One of the new processes we adopted in the recent Own Web Now fixup that I documented here in a fairly public way is something that Microsoft has been doing for years: Monthly “we suck” festivals. Every month Marie McFadden pulls together an awesome newsletter highlighting the most frequently asked questions that the newsgroup engineers answer. Lucky for them, they have documentation. We suck there too.

But, we’re trying to improve so here is what we did: Every week we plow through the helpdesk and identify the questions that we get asked over and over again. Those questions end up in the OWN Documentation portal with the hope that people will eventually read it before asking us for support. (we’re dreamers, I know) However, the more important aspect to our success going forward will be consultative selling, anotherwords, explaining to you what you bought and hopefully selling you on using the given application in a more meaningful, secure, productive, effective manner.

Here is an example – lately we have been getting a lot of flak in the support portal over the ISPs blocking port 25 access. Obviously, since I answer the phone it’s my problem, not the ISP’s problem. After all, it works with Google! (f’n Google, everything always works with Google). Now, common sense dictates that if port 25 is blocked, you just hop on to the alternate port. Or you use SSL. Both of which we support, both of which are common sense – assuming someone actually bothered to inform you! (rewind to “we suck” comment)

Now here is the real kicker – that applies to everyone reading this email: “Ok, great, next.”; Folks tend to ignore stuff like this, rightfully so, it is not an immediate problem. But when it does become a big enough problem you will have 10,000 other things on your plate and lets face it, you’re likely not an expert at Windows Mail configuration. Even if you are, do you want to spend 30 minutes playing around with it and making sure it works, or would you rather scroll down a 5 page whitepaper and do it the way we suggest, test and know it works (or more importantly, the way we say you do it and if it breaks we’ll help you fix it). See the sales bit in all this yet?

Anyhow, here is the blog post. Our first micro-whitepaper is titled “Advanced Mail Server Settings Options for Shared Hosting Clients” and in the nutshell it explains how to securely configure your mail client to transmit and receive mail via SSL/TLS to and from Own Web Now mail servers as well as how to say goodbye to the ISP filtering port 25 access to remote networks.

Check it out: Advanced Mail Server Settings Options for Shared Hosting Clients

So yes, we still suck, but we’re really trying to improve and I hope little things like this keep on going toward making this a decent partnership because not only does it give you some time savings, it gives the next person you hire a complete footprint on how to work with us. No guessing.

Oh, and by the way…

It’s a mighty cold day in hell. Big thanks to Susan Bradley for taking the screenshots of Microsoft Entourage on her Macintosh. Susan taking Mac screenshots, Vlad writing documentation for Mac users… yep, we’re doomed.

This is an impressive next step:

AT&T plans to introduce a nationwide program today that gives owners of small- and medium-size businesses some of the same tools big security companies offer for monitoring employees, customers and operations from remote locations.

Under AT&T’s Remote Monitor program, a business owner could install adjustable cameras, door sensors and other gadgets at up to five different company locations across the country.

Using a Java-enabled mobile device or a personal computer connected to the Internet, the owner would be able to view any of the images in real time, control room lighting and track equipment temperatures remotely. All the images are recorded on digital video, which can be viewed for up to 30 days.

This feature was the most impressive:

Aside from helping to verify insurance claims, the system can detect break-ins, alert an owner if a boiler breaks down and monitor employees who “are just sitting around on the clock not doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Mr. Roby said. In one instance, he said, a worker seen operating a meat slicer without wearing protective gloves was reprimanded.

I can just see it now, daily “Lazy Employee Summary Report: Found 3 employees with operational efficiency below 60%”

While I can see how this could be used for security, I think its use in business against employees throws us back to the age of Henry Ford “optimizing” his workforce.. I sure wouldn’t work for a place that had this in place any more than letting people stand over my shoulder and watch me work.

Wild monkey, apparently with an iPod loaded with LL Cool J’s “don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years”, went on a rampage in a low-income neighborhood in India. Does that make it the fourth-world? I digress:

“Police sub-inspector Gaje Singh told The Associated Press that the attacks started late Saturday in the Shastri Park area of New Delhi, adding that it was not immediately possible to give an exact tally of the injured. Local news reports said as many as 25 people were injured.”

