Category Archives: Events

Events, General, Staff Posts

Customers will receive Motherly Care this Mother’s Day

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By Don Robbins

Mother’s Day is coming up soon on Sunday, May 13 and it is a day that we’ll celebrate motherhood. Happy Mother’s Day from Superb Internet Corporation!

Take advantage of our Multitude of Opportunities all Month (MOM), and every month: which include an extensive variety of cloud hosting options or dedicated servers, from small to large sizes, depending on your needs.

Superb Internet wishes all our customers a Happy Mother’s Day from the host that supports you the most! In celebration of Mother’s Day, we have an exclusive Mother’s Day offer where you’ll receive two months free after just 12 months for all new Tetradeca v4 servers. This offer will expire on May 31, 2018, so enjoy our motherly loving care of your servers now before this offer ends. To take advantage of this offer now, visit https://www.superb.net/happy-mothers-day

When I was a kid, and the weather was bad outside, my mother would always tell me not to leave the house without wearing a hat and coat. As I think about Mother’s Day, that idea of my mom always looking out for my well-being springs to mind, always worried about my health and eating habits, suggesting one or another probiotic supplement. Mothers are naturally concerned about their kids no matter how old they get. Pure motherhood! I’ve been told that one of the qualities of a good mother is someone who nurtures and protects her child against the world’s pitfalls. Mothers will give the world to their children, from the day they are born when they have that first sip of Holle milk all the way to the end of their own days, their love never wavering.

Just like a good mother, our Superb Cloud nurtures clients by staying truly “Ahead of the Rest. ” with no overselling, fully dedicated resources and the world’s most comprehensive cloud hosting SLA. To look at a variety of choices at our website https://www.superb.net/ to see how we can help grow your business.

I’ve also heard that another quality of a successful mother is someone who puts in the extra effort to keep their kids happy, whether it’s a special birthday party or graduation event.

Unlike many cloud hosting providers who overpromise but under deliver, our Superb Cloud platform gives you exactly what was promised. There is zero overselling, and full disclosure of the exact guaranteed performance. As one of the first web hosting companies in the industry, we are the innovators and we know what it takes to keep customers happy throughout the years.

We feature a full range of cloud hosting services. We have a match for everyone: whether you are a developer, a start-up, an SMB, and even an enterprise that needs the best real-time instant flexibility. Superb Internet has a variety of scalable fixed-fee cloud services which offer great value for most uses. However, those who prefer a pay-by-the-hour cloud for highly variable loads or as a development platform can decide to choose our Superb FlexCloud as the best match for their individual needs.

In fact, we are so confident of our cloud that we not only offer the world’s most comprehensive cloud hosting SLA, but we’re also offering $500 of free cloud for all new clients. This enables them to get started completely risk-free and obligation-free.

For customers who prefer more on the physical side, Superb Internet Corporation is also like a devoted mother to its clients’ data.

Superb Internet’s dedicated servers are always up and running to help our clients. We are passionately devoted to customer service and our servers are designed with state-of-the-art technology.

I know that my mom always urged me to do well in school and strive to achieve my goals and dreams.

For that type of staunch support, we often treat our moms on Mother’s Day to delicious brunch meals, buy them special antique silver trays and salvers which they like, and also shower them with bouquets of flowers.

Speaking of support, the Superb Internet Corp. highly trained staff of Systems Administrators and Network Engineers provide exceptional technical support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So, we are confident that we have the best customer support team in the industry.

On top of that, we also offer a Price Match Guarantee to ensure that you’ll get your dedicated server or servers at the lowest price available on the market today. If for any reason you are not satisfied, we’ll refund 100 percent of your purchase.

At Superb Internet, we pride ourselves on our company-wide “Customers First” policy. Our core guiding principle ensures that our customers always come first in everything we do. To us, a customer is more than just a number. They are a key partner in our success, just as much as we are in their success.

