We’re now up to the fifth podcast in the OWN Partner Call series and joining me today is Dana Epp, CEO of Scorpion Software. Dana has been on our SBS Show before and as the Microsoft MVP in Security he is no stranger when it comes to the podcasts, blogging and SMB Conferencing in general.

So why should you bother to listen to the nearly 50 minute long discussion over TFA/OTP?

Because we sat around and had a security sales conversation. Learn how to intelligently discuss the security without fear mongering your clients, establish it as a point of differentiation and give your clients the flexibility of adding the extra level of security one user at a time. With customers always being reserved towards arming their entire staff with the latest and greatest gadgets, security does not have to fall into that category - Dana and I partnered up to bring a fully managed AuthAnvil solution at $20/month per employee.

Yes, $20.

Think you can make money offering that?

Now think about my spin on this - I’m now the only one able to offer cloud services with two factor authentication forever ending the paranoia of “But if it’s on the Internet anyone can look at it, right?”

Oh, and its being built into Shockey Monkey. Quick, does your PSA have integrated two factor security? So that thing you keep your passwords, customer credit cards, remote VNC access to the clients portals.. anyone that can sniff your password has access to it?

Year in the making folks, we’re here to kick some booty, stop playing around and pour some jet fuel onto your marketing. What in your offering makes you any different than the 200 other indianinabucket.com resellers in your city? I’ve got a whole stack of things, are you interested? AIDA!

Download it, listen to it, think about it…

Son, you have to earn the pimp hat. I am not sure how young you have to be to start moving software but Tim is getting an early start: effective immediately Own Web Now in partnership with Scorpion Software is bringing you safer small business computing.

One person at a time.

At $20 a month.

Complex? See below.

Game changer? You bet. Where do you sign up? Here.

Passwords are the most frustrating thing for system administrators and MSPs to manage. Make them too easy and you get hacked. Make them too difficult and the staff complains, forgets their password and opens trouble tickets which eats into overall profitability and security of the organization. We can fix that!

With Scorpion Software AuthAnvil and one time password authentication you are issued a token, a keychain, with a constantly rotating short password. When you try to login into your organization you are prompted for your password but you are now also prompted for another password which you copy from the security key. This allows clients to have simple passwords and passphrases and never worry about being hacked with a password that was compromised, guessed, keylogged on a kiosk or sniffed over the air. For $20/month per employee you have one less thing to worry about!

We are partnering with Scorpion Software to make this affordable.

We are doing it one person at a time. Yes, just one. Got a small client where only one or two people travel and need additional security for SBS Remote Web Workplace? You can get it one at a time!

We are integrating this into Shockey Monkey and ExchangeDefender.  We are working with Scorpion Software on integrating this into Exchange 2007 and will have discounts for the companies that subscribe to the above services.

Most importantly, we are making this EASY. We will configure the service for you. We will install and deploy the configuration. You can use it on any server or as many servers as you want to. Going forward, you will have ability to use the same technology with other popular services including some you will see on this very blog

I told you we’re changing the game. OWN is here for you, what are you waiting for?

Why is it that people only seek to open up the community channels, ask for feedback, have an ongoing conversation and attempt to win hearts and minds after they have launched a nuclear assault?

In case you have been out for the past week, last week Microsoft made an announcement that due to the pressures in the marketplace from Google, Apple, SalesForce and others it has to change it’s business model to be direct with the customer. While traditional business model will still be there, Microsoft will push for more and more direct business.

On the face of it, this is nothing new as Microsoft has already competed in consulting with Microsoft Consulting, as well as direct financial and licensing relationship with the customers with Software Assurance and Microsoft Financing. The new angle in the conversation pertains to the Microsoft offering ongoing services to the client which rightfully entitles them to fully managing the client, marketing solutions that compete with the current technology or support provider, bringing in their preferred partners instead of the ones currently in the account, etc.