The genius added: “But the monkey hasn’t been spotted yet”, adding to the already endless fountain of brilliance in “Part of the problem is that devout Hindus believe monkeys are manifestations of the god Hanuman and feed them bananas and peanuts, encouraging them to frequent public places” as well as “City authorities have experimented with using langurs — a larger and fiercer kind of monkey — to scare or catch the macaques, but the problem persists.”

I am not joking folks, those are the direct quotes from the article. We live on the same planet as these people? This, moreso than the ending of the Mayan calendar on 2012, might signify the end of times (which every generation/civilization has believed since the beginning of time) with the largest Darwin Award given out to the entire subcontinent.

Wow. Holy indianinabucket.com. Surely if these people can be taught how to read Microsoft KB articles out loud and fix event log issues someone might give them a better plan than “Go after the little monkey by unleashing the bigger, angrier monkey on them” or “Have you seen this monkey – wanted, dead or alive. Toothy and dangerous. Steak dinner reward.”

I know most of America is starting to reject the theory of evolution for the fact of “God did it, y’all” but even the most inbred hicks must be sitting next to their sisters-to-be-wifes thinking: “Darwin may be on to something.”

Survival of the fittest in action, bow down to the power of monkey.

I have been feeling a little under the weather so I decided to take a plunge and upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 on my Blackjack. This is an underground, unofficial build (cooked rom) so please don’t email and ask, I will just delete the message.

All in all, Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for BlackJack is pretty cool, its the only Windows Mobile 6 Standard phone I have and the experience is quite less impressive than Windows Mobile 6 Professional happens to be. It is however much, much faster than WM5 and the setup was a breeze. Internet Explorer still crashes on some sites but overall its a worthwhile update.

It’s a great phone, very speedy and pretty good for firing off a quick email or checking a football score. Beyond that, or rather, in spite of it all I am quite unexcited about the platform in general. It seems to me that not only has Microsoft lost every bit of edge and innovation with the platform, not only have they killed every outlet for developers and enthusiasts to hack their devices but relatively little has been happening on this side of mobility since maybe April. Some of us, or perhaps most of us, enjoy playing with these gadgets and thats how we learn the key features to solve business problems… with that spark gone though, I think there will be an iPhone in the house as soon as ActiveSync is fully supported.

Looks like it, at least according to Gizmodo’s tally of people that got the chance to play with it ahead of release.

I must admit, I want one and I’m sure the video on this device is awesome (having seen Vladfire on first gen) but $249 for me is a showstopper. Two years ago, sure. A year ago, maybe. But today I look at what $250 buys and a portable media device at $249 just seems like a mountain of cash.

I guess time will tell if this is the great player to dethrone Apple, but for the moment I’m sticking with my iPod Shuffle clippy.

Looking at my inbox this late at night it appears I am the only person that has taken the Veterans Day off or perhaps noticed it even exists. In United States this is both the federal and state holiday which usually means everything but the food/movies is closed… but not today – not only is everything wide open, nobody seems to have noticed it with the exception of the furniture store, car dealership and the local news stations – which ran a mention of it after the obviously retarded lady torturing an animal in the 3 day line waiting for the IKEA store opening, deportation debate and organ donor story.

Shame on you Orlando.

I’m probably the first one to say that the respect is earned. I understand you may not support the war. I understand you may not support the president with the lowest approval rating ever or the vice president that just had impeachment articles introduced against him. I understand that our government has flushed our civil liberties down the toilet. I understand that this has turned into a commercial nation that (as a result of the above f…ups has tanked our economy) cannot take a single day off but that does not warrant not even acknowledging this one day a year to thank the people that have died in combat, served to keep us safe, to make it possible to sit for three days in an IKEA store opening line. I understand. But apathy is not an excuse for lack of respect and gratitude.

To those of  you that served, made a sacrifice and even died to allow me to live the way I do.. Thank you.

With the Thieving Weasel’s launch coming in just a few weeks, Vladville servers need to undergo an upgrade and some cosmetic changes as well. It’s a holiday in USA tomorrow so I’m taking a moment to clear some of the Vladville mess that has piled on over the years and bring a more appropriate theme given the content..

In the meantime, here are some great blog posts to learn from, no matter who you are..

Read about Pablo’s move from developer to architect roles..

Read about Karl’s comparison of business consultants and technology salesmen..

Dave’s asking for a partner not to trash the relationship over the cost of 6 pizzas..

