Motorcycle Maintenance & The World of Cloud

I'm a keen motorcyclist. I don't ride every day or commute but what I do like is multi-day touring holidays, clocking up lots and lots of miles and spending long hours in the saddle, riding 'in' the countryside (rather than 'driving' through it). Last year, Liz (my wife) and I toured the Alps (France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstein (for 10 minutes!) and Germany) on our motorcycle. This year, I've completed three long-distance navigation rallies.

What I'm not keen on though, is any maintenance or cleaning. I'm a 'jump on it and ride it' guy. I've been on motorcycle maintenance courses, I know how to do an oil change, remove wheels, adjust chains but I still don't do it. I don't even clean the bike myself any more!

​Many other bikers (motorcyclists) are horrified at my attitude but I just feel I'm not competent enough to service my bike; I don't trust myself. As an example, as there's only one or two nuts per wheel on a motorcycle, the consequences of not tightening a wheel nut properly are very serious. Almost every time you fall off a motorcycle you're going to hurt yourself, and if there's another vehicle involved or you're at speed, it could be life-threatening.

No, I'd rather let a specialist, qualified motorcycle technician, service and set-up my bike.

​Some people love cleaning their bike; to them its almost meditative. I hate it. Having an adventure bike means it has wire spokes on the wheels which make it hard to clean and there's lots of 'nooks and crannies' for mud and salt to hide. I was ecstatic when I found out that my local hand car wash will, somewhat reluctantly, clean a bike for £3. Job done!

​So what links my attitude to motorcycles and Cloud / SaaS applications.

When it comes to Apps, I'm a 'jump on it and ride it' guy.

​We run our business on Cloud apps; Google Apps for Work for all our 'office' applications and mobile management, Insight.ly for CRM (with its super smooth integration to Google Apps) and Sage One for accounts. No need to worry about hardware, security and installation, all you ever need is a connection.

All in the Cloud, no wheel nuts to tighten, no oil to change, no chains to adjust and no boring cleaning.