Last week of the quarter, half and fiscal year for Vlad Media, Inc aka Vladville.com. Time for a look back:

Financially, vladville.com (the Google ads) made more money than two average crackheads working the McDonalds drivethrough. I don’t want to gloat but I am sure University of Florida would proudly display my 25% income bracket I make as a professional writer. And a terrible, terrible insult comic. Florida alums get paid!

Last years agenda was to talk more about business development and maturity, simply because this blog is nothing if not the venting grounds for things that piss me off during the day and I have nobody I can talk to. Karl meditates. Dave drinks. I blog.

The Economy

What a terrible time to pick to talk about business, right as the confidence in financial markets tanks, financial mismanagement / theft / fraud runs rampant by everyone from the bank teller stealing the bank pens to Bush and Obama, people lose their jobs and the iconic businesses that built this great country simply go under over the weekend.

As bad as it was, if you were smart, this was probably the best time you’ve had in business. It’s certainly the story at ExchangeDefender and Own Web Now. Yes, we had several lines of business get massacred, but the new lines of business propelled us to the highest financial records in the history of the company. I have heard the same from many of you reading this blog, good job!

Looking back, for many this was a trying time. Time to prove you’ve got your s$#% together. Nowhere was this more true than in the ExchangeDefender world – nearly all the partners that didn’t go out of business actually grew in the same space!

The Vapor, The Cloud, The NBT

Last year we announced “Lucy’s Sail” which included series of projects we launched to help partners compete with Microsoft and Google’s assault onto the SMB channel. At the same time I became The Public Enemy #1 for saying that we won’t sell SBS 2008 and a year later OWN has not sold a single seat. I can tell you from talks with many of our partners that even those that had high hopes for SBS didn’t fare much better. It’s just a sign of the times, technology is no longer seen as an investment or expertise and with so many tech layoffs a career in technology has never been more uncertain.

This is a debate that will go on until the last CIS graduate, last VAR, last MSP and computer repair shop left standing. Personally, if I had some great future insight I’d probably be selling research reports. As I said to someone today, I’d rather be dead wrong and paid than be right and broke. It is one of my bigger disappointments among my colleagues and peers, the incessant need to debate the future while ignoring what’s going on today. Today is when people are ready to cut the check, take the money. Until Vegas starts booking odds on the survival of a given computing technology I’ll just keep on growing the company in the direction of people waving their cash at me. Slimy Vendor Whoring at it’s finest.

So… What do you do?

Oh has this changed in the last 12 months or what? I used to get two answers in the past: 1) I write software or 2) I keep it running. You were either a developer or in charge of IT. But as the basics of computing got simpler (iPhone, Mac) and more affordable (as in free: Google, Facebook, Gmail, Netbooks) we’ve seen the premium and respect for technology skills plummet.

These days I talk to people who are anything but the two noted above. Even some of my dearest friends that have worked with me for over a decade have radically changed and diversified their technology service. To be fair (many, many, many) many others have also closed shop for good in the face of financial climate and technical obsoletion. 

The iNotMicrosoft

Tough year for Microsoft. Much tougher than I ever thought it would ever be. Microsoft is still the company that I have always looked up to and likely always will – but man this year hurt in so many ways. Too many to even discuss but I’ve certainly covered them through the year.

One thing I did not see coming is the iPhone domination. Even with the full Blackberry recovery, iPhone just pwned Microsoft in every possible way. They also brought their friends in Google and Facebook and once it became apparent that a computer network can run stuff not made by Microsoft the doors were blown wide open. Almost in spite of all the money Microsoft spent on marketing, it’s competitors are just out-innovating them.

Then the layoffs. Ooof. 

The Year Ahead

About the only nice thing you can say about this economic cycle is that it has washed out a lot of pretenders and humbled a lot of business owners to consider the fundamentals: What does the client want?

Therein we find the first great challenge for the new year: Pricing pressure. Nobody is buying. And when nobody is buying, it’s haggling time. The price for IT should drop a lot (a lot more than it already has) but we’ll make more because we’ll have more clients and higher level work commands a higher pay. We are experimenting with some marketing ideas now but suffice to say it will be the #1 thing going forward.

C-c-c-changes. Yes, virus filtering will always be necessary, but it’s heck of a lot easier to stay protected than it used to be. Apply this to virtually everything you know: All the services you provide now will still be necessary and in demand: you just won’t be able to make a living doing it. Doubt that? See thousands of people who thought they could do what they were doing before, now firmly engaged in the sales roles offering 2 apple pies for $1 with your happy meal.