Was Microsoft simply foolish when they came up with the S+S model that effectively destroys their partner community? Microsoft is a lot of things but they are not fools. In the process of pricing and designing services you look at what your competitors are doing.

I was put through the same cycle of advisory blindness when Google purchased Postini. “But boss, they are advertising their prices on their homepage with one-click purchase, can’t we do away with the partner program application?” In short, no, because we are a partner company.  Somehow people failed to remind Microsoft of that when they me S+S ed up their strategy. I’ll tell you exactly what they did - they looked at the Google Apps or SalesForce and thought:

“You know what, instead of pushing this through Volume Licensing that requires a lot of paperwork why don’t we just do what Google does and we’ll even one up it, we’ll give them 6% commission for just doing the referral. Let’s face it, nobody that is interested in this will work with the partner anyhow, and they get a few bucks out of every conversation so we can go direct and be partner friendly at the same time!”

Where Microsoft lost it’s partner community in the me S+S is in the fact that we know their business and their business practices better than they do. We know how Microsoft markets. Sign up for a few newsletters and they give you a few more. One group pushes another and the TechNet subscription offering with an enticing free software offer comes up in the sidebar. Soon even Microsoft Action Pack and MPAN find their way into the newsletter. Coincidence? No, just trying to break into the account with a Microsoft solution. Genius. Want to see how this plays out for you when you recommend or offer Microsoft solutions?

Microsoft owns the client. They need to stay in touch with them and offer them valuable services of course. Why not use the opportunity to upsell?

    Click here to buy Vista Ultimate, now 30% less!!!

Partner just lost a licensing deal. Microsoft should also be an active participant in the community. So it should naturally invite it’s customers to local events where material can be tailored for the customer that is not managed by a partner.

    See how easy customizing CRM is? Let’s do a quick marketing blitz!

Partner just lost on the advisory fees, consulting and perhaps further sales. But what is the ultimate exit?

Growing? Need local servers? Need managed services? Want help with migration from Lotus Notes or SalesForce? Well check this out, our partner locator. Which ZIP code do you live in sir?

Quick question, who climbs to the top of the partner locator? The partners who take clients best interest and recommend software and solutions that make sense and not ones that collect the most PAM and Microsoft Partner Program Points? Good night.

Let me repeat: Microsoft is not a fool. They know what they are doing. They likely have a ton of metrics and numbers to justify the fact that the SMB consulting space should not exist beyond a certain level. To an extent, I agree with them in that and have written extensively on how you can avoid falling into the dinosaur herd.

Microsoft made a fatal mistake in it’s direct approach because it showed it’s hands.

No number of adjustments to the course is going to make partners feel easy about the long-held suspicion that Microsoft is after our clients. They just came out and confirmed those fears, laid down the rules of the game, pegged the partner value at 6%, dictated ownership of the client and the right to do with them as they please.

Where does this leave you? Well, you could jump the crocodiles from one solution after another and hope to stay one step ahead of Microsoft as they move all their applications to the cloud and make the on-premise or partner solution unprofitable or unjustifiably expensive.

Does the significance of the problem make sense to you yet?

Does it now make it painfully clear why I’ve written so many sharp articles bashing the mindset of SPF and riffraff? Did you listen to me all this time that I’ve been waning you about the impact the SMB space will feel as the complexity of the solution spectrum goes away? Do you now understand the value of having a business over a specialty and a passing hobbyist interest in making a sustainable wage without taking it seriously? For your sake, I hope it did. You may not enjoy every picture and agree with everything I say, but if I were out to screw you do you really think I would waste all of my time talking to you about it? How do you like me now? Still afraid to call and talk to the big bad evil Vlad? Have you made your decision yet cause the clock is ticking… the only thing that has changed is that you don’t have to blindly trust me anymore because the cards are on the table.