Earlier this week Microsoft released Microsoft Essential Business Server and the name itself has caused a little discomfort among the people that don’t understand the midmarket customers and the dynamics beyond the box. So, as a public service, let me explain to you what its like working with midmarket customers in hopes that you don’t apply the flawed SBSer strategy and fail miserably with this new product suite.

What is Essential?

Essential, in a word, is the set of bare neccessities that a business will need to rely on in order to build their network infrastructure.

Quick, whats essential in a single office with 20 workers? Your answer is probably file sharing, email. If you think harder maybe you’ll come up with the domain controller, centralized security, remote office access? If you’re pushed for it maybe you can say mobility or a firewall? Given enough time you can probably name every single component of a modern computer network, both physical and logical, and at the end of it all start a spork fight with a coleague over what the meaning of “essential” means.

So again, essential as a term means the bare cornerstones of a network. If your network consists of four PCs and two Windows Mobile phones, your essentials can be squeezed in a tiny appliance. Grow a little more and maybe you’ll need SBS. Grow a little more and perhaps you’ll need a second server. Grow a little more and get an LOB and maybe you’ll need a SQL box. Grow a little more and maybe you’ll have to hire an IT guy to just run around and keep track of it all. Grow a little more and your SBS box needs a transition pack. Grow a little more and open another office. Grow a little more and now running your IT infrastructure change management is not as simple as nailing a sign on the bathroom door that says “Make sure you login to DC2 instead of DC1 starting Monday!”

Now, whats essential? Essential is something that you can’t live without and perhaps in a more relevant view, it is something you don’t want to spend time maintaining, managing, fixing and tweaking to get up and running.

That (Microsoft hopes) is Microsoft Essential Business Server.

Susan, and I imagine many SBSers, that exist out of a “single box with 2k3std accessories” are not going to see these things as essentials. And if you ever hope to serve these customers you need to understand that they are not just a supersized sbs-in-a-box just shipped in three boxes. There are dynamics, office politics, investments, legacy software and hardware, set processes that people will resist changing because whoever came up with the broken process had it embraced by the entire company that can not think of doing anything else.

If you are an SBSer, you need to come to terms that not everything can be fixed with one box and you need to come to terms with the fact that your sales cycle will be longer, much longer. Allow me to explain both points:

Researching Essential Business Server Opportunities

Midmarket clients are very unlike the smallbiz clients in that they have already adopted technology – just very, very poorly. You might be dealing with dozens of servers, multiple domains, multiple offices and tons and tons of little LOBS all setup in their own peculiar way.

Most of your midmarket sales cycle is actually going to be a research cycle. Identify if the customer wants to work with you and get paid. Immediately. This isn’t a Managed Services bangup of let us clean up your crap because we have a dozen customers just like you, this is a long process of identifying what the company has, how it interacts and how to consolidate it and plan for its growth.

Midmarket customers are infrastructure consulting opportunities, they are not managed services opportunities.
Midmarket customers are not problems that need to be fixed by an upgrade or a Zenith agent with monkey in a bucket banging at the event log, they are broken process and application implementations that you will be bringing back into spec for years.
Midmarket customers are not business owners that need a server, they are IT managers and accountants that can’t explain the costs or how everything plays together.

So get the consulting contract out, explain what you are going to deliver in a nutshell, provide detailed reports every 40 hours (or every $1,000 dollars) with the true project completeness and documented details. Then sell the server.

Selling Essential Business Server “Essentials”

Selling the software is the last step in the process. After you know what you have, after you’ve spent days or months bringing the process together, virtualizing servers and getting rid of legacy hardware and software (no, they don’t need that 96 DOS fax “server” from Packard Bell), documenting the LOBs and bringing the network back to spec, you sellMicrosoft Essential Business Server-s.

Mark my words – this will be the least expensive part of the process.

If you are any good at all, the documentation and process you leave this company with and the training you can provide to that IT person or team thats left minding after the things surrounding the essentials is whats going to keep you and your workers swimming over the six figure salary.

Thank you Microsoft

I am biting my tongue on this one, but this suite and direction are whats going to return the premium and technology consulting back to the world of SMB technology. And you have nobody but Microsoft to thank for it.

Why? Because these midmarket companies are dominated by arogant and overworked IT managers and staff that have to deal with the decisions their bosses made in the long long ago and they cannot break the cycle. So in order to get things done, they need an external influence to help them keep their jobs and not get fired for things that are constantly falling apart, something they can’t fix because they are constantly putting out fires.