Tighter circle. As my buddy Karl just wrote, get ready to compete with everyone. When the #1 thing becomes your marketing effort and not your technical skill (because you technical skill can be replaced by the 1st or 2nd result in Google) then a lot of the technology peer corrodery tends to go up in flames. Good news is, organizations like ExchangeDefender/OWN, MSPU, SMB Books and so on are still channel champions and will pay to get people together. But trust a peer for impartial advice? Don’t leave your house without your Amex.

At the end of the day, all we’ve got is our money and our relationships. The world is changing and the money is out there for those willing to work hard enough to take it. As always, thanks for reading this blog and sending your opinions to vlad@vladville.com.

Recently Sprint started offering Palm Pre device, touting a revolutionary new WebOS and integration with social networking. Initially, this device was described by it’s funding partners as an iPhone Killer and has certainly attracted it’s fair amount of attention for it’s very cool feature set. But how about using it in business, with Exchange?

The Setup

Click here for Sprint Interactive Setup Guides. Sprint also offers a very handy interactive setup for Exchange, just click on each step and it will highlight the part to click on. (Exchange Setup). For ExchangeDefender purposes:

1. Tap the Email icon on the Quick Launch.

2. Note: If you have already set up an email account and want to add another one, tap the Email applications menu > Preferences & Accounts > Scroll Down > Add an Account, before following these instructions.

Enter in the your Microsoft Exchange email. For this example, press J to prompt one to fill in.

3. Tap the Password field and type in the corresponding password. Here, press 0 to prompt one to fill in.

4. Tap Sign In.

5. Tap the MAIL TYPE field then tap Exchange (EAS).

6. Verify the information in the other fields and change the info as needed based on the information you obtained from your email provider or system administrator. Server names are either donald or daisy or scrooge or huey or duey or … In support.ownwebnow.com click on Service Manager > Exchange Hosting and click on the Info tag for any of the accounts you require information for. You will need the full server name as well as the domain name (which is the OWN NT domain name, not your fully qualified domain name like yourcompany.com)

7. Once the information is complete, tap Sign In.

8. Once setup is complete, you can exit the application by first pressing the Center button.

9. Click the animated arrow to simulate throwing the card off the top of the screen, to close the application.

The Security Gotcha

There are several factors you need to consider when deploying Palm Pre in business with Exchange. Namely, the Exchange Remote Device Wipe feature is not present at the moment so you will not be able to wipe the device from your Exchange Outlook Web Access. There is an alternative however, Palm Pre supports SMS wipe:

“Enhance security by remotely erasing data from your device if it gets lost or stolen without the need for IT support regardless of what email system you are using.”

Disclaimer: “Remote erase deletes all data from your phone including files stored using USB drive mode. Remote erase command sent via SMS and must be received by activated phone within 24 hours. Wireless coverage area only. Requires data services at additional cost.”

The SMS message must be received by the device within 24 hours in order to wipe the device. If someone steals your device, powers it down for at least 24 hours, you will not be able to remotely wipe it.

This restriction may cause you to consider storing sensitive data on your device and is a good cause for establishing other security policies like a complex device password, keeping a limited amount of data on the phone, etc.

Other Exchange Security Considerations and Exchange requirements

Palm Pre does not support ActiveSync Security policies, so if you have a firmly defined security policy in Exchange before allowing ActiveSync (such as PIN requirements) you will have to set those manually on the device before attempting the first sync. From Palm:

“Palm understands that some business customers need support for specific Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) policies. We are working to develop support for EAS PIN and password enforcement, as well as EAS remote wipe, for webOS and hope to announce these new features within the next 60 days. We will deliver the features through our over-the-air update system, which Palm has already started using to bring new updates to Pre users as they become available. Until then, Palm Pre customers can enable a PIN or password directly on a device, and can also remotely wipe a device via a Palm profile. Palm profiles can be managed by Pre users at palmws.com.”

As of firmware 1.0.3, Palm Pre can connect to an Exchange server without using SSL. This is an optional upgrade so if your server does not have SSL support installed you will have to either install a certificate or upgrade to this firmware:

Note: None of the ExchangeDefender servers allow plain text / non-SSL connections. All connections require encryption.

Special gotcha for SBS 2003 users and the SSL Certificate issue: If you use the self-signed certificate automatically generated by CEICW, Palm Pre will attempt to connect to the CN for the .internal host, not the public domain name.

Furthermore, advanced EAS functionality started with Exchange 2003 SP2 so to get the most out of your device you will need to upgrade. The build number for Exchange 2003 SP2 is 7638.2

Conclusion

While Palm Pre supports Exchange to an extent, it is primarily designed as a consumer device and currently does not support the basic security policies required for safe business use. While HTML email, push mail and Exchange sync will work, make sure you consider the security tradeoffs.

