For years Dell lead the way of ugly PC manufacturing. Their claim to fame has been the cheapest and most generic PC on the planet, delivered to your doorstep in any variation of ugly you want.

Beige, duotone silver, black did not matter in the rainbow of ugly because the competitive matrix was between price and performance and Dell had solutions in all the corners.

But then a funny thing happened.

Little fruit company out of Curpentino started making flashy computers that did pretty much what Dell’s solutions did. The little fruit company grew from obscure single digit percentage to being the third largest shipper of personal computers in America.

Suddenly, Dell could not grow its business and grow its margins. Suddenly things like design became important. Green became important. Style became relevant.

Dell was no longer just another fish in the ugly pond. It did what all the great companies do when they get told they simply aren’t keeping up with the marketing expectations.

It evolved.

Dell didn’t roam the desert for subjects to trick into thinking they are better than the market tells them they are.

Dell didn’t turn and say that it simply didn’t compete with pretty and flashy.

Dell didn’t sit back and choose to fight with the same tools it has used to get to the top, they completely redid their product line, changed their values.

Dell reinvented itself.

Little lesson for all of us. It doesn’t matter if we think we are right. It doesn’t matter what the perception is or who is causing the disruption.

What matters is listening to the clients, to the line of people lining up around the door to give us their money, and making sure we satisfy them.

It wasn’t too long ago that I felt it was my obligation to get into the public brawls with my peers over what was right and wrong, all while my friends tried to pull me back and tell me it’s not worth it. Nowadays, I feel like I’m the one doing most of the pulling because it is hard to get passionate people to pull back from what they perceive as a direct attack or just pure moral and ethical blasphemy.

Truth is, most people in this business put their all into their effort to change the world and burn out half way through it. Or they burn at 500 degrees, cool off, virtually disappear and then come back in a volcanic explosion. Nobody likes handling a live grenade.

I’m glad it never got to that point with me and the great deal of that goes to my friends Dave Sobel, Susan Bradley and Karl Palachuk. At their suggestion I started charting my day, charting my reach, charting the net benefits/losses both materially to OWN and mentally to me. How much time did I spend developing? How much marketing? How much helping others? How much pro-bono? And then in the other column, I noted how much difference it made to me, my family, my company and my community.

I encourage everyone to do the same.

The problem with passionate people is that they feed off the energy and response of others. The trick to being successful, in either commercial or community initiative, is knowing where your passion benefits the most people. With only 24 hours in a day you can only make a difference for so many people in so many places.

So crunch some numbers. Even if you make no money out of it at all. Especially if you don’t make any money out of it at all. Find out what you do that makes the world a better place for others, find out where you have a chance to impact the most people and offer your message.

If you do that, and if you only do that, we’re all a lot better off because nobody burns out. It worked for me

Update: Woops, one correction before I get beheaded. Most of the credit goes to my wife and to my son for grounding me, giving me a time out, chance to focus and giving me a chance to look at what I’m doing from outside in. I used to spend all this time at conferences, in groups, meetings, feedback groups, etc and use Vladville to vent my frustrations. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the difference but I’ve started using Vladville as more of a personal reflection on what I’m involved in and how I’m dealing/struggling/winning/failing - and judging by the feedback and emails and audience growth, it seems to be the most inspirational and valuable thing I’ve ever done for the complete strangers. So thanks to everyone above, and thank you for reading Vladville.

There are parts of business I truly hate, one of those being collecting money.

Yeah, I know, as a CEO I’m supposed to be taking the balance of accounts receivable every month and exchanging it for quarters and nickels and dimes to fill my money bin so I can swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.

Alas, it’s not that pretty.

It’s more like going through the endless list of ignored invoices, expired credit cards, moody credit card transaction processors and processing rules, fee adjustments and other fun stuff.

Every 2nd day to the end of the month we do the same shaking the money tree routine and frankly it ruins my day. Why? Because every month there is some schmuck that refuses to pay an invoice for the service that he isn’t using. Even while using the said service to send us an angry email telling us that he isn’t using it.

I refuse to pay for ExchangeDefender, we cancelled months ago!!!!!

ExchangeDefender Message Security: Check Authenticity

Argh!

I feel like a mafia kingpin on the 30th.

I’m making phone calls asking where the check for protection is at.

You gonna pay for your antispam or am I gonna have to break some kneecaps?

No, I will not barter offsite backup fees for rum, it be gold I’m after!

