The Teletubby Five Point guide to Apple Cloud Strategy.

There have been many guides to business strategy that have (mis)used some sage or hero of the past (or future) - Attila the Hun, Shaka the Zulu, Caesar the Roman, Sun Tzu of China, Yoda the ..... - you name it. And today I thought that a group famous for their simple wisdom, that have not been given a chance to elucidate their strategy, were being called on. Yes, I saw the TechCrunch headline:

Apple's Secret Cloud Strategy And Why Lala Is Critical

At last! Someone is putting Teletubby wisdom into our wonderful web world, I thought, though I was a bit worried that Dipsy, Tinky Winky and Po were being ignored. But it turns out that its not the Teletubbies, no, there really is a thing called LaLa, and it is in fact critical to Apple's Secret Cloud strategy:

What is of value is the personal music storage service which was an often overlooked component of Lala’s business. As Apple did with the original iPods, Lala realized that any music solution must include music already possessed by the user. The Lala setup process provides software to store a personal music library online and then play it from any web browser alongside web songs they vend. This technology plus the engineering and management team is the true value of Lala to Apple.

Which is all very interesting, especially as its Secret - except that if they are going to store that music the user possesses online, or even point to it for re-use, it may be an issue if it is - ahem - not paid for. Now, the TechCrunch reader base, smart fellows that they are had already listed all the Things That May Go wrong, chief one of course is that its very likely to be deemed illegal.

But on to the real purpose of this post, which is to outline how to use Teletubby strategy for these sorts of situations, to wit to invent secret strategies for high buzz count companies for improbable services in nonexistent markets, based of course in The Cloud.

There are Five Core Assumptions of Teletubby Cloud Strategy Model:

1. The business climate portrayed shall always be sunny and pleasant save for occasional inclement moments, and a bit of snow at Christmas time. There are no dark clouds in Teletubby Strategy

2. All users are already fully wired and carry their own personal signal receiver and an iPad screen (Teletubby 2.0) in their tummies to receive whatever messages you send 'em, wherever they are

3. All users will continually, constantly and comprehensively collaborate in this closed world

4. There will always be an automated system to clean up the mess when things go wrong, freeing users to carry on playing with their stuff.

5. When times are getting tough, The Cloud will send a Calliope with rocking horses, and a man who tap dances with a cane down from The Clouds to amaze the users. .... interestingly, no other Cloud based social network system has thought of these applications yet.

And Lo, today we read about the failings of other players vis a vis Apple:

There ought to be some soul searching going on right now among Apple's competitors. For this is not the first time the company has picked up a discredited idea and created not just a successful product, but a whole new industry. There were MP3 players before the iPod. There were smartphones before the iPhone. And there were plenty of tablet computers before the iPad, even if they did run Windows.

It is clearly Time for a Teletubby Cloud Strategy - Po, TinkyWinky and Dipsy are still free..........