If you are a man or a woman hoping to have children, don’t look down

Do we offer Blackberry? No. Why? Well, for starters I think BES is the biggest piece of s*it software ever written combined with the dumbest network implementation ever. Canada should be forced by NATO to apologize for RIM and be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Anyone purchasing a Blackberry should be profusely beaten with it, strangled with its cord, then have it wrapped in barbwire and showed straight up their candy …

Will we ever offer it? Yeah, over my dead body.

Vlad recently went for a swim in the Pacific:

Deal!

Own Web Now Corp proudly announces immediate availability of BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1 on our global enterprise-class Exchange 2007 network. In addition to availability from European Union, United States of America and Australia, the widest shared Exchange 2007 network now offers customers the choice and flexibility over their own mobility platform. Own Web Now platform for communications now includes 10GB Exchange 2007 mailboxes, SharePoint 2007 and mobility solutions powered by Windows Mobile 6, iPhone 2.0 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

With the WPC announcements out of the way, it’s back to business at OWN. This week has some huge news, first of which comes our way from the north.

So, what are we up to? Data centers all over Canada? Nah, that’s a bit boring. Our enterprise-class offsite backups with SQL and brick level exchange at $1/GB? Nah, already been done.

Tune in tomorrow to find out what it’s all about. One of them will literally change the way you think about the cost of security in the SMB space.

Indeed we do, as cliché as it may sound. Microsoft and Microsoft Partners have a problem. Few problems are among us as partners, some are between us together and our competitors and clients. But we have serious problems that have only been amplified by the WPC’s show of ignorance for the concerns SMB IT have voiced.

Microsoft WPC is supposed to energize the partner community, give it full faith in the products and services Microsoft will offer next, reinforce the Microsoft leadership in the industry and motivate us all to work together with Microsoft to benefit our clients. How did it go this year?

Microsoft failed this year by all accounts and with everyone I spoke to.

Lack of Vision: Software + Services. The catchphrase has been hammered into our brains permanently, in a largely meaningless way, and repeated every minute of every keynote. Yet it failed to clearly communicate exactly where Microsoft will lead, where Microsoft will empower its partners and where it will directly compete with us. The only clear inference is that Microsoft is starting to distance itself from the “applications on a local network with a server and some remote access” strategy it has become so dominant with.

Lack of Professionalism: Microsoft is no stranger to taunting competitors and challengers. Back when Microsoft was the dominant force in personal and business computing and a beloved technology leader the jabs came off as a spirited proclamation of victory. Last week they were soaked in desperation, paralyzing and often directionless. Kevin Turner took shots at every vendor that competed against every solution Microsoft builds, clearly failing to understand that as solution providers and developers in the real world we actually partner and work with the people he was calling out. Sorry Kevin, but Microsoft has not kept up with the marketplace demands, the illusion that Microsoft tools are the best in every scenario for every company only exists in your head, solving Microsoft shortcomings with Microsoft software is not something that is easily sold to even the most gullible of CIOs.

Lack of Partner Direction: By far the biggest disappointment of the show. All of Microsoft’s executives failed to clearly communicate the partnership benefits. That is why partners pack the keynotes, to find a way to partner up with Microsoft. If you want to gloat about how fabulous you are and talk about exciting commission schedules as a brand recommender and a sales agent you might want to go work for Mary Kay. This is the biggest quagmire for Microsoft – it’s competitors are more agile because they do not have to work with partners to go to market. Infrastructure solutions are easy enough to offer and both Google and Apple and Amazon are beating Microsoft to the market, with far simpler and less convoluted solutions. How can Microsoft compete with its partners in a solution ecosystem that doesn’t require partners to begin with?

Lack of Problem Recognition: Apple absolutely decimates the public image of Microsoft’s new system and Microsoft sits back. Microsoft is constantly challenged as a company without ability to come out with anything new that captivates the business and consumer marketplace – and they dust off the research lab professors and robots that wouldn’t even make it into cheesy 70’s vision of the future. Microsoft partners pay thousands of dollars to come to the WPC to hear how Microsoft intends to fix the Vista issues and are instead handed the blame for not pushing Vista hard enough and driving deployments.