Where my money at……

Anyone been terribly successful with hiring collections staff that would like to share a way to build a business that collects reliably and doesn’t annoy or beat down its customers in the process?

Summer months tend to be dead for us, and with the tougher economy out there I’m checking our KPI’s every day to see dip in either services or subscriptions. As bad as things seem, we going to have our strongest month on the books even for god knows what month in a row and with Shockey Monkey 2.0 and ExchangeDefender 4.0 online launching in August things are looking remarkably good indeed.

So why the paranoia? The bottom of the market is eroding. That’s about as politely as I can put it. The SPFs have long disappeared and riff-raff is on it’s way out as well. As I have written many times, with very very very few exceptions, being small is rarely a choice. It reflects in the service dropoffs and client quality of the bottom tiers as the service losses aren’t to a competitor of ours (Postini, MessageLabs) but back to the server or more commonly just null routing (as in company gone). And as the bottom client base disappears, so do the solution providers. We’re seeing a lot of people teaming up with other smaller IT shops but by far and large most people are out getting jobs.

That in a nutshell is my greatest going concern with OWN. We have worked very, very hard to leave SMB and count on our partners but not a day goes by that we do not get a former partner account call in direct and say that their consultant simply vanished. This forces our hand - if we cannot find a partner to refer to, we have to decline and lose a client to retail-based services organization. There is some talk here of providing direct support though I am not sure how we can figure out the numbers for level 1 staff around the clock and maintain our service levels where they are. So that’s a problem.

 So far we haven’t figured it out. Smallbiz disappearance is something that I’ve written here at length, much to the dismay of many of the people that self-identified with the SPF term I coined a long time ago watching the MAPS resellers at TS2 events that called themselves consultants. But apparently the choice to focus on small business for a lot of the shops we work with has been a wrong one. When you are small you cannot reach a significant diversity in the verticals, and most of the time geographic bounds are insurmountable (though I know a lot of people that will fly around the country to service all the branches) so if you are bringing in $50 - $75K a year you’ve got a pretty good life, but when one or two out of ten clients go south and your cost of doing business skyrockets you are facing pressure on margins as well as account loss. So much for a lifestyle, eh? I had a guy call me last week and lay out his “lifestyle” business plan and his challenges… and I felt like crap because there was just nothing I could tell him. I have degrees in business and engineering, I’m programmed to seek diversity, grow and solve problems. What this guy saw as his competitive advantage is turning out to be an Achilles heel to a lot of partners who in a tough economy have to face reality, partner up with the others in the marketplace and take a good look at their business processes and reevaluate direction. From talking to a number of them, it seems looking at the EBS/SBS launch didn’t quite resonate with their clients and they figured they could make more money working for someone else.

As for us, we keep putting more money in talent, equipment and services and people are lining up around the building to sign up. Remarkable growth with ExchangeDefender which with 4.0 enhancements will pretty much decimate everything else on the market (thats just my unbiased opinion), the offsite backup business is growing insanely and with 5.5’s addition of continuous data protection available now and hardware independant restores expected around Thanksgiving, with the global demand for Exchange+SharePoint $10/10GB combo.. our biggest issue is finding a direct compromise and how to deal with the small business partner attrition. I wish it was as simple as if ($revenue > $level1_support_salary) count_de_money();

Advice? You know the #….

Apple has some awesome videos teaching you how to get the most out of your Apple gear. As even Steven Ballmer noticed, Apple is spectacular at defining a narrow feature set and providing a great user experience. But let’s face it, every gadget has an experience of its own and the satisfaction varies with how you use it. iPhone 3G in particular is plagued with battery performance issues so here is my experience with it, remember that your mileage may vary.

In the past 24 hours I have used my iPhone to take a few pictures and upload them to Facebook. I have written two Facebook messages, four Tweets on twitter.com including one response, sent a bunch of email and spent some time on the phone. I used it as an alarm this morning. I have spent 3 hours 19 minutes on the phone over Edge, sent three SMS messages, listened to approximately three MP3s and maybe 20 minutes of Pandora radio. I have also spent about an hour browsing around and reading blogs and email. I have installed a few apps. In total, I have uploaded 26.1 Mb  of data and downloaded 186 Mb. I still have more than 20% battery left.

