The Eve of Shockey Monkey

Posted: 5:21 pm
February 3, 2008
Shockey Monkey
4 Comments

SmlogoIt’s hard to believe that it has been nearly two years since I first shared the vision of Shockey Monkey, even harder to belive the amount of people and effort that went into building this beast. Tomorrow I get to talk about what I’ve been working on for over seven months, largely by my damn self, to pay back the people that make my business so damn successful. Talk about a payback, the affordable SMB practice management software built by the SMB people, void of the political mess that makes the other commercial solutions suck and force SMB into the compromise.

While I certainly wish I put more resources into this from the getgo, I don’t think the product would have been this good if it didn’t take every single feature from the actual people that run these practices. The learning process that I went through in bringing this to the market fundamentally changed the way I run my business in the SMB space, and in turn became an ultimate symbiosis between the world of SMB consulting and the world of management system development.

The people that will be paying for this software will not only be supporting their own community (SBS group kickbacks), they will be financing my new development company. Talk about pressure: my success is directly tied to the savings and success that Shockey Monkey has within my clients practice!

This has been a journey fillled with learning, learning and more learning. I cannot thank all the people that have taken their time to be a part of this process enough. If you’ve been waiting…… well, folks, trust me, it’s been worth it. You’ll find out just how much throughout February!

Working with EU: Does location matter?

Posted: 1:22 am
February 3, 2008
Shockey Monkey
2 Comments

With the launch of SM 2.1 (yeah, yeah, looking forward, you’ll get the details on Monday folks!) and its commercial nature I have to cross the unglobalization bridge that the US has been burning and pissing on for quite some time – nobody trusts having their data in the good ol’ USA. Even care free Canadian’s are hating the Patriot Act. So it’s sever shipping time.

As far as I have been told, UK businesses have to disclose if any confidential data is going to be stored on the servers outside of EU. I may be wrong (if I am, please correct me) but I have heard the same from users in France, Germany, Italy, etc. One question I do have is, does it matter where in the EU the servers are located? I am currently considering Netherlands and Germany.

For Australia, I am still working on it. There may be a significant premium to having a localized server (20–40% depending on the number of users – the 2 IT shops in Malta are pretty much screwed) and some places are just not going to be possible at all due to the IP allocation restrictions.

Poor Google?

Posted: 9:27 pm
February 2, 2008
Google
1 Comment

I’ve been watching the outrage over the Microsoft-4-Yahoo! bid with mild interest and surprise at the angle that the general blogging public has taken against Microsoft! If I didn’t know any better it would seem like Microsoft is this giant evil behemoth just one secret ingredient away from conquering the world of technology. Cranking out billions and billions of dollars in profit, the Yahoo! takeover would catapult the company…. <Reality Mode: On>

The company whose major invention over the past three years has been a fucking table! The company that is facing a going concern on every major front: desktop, office, entertainment, online and mobility. The company that is struggling to limp under the weight of its own enormity, led by men defeated more than a decade ago bringing back the same concepts they lost with and ended up under Microsoft’s umbrella in the first place – the decades in which Microsoft won by pulling dirty tricks, abusing monopoly powers and competing in an environment in which everyone operated under the exact same principle – cash for product.

Times have changed, Microsoft has more enemies than it has friends, and even its friends are there solely for the economic benefit of an astonishing install base – all while investing in the areas where the future is going – away from Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop and infrastructure server.

That, dear friends, makes Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo! and admission of inability to compete in the new world, not it’s one magic puzzle piece to the top.

Microsoft is on the defense from Google, Apple, Linux, Apple, IBM, Sun and Oracle in all major businesses. Microsoft’s product and innovation pipeline is not market building, it is market sustaining – at best – more of the same old debt driven infrastructure simply because it fits with the rest of the indebted infrastructure in the workplace.

Microsoft is the same company today that it was 10 years ago, only the version numbers have changed. Except today we have true alternatives.

These aren’t the words of some laid off English major, turned half baked blogger. These are words of someone that has built a business by betting on Microsoft. We continue to do so, in the Microsoft realm, but I would be a liar if I told you we’d bet one red penny on Microsoft’s online strategies.

That said, any market with a single dominant player and the competitors in the dust is bad. So you know what, let Microsoft dump some money into Yahoo! and give Google a run for its money. Last time I checked, Google was not a non-profit charity, they just haven’t had the chance to be as evil as Microsoft, yet. Let’s not give them, or anyone else for that matter, that chance.

The only good thing about Microsoft buying Yahoo is the Microsoft Partner benefit

Posted: 6:20 pm
February 1, 2008
Microsoft
5 Comments

Microsoft has proposed an acquisition of Yahoo! and you can read the multitude of opinions at techmeme but I figured I’d offer you one more: The only side to benefit from the potential merger will be the Microsoft partner.

Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo, if it happens, will be a giant move backwards for the Internet in general because it will certainly bring with it the Microsoft “our platform or death” mantra to one of the biggest contributors and users of open source software. In other words, the kiss of death.

