“Tens of thousands” Windows Home Servers sold

Posted: 10:47 am
January 5, 2008
Windows Home Server
2 Comments

Steven VanRoekel is quoted by Cnet commenting on the initial sales of Windows Home Server: “It’s definitely tens of thousands, which in a month and a half is good”

I deal with managers all day long so let me try to help you with what I’ve so far coined as:

Middle-managers Counting System

The following conversion chart helps convert middle-manager numbers into real world numbers based on the circumstance the manager is in (bragging vs. defending.)

Middle Manager – Reality

When talking about things positive for the company:
Some, most, plenty, lots – 0
Successful – 0
Everyone – (everyone I know outside of our own company) – One person
Tens of thousands – Two people
Millions – Three people, from different companies

When talking about the install base:
Some – 0
We don’t report numbers – 0, and the two dudes that bought it asked for their money back.
Runaway success – 1 person that wrote in something positive about the product. (ToDo: Case Study)
Mass appeal – “We have it on good authority that a girl installed our software. I don’t know if she’s hot.”

When talking about things that are negative for the company:
Lots – 100% customer base
Some – 50% customer base
Very limited exposure – 30% customer base
A few cases – 20% customer base
Virtually none – 10% customer base
Absolutely zero – 9% customer base

And of course, the one even I have used:
Still investigating the issue – 100% customer base, 100% shipped product that is not yet installed, and we’re pretty sure 80% of the issue is not going to be fixed in the next relase either. Oh god, tell me Live.com is still hiring.

So what did Steven actually say, when put through the DeManagerLiser:

“I think we burned 20,000 DVD’s, half of which shipped to HP, Sony and discount software warehouses. The rest we expect to offer up as confetti to the CES organizers”

Here is problem with WHS that I believe CNET didn’t address: Backups are not sexy. When you design an appliance that is not sexy, it doesn’t sell well. And when even that killer feature that you pitch turns out to be faulty, people switch. So far WHS has done more for Linux and Windows Media Center than it has done for its own brand, at least with the tens of thousands (two people) that I’ve talked to about it.

Has the file corruption on a file server you bought to protect your family treasures been big enough to destroy WHS? I doubt it. But here are five things WHS can do to get to that 4.5 million sales in the next month. Yes, month:

1. Gateway Mode – Turn the Windows Home Server into the family gateway, armed with parental controls and AD-like policy management for web site blocking, report computers.
2. Microsoft iTunes – Family collection of shared MP3s, videos, etc availabe for sync to an iPod or the two Zune users.

And the sexy stuff:
3. Play XBOX game backups stored on the WHS.
4. Media streamer hooked into Youtube.com. This alone ought to be enough to kill Apple TV.
5. TV Interface – It’s in the living room, right? So why not let it work with the TV instead of forcing a client (Vista/Xbox) on it?

I think the WHS concept falls apart on the company culture. When I first told Kevin Beares that I just didn’t get the hoopla over the WHS and asked him how this was any better than a networked USB drive he went on to list a bunch of things that I couldn’t even begin to translate to a consumer. So I told him we’d look at WHS only as a SOHO business solution.

What I think really killed it for me, and what I am sure many of you will agreee with me on, is that this product is way too Microsoft Business to be used by a family. Kevin told me that everyone inside of Microsoft loved it and used it. Well, yeah, no shit, this is an awesome geek toy. But a consumer device it is not. You can see the Microsoft Business dry look and feel in the remote access features alone – way too much SharePoint 1.0 look, virtually void of any positive consumer experience – Excel 2007 stylesheets have more consumer appeal than the file listings. Not even a slideshow. No image previews…

I like WHS. But I hope WHS team is hard at work with a shippable SP1 this month. Yes, this month, because time is short. Because if all you do is appeal to geeks, geeks that now have a spare box in their home that doesn’t seem to do any more good to them than a file server with a file corruption bug, you’re going to be losing that spare box to a Windows 2008 server, Cougar or whatever else that “box” can be repurposed to. Heck, most geeks reformat and reinstall their main dekstops more than a few times a year, so if you want to solidify your current install base it needs to be more than just a limited-use/limited-appeal proposal.

Are you a Service or Support organization?

Posted: 10:46 am
January 5, 2008
IT Business
1 Comment

In my voice-less trolling of meetings this week I participated in a rather pointless debate over definitions in trying to discover, after all these years, what type of an organization are we. Are we a support organization that delivers technical support and primarily assists users with the use of our products? Are we a service organization that delivers Internet services with support being just a minor component on that.

