Regular season is over. Let the hatin’ begin. Buck Fama!

Got the tickets to the next Saturday’s SEC championship game between Florida and Alabama so I can hate live in person So even if we get our ass kicked at least I’ll be in the good company of drunken losers. But that still gives me over 6 days of hatin’

Southeastern Conference, the tradition of hate….

As the story goes, Queen Marie-Antoinette - the 18th century version of Paris Hilton, showed very little compassion for the starving French people and arguably with the quote above lead to the French Revolution (and a subsequent one-way ticket to the guillotine). Don’t you just miss the days when people properly disposed of failed leaders?

If history teaches us anything it’s that we do not learn from it.

Every Black Friday Americans take time off their work in an incessant search of great deals. In what is usually a great display of declining humanity, Walmart tends to showcase the finest - this year one associate got murdered in a stampede when nearly 200 people bum rushed the store and just had to get that 1080i LCD screen or the GPS receiver.

I had the lack of pleasure of spending a part of my childhood in Europe (stick with me, I’ll connect the dots in a minute) where many families practiced the epic fail of religious ignorance, fraud and arrogance in a little thing called “slava” - the religious aspect involved the actual cause for the celebration, as each family offered prayers to the Saint of their choosing for watching over them and blessing them (with the lifestyle status two inches beyond starvation)  followed by a big party, reception and a feast. In reality, this was an exercise in self-delusion and fraud, as the regions known throughout centuries for their destitute means and survivalist lifestyles would have one evening a year where they would go out and showcase themselves as the royalty among their peers. People that had nothing and barely scraped by would go all out to show how good it was to be them, even if it was total charade.

Sound familiar?

Today we are encouraged to spend, to go all out, to single-handedly bring our economy back through the consumerism and living above our means during the season where we should be with our families content with what we have we indulge in the crystal clear 1080i resolution of our brand new LCD TV.

Vlad’s quick guide to making it through a tough economic cycle:

1. Save more money than you spend. If you cannot make it through a full year without a job living on the savings in your bank you should not be spending, you should be looking for a second job.
2. Defer big purchases until you can either pay it off immediately or obtain credit and incentives that far undervalue the asset (so you can sell it if you suddenly need to liquidate assets to cover other debts).
3. Haggle for everything that has a sales person. Sales people keep their jobs and receive bonuses based on their ability to fill the pipeline and meet their quota - not on the bottom line profit they realize on each and every sale. To them it’s more important to land a $500 purchase than to earn a 3% profit on a fictional sale.
4. Realize that social status is not a competition. People who go all out eventually end up out of luck. As you watch the commercials for Mercedes Benz, Lexus, Jewelry and gadget of the month remember that only a fool and his money are soon parted.

Remember, a great deal on crap you don’t really need is not a great deal, it’s a waste.

Wishing you the best this season,

Vlad Mazek, who hopes he’ll be able to find his office without a GPS.

Today is Thanksgiving, to those of you in United States I wish you a happy turkey day. I hope you eat so much that the tryptophan-induced high moves your appreciation for arguably one of the highest white people to ever walk the earth - Bob Ross, painting happy little clouds.

We are in an era where a lot of us are building happy little clouds. There is money in them there clouds I tells ya! And sure enough, when I checked our KPI on Monday before heading out for a break we were already in the record books for growth/revenue for November and when you hear what we’re going to arm our ExchangeDefender MSPs with in Dec for enterprise storage you’re going to flip!

But wait, didn’t Vlad say yesterday that this IT business stuff is going to die? The news tells me that the economy sucks! Vlad’s newsletter is going to talk about the bad trends in the IT space. But he is launching new products, hitting record revenues and hiring people. His competitors are going out of business but he just raised prices.

What the heck man, I am so thoroughly confused!

I’ve had so many people do the above with me on the phone that I’ve nearly lost count. And most of them lately (fans of the blog) seemed nearly disappointed that I wasn’t gloomy and doomy in person. And nearly every person asks: But what if you’re wrong?

