Storm Applied Technologies

Seriously you guys, if one more of our clients gets dooped by this "update", we're taking pitchforks to Microsoft.

🤣

The slush is flowing and we are live at UMAAS! Such great energy

'Twas the night before RMAA, and the trade show floor was quiet but HEY is that a slush machine?!?!?

Not 5 minutes after posting about our amazing clients, we find out we've been nominated for best web designer in Regina. We're not crying, you're crying.

We'd appreciate your support, too!

CommunityVotes Regina 2024 Official 2024 Community Voting Awards Platform for Regina, SK. Where the community votes for their favourites every year.

2 decades strong, made possible by relationships even stronger. Thank you to the best clients EVER.

Accurate. But when it's running... ohhh boy ... all the grey hairs and years of wasted time you'll never get back are TOTALLY worth it.

*sigh* ...
(And yes, all our servers run Linux)

1000+ AI Tools: https://tinyurl.com/insane-ai-tools

Fun fact: in 1997, our founder worked for Pizza Hut. Now, he can *almost* make a website better than this pun of gold.

r/90s on Reddit: 1994 Pizza Hut website 🍕 Posted by u/ROCKY13573 - 814 votes and 56 comments

Storm often gets asked about cloud vs self-hosted servers and software, and we prefer the latter.

Cloud software seems convenient and cheap ... but who owns your data? In the following article, a Russian software company with a cloud option - along with all its users' data - is banned from Ukraine:
https://sundries.com.ua/en/russian-company-bitrix24-finally-stops-working-in-ukraine/

If you use cloud software, you might want to see if they have a self-hosted option.

Russian company Bitrix24 finally stops working in Ukraine Starting June 1, the on-premise version of the system will operate under a limited license, and a number of functionalities will become unavailable.All companies that use the cloud service from Bitrix24 have received this message."According to the mo

3-2-1 ... Storm's "Storm Shelter" offsite backup is the last key piece you need!

"Unexpected data loss from hard drive failures, natural disasters, and ransomware attacks pose potential threats to your paramount data. To avoid data loss caused by such unfortunate situations, the 3-2-1 data protection strategy is widely adopted to maintain multiple versions of backup data, thereby providing extra protection in case the current version crashes or gets infected by ransomware.

A 3-2-1 data protection strategy means having at least three data copies, where one copy is stored locally, and the rest are stored on two different devices. For personal users, you may consider adopting this strategy to acquire enterprise-level data protection for your precious memories, such as photos, family videos, and customized albums or choose to keep at least two data copies to ensure data availability. As for business users, it is recommended to follow the 3-2-1 strategy to make sure that all your core business data and critical information are always secure."

(source: https://kb.synology.com/en-nz/DSM/help/DSM/Tutorial/backup_backup?version=6)

We're just days away from our 19th birthday, and looks like we got an early present!

Web Design – Services – CommunityVotes Regina 2023 Official 2023 Community Voting Awards Platform for Regina, SK. Where the community votes for their favourites every year.

Just like airplanes, technology is an investment WITH return that needs to be maintained.

A source inside Southwest Airlines recently passed this on and gave me permission to share. This is worth reading:

“What happened to Southwest Airlines?

I’ve been a pilot for Southwest Airlines for over 35 years. I’ve given my heart and soul to Southwest Airlines during those years. And quite honestly Southwest Airlines has given its heart and soul to me and my family.

Many of you have asked what caused this epic meltdown. Unfortunately, the frontline employees have been watching this meltdown coming like a slow motion train wreck for sometime. And we’ve been begging our leadership to make much needed changes in order to avoid it. What happened yesterday started two decades ago.

Herb Kelleher was the brilliant CEO of SWA until 2004. He was a very operationally oriented leader. Herb spent lots of time on the front line. He always had his pulse on the day to day operation and the people who ran it. That philosophy flowed down through the ranks of leadership to the front line managers. We were a tight operation from top to bottom. We had tools, leadership and employee buy in. Everything that was needed to run a first class operation. When Herb retired in 2004 Gary Kelly became the new CEO.

Gary was an accountant by education and his style leading Southwest Airlines became more focused on finances and less on operations. He did not spend much time on the front lines. He didn’t engage front line employees much. When the CEO doesn’t get out in the trenches the neither do the lower levels of leadership.

Gary named another accountant to be Chief Operating Officer (the person responsible for day to day operations). The new COO had little or no operational background. This trickled down through the lower levels of leadership, as well.

They all disengaged the operation, disengaged the employees and focused more on Return on Investment, stock buybacks and Wall Street. This approach worked for Gary’s first 8 years because we were still riding the strong wave that Herb had built.

But as time went on the operation began to deteriorate. There was little investment in upgrading technology (after all, how do you measure the return on investing in infrastructure?) or the tools we needed to operate efficiently and consistently. As the frontline employees began to see the deterioration in our operation we began to warn our leadership. We educated them, we informed them and we made suggestions to them. But to no avail. The focus was on finances not operations. As we saw more and more deterioration in our operation our asks turned to pleas. Our pleas turned to dire warnings. But they went unheeded. After all, the stock price was up so what could be wrong?

We were a motivated, willing and proud employee group wanting to serve our customers and uphold the tradition of our beloved airline, the airline we built and the airline that the traveling public grew to cheer for and luv. But we were watching in frustration and disbelief as our once amazing airline was becoming a house of cards.