Needless to say, the consumer appeal of webOS and Palm Pre will make Palm Pre show up in corporate world just as the iPhone did. Start preparing your network and educating your users now.

Here is a quickie overview of where we’ll be in case you want to meet us, hang out with us, get the new ExchangeDefender shirts, etc.

Tomorrow/Thursday – ASCII Chicago – Nicole

2nd week of July – Microsoft WPC NOLA – Vlad, Nicole, Travis, Jen

1st week of August – CompTIA Las Vegas – Vlad, Nicole, Travis, Jen

2nd week of August – MSPU Los Angeles – Vlad & whoever draws the short straw.

There may be other smaller events through August that I am not aware of….

Folks have been trying to sucker me into this debate that started yesterday with CRN about “the cloud” and how to find a profitable way to it (I believe the title was “Running behind the train you’ve missed and why your sales # isn’t ringing anymore.”)  Everyone from CRN to Joe @ VAR Guy and the endless stream of shameless opportunistic weasels elsewhere are now entering the debate on a conversation that for the most part ENDED nearly three years ago at WPC 2006 with Kevin Turner.

I feel there is some value in encouraging the channel to change when it becomes threatened by technological evolution. My body of work, however ugly, is a reflection of that.

I, however, see no value in shamelessly cheerleading it to the grave. But hey, we all need hope in despair, so by all means you’re free to continue to be delusional if it makes you feel better.

So what’s changed to start this debate over the cloud again? Nothing, really. VARs  started losing money and clients to the cloud, like they were told they would, and now they are ready to pay attention and form a strategy for the cloud. Too late.

A friend of mine writes a blog in which she spends 10% of her time bashing the cloud solutions (many of which she actually uses/plays with) and the other 90% of her time demonstrating why DIY “on-premise” IT Management is about as much fun as doing your own root canal. And all while all her key vendors including Microsoft and Intuit are sending her a clear message – IT’S OVER – she persists to question it. Good news for her is that she has a real job – but the VAR? Not for long I’m afraid.

One of the more vocal folks about the change has been my buddy Karl (smbbooks.com) who last night wrote: “I want to sell that client a new PC every three years until one of us dies.” I (heart) Karl. But what Karl gets, and many others don’t, is that business survival requires change, which was the topic of that post to begin with. What made money yesterday isn’t making money today. The customer has changed the preference.

Does this mean the death of the VAR world? Of course not. In my humble opinion, it’s been dead for at least 2 years and the economic collapse just accelerated the inevitable.

The only bright news for the VAR industry is that there is plenty of work out there painting and putting up drywall in all the forclosure properties.

What about the IT Solution Providers aka “VAR with a business plan not stuck in 2002”? They are doing quite well as far as I can tell. As I’ve written here over, and over, and over, and yes even again today – business is about fulfilling the market demand. So people don’t want to pay for Vista. Or antispyware. Or email. So what if they don’t want a new computer – there is so much money to be made optimizing processes, improving security, mobility, remote access, business continuity, business intelligence. You can focus on that – or sit in a webcast with other defunct businesses trying to get on top of the trend they already missed.

Focus on what the clients want. It doesn’t matter what you want, you’re in the business for the sole purpose of making money. Either get comfortable with that or grab a paintbrush.

Earlier today the team wrapped up our Microsoft WPC plans and agenda. We will be sponsoring the event that I’ve traditionally made my biggest deals at. Microsoft WPC used to be THE event to meet big decision makers, spec out new vendors, work with peers and learn from the best in business.

This year we will be sponsoring WPC for the very first time, coming to it as a stronger and more profitable company than we’ve ever been, with the record growth to boot a very promising future.

Yet, this event will be very bittersweet. Despite the record amount of business we do with Microsoft, they have never been a more irrelevant part of our business future. Our of all our key relationships, we work with Microsoft the least yet send them the most money. Between Dell, HP, Autotask, AhSay, Sophos, ConnectWise and Microsoft, I have the least bit of a working relationship with Microsoft. I’m simply a consumer of their goods.

As someone who has built a company trying to emulate Microsoft’s success in the approach with the partners, I have to admit I’m sad with the direction they have taken the company. I have to admit, even though they are now competition, that I am even more disappointed that it’s not working. Last year I posted a very (appropriate or profane, you be the judge) picture of what Microsoft did to it’s partner base – and by all accounts it’s done more to alienate people from Microsoft and make it less popular than ever before.