However, for a Microsoft Partner program this is a potential savior because it may signal the end of Microsoft’s decade long track of failures trying to reaching consumers (bCentral, MSN, Live) and maybe, just maybe, it will take Microsoft’s eyeballs off the vapor of ad sales long enough… perhaps long enough so they don’t end up destroying the revenues they are actually making by selling software for the revenues they hope to make by turning them into a service and antagonizing every single partner away from them.

Seeing how Google just reported that social networking ads are not translating into major bucks, Microsoft’s distraction with an actually successful portal might signal the end of the quagmire that is their business software platform transitioning to partner-less SaaS.

If I were Jerry, I’d take the cash.

What is your biggest fear as the CEO of a software company?

Posted: 5:02 pm
January 31, 2008
IT Business
Comments Off on What is your biggest fear as the CEO of a software company?

I got that question posed to me today in an entrepreneur interview for UCF. What I proceeded to say was a PG-13 rated response of tourette’s syndrome that most VARs, partners, techies and CIO’s spout about nearly every company they deal with:

“I love their software, but they are such total arrogant dicks that the moment someone comes out with the slightest reasonable replacement I will burn their software, piss on it, then ship it back wrapped in their support contract”

Ok, so that’s the clean version of what I get to hear regarding some of the dominant solutions in our business. Not just related to software but also regarding user group organizations, books, conferences, etc. Aren’t we just a wonderful bunch of people?

My goal as the CEO is to take responsibility for what we do and to do whatever I can to keep a customer when they are pissed. Whether its our fault or their fault, here is nothing worse than disappointing a customer… short of ignoring their requests, being deceitful about what is actually going on, and dispatching their call to India.

I handle the disputes directly, by myself. We’ve made a significant effort to make sure the problems get to me and that the problems are wide open for everyone to see, to the point of running a transparent NOC, transparent feedback system, DID that rings right on my desk. Being that open and up front about things has a lot of vulnerabilities too, which sort of serves as a motivating stick for the rest of the company to either minimize the apparent problems or document them openly so everyone is aware of what is wrong.

It tends to work. Thankfully, we don’t have many issues so I can handle the problems by myself. It does not do much towards keeping the clients though – if they are pissed, they are leaving to go to another place where they think they will get better service. However, we do get a chance to part ways on good terms and leave the door open for other solutions or down the road.

I take immense pride in what we do over at Own Web Now and the one thing I hope we can accomplish is for all of our clients to actually like doing business with us.

P.S. So what makes a client pissed? Bull and lies. IT people tend to be a pretty reasonable and understanding bunch – after all, they deal with computers that disappoint on daily basis. So they have a bit of a tolerance for failure. What they don’t have a tolerance for is being ignored, being made unimportant, not having anything to say in public, being closed in opinion and in product input.

Figuring out naptime for programmers (and other DND tasks)

Posted: 6:54 am
January 31, 2008
Misc
7 Comments

I’ve been up since roughly 9 PM last night working on the Shockey Monkey service desk enhancements and so far the evening has been quite productive. I’d venture to guess that my output tonight has been greater than it has been over the past few days combined.

The secret to it is that practically nothing happens overnight. Nobody needs to talk to me urgently, no fires need to be put out, nobody needs to have a manual read out to them over the phone or over trouble tickets, there are no issues, nobody needs a quick minute or a quick meeting or a presentation or tickets to an event…

It’s just me and Benz, and an occasionally frightening episode of Coast to Coast to keep me awake.

Obviously, allnighters become exceedingly difficult the further you get away from college and to be honest, I’d rather take a 2 hour nap in the afternoon and trade it off for the 2 hours at the crack of dawn where I can actually focus and get stuff done.

This goes for any do not disturb task, it is nearly impossible to focus during the day with all the distractions and while I do have a sofa in my office I tend to sleep on it as I imagine I would on a bet of nails and broken glass – the moment my back touches it I jump back up – be it for the phone, forgetting to mute the sound and an IM coming through, not flagging the phone and Office Communicator in the DND mode… you name it.

So I have one question that I hope someone out there has figured out (come on Pablo!) – how do you effectively trade daytime nap hours for the midnight work hours? Is there a way to establish a long term sleep pattern that involves two sleep sessions in the 24 hour span? If so, whats your trick?

Ashamed to be a Floridian

Posted: 3:55 pm
January 30, 2008
Uncategorized
10 Comments

Today is the second day ever that I am ashamed to be a Floridian.

Back in August of 2005, Florida got scraped by a little hurricane called Katrina. It proceeded to go around the panhandle and absolutely decimate Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Then part of Florida’s finest Highway Patrol got dispatched to the disaster zone to help with the crisis management, driving 10+ hours to the affected areas, just to immediately turn back and go home. These scumbags, supposedly sworn to protect us, drove across the state, tagged in, and because in the middle of the catastrophe their assignment wasn’t available immediately, they decided to turn back and go home – right away.

Today, we have yet again solidified our position as the most ignorant state in the union. We collectively decided to ignore the infrastructure, education and support problems that the state faces, and decided to give ourselves a well deserved property tax break. After all, who makes better financial decisions than the poor and lower middle class families that are not just taxed the most but hit with the highest insurance premiums and second most regressive tax system.. We elected to give a giant middle finger up to the education, debt payback, insurance reforms, infrastructure investments that would actually drive businesses into the State… and chose to get ourselves a little cash back that will just go to pay for fast food and a new iPod.