That kind of reminds how a mom often will put her youngster first, dropping everything to watch her teenager’s basketball game and cheer him or her on from the stands. It’s for this reason, amongst many others, that moms deserve to be treated on Mother’s Day. Gift-giving is an essential part of saying thank you to your mom, and there are plenty of interesting and quirky things you can buy for her on sites like NoveltyStreet.com. You could even take her out for a fancy meal, or bake her a delicious cake.

Moms work hard to provide for their children, and they deserve the world. I’ve known many moms who help their children plan for their future success, so they can have a better life than their parents.

Superb Internet would also love to help you plan for future success with our dedicated servers. Regardless if you’re thinking about getting a dedicated server to optimize your websites due to high traffic, to enhance security, or to achieve greater flexibility for improved customization and configuration, we have the perfect server solution to help you get to your business goals.

We have a multitude of dedicated servers to choose from, so you will easily find the correct server that is tailored toward your needs at the lowest prices. Among our dedicated servers, customers can choose from a variety of options, such as dual core, quad core, hexa core, octa core, deca core and tetradeca core.

Events, Technology

Data Science “Fails” to Avoid

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Fail

Data scientists are getting paid huge salaries, presumably to infuse their businesses with insight and allow stunning differentiation from competition. However, many organizations aren’t using this field to its full potential.

  • Fail #1 – Too Much Data, Not Enough Science
  • Fail #2 – Lack of Clearly Established Goals
  • Fail #3 – Chasing After Leprechauns
  • Fail #4 – A People Problem
  • Fail #5 – Thinking it’s Just a Trend
  • Fail #6 – Demanding Black and White

We can all agree that the era of data science is in full swing. If we need any further evidence of that truism, we can look at the high salaries companies are willing to pay to specialists. For instance, in Australia, the average data scientist now makes $200,000 – the equivalent of $146,000 in USD – according to a report from data intelligence consultancy Which-50.

Although business leaders know that having experts who are focusing their efforts on data analytics is increasingly critical, companies still are not fully capitalizing on their data science investments. Nearly as many analytic experts say that their business is not making full use of their capabilities (37%) as say that their role is fundamental to their firm’s competitive advantage (40%). Utilizing a resource such as this is essential in this day and age of data gathering, that is why lead mortgage data intelligence and other forms of data intelligence, need to be further looked into for optimum output.

Part of the problem is the chain of command. “Executive level understanding of data and analytics’ was cited as analytic professionals’ biggest challenge in converting insight into action (47 percent),” notes Which-50.

What else is keeping businesses from thriving with their data science objectives?

Fail #1 – Too Much Data, Not Enough Science

Business is obviously fundamentally concerned with capital, but you can’t profit from data science without using basic scientific principles.

When you approach data science, in other words, you need to root out any potential bias. You come up with an objective and a hypothesis – basically question and possible answer. What do you want to know, and what do you suspect is true?

Furthermore, you need to make sure that your data is of high enough quality that you aren’t being misled.

Fail #2 – Lack of Clearly Established Goals

It’s important to align your data accrual and analysis process with business goals. Otherwise, strong ROI will often be elusive.

Above, the issue of leadership was cited as a challenge. However, data scientists often are out of sync with the business mission, notes Data Science Association president Michael Walker. “I see a lot of data scientists collecting everything without thinking about the business their client is in, the data they have now, and the data they’re going to need to do a better job,” he says.

Fail #3 – Chasing After Leprechauns

Everyone wants to hire that diversely knowledgeable data scientist, the leprechaun who might offer you some of his pot of gold. However, most data analysts have niche expertise.

Any project that works with big data should be considered a group effort. Disappointment will typically result from expecting a single person to establish insight. Some people will be better at experimental design, while others will be better at coding, and others will have an incredible grasp of probability theory. Combine and conquer.

Fail #4 – A People Problem

Long gone are the days when someone could casually describe themselves as an “Internet expert.” However, today the guru du jour is the data scientist. Part of the problem is that someone might technically have a “data science” degree, but all it amounts to is a marketing ploy by their university, notes Kennesaw State University data science PhD director Jennifer Priestley.