You can probably guess from this blog what my attitude is. If I could have spoken I would have asked “Is there any way we can penalize the idiots that request support for the fully documented issues, or because they didn’t RTFM – can we deny them support on the ground that they are too incompetent to request support and still get away with charging them?” 

I guess I won’t be writing the mission statement this year.

Division between service and support is a pretty big one – assume that its mutually exclusive as well. A good support organization should follow through with the customer until their problem was resolved, even if it involved third parties. A good service organization would deliver a solid product that didn’t require support. A milkshake.  

So what about offering support as a service? I’m a little divided on that one, mostly becausue I have yet to meet an organization that can do it well and still scale. Yeah, small consulting outfits like lawyers and accountants and corner shirt store can do it very well, but they can’t scale. When they do scale, you end up on the phone with India. Even Kinko’s to an extent does this, if you take them a project that is too complex or needs to be done on the short schedule, they will not do it while you wait. Want 2,000 copies, bonded and perforated – sure, give us an hour. Want a banner? Whoa, whoa, give us a few days.

The other limitation in support as a service is the matter of boundaries. How do you clearly communicate where your support ends?

Today I worked an issue I like to call “Support as a disservice” – I helped one of our partners customers partners. Try to wrap your head around that one for a moment. Our partner had a client who was getting upset that they were not receiving any email from their remote billing partner. Any email. After three wasted tickets of “It’s not our fault, next” and days of “no email” from the customer I got on the horn with the IT guy at the remote office and tried to get to the bottom of it. They didn’t have a mail server – they used their ISPs mail server. They also got a bounce back saying that the message was not delivered due to the timeouts. So today, I was on the support call with my partners customers partner and their ISP guy who didn’t have access to their server mail logs. (another reason phone support blows, you always get the lowest dude on the totem pole); In the end, we concluded that the mail is flowing, except in some cases involving some funky configuration on the partners customers partners ISPs mail server.

Do you see the problem here? This issue involved six people in five different organizations, and yielded one very helpless and disappointed third party, which will no doubt reflect poorly on my product even though its not my fault to begin with. So even though we went that extra mile, as a support company, we would easilly earn the Suckiest Support of The Year award. However, as a service company we proved that the product works, that there are no issues and we went a little further to help an unrelated third party see that we stand behind our services.

My basic thesis is: It is easier to define limits for a service organization because your deliverable is a particular feature (ie, you get to send email) where a support organization can either have a happy customer with all problems solved or an unhappy one that is uncertain of why they are paying us. With the later, there is no happy middle because the limit of “how happy are you” is hard to measure and while your support can make lots of people happy, you can still lose customers because some will feel you have not done enough.

SPAM Monitor Humble Pie

Posted: 6:05 pm
January 4, 2008
ExchangeDefender
4 Comments

I really hate having to eat my own words.. but SPAM Monitor has been a far bigger success than anyone ever expected. I am perhaps the most shocked at the popularity of this thing, the positive feedback, the adoption rate and today, in a mountain tombstone that is my cynicism for SPAM Annoyarizermaster 6000, three new MSP’s signed up for ExchangeDefender alone. Quote the SharePoint:

“The SPAM Agent is the single feature that won the client over the other proposals. I was able to win the clients total network management as well as antispam, provided by ExchangeDefender of course.”

FMR.. Global infrastructure.. yeah.. MSP tool integration, 14 data centers, 24/7 support.. yeah, yeah.. LiveArchive to keep the business up and running when their server or network are down… ok, maybe… Atomic tangerine icon in the corner of my screen popping up with the crap I don’t want to see? Now THAT we’ll pay for.

/me hangs his head in shame and goes back to programming.

Rich, what do I owe you buddy?

The Brave New Year

Posted: 10:21 am
January 3, 2008
IT Culture
2 Comments

Yesterday I learned how to listen. Not by choice, I went to the UF game on Tuesday (we got whooped) and lost my voice. So yesterday’s meetings were interesting, instead of talking about what we’re supposed to be doing, I ended up listening to what needs to be done and it was an interesting day to say the least. At this point I have no idea what is and what isn’t NDA, so I don’t have a thought to share. But here is what I am reading this morning:

How to survive CES, Scoble gets kicked off Facebook for trying to port the data out, VoIP working on iPod Touch and an addon mic for sale. 

Nothing interesting happening out there, I think everyone is just getting back from their time off and deciding what to tackle first.