Lack of Broad Excitement: Don’t underestimate how relevant broad excitement by the overall global IT community may be. Blogs. Newsgroups. Web TV. Even more mainstream technology sites largely ignored the significant news coming from the event. In a time where Microsoft is being attacked on all sides – devices, servers, workstation operating systems, entertainment – Microsoft’s competitors are capturing the imagination and excitement of the technology enthusiasts and evangelists leaving Microsoft in their ridiculed middle aged man self as depicted in Apple commercials which are less funny with each passing day and just pointing out the obvious. Microsoft is slowly turning into IBM. Quick, how much IBM software do you run today? Microsoft as a platform is not just a .exe anymore. With AIR, with the cloud application deployments that can be multiplatform from the start, with even iPhone, Microsoft had to excite and give a great reason for someone to develop for their platform and make it relevant. In faling to do so, Microsoft jeopardizes their future.

Of All The Epic Fails…

Microsoft’s competitors just can’t do anything to wrong the client. Google ships 12 Tb of logs to a private company and destroys any faith anyone could possibly have in them yet they continue to be the most well respected brand and an emerging solution for all your business, personal and social problems. Apple bricks thousands of phones, downs their cloud me solution for days, makes their customers stand in the line for hours while their systems crash, cripples their devices and clients not only take the abuse but live to rave about how great the ends justified the experience.

Meanwhile Microsoft cannot even get its most loyal partners to consider a move from a six year old platform. With the clients showing less and less willingness to pay for the essentials and the rising competence of Microsoft’s core competitors in Apple and Linux it is hard to find what Microsoft’s vision is. Yes, Software + Services as we heard the first 5,000 times but what does that actually mean? How does Microsoft compete with the ad sponsored software? How does Microsoft compete with totally free software?

You have to be a heck of a Microsoft fanboy to look past these obstacles and answer these questions.

I am one of those unapologetic Microsoft fanboys and even I am shaking my head at this.

Microsoft clearly no longer wants to work with partners on a broad scale. Sure on the low end they want to train “partners” to be their evangelists and SA resellers. On the high end, Microsoft wants the partners to fill in the gap in the solution portfolio until Microsoft can catch up to them and replace with their own solutions. You may even scrape by in the complex infrastructure migration space where a company magically wants to replace their current infrastructure mess with a new release of more of the same and face the same problem five years down the road. Little holes, little gaps, little opportunities.

Where are the partners?

That is the key question that remained vague and unanswered. Yeah, we got it, Software + Services!

Where am I as a Microsoft partner? In 2008, higher and higher. We’ll do more business with Microsoft this year than ever before, with two huge undertakings under way. Past that, I have to admit, I am less decisive of aligning my business with Microsoft because for the first time in my Microsoft partnership I doubt their direction and seriously question their ability to be successful across the board. I don’t see where OWN fits in Microsoft’s quest to fight against itself and cannibalize its own self interests and pricing premiums. I doubt and refuse to commit my development resources on a Microsoft network that has a goal of competing with free and AdSense, I sell the value of my solutions not their mass appeal to resell others. As Dare Obsanjo mentioned this weekend, giving sh*t away is not a business model.

Steve, Kevin, Allison… you need to go back to the drawing board.

You failed to draw up a clear picture for us to be a partner in your business plan.

You have put us in an uncomfortable position where we must reevaluate our business plan and you can count that we’re going to our own drawing board, with an eraser.

Microsoft, Houston.. we have a problem. We need to be involved. Decisions and announcements you’ve made this week will make the business in the short term very good, but they ignore the long term strategy problems that have us all uncertain and desperate for answers. Answers that you have failed to provide. Those concerns don’t go away, they just fume and seriously impact our relationship in the future, which in turn limits your ambitions for the future. You need to come up with something, fast. Where does Microsoft want to go today? I honestly can’t answer that question. Can you? Can Microsoft? Everywhere is not a direction, it’s lack thereof. Microsoft, the clock is ticking - fix this while we’re still listening.