“You have a lot of programs that yesterday were operations research and today they’re data science,” she says, “or you had an MBA and now you have an MS in analytics or data science, but it’s the same curriculum.”

Fail #5 – Thinking it’s Just a Trend

Although there is a lot of hype surrounding data science and a lot of charlatans popping up like prairie dogs, being intelligent with data is becoming increasingly important.

Even the data itself is different, notes Priestley. “Technology enables us to treat audio, video, and text in the same way we have treated numbers like age and income, historically,” she says. “This is a sea change in the way businesses operate.”

Fail #6 – Demanding Black and White

To get back to probability theory, you have to embrace the idea of directing yourself toward what is probably correct. That’s the nature of data science. Executives often want to know what they need to do in order to get a certain result, but the best way to leverage data is to understand there is gray area and make reasonable educated guesses.

Although that level of ambiguity is an acceptable and necessary part of data science, it should not be part of cloud hosting. At Superb Internet, unlike many providers, we never oversell our cloud. Plus, we use the best technology: distributed rather than centralized storage (no single point of failure) and InfiniBand rather than 10 Gigabit Ethernet (always zero packet loss). See our 100% guaranteed cloud hosting plans.

Events

Cloud Hosting Company’s  Pathetic, Sexist Bro Ad

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FORTA

Please review the following promotional effort by a cloud hosting company for your pop marketing quiz:

Pop Marketing Quiz

  1. FORTAcloud’s recent Marketing Message was:
    1. We like to do it with hot babes as much as the next guy.
    2. We obviously don’t have any women on our marketing team.
    3. Here’s something you can look at while we have our way with you.
    4. All of the Above.

Correct Answer: 4.

What Can You Possibly be Thinking?

You just can’t make this stuff up. Here’s the play-by-play:

  • At 7:14AM PST on May 18, a cloud hosting company posts its marketing campaign, blasting its followers with a picture of a woman in lingerie.
  • The company gets immediately attacked, by women and men alike.
  • The company stands its ground, saying basically, Hey, our customers enjoy porn, and they deserve to see it when they’re being sold our awful hosting packages (see image of their incredible performance figures below – hey, 2 stars for Uptime, not bad!).

FORTA 02

This is one of those things that could easily have died on Twitter, but with more people frustrated these days by being insulted and objectified by marketers, it got considerable traction.

“It’s pretty interesting that I can still embed FORTAcloud’s actual tweet about the deal instead of relying on a screenshot,” offered Jenny Kutner sarcastically, “because — in a surprising turn of events — the ad was rather quickly criticized as sexist, in a manner that might typically result in a brand removing the questionable content and issuing an apology.”

What’s really funny and also kind of disgusting about this situation is how much disrespect it shows that FORTAcloud has for its customers. It’s one thing to post the thing, and that’s bad enough.

What’s amazing, though, is that the cloud service provider is arrogant enough to seemingly not care that hundreds of people are bashing it through its own social media channel. I would assume that some of these people are its customers. Gauging the general sentiments online toward the organization’s cloud servers, surely many of these individuals were looking forward to the opportunity to use them as a punching bag.

“The company fired back at critics who dared to suggest it might be problematic to objectify a scantily clad woman without any context,” explained Kutner, “or to blatantly use her body to attract customers for an unrelated service because ‘everybody else is doing it.’”

See below:

FORTA 03

As you can imagine, these boneheaded responses by the cloud hosting company only made the matter worse.

Here are some of the perspective of those upset with the image and the poor efforts at self-defense, the attitude of pretty much everyone who was engaging with the post:

  • Technical strategist Thayer Prime said that the advertisement suggested their service was so terrible that they were purposely trying to attract ignorant customers.
  • IT consultant Sally Jenkinson noted that the initial post by FORTAcloud was pathetic, and the company’s responses only made the situation worse.
  • Web developer Shane Hudson said he thought the marketing was preposterous and that he would never want to do business with the company, pointing out that he falls within their target demo as a 21-year-old male.