It’s called Determination

Posted: 12:46 am
January 2, 2008
Vladville
2 Comments

So how was your first day of 2008?

Have you done anything significant towards accomplishing your goals in 2008?

There is a little stage between inspiration and accomplishment. Somewhere between becoming inspired to accomplish something and getting to that accomplishment there is a period of time and actions that separate winners from losers. Some people like to call this process “execution” which I think is wrong – execution is an act or result of a said performance or work – but what if you’re a complete idiot and you just keep on pushing in the wrong direction? The beauty (or tragedy) of the whole concept is that for the most part you only know if you’re an idiot about something only after you’re done executing. So no, it’s not execution.

It’s called work ethic. Being driven to do a particular task, or set of tasks, towards a goal. Most people lack work ethic because at times it’s just difficult to work. You don’t have the energy because you are on a diet. You don’t have the energy because you were up all night browsing the web. You’re demotivated because a coworker stepped on your toes today. You didn’t get the promotion. You didn’t get the good parking spot.

Whatever the problem is, people with work ethic tend to get over it. Most people do not. Most people push it off to another day, think it will be easier tomorrow, that a pile of problems is somehow going to be easier to address than dealing with the issue right now.

Today is the first day of 2008. Are you a resolution person? Got some big goals this year? What is different on January 1st, 2008 from December 31st, 2007 other than the date? So you hoped 2008 was going to be different than the previous X years of your life, but what have you done to change it? Nothing. Well, tomorrow is January 2nd, 2008 and you have another chance to reset that clock. Tomorrow is a new day, tomorrow you can do the things you promised yourself you’d start doing today. Then again, two minutes from now is different than two minutes ago, so why wait for tomorrow, why not start two minutes from now?

That dear reader, is called work ethic, don’t wait for it – go for it. The virtual reset buttons and logical dates are completely in your mind – determination to actually do something and start doing it is what its all about because in reality you’re either doing shit or talking shit.

Microsoft MVP ReAward

Posted: 9:11 pm
January 1, 2008
Microsoft
8 Comments

Today Microsoft gave me the MVP award in the category of Microsoft Exchange Server. That’s third in a row, thanks!

People often ask me how you get the MVP award. I have no idea to be honest, Microsoft doesn’t share the process or voting or criteria with us, but MVPs are encouraged to nominate other people that participate in the technical communities and share their expertise with Microsoft products. So here is what I did in 2007: I presented Exchange 2007 training to a dozen or so user groups, some in person (Palm Beach, Orlando, Dallas) and most others via Livemeeting. I even shared the video with you on this blog. I presented Exchange 2007 content at the SMBTN SMB Summit twice – once on Exchange 2007 Deployment strategy and once on the Windows Mobile 6 & Exchange 2007 integration. I worked five days in the TechEd Unified Communications pavilion, answering questions regarging Office Communications Server, SBS, Exchange 2007 and particularly Edge and IMF services. I attended the Microsoft MVP Summit and the Microsoft WWPC, at both I worked with the Exchange 14 groups brainstorming features and providing feedback. At TechEd I also participated in a few focus groups. I participated in two Microsoft Technet expert chats. Add to that numerous blog posts, Exchange articles, two Exchange 2007 book reviews / technical reviews, newsgroups posts, etc.

E tu, Crallus?

Posted: 4:49 pm
December 31, 2007
Microsoft
3 Comments

28772-hi-Mojito From the “It’s only negative when Vlad criticizes it” department comes a blog post from Mark Crall beating up the Lifestyle business segment of the IT population. For what its worth, I love the “lifestyle business” movement and if I could do what I do by myself and only work two months out of the year, I’d be the first guy blogging this by the pool in my red Speedos sippin’ on a mojito.

[ pause to let you scrub out your eyes from that visual ]

What exactly is a lifestyle IT partner? I first got this term from someone fairly senior in the Microsoft Patner Program organization, talking about the partners who are only committed to the client base that fits their lifestyle: seasonal, low stress, low demand, highly strategic customers with onsite IT and just general IT direction (vision) requirements with the execution left up to someone else (usually me, thus the reason I love them).

Here is a partner lifestyle business card:

retired

That’s just beautiful. Photo credit: John Behneman

I guess Mark will have to reprint the riffraff shirts and put his name on it too. What a divider. 🙂 And this is the guy I am paying to represent my interests to Microsoft? Even Andy is falling off the RR train, he just sent me a wonderful email:

Dear Blood Sucking Vendor,

I just wanted to be your last piece of official hate mail for 2007 😉

C Ya,

HA

Damn community. Personally, I am curious what the Crazy Ligman Impound Lot & Software Assurance team is up to. Big announcement is tomorrow night.