There are many optimization tips, all obviously depend on your usage patterns. First, the obvious battery hogs:

• 3G
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• Screen Brightness

Turn all of those off if you wish to extend your battery life. Also consider shutting down the Push Mail feature if you can, I am not at liberty to do that since my primary use for the phone is still sending and receiving messages. But if getting your email immediately is not a big requirement you might want to consider turning this feature off or you will be wasting your battery on a constant stream of junk that hits your iPhone before Outlook cached mode moves it to Junk.

In terms of Usage Metrics: Full on power user mode barely makes it past 2 PM. This assumes all services on, 3G network, voice, Facebook, Twitter, iPod on the way to work, phone, video and email in a business environment. By comparison, lighter use with Edge instead of 3G, makes it through the day and then some.

The iPhone “Problem”: If you are coming from other platforms you will find yourself disappointed with the battery life. I can almost guarantee that. This is simply because you will actually find yourself using your phone for activities that would make you smash for previous gadget to pieces out of frustration. Ever tried browsing the web and catching up with news and friends before iPhone? The same level of frustration is just not there on an iPhone and you find yourself using more apps and using the phone for more than you ever would.

It makes your laptop lonely. But without a replaceable battery for the iPhone, or willingness to carry emergency chargers you have to restrain yourself a little. Or hope that chicks dig solar energy.

Why, yes baby, that IS a solar array in my pocket AND I am happy to see you!

Bow down to the power of mobile gadgetry.

I know that this is the last place you’d expect to hear this, but we should cut Microsoft some slack. When it comes to advertising that is.

I am hearing a ton of grumbling about the recent marketing efforts and announcements by both partners and customers. Last week we were in a sales call to a client that wanted to explore the new desktop streaming technology to consolidate a few thousand workstations and licensing but would not even allow us to pronounce Vista all the way before cutting us off. I figured I’d “float” the new ship campaign (I try to sarcastically pronounce ship like Ms. Dansey does) and explain that Vista is really not as bad as they have heard and the customer shot the following back at me:

The ship to try Vista has sailed.

For me, the Wow started there, though more in a jaw dropping disbelief that customer perception has sunk so low for an operating system whose most appreciated pitch was the fact that you can get a full motion preview of a bear eating a salmon by hovering over the taskbar icon for Windows Media Player. So what if you needed to replace every peripheral bought before 2005, shut up! Honestly, here is the bottom line:

Bad advertising is better than no advertising..

So let’s cut them some slack and let them spend a few hundred million trying to promote the brand that has made us all a lot of money. No, they aren’t going to stoop down to Apple’s level of smugness nor are they going to be able to present an overall unified platform since they don’t have one. But we need to let them try before we burn it alive before it’s even had a chance to air.

I know there are a lot of concerns about Microsoft advertising only going down to turn the company more direct and less partner-oriented, but to be honest Microsoft has only ever promoted itself and since they are paying for it they should be marketing themselves, their message and their products.

Reality is, Microsoft is turning into a direct company in the same way that Dell is. The less complex their solutions become, the less need there is for partners to exist to solve the problems that no longer exist. In order to raise interest in the solutions Microsoft will have to spend more money on direct marketing which will make for a larger market and larger opportunity for software solutions that bridge the gap and service providers that Microsoft just can’t compete with because they are a software company and if Zune is any evidence, they will always be a software company.

So can we please let them sink $300 million into promoting their solutions so we can make money servicing and supporting their new audience?

You have never been in charge of data center ops if you have never turned to your staff and said: “Can we just burn all this s#it and start over?”

What a messed up day. Everything crashed today. Including a Linux server that has been up and running for over 500 days without a restart. Everything from a $399 server to servers with $399 network controllers.

And then people look at me sideways when I say we will not support EBS/SBS. I will no longer approve purchases and deployment of single point of failure solutions. It’s 20-fn-08, overpowered hardware is dirt cheap and we are designing infrastructure like we just got out of the great depression and are trolling up and down the L looking for coal rocks to trade for parts. Come on, who needs this stress!!!

Drinking it away at Chillis and blogging from my iPod.

Last week I switched my mobile platform from Windows Mobile to iPhone. I have written some fairly nasty things about iPhone and still stand by many of those statements. I will write about this at some length because as far as the development of our industry is concerned, the iPhone 2.0 is pretty earth shattering. So why does someone who has had a virtual love affair with a Windows Mobile device switch to iPhone? How in the world do you justify abandoning a platform on which you’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars in app development? Why?

For the same reasons we use Vista. It may have issues, but it’s the best fit for what we do.

It really is as simple as that.

