The Cloud, The Masters and Jordan Spieth’s Collapse
April 12, 2016
The Masters last weekend – the 80th incarnation of the event – was a fun golf tournament as it always seems to be. As the annual kick-off to the pro golf season the Masters gets engines running for a grueling pro season. Essentially, early April arrives and then amateurs and PGA professionals flock to this storied course where they hope to make history.
The Masters is one of four ‘major’ tournaments on the PGA Tour. Though the word major is relative. Anywhere you can win more than a million dollars for hitting a golf ball into a little cup is likely considered a major event by rational people. But to clarify, only four events during the golfing season are classified as Majors and they are the key events within a year-long tournament schedule for pro golfers.
This year, there was an underlying current of anticipation as last year’s champion Jordan Spieth was poised to win the tournament again if he could just tame the clouds and how they affected his golf ball. Unfortunately – #spoileralert – Spieth spiraled out of control and failed to win. Instead ceding the lead and the green jacket to Englishman Danny Willett.
What’s all this about controlling the cloud? Isn’t this a technology blog post? Well, all businesses are trying to do business in the cloud these days…and the climate version of the cloud affected the athletes this weekend. Wind and weather were critical factors affecting play and the results in the same way technical clouds can affect your business if you don’t take control of how you use the technology.
For the sports fans out there, here’s a quick golf recap. Target golf pros Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson missed the cut. Long-ball hitters Bubba Watson and Adam Scott finished 37th and 42nd respectively. It just wasn’t a four-day stretch where you could rely on power or finesse to tame the course. The cloud was in control.
For C-suite professionals looking to tame the cloud, the quest is a bit easier than choosing the right golf club and distance. Once complete, there’s no guarantee of a million dollars. But you can certainly sleep more soundly than Jordan Spieth will this week as he replays his collapse over and over in his mind. Here are the three steps to success.
These are…
Know the products and services your customers demand and where to best acquire them – be it via SaaS, a marketplace or other source;
Understand the pain points and goals your customers have – if they have changing data demands from month to month, find a way to address and solve these needs;
Be as informed as you can be about all your accounts and the way they’re using the cloud to do business – and you do that with solutions that provide reliable, accurate cloud commerce functions.
To find out more about this weekend’s spectacular Spieth spiral out of control, visit masters.com. To find out more on cloud solutions that can help your business…see a few of the following sites…
Is tying golf and bad weather to cloud commerce and technology a stretch? Leave your comments here or hit me up on Twitter. Thanks for reading!
