Everywhere you turn today, the focus is away from managed services and towards the cloud and mobility. Consider the biggest news this week: Google allows VoIP calls from Gmail, Apple’s new TV and rental model, and a bunch of stories about location services across multiple vendors and devices.

Hardware not even on the front page – somewhere half way through the newspaper (the model of irrelevance) there is a scribble about some bidding over 3PAR, a company 99% of you have never heard of and 99.9999% never used a product from. 

No, the MSPs haven’t jumped the shark.

We (the entire ecosystem) are more relevant and profitable than we’ve ever been.

It’s just that we’re not exciting to write about because the industry is mature and for the most part dealing with legacy issues – servers, workstations, uptime and other “junk” that rarely sees the front page.

What concerns me… is that the question is being posed to me, repeatedly, by service providers around the globe. Which leads me to the logical conclusion that many of you are also seeing the light at the end of the tunnel – and it’s the locomotive of the train heading right for you. We can certainly match it up with our numbers: the “recovery” hasn’t happened everywhere and in some places it’s only getting worse.

Tip: It’s only there if you choose to look for it. I’m not championing ignorance here – but if you’re only going to stand by doing what you’ve been doing and eat a donut while the great big cloud shark is swimming up from under you.. we all know how the story ends. Microsoft didn’t save anyone with Windows 7, put the koolade down, Aurora / SBS 7 won’t either. You don’t need to change your products, you need to change your business model. It really is as simple as that. And if you won’t – there are new MSPs rolling up their sleeves and getting into it every day. Give me a call, I’ll show you how.

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.

I’m in Dallas for HTG and decided to come in a day early to go through some stuff. Part of that stuff is a meal at McAllisters, a visit to my bank and a pilgrimage to Fry’s. I call it a pilgrimage because it is nearly a religious experience going there – the place knows just what I want.

And mind you, it has a totally crackheaded taste.

For example, yesterday before leaving Orlando I stopped by a Walmart to get a power strip. I hate going on multiday conference business trips because my N+1 redundancy lifestyle doesn’t fit what most hotels consider to be a “business” traveler.

In my business travels I have unplugged lamps, microwaves, TV and DVD sets, mini bars, refrigerators even set electronics to charge in the bathroom. I have 3 cell phones, 2 laptops, 1 camcorder and I’ve actually downsized over the years I also travel with a power strip as a result of it.

So today I went to Fry’s. Guess what they had on sale?

Travel Charging Strip.

I kid you not. $6.99 for a 0 profile 0U power strip with a wraparound low profile cord and power plug. It takes up 1/4 of the space my current strip takes up and it weighs almost nothing.

Now, if you ask me what the other $300 dollars that I spent at Fry’s went to… it gets scarier. Among the selection, a universal rechargeable external battery pack. It charges while your laptop charges. This way I don’t have to charge multiple batteries and if my laptop starts to run out of juice, I can plug it into this 1lb battery pack.

God bless Fry’s and all it’s junk I always needed but nobody decided to make it.

Book. If you are seeing difficult times ahead you have to step your game up. Don’t end up on the corner like Paco, get your learn on.

Erick is doing a 50% sale. Ends next week so hit it today.

IT Service Delivery book is by far the best one you can get regardless of where you are in business. I never read his sales book to be honest, but the IT Service Delivery one breaks down delivery across four different business models and it ought to be your xmas assignment to complete it. I made my monkeys read it.

My buddy Karl is trying to help you in a down economy. Spend $20, get $8 off:

http://smallbizthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/12/end-of-year-sale.html

If you haven’t looked through Karl’s stuff before let me offer you my advice. Get Karl’s Managed Services in a Month for $19.95 and Dave Sobel’s Building a Referral System for $9.99. That brings the total to under $30 and with the bailout cupon that’s $22. Set a weekend aside between now and new years and get your managed on.

People are struggling right now and one thing they definitely cannot afford is big IT bills. Put the info up there to a good use to establish a low cost MSP practice that can build referrals and offer just the basic monitoring and patching that you can do with even free tools. Then make the clients market it for you.

Check out the new stuff in AuthAnvil 1.5:

For starters, there are plenty of fixes and updates to the core system. There are over 50 usability bugs that have been fixed ranging for faster communication in the AuthAnvil DCOM Bridge to support for periods in AuthAnvil usernames.
 
We also include a few new things:
• The new AuthAnvil Web Logon Agent. You can now add strong authentication to web applications using Virtual Directories in IIS6. Look for an update that will also protect complete websites like Sharepoint in the first half of this year.
• The new AuthAnvil RADIUS Server. Microsoft’s Internet Authentication Server is toast… as is our IAS extension. With all the problems IAS posed for our premium customers who wished to use it along with MIcrosoft’s ISA server, we have found a better solution which also allows us to now support ful MSCHAP2 VPN,
• More documentation. You asked for it. So it’s now on the ISO.

Coolest of all – I saw AuthAnvil on a Windows Home Server today. We’re looking to use AuthAnvil as our main offering of securing the hosting side of hosted solutions since that happens to be the #1 part of paranoia when it comes to remote workers.. It’s always about differentiation.

But check out AuthAnvil, its BY FAR the most affordable thing out there when it comes to two factor authentication. If your projects fell through because you submitted an RSA quote with your pitch, you’re going to be a big fan of Dana’s.

I fly. A lot. That has allowed me to become an expert psychopath that can only come about through extended exposure to the airline customer service.