The core concern of most people who engaged with the tweet was that the cloud service provider was using women’s sexuality as a tool. They were symbolically undressing the women in their audience by stripping a woman for no other reason than to strip her, no matter how irrelevant that action was to their discount offer.

“I am absolutely fascinated by who would ever think this is a good strategic decision,” said ResourceiT managing director Julie Simpson. “What is even more disturbing is the way they’ve reacted to the reaction from people on Twitter.”

Simpson said that the company would have done itself a huge favor if they had responded to the criticism by accepting the fact that they had made a mistake. People are willing to forgive when companies will admit that they made a misstep.

Instead, they kind of got into a semantic conversation about the definition of sexism and seemed to suggest that whatever might be wrong with the material didn’t matter because their audience loves sexy ladies.

Perhaps it was all a clever plot, and FORTAcloud is not the misogynistic bro weenies they appear to be.

“We know what’s really going on here,” posed Kutner. “FORTAcloud might have been attempting to highlight the pervasive objectification of women in advertising by noting that many industries with predominantly male clientele rely on [that advertising tactic].”

A Hosting Company that Likes Women

What this Twitter disaster really comes down to is respect. The fact is, if you have a good product, you are much less likely to have a click-bait attitude toward the lowest common denominator in your audience. Do these guys really think that professional women want to have to look at that nonsense? Or professional men, for that matter? It’s insulting.

At Superb Internet, we like women, and our marketing is based on confidence in the strength of our cloud hosting systems – which have met numerous certifications for regulatory compliance and objective technological standards.

By Kent Roberts

Cloud, Events, Security, What's New?

House Goes Orwellian in Response to Recent Hacks

1,399 Comments

Three perspectives on the PCNA and CISA, which many believe are simply ways to broaden the powers of the government to collect digital information and advance a 1984-ish, Orwellian agenda.

  • PCNA Passes
  • TechCrunch – They had no choice, folks
  • ACLU/Wyden – “Cybersecurity” bills just sneaky ways to expand spying
  • EFF – Not buying the propaganda
  • Prioritizing Security AND Privacy

PCNA Passes

On April 22, the House of Representatives voted in favor of the Protecting Cyber Networks Act. In fact, Democrats and Republicans supported the bill, which passed by an incredible margin due to bipartisan support: 307-116. The stated intention of the bill is to get pesky laws out of the way, facilitating transfer of security details between American businesses. In turn, the idea goes, we can reduce vulnerabilities and prevent breaches – such as the ones perpetrated against Sony, Anthem, global banks, and the US State Department.

The bills are backed by President Obama and some professional organizations, a few of which are IT-specific. Here are some perspectives.

TechCrunch – They had no choice, folks

“Privacy advocates have criticized information-sharing bills as surveillance bills by another name,” explained TechCrunch. “They worry that sharing cyber threat information with the government will give surveillance agencies even more access to citizens’ personal information.”

Those who really think the bill is just absolutely great and not a horrible threat to personal freedom say that an amendment was tacked to the bill so that individual rights are better protected – in other words, it pays better attention to the issue of data privacy than does the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA).

The Protecting Cyber Networks Act removes certain data related to individual users on both ends, both within the business and within the government system collecting the information. Advocates also say that the legislation is better designed to prevent government abuse. The National Security Agency ostensibly won’t see the information, for instance.

While the PCNA takes privacy into better account than CISA does, TechCrunch cited critics who believe it’s still going to mean that the government is getting a green light to be a peeping Tom in the window of our digital lives. Those opponents argue that it will be easy for the federal government to misuse the data. CISA didn’t get to the floor of the Senate for a vote in 2014 because privacy was the fundamental concern.

Now, everyone is filled with fright about hacking – and for good reason. In the last year, Sony Pictures was viciously attacked; the White House and State Department were both hacked; and almost 80 million users’ information was stolen from the nation’s second-largest health insurer, Anthem.

