As mentioned previously, this post kicks off a week of reintroducing Shockey Monkey to the SMB/ITPRO channel. Over the past year or so I’ve had an honor and a priviledge to learn more about IT consulting than any person ever ought to learn. I’ve personally talked to over 2,000 CEO/CIO folks who described their business and described what they thought would help them manage their own business. The very project was started because nearly everyone I spoke to regarding practice management software was either indifferent or outright loathing the solution they’ve trapped themselves in. As I talked and learned about how everyone went about their business I got a ton of input, a good portion of which went into development of OWN as well as the future community projects I’ll be undertaking.
If you’ve ever met me you know I above all else don’t like to waste people’s time. So here is the pitch:
Own Web Now Corp is a large and powerful player in the SMB IT space. Over the past three years we’ve/I’ve established a great track record of supporting the ITPRO and the business owner, contributing relevant content to the community, presenting “the real deal” behind vendor promotions and more. Many partners saw value in what OWN delivered and gave us a lot of business. I have written Shockey Monkey and I am openly asking for your business. The bigger the project gets, the more money we make, the more dedicated we become to the SMB channel and you benefit from a system that is not designed to exploit your checkbook and gives you true SMB best practices.
There are currently over 2,000 IT solution providers using Shockey Monkey to manage their businesses and their customer service. I originally started writing Shockey Monkey to solve a problem, and through my process I’ve been able to identify and address problems that most never mentioned in public. That is the biggest problem of all: People love to receive information, they even offer insight directly face-to-face but would not dream of putting it in writing in public. I believe we are stronger together but I can tell you from 10 years of SMB IT experience that not even 1% of the organizations will ever come to a table for any collaborative exchange. The most successful companies are in fact least likely to do so.
Shockey Monkey is the first project, software, development or service I have ever seen that truely gets the attention of the SMB IT solution provider. I suppose “How can I help you run your business more effectively for $50 a month” line worked. Frankly, Shockey Monkey is a ridiculously simple lightweight software that I wrote (over 95% of it) by myself on the road. I have written nearly all the code, I have assembled the servers that power it, I even crimped the network cables myself. So while this is not the most elegant piece of software ever written, it is probably the best summation of SMB consulting best practices ever integrated into an application from the getgo.
Brief History of Shockey Monkey
I started the discovery process of Shockey Monkey last February, published the first beta around May, wrote major pieces of code throughout the summer and officially released the product in September. It took until November to beef up the servers and the feedback loop and by now over 2,000 IT solution providers are happily using it to manage their business.
I wrote Shockey Monkey because everyone told me that everyone else had it wrong.
I rewrote Shockey Monkey because I realized that I was wrong.
That step hurt. It involved a near complete project rewrite, new interface implementation and project design, more strict development and optional flexibility for future expansion.
Gone Open Source
Initial Shockey Monkey was written for IIS6 using ASP.NET. As I took more and more feedback and understood just what people were looking for (hint: there is no such thing as one size fits all) I was forced to drop the Microsoft platform due to the licensing complexities and go open source. Why, oh why, would that be the case? Shockey Monkey was designed as a lightweight hosted web solution. Key word in that sentance: was.
Gone Virtual
The single biggest obstacle to Shockey Monkey solution to most providers was the fact that they did not trust a hosted application. Many providers were reluctant to trust their process, customer data and business intelligence to a data center, server or network that was not under their control.
I initially dismissed those complaints but eventually went back and redesigned Shockey Monkey to be distributed using VMWare or VirtualPC image. The system itself can run out of 256 MB RAM virtual image and produce an experience similar to the hosted server option.
The hosted server design changed a lot as well. Biggest obstacle to the scalability of the project was storage. How do you quickly index, deliver and manipulate data to give customer, accountant, staff, administrator or client administrator the performance and information they need? By running the entire thing out of web and implementing the cached pool concept. I would like to publicly thank the WordPress project for having some really phenomenal caching technology and providing it in the open so people can learn from it.
Gone Pretty
Microsoft spends millions of dollars developing visual user interfaces, testing them on end users, exploring high visibility solutions, etc. Short of harrasing random people at the airport to try my app and tell me what they think it does I don’t have a similar resource set. Not by a longshot.
So I replicated what Microsoft did. Shockey Monkey looks damn close to SharePoint 3.0. Take a look at the login screen for example: https://support.ownwebnow.com
Furthermore, I got a lot of feedback from the partners that wanted their customers interacting with the application that looked like something they cold be sold. I realized I was wrong and I dumped the original ultra-light design for what the project is toay.
Gone Modular
Shockey Monkey solution was based on best practices. Frankly, most of them came from the two books by Karl Palachuk, Erick Simpson, discussions on Yahoo SMB Managed Services newsgroup and the feedback of the partners that used the solution.
My original goal was to design something that could be used immediately.
I had to change my gameplan because best practices change, companies grow, new problems show up and one size just doesn’t fit all. So the initial release is highly flexible and modular, I only hardcoded some values to make them stick in the interface easilly and give people an idea of how they need to start thinking about their customer service and IT solution delivery.
So in conclusion…
The pitch is, I’ve already developed an awesome solution with a help of a lot of people. It’s free. But this isn’t a cheritable operation, this is a business decision. It is free because I want to give everyone a taste for what I’ve built and I want to hear what can make it better. I intend to use that information to improve the system and then turn it into a commercial solution. The more money we can make, the more dedicated we will remain to the channel and the better solution you will keep on getting to run your business. Our primary business is not practice solution management software, we will be fine with our partners using us when there is a fit for a reliable hosted solution. But I do believe that because we both don’t directly compete with you and don’t have the world to gain (the projected price for Shockey Monkey is $50 a month – no seat limits or costs) by being at every single IT show with 8 sales people – I believe that, combined with our committment to the SMB community, is nothing but a huge asset for anyone in this business.
So, have you signed up for Shockey Monkey?
I hope you do. Next up: Shockey Monkey video tour!
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