I am sad, ashamed and disappointed in this turn of events. We want to live in paradise, we just don’t want to pay for it. We want to have affordable education, we just don’t want to pay for it. We want to live on an acre of land, we just don’t feel like its our duty to pay for the road, power, utilities, police, fire departments and amenities required for us actually to live there. We want to drive businesses to the State, but we don’t want to train our population to work in the kinds of jobs that still make America competitive with the rest of the open WTO world.

It is called sacrifice folks, money does not grow on trees and we cannot pound the ATM window and cry every time we need more. This is the very basic fundamental truth of fiscal responsibility that seems to be lost from the highest levels of our government to the very lowest income families that today cemented our future for a quick and meaningless rebate. 

BYOB Update

Posted: 9:54 am
January 30, 2008
IT Culture
Comments Off on BYOB Update

orlandoitproLast night we held our first meeting since roughly September and the attendance was fairly good. We had a few regulars, few newbies, few old friends.. all in all it was a good networking meeting and the chance to catch up with peers and everyone picked up something new about Microsoft licensing, CRM 4.0, Cougar, etc.

JJ Antequino from Microsoft was on hand too, still with the TS2 team, to talk about all things tech – Linux, Vmware, Citrix, Citrix app streaming; We have been very fortunate to successfully find the balance of sabotaging his career to the point that he’s not promoted yet not fired. Good news for Florida! 🙂

Some people got new jobs and talked about that, others went back to their businesses, some got a decent haircut and a shower which is always good news. It was just an evening of discussion of diverse IT topics:

Cougar, Centro, Responsepoint, GP/CRM and financial integration middleware, Dlink switches for small business, Citrix, Microsoft Licensing (new volume), SAS70 data center certification, mobility, CLEC bailouts, Silverlight bashing, divided house on the XP vs. Vista.

So next month, we’ll try the same. At some point, someone will find some value in the captive peer audience and present something that might elevate their business and their expertise and lead to subcontractor gigs or leads.. but until that happens, the peer conversation seems to be quite valuable as well.

What makes businesses fail or stagnate?

Posted: 5:47 pm
January 29, 2008
SMB
2 Comments

Pretty simple question: What dooms certain businesses to fail or never grow beyond where they are at right now and presumably have been for years?

If you ask the business owner, it’s always the same answer: money. Except it’s not really money, it’s fear – money is easy to obtain if you have an idea and can justify it to someone who actually makes a business extending currency to people that can pay it back with the business profits.

Most of the time, the problem is in getting things done. Some like to call this execution, but as I mentioned before, if you’re a particularly earnest idiot you are still doomed to failure, despite your execution. (footnote: every single NCAA athlete hoping to go pro)

In the end, it really boils down to two things that are within your own control (third being the information / due dilligence but that can be outsourced / learned): work ethic and embrace of change.

Work ethic – Let’s face it, unless your big business idea is playing lottery or legalized gambling, few things will come to you if you just sit on your ass. If you are not wired to work hard for what you want, if the ends do not justify the investment in time when you’d rather be doing something else, if you are not capable of motivating yourself when things seem their darkest… business ownership ain’t for you.

Embracing change – People are afraid of change. Tony Robbins did a presentation at TED and asked the audience if they liked surprises. Everyone yelled out “Yeeaah” to which the response was: “Bullshit. You like the surprises that are good for you.” It’s true, given the option of doing something that requires a lot of effort, retraining, thinking and reading people often opt for same ol, same ol. Even if the same ol’ crap is the reason you’re in the funk to begin with, it beats thinking and reading!

When these two superpowers combine, you get what I like to call “The Law Of Best Intentions” where people generally mean well, want to do good, are hungry to succeed and are temporarily motivated to do just that. But just as motivation is the act of raising your ass out of the chair, it works the opposite way in reverse. The act of your ass slamming back into the chair and continuing to do what you always did before gets you the same results or lack there of.

In a nutshell: If you can’t motivate yourself to work hard to be rich, go work for someone else.

Mobile Competition for Pocket IE

Posted: 11:57 pm
January 28, 2008
Mobility
2 Comments

Let’s face it, web browsing on a Pocket PC has been one huge disappointment after another. Not to just fault Microsoft, all other contenders have not come even close to a desktop browser in your pocket. Not Opera. Not Minimo. Not Deepfish.

Then enter iPhone with Safari with full AJAX and suddenly the Windows Mobile enthusiast is reduced from a human being to the gorilla banging the bones in front of the monolith during the 21st century odyssey.

But if you really want to browse the web on your PocketPC there is a glimer of hope, Skyfire:

Skyfirebrowser

It sounds ok, until you come to the part explaining that in order to get these cool features you also must run a server-side component in order to browse the web on your phone. If thats not a dealbreaker for you, here is the Youtube video.

Not very elegant, but a small price to pay for a useful web in your pocket.