Praise & Purpose

Posted: 10:37 am
December 31, 2007
IT Business, IT Culture, Vladville
1 Comment

Got some pretty big praise for the blog from Karl Palachuk over the weekend, though to be honest it’s pretty high praise every time anyone links to this blog:

You may not agree with everything he says, or the way it’s presented, but for an analysis of the business you’re in, Vladville is the smartest blog on the internet. Just look over his posts for the last week! In fact, this entire post was inspired by his article on Arthur Miller and the Death of an SMB Tech Salesman.

I highlighted the italicized part because I get it all the time: “I don’t agree with everything, but I love it!” – and to stay true to disliking the delivery: well no sh.. sherlock, 90% of what I put here is op-ed and as my good friend Albert would put it: opinions are like ass..es, everyone has one!

So much for ending the blog in 2007 on a high note!

My opinions are just that.. the world as I see it based on the limited facts I have to work with at the moment. Sometimes I’m right, most of the time I’m wrong, but because I voice it I get attention from thousands of people that are just pouncing to give me more information and let me change my mind. If you agreed with my every opinion and my every word made you feel great about who you are and what you do, you’d have a cause for concern… it would mean I’m patronizing you. And while there is good money to be made in patronizing people, lying their face while selling them out to the highest bidder, telling them everything is just great and peachy and if you only tried a little harder you would have a Ferrari… First, I can’t bring myself to be that full of crap for free (though for a $ I will sell a pig like a supermodel) and second, running a business and being an engineer, in any market segment, isn’t easy! Making money isn’t easy, getting attention is even harder, separating yourself from the herd requires a ton of time and effort and making success last is damn near impossible.

So why, oh why, do so few of you have an opinion of your own that you care to share with your peers? Some of you believe that it is easier to just open up the checkbook and join a group based on how big of a check you are willing to write – and waste the time, the money, the enthusiasm with other people that came over just because they wrote a check too and the only question they have is “What do I get for my money?” – the enthusiasm, money and time that you could be pumping into your own blog that could address your peers, your customers, your market, your community – and let them come to you because you prove yourself to be of value. That is marketing, not postcard spamming.

So if you’ve ignored my posts over the last week and are a “resolution” type of a person, why not make it a resolution for 2007 to have a blog and be proud of what you are able to do for your audience?

I for one have made my investment – Debra Hart May’s Proofreading Plain & Simple. $12 to make this place look like it’s not written by a 12 year old that got left behind.

Saying Goodbye to 2007

Posted: 6:32 pm
December 30, 2007
Vladville
1 Comment

Just one more business day left to go and I can breathe another sigh of relief that we’ve made it out of 2007. Businesswise, 2007 was as phenomenal of a year as it was frustrating. Every month was the record month on the books, both in terms of year over year and all-time totals in terms of months. That is nothing short of spectacular, and I think it speaks volumes over how we’re positioned against our competitors in nearly all core areas of the business: ExchangeDefender, Virtual Services, Hosting, Data Center Ops, Offsite backups…

It was a frustrating year at times as well, dealing with the growing pains, complexity, new relationships, negative feedback, product delays. I kind of have no way not to take some of these personally because of the level of effort and involvement I have in my business as open as I am and as easy to find as I am to find, sometimes it gets to me that people are not able to bring things to my direct attention. But that brief bit of doom and gloom really helped me figure out just what my role within Own Web Now really needs to be and has absolutely re-energized me over the past few months.

January tends to be the slowest time of the year so we’ll be mostly on the skeleton crew as everyone retrains on Windows 2008 and we hammer out our product offerings and pricing for the rest of  2008. Lot’s of new and exciting things are coming out and I’ve got to say that 2008 looks better than any other year on record and man am I looking forward to it.

So here is to 2007, I hope you too are excited about what 2008 brings to you.

WordPress 2.3.2 patches a security issue

Posted: 1:48 am
December 30, 2007
WordPress
3 Comments

Of note for us WordPress fans is the release of WordPress 2.3.2, urgent release fixing a bug that can reveal the contents of your draft posts and database table structure.

Upgrading WordPress tends to be very simple – just grab the .zip file and uncompress it – upload everything except wp-content directory and wp-config.php file and hit /wp-admin to update the database. Thats all there is to it.