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.

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