As a partner and as a stock holder, I am disappointed.

As a sponsor and a business man, I’m moving forward with Microsoft looking for the win. However, when relationships become “just business” people soon only look at the numbers.

This is a good, albeit tragic, thing to pay attention to no matter where you are in your business maturity: there is a reason why people work with you. If you don’t nurture the very reason people work with you, they will consider your competition even if they don’t win “the feature spec battle.”

So earlier yesterday we were going over our launch plans for our PSA integrations and one of the API’s just doesn’t have the same level of functionality to create and manage contracts and companies remotely. And as I mentioned here, if I do something for one group and not the other the holy war ensues.

So here is the problem we are trying to address: Most of OWN’s services are subscription based and the quantity of subscriptions can vary from month to month because the only way you can make money in services is by giving the end user full control to add / remove / modify services when and how they please. This creates an awesome income effect, until the last of the month when you have to reconcile the accounts between us and your PSA.

Now, you could just enter the service changes into your PSA as OWN notifies you of new services and changes. And I’m the bunny Vlad that makes the cookies.

The So-so-solution…

Yesterday we talked this over and we just can’t find a way to make it happen with a 2-way sync as we do in the other PSA integration.

So I coined a new phrase: 1-way automation. It works like this:

Just tell them to create all the contracts manually. When a new contract is created, we’ll just automate our side of notifying them to create a contract so we can update and modify it remotely.

You call it a crappy email alert. I’ll call it 1-way automation

Now obviously that still falls into the category of “your job is so worthless it could be done by a retarded monkey” so it’s a no-go. We also have no proactive way of running a kick-start script as we do with the other PSA.

So the only thing we got left is screen macro playback. This is the software used in software testing where you can record case scenarios and the software moves the mouse, fills in input fields, scrolls down, fills pages, does stuff in sequence. We can automate creation of a macro that would go through your software, locate company, locate appropriate tabs, create products and services and notes – so we can then automatically sync them via API.

If this were the only way to shave off what is at least 2 hours a month in double data entry, would you do it? Got a better idea? Please voice all your comments and ideas to your OWN/ExchangeDefender Partner Account Manager (not me, please don’t bother as I’m not touching the @vladville.com email until next week as previously noted)

We’re still planning as next Monday being the launch day for all our PSA integrations, 1-way or otherwise

So I mentioned I was going to be a bit silent on the blog for two weeks previously, but that apparently also means “let’s email Vlad for comment”

I appreciate the love, don’t get me wrong, and I enjoy the Vladville character and all the entertainment it brings to those that follow it, but the Vlad that worked 20+ hour days and did more for others than for himself died on Oct 8th, 2006. Today I have a wife, a kid, a dog and over 200 babies that cry for attention / training / paychecks / direction / inspiration every day.

So, give me the two weeks… please. I promise you will enjoy what OWN is putting together for you.

I will be out of the office over the next 2 weeks and will not be available a lot on the phone until after the Microsoft WPC in July. While I’m out you can count on the Orlando and Beverly Hills offices to take care of your every need.

As for me, thanks to many of you, I have a new house and am helping coordinate all the upgrades. After that, I am giving all my time to the ExchangeDefender dev team, reviewing the launch plans for the new line of business and a few other things.

Every now and then we come to the difficult decision, or a set of decisions, that might impact the way our partners work. This is my personal attempt, as the guy who is paying to make all this happen, to explain our situation and answer the questions before you’ve had a chance to form your opinion based on the first few keywords that upset you.

Later this month we (Own Web Now Corp) will be announcing our next generation integrations with Autotask, Connectwise and yes, even Shockey Monkey. This is a significant effort, a significant gesture – because it is in no way a part of our products functionality – to help you think about OWN a lot less and make a lot more money. I will go a step ahead and even say that what we are bringing to the integration picture (and beyond, in custom software for the platforms) is unlike anything available on the market… and if you’re an MSP you owe to give us a look.

On to the imaginary questions:

Q: How are we going to implement the integration? Can I have the white paper? Can you walk me through it?

There are two possible ways to get Own Web Now integrated with your PSA deployment:

Supported – Under this scenario we will offer you the whitepapers, create the integration workflows, queues, service boards, dialin numbers, offer best practices and support the integration when it breaks. This service will come at a reasonable one-time cost and will include training and ongoing best practices from others that use it.

Unsupported – Under this scenario we will send you the whitepapers and wish you the best of luck. This will be available free of charge and will include all the features of our integration suite. No support is available. If you choose this route you will not be able to upgrade to the supported product in the future. I know, I know, while it may make sense for you to try it on your own, fail, and then blame my staff into doing it for you for free while also training you to use your PSA, it is really not a fair scenario and not one I expect to see – you know exactly how much time goes into supporting, managing and billing the solution, so if there is even an ounce of question of whether our service is worth $500 then you have more serious questions to address.