P.S. I have told Microsoft a year ago that their model will not work. I have warned partners in many posts to start thinking cloud strategy in their own service model. I have changed my business model as a result of it, I have broadened OWN reach of Microsoft cloud to native deployments in EU and in Australia, I have offered 10x as much as Microsoft does, I have a long track record of being brutally honest even when it may not be the most popular thing to say, I have thousands of partners worldwide, a mature service-oriented organization. I really do not appreciate folks offending my friends or trying to volunteer me for advisory councils or more free work, I have no intention of helping Microsoft fix the mistake I’ve given them a years worth of heads-up on. If you want this to be fixed so badly to work for you, I have fixed it. It’s called Own Web Now Corp. Hit the partner link and grow your business. Or sit back and complain while Microsoft makes you extinct. I intend to invest the next year of my professional blogging towards helping SMB prepare and embrace the cloud and grow it as a part of the solution portfolio, not as a replacement for a 6% fib. As Alec Baldwin said in Glengarry Glen Ross: “Get mad you sons of bitches.” Microsoft, do likewise. We all want our clients to get the best service at the best possible price with the best possible company. I am making sure OWN is a part of that solution. I am begging Microsoft to come aboard. I am begging you to consider it too. The choice is yours, let’s go!

Yesterday was an interesting day to say the least. Microsoft made a huge announcement about their Software + Services initiative that directly compromises the value of not just their own products but of their partner program as well. You’ve already seen my opinion of it, in a raw way that only Vladville can deliver, and today we actually talk shop about it on the OWN Partner Call #2 with Scott Colson.

Scott is a good friend and a long time partner that has sold pretty much everything OWN has produced. We even sell CRM together if you can believe it. So when I saw him pop up on IM last night a lightbulb in my head switched on - here is someone who already has to compete with Microsoft CRM Online in his CRM specialty. Scott’s company, Autonomix, provides both traditional infrastructure (managed services) as well as special CRM deployments including customization and development. With Microsoft already being in his space, what does Scott think of the new additions to the S+S space and what is his business model?

Tune in and find out. Best 20 minutes you’ll spend today to sum up all of yesterdays events impacts on our space.

Still seeking the title for the podcast. I was thinking of going with “How Successful IT People Make Money” but it seemed a little too arrogant for the professional corporate podcast. Suggestions, ideas, opinions?

Pardon the maritime references; For what it’s worth, the line is used to lift the sail up so that the ship can sail faster in a new direction. So in terms of the series of blog posts crossing the metaphores between The Beatles Lucy in the sky with diamonds, the colonial and penal ships sailing around the world to establish new colonies, yada, yada, yada… this post title therefore infers that we will be doing something new with the wind to get us moving faster. My god, I’ve completely lost it.

If you haven’t read any of the posts on this thread, I understand. Self gloating gets tiring. Most of it is unlikely to impact you at all if you don’t work with us. The following will and I hope you take a moment to understand where I’m coming from and what I am about to do.

In the long, long ago, I started a consulting business. We designed network solutions, built workstations and servers, started writing system management software and antispam stuff.. fast forward to now. We have a mature enterprise consulting group. We have one of the leading infrastructure companies, in terms of customers, in terms of network diversity, and in terms of presence. We have an ISV arm that develops all the things you are aware of and all the things you’ve never heard of. Fingers crossed, by the end of the year we’ll be doing a lot more stuff. Point being, none of this happened overnight, I worked very hard and very long with a lot of people to get my company where it is now. About two years ago I had announced my intention not to die under the glow of the computer monitor, at 4:10 AM auditing an event log. Over time I reduced my work hours, got married, started a family, had a kid.. and the company grew more and more, and it is poised to go even further.

