Welcome to the Mclowd Newsletter, our monthly communication to Investors, Marketplace participants and Partners.
“If they ever met Jeff Bezos and Jeremy Rifkin would have a lot to talk about.While not directly mentioned in Rifkin’s book Zero Marginal Cost Society, Bezos and Amazon are playing a central role in the story, effectively laying down the asphalt which is accelerating our collective journey towards zero marginal cost.”
Mclowd Blog: Cloud Computing and Market Definition: Implications for Incumbents
Introduction
Amazon recently announced an unlimited cloud storage service that cost just US$5 per month ($1 per month for photos / videos).
Consumers can now store terabytes of data virtually for free, and as a consequence the revenue models of entities such as Dropbox have been fatally compromised, almost before they began.
There is a very simple reason as to why the price of cloud storage has fallen so far and so fast:
We have entered a new economic paradigm where large swathes of the economy are witnessing the deflation of marginal cost towards zero and – as the VC investors who pumped $600 million into Dropbox are about to find out – under those circumstances it is almost impossible to maintain price any distance from that marginal cost.
Accounting Platform Update
Version 3.5 will be live next week, including the following new features:
- General ledger report
- The ability to dispose of multiple parcels of shares in a single transaction
Version 3.6 is scheduled for release on 31 May, with the following being targeted:
- Further support for corporate actions, including scrip for scrip rollovers, consolidations and bonus issues
- Contributions CAP report
- Integration with Macquarie CMA
- A revamp of the chart of accounts (representing the upstream work necessary to complete ATO integration)
As always detailed Release Notes will be available on the website.
Automation
The release of bank data feeds has been well received by both trustees and practitioners, and represents the first step in replication of all the automation tools which are offered by incumbents, including allocation rules and a raft of third party integrations.
Practitioner Migration
With the new financial year fast approaching we have ramped up our development efforts, and as we approach functional equivalency with incumbent vendors we will be publishing a calculator on the website that will permit SMSF practitioners to measure how much they can save themselves (and more importantly their clients) by migrating to Mclowd.
Postscript
For most of the last 200 years the limited liability company (and the financial capital on which they have been built) has been the primary mechanism by which collective human effort was co-ordinated.
However that period of human history is drawing to a close, for the simple reason that as the price of mousetraps approaches zero, it will simply not be possible to justify the deployment of financial capital under circumstances where there is no realistic prospect of delivering a return.
Instead we will see the rise of social capital and the Collaborative Commons, for which the Mclowd Community is a classic illustration.
Kind Regards
Ashley Porter
Managing Director
Mclowd Pty Ltdhttp://mclowd.com/mclowd-newsletter-april-2015/http://mclowd.com/mclowd-newsletter-april-2015/