There are no ifs ands or buts about being wrong in business, it’s a business certainty that most or at best some of your decisions are not going to be good or great.

Here is a little secret: Most businesses fail. You are statistically more likely to fail than succeed.

I call it a secret because most people are either not aware of that or choose to run their business in a way that it’s a one-trick pony that is built to implode upon failure. You know, Bob the OEM that used to build computers in the mid-90’s that bought a big store and got killed by Dell. And who can forget Bob the Webmaster that bought thousands of dollars in Photoshop licensing but couldn’t even figure out Paintbrush. Or my favorite, Bob the Y2K expert that went around with a witch stick and a skull and blessed bank computers in 1999 and found himself homeless in 2000. But Bob bounced back with the SEO business plan which worked for about 25 minutes. Not to worry, after a brief stint as the antiterrorism insurance salesman Bob was back as Bob the SBSer, then Bob the VAR. Currently Bob the MSP is one credit card payment short of losing his 5,000 seats of Kaseya watching over the 80 seats across his client base and he’s pawning it on eBay to buy an Exchange server and become a cloud services provider.

Bob… Bob… Bob…

Do you ever wonder how certain people, regardless of time and condition, seem to talk a lot yet year after year they are no better than the year before? Or even worse do you ever notice how some people seem to know it all and then you see them again a while later to realize they are not doing any of the stuff they were such experts at last year?

Love that paradox. But here is the real kicker - forget about the guys that are flunking or that are constantly going nowhere. Seriously, forget about them. Try to explain this one: How is it that there are still profitable OEMs out there that make a ton of money? How is it that people still manage to make a ton of money designing web sites? How in the world does a one man MSP shop in England become more profitable than an entire two dozen employee company in Miami?

That’s what you need to focus on.

And there is no book, no magazine, no mentor, no Yoda that will teach you how to think, observe, research and react in the right way at the right time.

Today, I am most thankful for the people in my life, personal and professional, that have given me the opportunity to learn. I’m glad to put it out there, popular or not, and I thank you all for reading. Speaking of giving, the 1st Vladville newsletter comes in tomorrow.

November 26th, 2008.

It’s a little too late to stick the head in the sand, plug your ears and sing la la la while people tell you about the tough economy. Whether you chose to participate or not, for many of you this years Christmas/Hanukkah cards you send as a company will likely be your last.

Now those are some ugly words to say out loud but if there is anything you’ve learned from me and this blog it should be that business decisions are made on logic, research, surveys, risk calculations and business plan delivery / management.

If it prompted an emotional response - sorrow, anger, misery, frustration, a fatwa written in your blood - the paragraph above likely doesn’t apply to you so you should stop reading right…. here.

For years I’ve used this blog to publish what I thought was the right thing to do, the mistakes I see people make, the mistakes I’ve made, the relationship management with the partners, customers, resellers, vendors and the general business of technology.

I think it’s time to look at the endgame of sorts.

In the past month I have been invited to half a dozen conference calls and peer groups and user groups to discuss how to operate a business in a tough economy - most of which I’ve had to pass on because you operate the business in the tough economy in much the same way you operate it in a great economy - you diversify, you spot opportunity, you form the right partnerships, you grow conservatively and seek out profit over hype. Some people consider this blog too tough (on me, on OWN, on partners, on vendors) so saying the same thing I’ve been saying for years at this point is just an equivalent of beating a dead horse. (no pun intended)

But what about those of us that aren’t screwed? We can learn a lot from the complacent Grasshopper IT companies that were able to ignore the fundamentals of business just because the demand for their services outpaced the supply.

So join me in the next few days, through the Vladville Newsletter, as I break down the lessons learned from the downturn and how that has made those of us that are still growing far more powerful. Newsletter is free, open to everyone, is not meant to sell you anything - but there is a catch, you have to participate.

Happy Thanksgiving, thank you for reading Vladville.

