Over the next two months we will be unveiling our grand strategy for the deployment and management of cloud services in SMB. We have been wildly successful with this model for years and it’s what’s attributed to the phenomenal growth of Own Web Now.

Note: This is being piloted through HTG partners first and it’s the only way to get it right now. It is not an exclusive arrangement by any means, it’s just that a lot of companies in HTG reviewed, guided and helped design this model for us. Later this year it will be available for everyone and through our alliances.

Ok, now that we got the messy part let’s get straight to the point:

We are going direct!!!

If you haven’t had a heart attack or a brief moment of blurred vision, congratulations. You’ve worked with me before, you know what I’m all about. No, Own Web Now Corp is not going direct. No way, no how.

But we have built a brandable (your label) portal, workflows, support and accounting processes to enable you to go direct and not incur the costs of supporting our own products. Here is what we’ve got:

• Free branded portal secured with SSL (https://yourportal.yourcompany.com)
• Free backend integration to ConnectWise and Autotask for service orders, service tickets, account configurations, inventory and statistics.
• Free support services for all our products. Your users can open support requests either through this portal, or through your own ConnectWise or Autotask and automatically get delegated to us for resolution.
• Free updates to inventory and configurations, when something changes on our end it also changes in your own home portal so you can always bill properly.

The big picture here is that you can now offer cloud based services backed by a SAS 70 – Type II audited company, with a full SLA, redundancy and history to back it all up.

So without the cost of supporting, or accounting or actually maintaining and managing the service… because hint: Users can make their own orders and changes for things like Exchange hosting… what are you going to do with the markup?

I’m buying a Ferrari or two. But that’s just me.

Most of you have seen this path a long time ago – there is no ignoring the consumer that wants a cheap cloud solution. But as so many of the HTG members said over and over again.. if we can’t make a margin, we can’t do it. Well, Own Web Now has always been behind the channel and now we’re doing it again.

Oh… and one more thing:

There has been a little company out of Cali that has for year been a giant pain in my butt. It’s the only one we lose to competitively. Why? Price. Always comes down to price. Well, we’ve optimized ExchangeDefender to the point that the new release (ExchangeDefender 5) runs in 1/5th the infrastructure the v4 did.

So for the first quarter of ExchangeDefender 5, all new accounts will come with a new price. $0.75. No minimums. One user at a time. Full feature set. Everyone you sign up at that price level will stay at that price level.

Oh… and just one more thing: Instead of launching the product and providing education, marketing and training after you’ve already grown frustrated with the product: We’re spending all of November holding webcasts, training and producing your direct marketing collateral. Bigger partners also get MDFs.

So when December 1st, 2009 strikes… I will have the biggest month in the company history. Vladdy needs a new Ferrari and a bigger market share.

Game on. I’ll be in Orlando pimping this stuff all of next week.

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