Enter Microsoft. “Hey, midmarket company, heard of Business Essentials Server? We can show you how to do XYZ with it, are these your pain points?” and then you’re in. Your first friends should be the IT staff, even if you’re dealing direct with CEO and CFO they will still ask their IT people to give their nod of approval. At least thats been the case in every midmarket situation I’ve ever been in. So if you patronized them, if you come in as the holy grail that will fix all the problems overnight with a single solution without even understanding the problem (SBSer mentality “You need a server!”) then don’t expect to hear back from them. On the other hand, if you’re really going to be there for a few months to not just fix but establish process and training not only are the IT people going to love you but you will have a gig for life. Then sell them the managed services The managed essential services

This works for us, hope it can work for you.

IT is a commodity.

One company realized this over ten years ago, crushed its competitors, and skyrocketed to being the most despised/hated company in the IT Solution Provider space.

That is of course unless you work with Dell and leverage the conveniences and price breaks they bring to market to let you get to the next step but thats common sense and there will be none of it here. “Down with Dell” yells the angry gaypile as it sends wads of cash to Round Rock Texas.

Woops. Thats a Dell server costing $50 more than the Everex TC2502 GPC!

Dell competes with IT Solution Providers in nearly every category. They have the largest ground force after IBM, now provide managed services, have a decade of experience providing horrible support from India, tons of customers models and options. About the only thing they do not have is the tablet.

So, as the angry mob fights the paperwork and nightmares of purchasing HP servers, the smart IT providers are teaming up with Dell, making huge profits and investing them in their practice, their value add and their white-glove customer service and customer relationship so the retention stays at its peak.

Or you can just hand crank MSP contracts down every lead and try to beat the indianinabox.com with high school kids. 

As you may have noticed by the flurry of blog posts and my cheerful mood over the past week, things are really starting to pick up. OWN is back on course, with lots of work ahead, my personal projects are picking up, spending more time with Katie is just awesome and the amount of support I have received from a few of you has been nothing short of amazing. So I wanted to take a moment to share something I have learned, because quite frankly, it surprised me.

Here are the stats from the recent Vladville survey I ran, and much to my surprise my audience is not just a bunch of IT shops. As a matter of fact, its almost the smallest one. That was the first surprise. I immediately thought, “man, these people must hate my guts, why do they bother reading” but the comments answered that quite vividly.

Vladville receives over 80,000 unique visits per day, over quarter million RSS hits (impossible to find out how many people just have a broken RSS reader that requests the feed every minute). Of those, 41,998 bothered to look at the survey page, of which 36,701 actually answered it. By number breakdown alone, most visitors to Vladville are smallbiz companies, followed by employees of midmarket or larger companies. Why read Vladville? Primarily for technical info but also for business advice. 

Those are the flat numbers. Now, here is another curveball. When split individually, the smaller audience segments (student, smallbizit, smallbiz and a good portion of midmarket) come here primarily for technical information. The larger organization employees (enterprise and nearly half of midmarket) comes here for business advice.

The only inference I can draw is that techies from larger companies are looking to go out on their own and are looking for business insight, while the smaller company employees are here to figure out the big picture. The comments, which I honestly have only read maybe 700 of, seem to confirm this.

Something universal among everyone (or just one person submitting the form over and over with slighty varied comments) is the appreciation for keeping it real, without sugarcoating and pretending things are not something other than whats in the plain sight. That seems to be the most apparent criteria to you all. The second biggest trend among the comments is the number of thanks I got for helping people put a mirror up to themselves, identify themselves in what I’ve had to go through and face their problems now. While I am sure there are quite a few that probably see me as just a rude asshole who gets off on throwing insults on the random web site, a LOT of you seem to be getting the right message and the spirit in which I post some of these blog items. Yes, they are a plea to change and help you understand that everyone struggles, every day, that this is not easy or a hobby..

One of the things I say very often when people confront me about the overall lack of respect and appreciation customers send back is: “They are paying us for our expertise, we’re professionals not support group participants”; As a result of this survey and its tremendous feedback I am going to have to change that tune, while Vladville is not my job (as a matter of fact, it is just a venting distraction from it) I appreciate hearing what a big positive impact it has made in so many of your lives and careers and I can’t even begin to express what it means to me that this tiny little blog has such a huge following and so many fans. In my line of business you don’t get to have fans, knowing that there are so many of you out there that appreciate what I’m doing is truly a blessing.

Thank you for your support!