As I started pulling back from being the main operational monkey, and focusing on other things, I sat in a lot of meetings, conferences, advisory panels and just sunk a lot of hours into trying to figure out what it is we do here. Are we an ISV? Are we a Global VAR? Are we an antispam company? Does it matter to anyone? Turns out the marketing message only matters to the marketing people, the folks that sit around and talk about the web page that nobody visits as the next book to be included in the bible, counting the number of times you have to repeat word “process” or “leader” in order to prove a point to the guy that is scavaging the site to figure out some obscure detail we failed to document.

What this business (Own Web Now Corp) was built on, what it grows on and what it will continue to succeed on is much simpler than that. It’s called relationships and working with our partners and clients to help them be more profitable by spending less time on special systems where they have a tiny need/opportunity and helping them pull of giant projects only we and IBM can deliver.

Welcome our new web site…

Last week Judy and I sat down and scraped the whole pile of marketing crap and instead looked how to reduce the amount of junk filler we have and instead focus on how to get people to come to our site, learn something new and move on even if they don’t buy anything. We are not a retail op, impulse purchases off the web site are not very likely nor important, but it is important to stay true to our heritage of being a company that works together with partners and clients, not one that sits behind vendor tables and hands out dead trees. Call it antimarketing.

Our new web site:

http://www.OwnWebNow.com

But dude, what am I looking at?

The first thing you’ll notice is that there is no signup button. No buy me now. Even all of our products are not described. What about the specs? What about the flash? I need cute pictures to make a decision damnit!!!! I know, hold on, it will be there. There is a point to this exercise:

Most of the web sites in the IT consulting space, b2b or b2c, suck. They suck because it takes far too much time to design, it is outdated immediately, it is not relevant to the audience and it doesn’t serve a purpose. At all. So instead of working on our corporate identity, instead of drawing people to it, instead of constantly refreshing and educating our partners and clients - we come up with another distraction to further fragment our presence. OWN is a small company. We have three sharepoint portals, two web servers, two knowledge bases, one blog and one managed folder that I know of. There are likely more.

To me it matters very little how my web site scales with my competitors in terms of revenues generated from the web - read the bank balance, bitch - what matters to me is that we have this awesome opportunity to take what we do every single day and put it towards improving our partners and clients.

My favorite self-proclaimed RiffRaff general Andy Goodman and I talk once a month, sometimes more. I don’t want to out Andy but he makes a lot of money for OWN. He ain’t no RiffRaff, those tshirts are expensive! Same with Mark Crall. Do we talk about some super secret squirrel club way to take over the world? No. We talk about business, we talk about technology, we talk about business plans. We do things that makes being in this industry fun and we’d talk to you about it in person no matter what.

I have never entered into a conversation with the words “So who do you use for antispam..” and I don’t really see a reason to start to now. Moreover, I have a new problem, with more people from OWN working directly with my partners and customers, do they know what we’re all about?

I am advertising to myself.

My marketing message is that I need to sell myself, my partners, my employees, my vendors and my wife on what it is we do around here. If I can manage to do that, we’ll find someone to sell this to. If I don’t I guess I’ll go work at McDonalds and buy some AdSense to promote our solutions. It beats growing old and fat and having to wear pink pants and a megaphone to attract attention.

I (know from partner feedback) that people buy more than a product and a service from OWN. They buy into a relationship. I want to share that with you, although if you’re reading this blog you already know how I go about things.

Summary

We are all at a point where our businesses must change in order to survive. I am going to share the development of our message, our value proposition, our web site marketing, traffic trends, what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t have all of the above problems, keep on working hard and you soon will. First, I’ll comment here on what we say and how we say it, to give you an idea of how we’re trying to position our hosted messaging and collaboration products that we’ve been selling all along. In a world of Gmail and Live, a $10/10 GB Mbox needs to fight too.