“In the past, Congress overlooked the issue of cybersecurity because it faced no public pressure to address it,” argued TechCrunch. “But after these high-profile hacks, it has backed itself into a corner where it has no option but to pass legislation that will address them.”

Were they really backed into a corner, though? Let’s look at a couple of other perspectives.

ACLU/Wyden – “Cybersecurity” bills just sneaky ways to expand spying

No one in Washington or anywhere could really disagree that data security is a serious threat that must be handled immediately. However, as the ACLU sees it, simply stating that a bill is intended to help with security as a publicity stunt isn’t the same thing as passing a security bill. While national leadership could focus on truly improving security, according to the ACLU, this bill is a bait-and-switch that runs roughshod over personal privacy rules, possibly sending huge amounts of personal data to federal agencies – such as the NSA.

Remember the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, the bill that’s even worse than the PCNA? That bill passed out of the Senate Intelligence Committee in flying colors as well, 14-1.  Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (remember, these people are technically allowed to go against the party line) cast the only vote against the bill.

“I am concerned that the bill the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported today lacks adequate protections for the privacy rights of American consumers,” commented Wyden, “and that it will have a limited impact on U.S. cybersecurity.”

The basic message shared by Wyden and the ACLU is that there is no reason for us to have to give up our privacy in the name of security.

EFF – Not buying the propaganda

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, like the ACLU, is fundamentally dedicated to protecting the civil liberties of the individual user. The organization banded together with more than four dozen like-minded groups that submitted letters to Congress in opposition to the two bills.

As indicated in the letter signed by the EFF, CISA and the PCNA are spying bills, not security bills; and the former legislation is particularly troubling.

“CISA would significantly increase the National Security Agency’s (NSA) access to personal information,” stated the EFF, “and authorize the federal government to use that information for a myriad of purposes unrelated to cybersecurity.”

Prioritizing Security AND Privacy

Security and privacy aren’t at odds.

At Superb Internet, we care deeply about meeting the compliance and security needs of our clients, as indicated by our various national and international certifications. However, we are also fundamentally dedicated to the privacy of our users – just take a look at how much they like us.

By Kent Roberts

Photo via Wikipedia

Cloud, Events, What's New?

“Black Lives Matter” Pushes Forward the Body-Camera Cloud

  • Oakland – Building the Body-Camera Cloud
  • Why Body Cameras?
  • Why Cloud Storage?
  • Everyday Compliance with Body Cameras
  • The Obvious Choice

Oakland – Building the Body-Camera Cloud

Oakland is one of the primary strongholds of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. The civil rights project started in response to a pair of grand jury decisions in New York and Missouri to let police officers walk after two black police deaths were captured on video and distributed online. Most recently, 80 to 100 protesters shut down the northbound lanes of Interstate 80 as part of a coordinated, nationwide response to the death of Walter Scott, an unarmed African-American man shot by white police officer Michael Slager in South Carolina.

In many places in the US, these kinds of incidents are prevalent, making it relatively difficult for black people to live their lives with dignity. Many times, policemen are usually spared punishment when they are involved in such a wrongful death incident. In this case, a legal professional may be needed to help the victim’s family file a case against the accused policeman. In addition, if they feel that the decision they received was incorrect, they may have to appeal to a higher court with the help of one of the best criminal appeal lawyers Florida (or wherever they are located) until they obtain the justice they deserve.

However, there are many police officers who are good people and aren’t out to get anyone. My cousin is a police officer in Colorado, for instance. I also have family serving in the Ohio State Highway Patrol. But clearly, accountability is needed.

One change that many believe could help improve accountability among police officers, as well as exonerate those unfairly accused of wrongdoing, is body cameras. In other words, we have technology that prohibits people from misleading us on either side, so why don’t we use it? Oakland is actually one of the cities at the forefront of the transition to body cameras for greater collection of evidence and monitoring of law enforcement.