I love Vista. I use it at home, at work, on the laptop, it fits just about everything I do. Business, development, video and image editing, etc. Is it crash prone? No. Does Outlook 2007 have a slight heart attack every time I touch it? Yes. But pound for pound, no other system I have met is as reliable and able to work with all my computer needs to the extent that I will overlook the few issues it has. Most disagree with me on that, but to each his own.

Windows Mobile for me was a business tool. But Windows Mobile has made just a few inches of progress throughout the years. It is still a clunky, battery-draining highly unreliable and inconsistent phone software that fails at meeting even the most basic of my needs. For example, last week the Live Messenger on my phone just died. No errors, nothing running in the background, just clicking on the little green buddy does nothing. Stock AT&T rom, before you ask. Mail sync is supposed to be 100%, but I found myself rebooting the phone twice a week to get it going. Pocket IE is starting to give Microsoft Internet Explorer a bad name for Petes sake!!!

Windows Mobile, for all its compromises, is not even good enough to do the one thing it is designed to do. With iPhone 1, it was just an interface battle. With iPhone 2, Microsoft should just kill their mobile effort. Yes, it’s that far behind and with App Store it may not have a chance at all, especially if Apple starts offering a choice of handsets.

So I switched to iPhone 2.0. Is it perfect? Oh, lord no. Not even close. For example, while they have licensed Exchange EAS for push sync, it doesn’t have a reliable folder sync. For example, it syncs my mailbox just fine. But it does not alert me to the new messages in any of the subfolders. Dialing a contact is as easy as just typing in their name. On an iPhone it’s clicking on Phone, Contacts, letter of their last name, phone number selection. Yes, really! There is no way to search through the mail. There is no way to search the server for anything. No way to flag items in the mailbox.

I’m willing to tolerate those problems because Windows Mobile has never been at even 80% satisfaction rating with any of the above. Sure, it was capable but it simply did not deliver enough to be a viable business tool.

So when you can’t count onto something for business, why should you be tied to it for all the other stuff you do? For me, that’s Facebook. Today I receive more friend and personal communications over Facebook than I do over email. I line up appointments and see what my buddies are up to using Twitter. I like the fact that I can get some entertainment value from my device, so I don’t have to carry a phone and an iPod. Write a blog post, attach an image to it? Done.

With iPhone 2.0, Apple has been able to bring a comparable business experience to the Windows Mobile, and platform-wise and entertainment-wise simply destroy any chances I would ever want to look back to Windows Mobile. The App Store brings an actual platform to iPhone, ability to obtain and play with apps that are designed for the device, checked through by Apple, quickly installed and uninstalled giving me the ability to play with stuff if it works or dump it if it doesn’t.

iPhone fits my lifestyle better, as far as I am concerned it is the best. It may not be perfect, but it is robust enough to fit everything I do that I am willing to overlook a few problems. As Apple continues to push down this path I think Microsoft will have more and more to worry about. How far along do you think AppStore for Mac OS X is?

Back in Exchange 2003 times the most frequent complaint users had with Exchange was the 32kb quota on e-mail rules. Even casual users would hit this limit as they tried to organize their Inbox and Microsoft listened to the feedback. So with Exchange 2007 the rule size doubled to 64kb, still far short of some demands. Exchange 2007 supports 256kb rules, but how do you enable that?

Click here to find out…

P.S. Yup, back to writing technical articles again. With the Exchange 2007 about to land into the laps of SMB folks in a few months it’s time to start talking about this two year product again

On tangent to the previous blog posts about V vs. V, what happens when vendors cannot communicate with other vendors? I just went through my “community” mailbox (vlad@vladville.com) and cleared out a few of the usual slimy vendor whoring requests. What is particularly amusing about these is that whenever there is something racy on Vladville these folks are the first to cringe at the display and offer me guidance (like they have ever met me), but two minutes later they are back with “permission to blog” about their announcements, surveys, conferences, etc.

You can’t have it both ways, you can’t be outraged at the content that builds the audience and then go back to it begging for traffic. If what you are writing is not what your audience wants to read, and you consider Vladville so repulsive, what good is the link to your press announcement going to do?

So in the interest of helping some of you reach your intended audience for shameless whoring, here are a few tips:

1. Start a blog of your own.
2. Keep your blog honest and straight. Nobody likes to read announcements and PR bull.
3. Comment and link to other peoples blogs. I do not link to anything that doesn’t appear to be open to conversation - so if you’ve closed comments, didn’t list contact info, who you are, what you do… I consider it a spam blog.

That should get you started…