I have not exactly been celebrated for holding a very low opinion of most “We install manage and support SBS networks” shops, especially in the one man shop category. But it seems that my reigns as the SBS Public Enemy #1 are being taken by someone new so in spirit of helping they guy out from the public religious drubbing and eventual crucifixion at the Garbage Truck Drive Convention this October, I’d like to offer a slight SBS-atheist (“No, god did not create the SBS CEICW Wizard on the 8th day”) reality check to some of my dear friends and respected colleagues who seem to be living in a delusional dream state.

First, you are not going to beat Susan Bradley in an argument by calling her out on technical facts. She corrects Microsoft’s web sites and KB articles for living. The way to get under Susan’s skin is to say that she is “just a CPA” and should go read an ISA book by a good friend of mine. What happens is reminescent of the fabulous 80′s cartoon:

Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said:

I have the poooooooweeeeerrr!

She then proceeds to point her sword at her Mini which becomes a mighty wrecking ball and probably says: “Here is your button. Now bend over!!!!”

Susan is a dear friend so in a moment I will demonstrate how you get her to stand in front of Skull Mountain.

The real reason SBSers aren’t installing _______________________

The real reason is because most SBSers aren’t technology savvy people to begin with, most of them were barely able to manage their own workstation as the counter went from 1999 to 2000. Most are your garden variety hacks in multiple IT gadgets, enthusiasts if you will. They knew how to uninstall spyware. Maybe they knew how to connect a printer, install a switch and figure out through documentation what the difference between the WAN and LAN ports was.

Then the divine intelligent creator came around one day, we’ll call him Mike Marshall, and thought:

What if we created a roadshow that did nothing but take end users and consumers through the Microsoft’s product stack and do a quick and easy demo on our latest technology and teach these people how to click on wizards, add SharePoint parts, etc. Let’s break through this myth of IT being something that required training, certifications, experience, degrees or really any knowledge beyond the brain dump.

Then Mike went to a tall mountain where he talked to the burning bush that gave him “Microsoft Business Solution Accelerators” that would guide the horde of SBSers through the waters of wizards that you couldn’t just click Next on and actually hat to put in a IP address or a hostname.

Eventually these shows became the breeding ground for the Microsoft solution stack and training of people who wanted downloadable virtual images, walkthroughs and workshops. Microsoft all too happily obliged.

What we ended up with is a large but diminishing population of people who have no ability to manage a server and never should. Just a bunch of CPA’s (see, thats how it’s done n3wb writer) stabbing in the dark for a solution to their infrastructure problems.

Surely it’s more complicated than that?

Nope. Not at all. The SBS community played a big part in getting DIYers to ignore the world outside of SBS and to discard it as irrelevant. When I started hanging out in the SMB IT community around 2002-2003 you would see endless threads of people saying “Why not just install SBS” or “Pull that Windows 2003 server and install this SBSized wizarded thing”

People like me, who wrote technical articles and organized SBS groups, are partially to blame for this.

Bottom line

It’s not that these incompetent people are choosing to ignore Linux or Windows 2008 or Exchange 2007 or cloud solutions or ______. It is that they lack technical competence to do anything out of their comfort zone because they are the glorified script readers and button pushers and they reject the notion of anything that might force them to read Google, open up a book.

Just read all the outrage lately over the SBS support going to the callback model only.

Why do you think that is?

Because folks that don’t know what they are doing can easilly say it’s Microsoft’s fault and spend the rest of the day on the phone all while telling their clients that Microsoft is on the case.

But what about Microsoft’s side in all this? Why do you think they only chose SBS to be a callback platform? Because it takes a lot longer to troubleshoot an issue if your caller can’t figure out where the registry editor is or how to stop and start services. If you’ve never been on the receiving end of some of these calls then you’re missing out. What happens when you ask someone if the service is running they will try to read the entire services right panel, with descriptions and all to boot. “So are these sorted alphabetically? Can I just do a search?” <faceplant>

That can’t be, that simply just can’t be…

Welp, it is. I would venture to guess that upwards of the 90% of the SBS-or-death consulting market is comprised of just CPA’s, lawyers, the most savy IT people in the shop and not of actual certified engineers, people with IT degrees. I’m just basing that on the tier-1 questions we get in our support portal.

The SBSer elite doesn’t want to admit this is the case because they just refuse to believe it and they have no circumstantial evidence to point to. That’s because Johnny the SPF doesn’t go on the Internet to post a question. He doesn’t take the time to come out to the SBS user group. He doesn’t stand up and profess his issues at the TS2 event or Microsoft roadshow because he knows he is a fraud.

That’s the truth kids. It’s not that people are making bad business decisions or are just uninformed of other solutions or that they cheat their customers — it’s the fear that their inability will show up one day and they would be exposed for what they are — power-user way out of his comfort zone.

But is all this a necessarily bad thing? For the customers stuck with the SPFs, yes. But for the greater majority of clients, Microsoft and the SMB IT ecosystem this is a huge win. I suppose the greatest compliment one can pay to the designers of SBS is that they’ve designed a product that is used and managed by people that never should be touching that server to begin with.

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