in Manhattan, the hearing will give the Shouldises an opportunity to ask to stay in the apartment for which they pay $277 a month in rent. If they are not allowed to remain, officials told them they will be evicted in April, the brother and sister said. "They need the apartment. They can't be paying a $600-a-month rent. You're (the city) going to make homeless here," said their uncle. He sat across from his niece at the kitchen table.
Shouldis said he was bitter because he felt as though his niece and nephew were being put out into the street, possibly to make room for someone on public assistance. He argued his mother took on a financial burden that would have been passed along to the taxpayers and said the situation is an example of the self-defeating rules built into the welfare system. "It just seems unbelievable, like a slap in the face all around," Shouldis said.
The Housing Authority has placed at least 181 families on public assistance in Staten Island's 11 subsidized housing complexes over the past four years as part of an effort to empty the city's "welfare hotels," according to authority spokesman Fred Taylor. Meanwhile, thousands of working poor families have been on waiting lists for apartments in subsidized housing. Some have waited for more than 10 years, authorities said.
The late Mrs. Shouldis, a retired radiology clerk, a grandmother to 27 children, brought up Miss Shouldis and her brother without public assistance, her granddaughter said.
St. Teresa's School principal Sister Mary Joseph Deasaro said Mrs. Shouldis was the only person she contacted about her grandchildren when they were students at the Castleton Corners grammar school. Mrs. Shouldis paid the children's tuition, bought their books and uniforms and was involved in school activities, Sister Mary Joseph recalled in a recent telephone interview. She characterized Mrs. Shouldis as "very active" in school functions. She said she was a member of the PTA, went on field trips and was a schoolyard recess attendant. Of the children, Sister Mary Joseph said: "Always helpful; they got that from their grandmother."
When Mrs. Shouldis died last March at age 76, things changed rapidly for her grandchildren. In early April, Miss Shouldis found out she and her brother were to be evicted. She had to leave college to work to pay the bills. Miss Shouldis was a freshman nursing major at the College of Staten Island. Now, as a food attendant, she works from 27 to 30 hours a week. Recent cutbacks in hours prevent her from working a full-time shift, she said.
She requested an official hearing on the eviction, and in the fall, she was informed in writing by a Housing Authority official that she and her brother did not have a claim to the apartment based on "survivors' rights."
According to an Oct. 16 letter from Housing Authority district manager John Costello, "a remaining family member" -- one who may remain after the lease holder dies -- has to be either a family member at the time of the move-in, born into the family after the moving or receive written approval from the project management.
"As you can see (your situation) does not meet the guidelines of a remaining family member," Costello said in the letter.
The younger Shouldis is a student at Susan Wagner High School, where he is also a pitcher on the baseball team. He is hoping a good season will get him into college on a scholarship. Without a scholarship, he won't be going to college, said Miss Shouldis, adding that she is anxious to continue her education.
Alas, a happy ending!
Eviction Threat Lifted for Sister, Brother:
Advance Story Brings Wave of Support
VIVIAN SCHLESINGER
ADVANCE STAFF WRITER
Staten Island Advance
Calling it the "humane thing to do," city officials yesterday decided not to evict a young Castleton Corners woman and her 17-year-old brother from public housing.
The decision came two days after the siblings' story appeared in the Sunday Advance. The story set off a wave of public support for the pair.
"I am so happy right now," said Janet Shouldis, 20, after returning from work to receive word that she and her brother, Gary, would not be evicted from their Todt Hill Houses apartment over a technicality in housing regulations.
"I was just crying, to tell you the truth," said the siblings' uncle, Robert Shouldis, 15 minutes after he heard the news. Gary Shouldis declined to comment.
The city Housing Authority, which operates the city's public housing, decided to give the Shouldises a lease after reviewing their case."Since we permitted their residence for this length of time, it is in our best judgment to permit them to stay," said authority spokesman Val Coleman.
The Shouldises have lived in the Todt Hill Houses since they were children. Coleman said the Shouldises would be expected to pay 30 percent of their income in rent -- which is considerably lower than what they now pay, $277 a month.
Today, Miss Shouldis will meet with the Todt Hill Houses manager to draw up a lease, she said.
Abandoned by their mother as children, they were taken in by their grandmother, Helen Shouldis, who lived in the apartment complex. For 12 years, Mrs. Shouldis fed and clothed her grandchildren without public assistance. When she died last March at age 76, Housing Authority officials told the brother and sister they would be evicted because their grandmother had never listed them as tenants. But the Shouldises didn't have anywhere to go or an income that would sustain them. For a year, the Shouldises waged a private struggle with the Housing Authority in which their requests for a lease were denied twice. Officials told them they had no "survivors' rights" to the apartment, according to letters and records Miss Shouldis provided to the Advance.
During that time, Miss Shouldis took a leave of absence from college to support herself and her brother. She continues to work at a fast-food counter in the Staten Island Mall in New Springville.
Going public as a last recourse, the Shouldises' story was chronicled in the Sunday Advance -- four days before they were slated to attend a final hearing on the matter in the authority's Manhattan offices.
Support calls flowed into the Advance offices for two days after the story appeared. More than 50 Staten Islanders offered jobs, money and political might. Three lawyers offered to represent the brother and sister free of charge. Island business people offered to help Janet get a better-paying job. One woman said she would consider taking the Shouldises into her home. Others wanted to contribute money toward their college educations.
City Council President Andrew Stein had a letter of support hand-delivered to Housing Authority Chairwoman Sally Hernandez-Pinero on Monday morning. Assemblyman Eric Vitaliano also wrote a letter of support. And North Shore Councilman Jerome X. O'Donovan pledged to attend the hearing to testify on the Shouldises behalf. Others called to express their empathy and outrage or offer advice on financial aid for college. Miss Shouldis still has to find a way to pay her college education while supporting herself and her brother.
Bob Catherwood, of Great Kills, called to say he would be rooting for Gary Shouldis this baseball season. Gary, a pitcher at Susan Wagner High School, is hoping a good season will bring him an offer of an athletic scholarship, his sister said. "I'm just hoping and praying that her brother makes it," Catherwood said, adding, "These kids deserve an award for staying off welfare the way they did."
Aside from the emotional support and the political pressure, the Shouldises thankfully declined the offers of assistance.
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