The Oakland Police Department is currently testing out a cloud storage solution that can serve as an archives for the office so that the city isn’t buried under an avalanche of on-site video.

Why Body Cameras?

Body cameras have become more prevalent in 2015 as the Black Lives Matter efforts continue in response to news of additional, questionable black deaths. In December 2014, President Barack Obama requested funding from Congress for 50,000 body cameras to be used by police departments around the country.

According to Dave Burke, a police officer in Oakland, the city’s PD said that body cameras are helpful not just to gauge the behavior of officers but of people being arrested as well.

Former Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said that the police department was awash in more than 2200 complaints of excessive force in 2009. In 2014, however, with more than 600 body cameras in operation, those complaints plummeted to 572. The statistics suggest that three out of every four incidents of reported police violence (74%) are being prevented by simply turning on cameras. Another stat is similarly compelling: before body cameras, the Oakland Police was involved with an average of eight shootings annually. Last year, that number was zero.

Why Cloud Storage?

Think about walking around all day with a camera capturing everything that you do. Now imagine everyone on your workforce having the same technology that feeds in their own shift-long perspectival shots. What we are talking about is a huge amount of data. In fact, 12 months of video from just one camera can be in the terabyte range (in other words, thousands of gigabytes).

Cloud storage could offer a cost-effective method to make it easy to stow away and easily retrieve videos as needed. However, public cloud typically doesn’t have the security mechanisms to meet the requirements of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division – which is necessary to allow police departments around the country to log onto the federal agency’s system.

Now, cloud providers are starting to step forward to meet this growing demand so that law enforcement offices around the country are able to prove their security.

Cloud systems can be extraordinarily helpful to police departments so that they have a robust way to immediately access distinct portions of their video libraries.

“It cuts down on time and also aids in investigations, crime trends and analytics,” explained the Oakland PD’s Burkel.

Everyday Compliance with Body Cameras

How about this scenario: A police officer goes to a hospital to collect information related to possible child abuse of a young boy. She talks to the boy, the physicians treating her, an official from the school, and the mother and father. The conversations range from classroom behavior to a potential pattern of abuse to IRS wage garnishment that’s removing funds directly from the father’s paycheck. Essentially, the officer is gathering as much information as she can so that the responsible parent can be arrested and face an airtight, evidence-rich effort from the prosecution.

If the officer is wearing a body camera, video must meet the parameters of numerous laws enacted at various levels of government.

“If that video is not properly stored, managed or disclosed,” argued Government Technology, “its value to the investigation can be compromised, which in turn can have devastating consequences for the people involved in the case.”

The Obvious Choice

Not everyone is gung ho about security cameras. Lynne Martinez, president of the ACLU branch in Lansing, Michigan, commented, “We must make sure these cameras don’t violate the rights of victims and are anxious to have a conversation about that.”

However, most people view body cameras as a necessary evil – and the decrease in force complaints at Oakland PD back up that perspective.

In terms of storage, cloud is the obvious choice – fast, accessible, and affordable – for the massive amount of data generated by body cameras. However, police departments must consider compliance with stringent security rules.

Just as cloud is the obvious choice for police video storage, we want to be your obvious choice for cloud. Our compliance audits and certifications are wide-ranging. Talk to us today about crafting a solution to meet your needs.

By Kent Roberts

Image via Wikipedia

Cloud, Events, What's New?

Salesforce CEO Benioff: Capitalism Should Be Compassionate

  • Business Versus Government
  • Walmart, RuPaul not Benioff’s Only Allies
  • Hybrid Program Unanticipated
  • It’s Getting Hot in the Kitchen
  • Setting an Example

Business Versus Government

The inclusive, benevolent approach of Marc Benioff has been known to those in the San Francisco Bay Area for some time. Now that he finds himself under the glare of the national spotlight, many people want to know more about this guy who takes immediate action when anyone tries to discriminate against his employees and friends.

In late March, the chief of cloud computing giant Salesforce gathered support from other tech company leaders to stand up against Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act for opening the door to LGBT discrimination and making it difficult for companies to hire people who now feel that the state has an established anti-gay policy.