A half dozen small scale meltdowns occurred during the mid to late 2010’s. With each mini meltdown Leadership continued to ignore the pleas and warnings of the employees in the trenches. We were still operating with 1990’s technology. We didn’t have the tools we needed on the line to operate the sophisticated and large airline we had become. We could see that the wheels were about ready to fall off the bus. But no one in leadership would heed our pleas.

When COVID happened SWA scaled back considerably (as did all of the airlines) for about two years. This helped conceal the serious problems in technology, infrastructure and staffing that were occurring and being ignored. But as we ramped back up the lack of attention to the operation was waiting to show its ugly head.

Gary Kelly retired as CEO in early 2022. Bob Jordan was named CEO. He was a more operationally oriented leader. He replaced our Chief Operating Officer with a very smart man and they announced their priority would be to upgrade our airline’s technology and provide the frontline employees the operational tools we needed to care for our customers and employees. Finally, someone acknowledged the elephant in the room.

But two decades of neglect takes several years to overcome. And, unfortunately to our horror, our house of cards came tumbling down this week as a routine winter storm broke our 1990’s operating system.

The frontline employees were ready and on station. We were properly staffed. We were at the airports. Hell, we were ON the airplanes. But our antiquated software systems failed coupled with a decades old system of having to manage 20,000 frontline employees by phone calls. No automation had been developed to run this sophisticated machine.

We had a routine winter storm across the Midwest last Thursday. A larger than normal number flights were cancelled as a result. But what should have been one minor inconvenient day of travel turned into this nightmare. After all, American, United, Delta and the other airlines operated with only minor flight disruptions.

The two decades of neglect by SWA leadership caused the airline to lose track of all its crews. ALL of us. We were there. With our customers. At the jet. Ready to go. But there was no way to assign us. To confirm us. To release us to fly the flight. And we watched as our customers got stranded without their luggage missing their Christmas holiday.

I believe that our new CEO Bob Jordan inherited a MESS. This meltdown was not his failure but the failure of those before him. I believe he has the right priorities. But it will take time to right this ship. A few years at a minimum. Old leaders need to be replaced. Operationally oriented managers need to be brought in. I hope and pray Bob can execute on his promises to fix our once proud airline. Time will tell.

It’s been a punch in the gut for us frontline employees. We care for the traveling public. We have spent our entire careers serving you. Safely. Efficiently. With luv and pride. We are horrified. We are sorry. We are sorry for the chaos, inconvenience and frustration our airline caused you. We are angry. We are embarrassed. We are sad. Like you, the traveling public, we have been let down by our own leaders.

Herb once said the the biggest threat to Southwest Airlines will come from within. Not from other airlines. What a visionary he was. I miss Herb now more than ever.”

IT'S STILL SUMMER ... and look where we were to capture it for one of our (amazing!) clients

3 words: PC LOAD LETTER

This checks out 😂

We code a LOT of forms. But every once in a while, an existential question comes along...

Cringer

Storm Applied Technologies updated their business hours.

Storm Applied Technologies updated their website address.

We're big on design, especially timeless styles that reveal more the closer you look
https://news.autoguide.com/en/plain-sight-along-cool

Cool Things That Were Hidden In Plain Sight All Along These surprising pictures messed with our mind a little bit

Attacks are becoming common place. While it's very unfortunate that the data will likely not be returned in good faith, the best protection is an offsite backup so you're not a victim. Contact us about "Storm Shelter" private managed backups

Cyberattack against Regina Public Schools likely ransomware | CBC News A ransom note displayed on some Regina Public Schools computers indicate the cyberattack is a ransomware attack.

As we come up on 18 years next week, an award would be a nice birthday gift. Please vote!
https://regina.communityvotes.com/2022/02/services/web-design

Web Design – Services – CommunityVotes Regina 2022 Official 2022 Community Voting Awards Platform for Regina, SK. Where the community votes for their favourites every year.

It's tough enough making a compelling message for your company. Add to that, writing for the web (read: search-engine optimized) requires further intricacies. Let us help you tell your story with our "Coffee Talk" content entry and support retainer.
https://hbr.org/2022/04/what-the-best-presenters-do-differently

What the Best Presenters Do Differently Our minds are wired for story. We think in narrative and enjoy consuming content in story form. So understanding the difference between presenting and storytelling is critical to a leader’s ability to engage an audience and move them to action. Unfortunately, presentation software often gets in th...

*** NEW GRANT UP TO $15,000 FOR ALL BUSINESS OWNERS ***

With Storm offering web design, e-commerce, point of sale, accounting, cloud server, and offsite backups - all connected together! - now is the time to maximize your business' potential in marketing, process management, accounting, and IT.

Ottawa announces $4 billion in funding to help small and medium-sized businesses go digital Loans and grants to 160,000 business owners

Empowerment, not fear. It sounds like an obvious choice but many platforms - gaming, social media, retail, etc. - use the latter regularly. When Storm launched Storm Shelter offsite backups, we were faced with the same choice: do we scare people into a sale based on data loss (like a pushy insurance plan), or empower them to grow their business while a team committed to their success manages the stuff behind the scenes? Guess which one we chose, and guess how successful our clients are ;-)

How to Use Meaningful Gamification in Product Design Use your design powers for good with meaningful gamification strategies.

Our Team works hard ... and pranks harder. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BEST WEB DEVELOPER ON EARTH (and heckuva good guy)!

17 years of imagination, supported by 17 years of the best clients we could ask for. Thank you to all who've chosen to be "taken by Storm" ... And we're just getting warm.