Yes, it’s a tip to Iron Maiden and the prophecy behind it.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Taking a long needed mental vacation from the past few months of mind breaking journey that has been the globalization of the OWN’s US-only businesses: virtual hosting, virtual services, exchange+sharepoint services, enterprise storage network, security tokens, enterprise services and something we only call Karl. At the first of the year the only true global OWN services were ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey, now we’ve got our most profitable lines of business in Europe, Australia, Canada, Dubai and Hong Kong. Next quarter is all about announcing and positioning all that to the greater benefit of everyone involved at OWN.

One of the downsides of mortality is that you don’t get to live forever and you get to change your mind about which parts of business you work on. The past two quarters, or the seventh monkey of the seventh monkey, were all about teaching folks around me how projects, business lines, relationships and processes get built. It took twice as long but it’s always nice to fail right away than to fail down the road when you can’t fix it easily.

New year doesn’t start in January, new year starts in August. If you’re not on that same page yet, go read this. I was talking to Dave the other day about the advances we’ve made in internal documentation, the issue with the body of knowledge is that it should not be limited to one single person. No one single point of failure should be the holder of any critical knowledge of the corporate service, we sell commodity enterprise services, not specialty blown glass vases.

So with the stuff all complete, running and buzzing, I’m taking some time off till after the SEC championship (Dec 8th) and am coming back with something you’re really going to enjoy hearing. In the meantime those of you working with my staff will be getting the news about what all this means to your bottom line so fax back those NDAs if you want $$$$.

Mythology: Seventh son of the seventh son is European mythology for the special healing powers the seventh son of the seventh son is supposed to have.

It’s the people that want the credit and respect but are unwilling to work for it. Sorry bro, you’ve got to earn stuff in life and plenty of people and organizations exist to extend the opportunity and help you get going- but if you do nothing with it you’ve only got yourself to blame.

It’s Sunday, WTF are you going to do with your day?

Earlier this week Microsoft killed it’s retail offering in Equipt as well as the OneCare retail edition and the OneCare Server edition, trial of which shipped with SBS 2008 at a recent launch. Microsoft expects to release a free security suite, Morro, to coincide with the launch of Windows 7.

The commentary on the net has been split between Microsoft failing with a bloated security product and the consumer economy being so terrible that Microsoft’s presence in the retail channel is a waste.

I’d like to offer a third option

Microsoft intends to copy Apple’s successful strategy of providing all the essential and simple apps so that the user doesn’t have to search or buy (or let’s be honest, pirate) their own.

Apple Mac OS X comes with relatively little. But add a $79 iLife or $79 iWork and you’ve transformed your system into a media production machine capable of managing albums and web sites, editing videos or composing music. For $20 more you can install it on up to 5 PCs in the “family”

Microsoft has stated that the cloud based apps are their future. You can see this today in the form of Windows Live family that comes with a single installer and lets you download a lot of free and relatively good software.

It fits the strategy. It keeps the Antitrust lawsuits away. It simplifies and secures Windows 7 usage and improves the experience. It certainly seems like Microsoft is getting their stuff together.

Another magazine bites the dust, sadly one that I enjoyed quite a bit and have an active subscription to. Companies are pulling back, some are scaling down, some are outright changing their business models.

Yes, the economy sucks. Some of the largest and most respected companies will not see 2009. There is a good statistical probability that you won’t have a job in 2009.

However, this is a natural progression of business and life. Out with the old, in with the new. If you can’t make money doing what you used to, you find something new to make money at.

Look at it this way: Most of us were lucky to have been able to learn how to run a business at a benefit of our technical skills that kept the demand pent up - and we took that advantage to grow and scale and do more - and that is why so many are now thriving while the rest of the population is struggling at best or outright dying at worst. If you have the time to sit around and think “I wish someone could help me figure out how to run my business during the downturn” then it’s probably too late already.