Supporters of the bill, signed into law by Republican Gov. Mike Pence, “sought legal protection for business owners if they denied services to the LGBT community based on religious beliefs,” explains Marco della Cava of USA Today.

Benioff asked users of the Salesforce cloud-delivered system not to visit Indiana and gave stipends to Indiana-based workers to move elsewhere.

If part of you thinks Benioff is a loopy maverick, keep in mind that Walmart is opposing a similar bill in Arkansas. Yes, that’s right: Walmart. Remember them?

Walmart, RuPaul not Benioff’s Only Allies

Other top executives joined the Salesforce head in his refusal to let the bill go unanswered.

  • Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, penned an opinion piece for The Washington Post entitled, “Pro-discrimination ‘religious freedom’ laws are dangerous“.
  • Max Levchin, cofounder of PayPal, wrote a statement of general opposition to congresspeople, with signatures from dozens of top executives.
  • Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp, argued that no one in good conscience could conduct operations in any area that has passed an act to uphold the behaviors of discriminatory businesses.

Hybrid Program Unanticipated

A kingpin of the software-as-a-service branch of the cloud computing industry, Benioff told della Cava that he was floored by the whirlwind of activity that has taken place following an enraged tweet he shot out to his Twitter followers on March 26. He said that the amount of focus on the anti-discrimination perspective of the CEOs is a novel position that none of them really anticipated.

“We didn’t know we were going to get into this hybrid social-business program,” he comments. “So … we’re seeing some best-practices forming, whether it’s Tim and his op-ed or Max and his letter.”

Benioff adds that he was unaware the dismay he and his team experienced in response to the law would help to galvanize a broader business effort. He sent out emails to other top executives with whom he maintains close contact, and they similarly wanted to make statements about the bill.

It’s Getting Hot in the Kitchen

The cloud computing head believes that the frustration with these anti-discrimination laws is not just about the laws themselves. Rather, he thinks that the corporate world is not going to be quiet about socially reactionary legislation moving forward.

We certainly aren’t used to seeing businesses stand up for the little guy. It’s not just corporations, either. Even small businesses are hesitant to stand up for justice or become controversial. I once was a ticket clerk at a movie theater in Madison, Indiana, and I witnessed disgusting child abuse of toddlers inside the building. I reported it to my manager, and she said simply, “Madison 6 Theaters does not get involved in the personal lives of its customers.”

Benioff says that CEOs are no longer willing to take neutral positions when they can foresee that governmentally backed social policies will hurt their employees, customers, and bottom lines. There will be consequences. Even when companies look to hire executives to fill their top positions, it may become important for the headhunters doing the work to understand the policies and stance of the company itself. Ensuring that senior management and executives share the opinions of the company as a whole makes it easier to take a united stand against discriminatory policies and/or laws. Now the governors are aware of that, and they will know that any actions they take could result in a rapidfire business backlash.

“And there’s a reason,” Benioff argues. “Everyone’s been working super hard since 2008 to get the economy turned around, so they’re pissed at some level when someone throws a wrench in it.”

CEOs of businesses operate globally, he said, even interacting with world leaders and trying to craft solutions with them on a regular basis. As businesses have taken a stand against the “religious freedom” bills – which Tim Cook notes have been introduced in more than twenty states – they are not just addressing the specific issue but sending a general message that they will not be ignored.

Setting An Example

Levchin says that Benioff has been inspirational to him. He decided to appear on CNBC to discuss the law because he was the victim of anti-Semitic discrimination in the Ukraine before moving to the US in the early 90s. Stoppelman, who sees Benioff each month, notes that he is essentially concerned with doing the right thing.

Cloud computing and other technology isn’t everything. We all want to be a positive example to our peers.

We also want to partner with organizations that set a strong example by actually caring about their customers. That’s Superb Internet.

By Kent Roberts

Free Use image source: Tech Crunch (via Wikipedia)