I always get a free upgrade to those “more leg room” seats that the airlines sell for a hefty fee during checkin. More legroom! Leave it to the airlines to make it a benefit to feel a sense of responsibility as the plane potentially plunges to the ground in a fireball from 37,000 feet.

Case and point, my flight from Dallas back to Orlando. The round trip cost $233 but the one way upgrade was $90. One way! Not even to the first class with the Denny’s class breakfast. For an emergency exit.

Nobody is dumb enough to upgrade to that, and those seats are always empty. And after you spend a few flights from LA to Orlando with your body so contorted that your balls are behind your ears and you’re scratching the small of your back with your eyelash you start to notice things…. Like how nobody asks to see your ticket? Yet as you sit on your 90 minute delayed flight they won’t let you move up to the emergency exit row seats until all 32 passengers have boarded the 757.

So I act like the airline. Show up late. You know how they fake the feeling of an overbooked flight by calling for passengers in stages and groups determined by the random numer of times they will kick your luggage down the tarmac? I ignore it. I try to be behind the dude waving the ground crew off behind the airplane. Why? Because in their illusional sense of departure they don’t show you the Cirque de Soleil production that is happening in the tunnel leading up to the damn plane. When they are doing last call and calling my name they aren’t also mentioning how an elderly woman who just got out of a wheelchair is holding 20 people in the tunnel hostage while she tries to muscle a grand piano sized box of sudoku puzzles into an ashtray of an overhead compartment.

So as the control tower gives the pilot their runway information, I run onto the plane looking like just finished a marathon: “Phew. Phew. Ok. Thank god I made it.”

And then I sit in that vacant $90 upgraded seat like my name was embroidered into the headrest. 34B, kiss my ass!

(Typed on a BJ from 18D, E and F!)

Yahoo! acquired Zimbra earlier tonight for cool $350 mil in cash. Zimbra, for the uninformed crowd basically means: Exchange features on Linux. Though its a lot more than that (collaboration, AJAX interfaces) the bottom line is that this is (or was) the main competition to Microsoft Exchange – Lotus and friends included. I must admit, Yahoo! is a surprise, what does Yahoo! gain (or what does Zimbra lose). Smelling the synergy? Here is how they are selling it: 

At the heart of this merger is the conviction that email is a core application and Yahoo! can continue to expand its leadership to new markets using Zimbra. For Zimbra, it was the opportunity to grow our footprint at an accelerated pace and the opportunity to provide innovative and new ways to use Yahoo!’s vast SDKs, trusted brand, vast network of users, great communication applications, core email technology like anti-spam and search as well as its ad network to bring in innovative combined solutions to markets that are still left untapped. At every step of the way, we will ensure that Customers have the freedom of choice in what they deploy.

Zimbra is clearly the big winner here. $350 mil in cash, free advertising, bigger footprint and customer base to pitch to.

What does Yahoo! gain? This takes away from their “everything ought to be hosted on our Yahoo! everything systems” and provides people with a downloadable on-premise, or more key – away from Yahoo!-privacy-concernville. Yahoo! now owns a piece of infrastructure incompatible with their message so was this huge deal just a takeaway to keep a key component away from someone else that has recently been talking about “offlining” their data?

Time will tell, congrats to the boys at Zimbra, Ferrari in every color is the only way to go….

The good news about Windows Server 2008 just keeps on piling up. Even without the WinFS and Virtualization features built in, Windows Server 2008 looks great and the IIS and infrastructure improvements are making a lot of us drool already. How will you roll it out is an easy question to answer, just work with the betas now and you will have a handle on it by the time it ships. But how do you prove to others that you can roll it out, correctly, securely and the first time? Through a little thing called professional industry certifications.

For that you have to listen to Trika Harms zum Spreckel, lady with a long name and lots to say about Micrsoft Certifications. Trika talks about training, certifications, Microsoft Learning and other cool stuff that separates professionals from… well.. hobbyists. And it’s darn important in SMB as well. If your company stands for more than its ability to scheme customers into buying Microsoft solutions then it ought to be getting you one of the leading technology certifications – MCSE on Microsoft Windows Server 2008.

This week Trika is offering a 40% discount on the upgrade exams to MCSE on Windows Server 2008. Sign up now, these are by no stretch of the imagination “easy”;

Bit of a short notice (it’s in two weeks) but a good one nonetheless. I have a $200 discount code for SMBTN Summit, if you’re interested in going and use the following promo code they will knock off $200 from the registration fee: SMBVLAD07

The event is in about two weeks and judging by the content the premier event for the SMB IT shop owner. Take a look at the sessions, they are a head and shoulders beyond anything else out there. I talked to the conference organizers (they are SBSers like us, SBS group leaders, etc) and you’ve probably met them if you’ve gone to the SMB events in the past – they decided to take the conference a step further and not focus on the basics. I think if you look at the topics you’ll agree. You can see the details here: http://www.smbsummit.com/

The event is in Los Angeles (DisneyLand actually) from March 15th – March 17th.

It’s worth the trip, I’m ducking out of the MVP summit early for this one so hopefully that gives you some indication of value.

P.S. Ok, apologies to the OC snobs: The event is in Anaheim, Orange County, NOT Los Angeles. Apparently being 20 miles west of Compton makes it a whole different world. And speaking of Compton, if you’re driving by say hello to Erick Simpson.