That’s business folks, survival of the fittest. You can’t get angry at the market demand, all you can do is be savvy enough (and opportunistic enough) to seize the opportunity and make something out of it.

Earlier today Microsoft enabled end-user customers to purchase software and services directly from a Microsoft site, completely bypassing the partner community. While there is a bit about contacting Microsoft Partners for support services if you sit on the site for a few seconds you will be greeted by a popup and a person all too happy to take your money:

Meet Heidi:

There you go. As one of my partners called in and stated today:

“So they just told me not to bother with licensing and IT training on their products anymore, I’m just a sales guy…”

No, that would be Heidi, Bob… Now the last time I told you this was coming I got under a fair bit of criticism. As I said in the past, Microsoft is the only one that truly knows how much value is in the Partner Program and what the bottom tier accounts for. Is this one of Microsoft’s giant mistakes or a well educated business plan change is pretty much their problem.

Not all bad news, you can always come and work for me.

There you have it folks, this is how it all ends.

Over the past 12-18 months Microsoft has gotten a lot of bumps and bruises on this blog, ever since Kevin Turner and Allison Watson outlined the lack of vision for the company that is Microsoft as we’ve known and grown with. At the Worldwide Partner Conference in 2007, Turner announced the Microsoft shift to the more consumer-centric business and at the Wordwide Partner Conference 2008 both Turner and Watson explained where the partner community will remain - below 6% commission on cloud services with opportunities to integrate legacy platforms with the new way of Microsoft software service subscriptions. In November of this year at the Microsoft PDC, Ray Ozzie revived the much criticized Hailstorm .NET failure at the turn of the millennium into a thriving cloud based operating system and renewed the commitment to the developers that choose to build on top of Microsoft.

Yesterday, Microsoft also announced the launch of the Microsoft store where you can purchase software directly from Microsoft.

In a nutshell, in just under 18 months, we have seen Microsoft go from the largest software developer in the world to the largest technology conglomerate in the world with the funds, presence, talent and overwhelming opportunity to seize large shares of the markets that are struggling.

Do you think that bankruptcy of Circuit City and CompUSA had anything to do with the idea that Microsoft needs to go at it alone to reach the end customer? Microsoft’s inability to control the messaging in the retail segment has as much to do with the Vista failure as do the perennial Apple smears against it.

My biggest gripe with Microsoft for years has been in that Microsoft lacked leadership and vision. Ray Ozzie has changed that.

For years Microsoft roamed the post-monopoly-lawsuit desert in search of a hit - with many technologies seen as me-too would-be competitors that failed to catch on. The entire cloud approach, from search to storage, seemed like a neverending collection of summer intern code experiments that lacked in both purpose and refinement. It just seems cool became the norm at Microsoft Live, except none of the cool kids wanted to play with it.

And when it seemed like Microsoft was down for the count it seems something changed with it in a way that absolutely repositioned the company and its direction. Looking at the flow and innovation from Microsoft it no longer feels like a business software company trying to exert it’s will into tangent markets - it seems like a business platform company that wants to be the delivery mechanism for the services.

That is a tough call to make and a huge change in direction - one that has caused a lot of pain as the ship now plows over the partner marketplace that brought Microsoft to it’s prominence to begin with.

So as painful as it is to watch, it is ultimately the right thing for Microsoft and the right thing for the technology marketplace. We (software solutions people) strive to enable easy communication, trust in the computing process and data integrity, and the beauty of this business and profession is that you never stop learning with the constant change.

Microsoft has effectively shot the middleman that stood in the way of their direct relationship with the user - if you were that middle man your days are unfortunately numbered. As more technology jobs are sailed down the pink slip river there is a very bright and positive side to the development - more and more people are not just using but relying on technology for both business and leisure. As complexity is removed and reliability is improved the opportunity goes from “building IT” to “improving IT” and the great news is that the cost of entry in the new world is pretty much leveled.

If you intend to be in business or even employed five years from now I hope you are imagining your role in IT five years down the road.