Second, to celebrate the launch of the new web site and our new dedication to improving our partners and working better together, we’re doing a series of podcasts from the Microsoft WPC. Tune in every night this week to find out the latest WPC events as seen by our partners.

Finally, remember that little SBS Show thing Chris and I used to do? Yeah, it’s grown up a little bit, and you can download the latest show here: http://www.ownwebnow.com

I hope this post and the one that will follow later tonight and tomorrow reaffirm the commitment to our partners and clients that we’ve built a business on top of. Stay tuned Oh, and join in

In light of our recent global expansion I feel it is my duty to explain to you just what kind of business plan is needed to make your business successful in the world of software as a service. I think a lot of people have this mentality that SaaS is simply a way to replace all onsite infrastructure and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean, what would you do if I came to you and said this:

“Ok Mr. ITPRO, here is what I’m going to do. I am going to spend a ton of money marketing directly to your customers the advantages of not hiring you to build their business infrastructure but to have them sign a contract directly with us so we can have a financial as well as a service provider relationship with them. Oh you? Umm. Ok, how about this, we’ll gave you 5% off the revenues. We can co-own the customer! Thats about 50 cents a month for a hosted Exchange, surely you can run a  business with that much money, right? Ok, listen, since I’m such a nice guy, I am going to double that! I’ll give you a whole dollar during the first year.

You can be a specialist trusted advisor reseller recommender of our service! Just turn all of your customers over to me!”

Ridiculous, but most people believe that is the SaaS model? What kind of an asshole would ever pitch that? I would rightly expect you to punch any moron that said something like that square in the mouth.

But enough of my telepathic abilities, let’s talk about our recent announcements in a way that can actually make you money instead of destroying your business.

Have you ever wondered just why Microsoft has completely fallen apart over the last few years, seemingly chasing one cloud technology after another while the existing problems just mount higher and higher and their efforts go largely ignored? They are doing so because Microsoft is on the defensive against companies like Google, SalesForce, Zoho and others that are promising incredible storage limits for just a few bucks a month (which is a deception to begin with because nobody actually ever approaches even 20% of the supposed limits without subscribing to every mailing list on the planet). But Microsoft has to fight the perception. Microsoft also has a problem that the world of business software is losing its pricing premium and the customer demands immediate gratification. Google and Yahoo have been able to provide communications mediums for free or very little using ad supported portals. How is Microsoft to compete in a marketplace where free is the king?

They can’t, they don’t and they end up chasing one failed idea after another all while burning all the bridges they built with the partners over the years.

Sooner than later, even your own customers will be asking you why they can get SalesForce for $X and you are proposing a system that seemingly does the exact same thing but needs a Windows Server, an Exchange Server, a SQL Server and enough licensing and labor to buy a luxury sedan.

These are not the customers that are going to buy a server.

These are not the customers that are going to buy managed services.

These are the customers that are willing to pay for the advice, that will one day grow to the point of needing some more - remember, Microsoft software is still the king of business software. Not to mention all the other needs that come with even a mobile office - software backups, licensing renewals, antivirus, etc. Who is going to provide all that?

Are you man enough to take their money?

Listen, you can dig yourself into a mental hole of thinking that none of these services are ever going to be taken up by anyone or that anyone interested in them is not your target client. Good luck. Or you can draft a business plan that includes these services in your portfolio so when opportunities present themselves for you to spend time consulting, you can actually get paid for talking to them it instead of building their networks. Time is money after all.

Now, why should you bother partnering with us?

Global presence.

24/7/365 support.

Business with leadership involved in the IT community, accessible and able to make special deals depending on the needs.

But you already know that, after all, you are reading this blog.