The integration is available between us and Connectwise, Autotask and Shockey Monkey.

Q: We use ____ PSA? Will you integrate with that? When will you integrate with it?

No, we only integrate with Connectwise, Autotask and Shockey Monkey. We never (ever, ever) expect to integrate with anything else. If your product doesn’t contain Connectwise, Autotask or Shockey Monkey we will not integrate with it.

Q: Will the integration be different between different platforms?

While we have tried to bring the identical level of integration to all platforms, there are many factors prohibiting us from offering the same feature set across all platforms. Things contributing to differences between platforms can be attributed to the maturity of the API we are using to integrate with your platform, similarity of data types for services / contracts / products, vendors willingness to assist with problems, vendors restrictions of features across product lines.

Most importantly, our technical inability to create an integration point because of our unwillingness, incompetence and BSTDWOT (better “stuff” to do with our time). It’s not that we are bad people, it’s that your feature request will never generate enough money for us to justify writing the software in the first place.

Q: But..but..but… Vlad! If you can make this work with Autotask, why can’t I have it in Connectwise? Why does it work on the dedicated installation of Connectwise and not hosted? I have this feature in ConnectWise but I’m moving to Autotask Go to save money, I can just assume it will work the same right?

I don’t want to oversimplify this but here it goes: If you see a feature that you don’t have in Connectwise, it’s Arnie Bellini’s fault. If you see a feature you don’t have in Autotask, it’s Bob Godgart’s fault. If it’s a feature that you don’t have in Shockey Monkey then it’s coming in the next release.

Joke aside, see the above answer. The platforms are too different for us to offer the same feature set. If you see a feature in Connectwise that you need in Autotask or your business will implode, please switch to Connectwise. Or vice versa. Again, we are not bad people, we just need to explain that it’s not really apples to apples out there:

All OWN workflow and order management is designed on top of Shockey Monkey. That work is then ported to an extent to two different sync APIs. Some stuff will work with your PSA, some will not. That’s just the reality of software development.

Q: Is this just an elaborate ploy to sell more Shockey Monkey?

No. As a matter of fact, we will not take competitive orders for people looking to switch from Autotask or Connectwise. Truth is, we develop software for our platform and then extend it, within reason, to our partners platforms. We do not have any more advanced access to either platform than any other vendor, we are bound by the same legal and licensing as every other vendor and it’s a leveled playing field.

Q: When will you do ____?

Official answer will always be no. I cannot stress this enough, we are talking about software and features that save you money and make you more productive – I do not want to put more pressure on my staff or shift their focus from our tasks. We don’t write our software in India or China for $2/hr so the feature you are looking for will be available in the next release (maybe not the very next one)

This may sound harsh, and I wanted to give you an idea of the possible conflicts I see in this initiative so you can know where our line is drawn. We will do everything in the power to help out the people that see the value in this.

By all means we’re going to do everything in our power to give our partners an advantage with their PSA choice. All of the above will be made very pretty contract language with blog posts and screenshots to follow.

Another record month, amazing 2009 and the future has never looked better for OWN and ExchangeDefender. We’ve worked very hard to make this possible and huge credit goes to our partners who keep on helping us build the best damn offering out there. Over the years the part of community and involvement was mostly an individual effort, Vlad(tm), but as we started producing more documentation, the SPAM Show, more conference calls and developer feedback… well, we needed someone whose full time job would cover interaction with the community. Meet Jen.

Earlier this Spring we started producing the SPAM Show, many of which Jen has produced and edited. As we add a newsletter, magazine, syndication and few more things we needed someone to handle all the communications, scheduling, etc. You’ll be hearing and meeting Jen who will take over a bulk of my effort with goal of making our training and community outreach a constant. So many people have made SPAM Show (SBS Show prior to that) a core of their training and community participation that it really needed someone in charge of making it a consistent full time presence.

Jen will also be joining Nicole and Travis on the road more in the coming months. As Karl noted earlier, I am not qualified for the after-hours sessions that turn into competitions of who can drink the most and still make it back to their hotel room, so we made sure to hire only the best:

“I was so drunk that night I puked 6 times.”

I can’t wait for her to meet Chris Rue and Mark Crall.

So while I’m sure we’re violating some child labor laws with Travis and Jen, they should keep the spirit of Vladville on the road as I roll out of the scene on my walker into my thirties.