What you don’t know, and what separates us from the others in the market is:

Pricing and Contract Power

It is up to you what you charge your customers. It is also your god given right to let them nickel and dime themselves to oblivion if they so choose. The new Shockey Monkey service order panel that every MSP will get for free will let you set your own pricing on your portal, set limits on the amount of services they can order, let them pick and choose which services are a la carte. You actually get to build your business, I know, what a novel idea

Branding

Starting with July, all our solutions and customer access control panels will be brandable in the same way that ExchangeDefender is. Your logo, your color scheme, your terms of service, your business.

Centralized Management

No more getting services through tickets, all the service management will be central, consolidated, under your logo, at your price and managed from a single panel in Shockey Monkey.

MSP Tool Integration

Connectwise, and working with Autotask to import the asset information, statistics and service data into the way you manage your business.

Oh… and there is a little something else to this:

WE WILL NEVER DISRESPECT YOU BY IGNORING THE FACT THAT THIS IS YOUR BUSINESS, YOUR CLIENT AND YOUR CALL WHAT YOU CHARGE AND WE WILL NEVER COMPETE WITH YOU OVER YOUR BUSINESS AND WE WILL NEVER MOVE YOUR CLIENTS FROM YOUR ACCOUNT TO ANOTHER PROVIDERS ACCOUNT.

I think that was important enough to put in caps, because it differentiates one of the most important factors you need to consider in this whole equation: TRUST. If you cannot trust the company you are about to partner up with on the basics of business courtesy - respect for the partner-client relationship, respect for your right to set your pricing, respect for the right to provide your own support, respect for you to be the main point of contact and representation of the company - how in the world can you TRUST them on anything else?

Your clients trust you. We want to be in a position where you can trust us to run the servers and networks and make Exchange, SharePoint, Offsite Backups and web application hosting redundant, reliable and affordable. If you have a question about that, 877-546-0316 extension 500. My name is Vlad Mazek, I’m the CEO, and I’m here if you need a real partner to make a business around these new solutions.

Are you interested? I know you are because it’s ____ or ____ (comment for iPod)

Time to consider this stuff is right now. This minute. Because if any of the above is upsetting to your senses right now, just wait a few days. You’ll be livid. (or you’ll have an advantage - your call really) Enjoy your 4th of July, the announcements of the further global domination will resume, 10 days remember?

Once upon a time, on a continent far, far (far, far, far, far) away prisoners of her majesty told scary stories to their children to keep them from getting hit in the head by the falling branches of the eucalyptus trees. The fable says that if the large carnivorous dropbear doesn’t eat you, you may grow up to download something off the Internet and have all your worldly possessions taken away by Telstra. As of today, the only scary story the Australian’s have to fear is that of the dropbear itself because…

Own Web Now proudly launches it’s Australian branch!

In yet another effort to prove that the world (at least Internet) is flat, the services we are launching in Australia are going to be priced the same as their counterparts in United States.

They will be a lot faster though, served straight off our infrastructure in Sydney which means no more delays for the transatlantic packet journey.

And just as I mentioned yesterday, say goodbye to being treated like a second rate citizen - say ehlo to my big friend - 10 Gb Exchange 2007 mailboxes.

Captain Cook is also bringing SharePoint 2007 which will be free with the Exchange 2007 hosting.

For those of you looking for a fast presence in Australia, email, web hosting, pop3/imap and sql are also on the ship, still under $10.

Not a joke, not a promotional stunt, not a limited offering, not testing the waters. Simply a giant thanks to Australia and New Zealand for being so supportive of my business for years. Shockey Monkey is huge down under and was the second of my products to be announced with native presence in Australia. I am simply answering the demand to help my partners in Australia stay on the edge as the world of services evolves. Available…. immediately.

The only product not offered natively in Australia are the offsite backups. Not because we don’t love you, but because we’ve seen 0 (actually, thats how much of it we sold) demand for such a service in Australia.

So should you ever find yourself down under in Australia (as the native guide explains: head south and to the left) you can count on Own Web Now partners to hook you up with affordable Microsoft Business solutions that won’t break the bank.

Gday, Australia. More professional post to follow @ OWN.