Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog | Vlad Mazek on IT, Business and Technology

Vlad: On to the next one

Posted: 3:30 pm
August 27, 2012

Boss, IT Business
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Note: This is the first in the series of blog posts about stuff that has served me well in the world of business. The success of Own Web Now, ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey has been well chronicled, these posts are more about me – some stuff I was born with, some I learned after hitting the wall with the head too hard and often. Take it for what it’s worth, forward it to your friends if you like and if you’re interested in these please feel free to join my private list by clicking here.

It’s natural to think about the should have, would have.. things you could have said in the argument, things you could have changed, tweaked or done differently to get a different outcome. In business spending time dwelling on the past decisions is crippling.

If there is a single ~~personality flaw~~ characteristic that has helped me through the years it would be the sunrise.

Every day I wake up, I have a chance to try it again.

Now I’m not a motivational speaker so I’ll tell you the truth – failing is f’n agonizing. There are days when I have a reverse Midas touch – when everything I touch turns to shit. On those days, if I’m smart, I will just quit early and call it a day. Those are the good failure days. The bad failure days are the ones that never end – where I don’t admit to myself that things suck and I just keep on turning the stone over and over and over again.

Yet, eventually I fall asleep. Eventually, I wake up again. It’s go time.

If you’re lucky and capable of doing so, keep what happened yesterday in the past. Focus on what you’re doing today, tomorrow next week.

Stressing over the ways you’ve failed at yesterday are not going to make it any better in what you’re trying to do today.

Look to the future

If you’re good, you’ve sold yourself on what you’re doing next so your mind should naturally be consumed in your next step. Focus on taking that step, if you fall get up again, try again. It’s that simple.

If you’re great, you can already see yourself failing. Too often business owners and managers have sold themselves their own dream and they can’t see what they are doing or how badly they are failing. If you go into something with the expectation that it’s not going to be all roses and champagne you have better odds of being pleasantly surprised.

Remember the big picture

Each day is a piece of the puzzle. Don’t let momentary distractions trip you up.

Every day I show up in my office I have to deal with crap. Not just my own crap that I’ve caused but all the client crap and employee crap. Whose it is doesn’t really matter, it’s still being showed my way and I have to deal with it. The same goes from the executive office down to the lowest paid / lowest appreciated person in your company – everyone has someone trying to drive them away from what they need to do. It could be phone calls. It could be that the A/C is running at 300% and you’re freezing. It could be that you know you have a crappy meeting to attend to later. It could be that your bank account is running on E. Whatever it is, can you do anything about it? If not, don’t worry about it.

Way too often things just don’t go our way. Shit happens. Do you want to spend your whole day focusing on it? If so, it will consume you. There are millions of ways you could have done something differently – so just remember it until the next time you have to make a similar call. In the meantime, take a deep breath and just ask yourself.. what can I do now?

I deal with a lot of people and to be honest, most somehow feel like their stuff is predestined and dictated by someone else. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s not up to your boss how you feel about your job, it’s not up to your guidance counselor to tell you what you like to do and it’s not up to anyone but you to actually do it. Unless you work at McDonalds, you could just deal with the french fries tomorrow.

If you’re sitting around reading this blog post thinking… “I wish I was doing something else” then that’s probably a great indication that you need to make a change. If you’re not mentally committing all of your concentration on being successful at what you are doing.. .. .. Well, how’s it going for you?

Perseverance or Reckless Ignorance?

I suppose it’s a thin line between the two.

In my context, I live to design software solutions.. from communicating securely to communicating more efficiently. I am always sitting here trying to think of a way to do it better.

Yet, if I look at my past there is a long long long list of failures. We’ve probably spent more time developing features people don’t use than the ones they do use. We deal with the irrational market that is not willing to give up the legacy solutions they feel good about even as they admit they aren’t working for them. Change is hard – and having to deal with living with a better solution that people ignore while the crappy solution still limps along? – it’s a failure no two ways about it. But I don’t think it’s the failure of the solution – after all it has no conscience – I just haven’t figured out the right way to pitch it yet.

See how that works? If I thought I was so smart that I could beat the computers I wouldn’t be in the IT space. I’d be the guy working the bulldozer running over PCs at the junk yard because that’s the only one out there beating it. The rest of us are just trying to make them better.

I’m not saying you should ignore your failures. What I am saying is that past acknowledging your mistake there should be no more. Leave it in the past and move on to dealing with the next problem. Dwelling doesn’t make the mistake fix itself, it doesn’t make the next problem any simpler and it doesn’t give you all the resources you could be using.

You have to believe what you’re doing.

You have to believe in yourself.

So long as you’re OK with failure and your ego is not bigger than your rational thinking.. get back to it. There is always another opportunity and another day.

Hope you liked it. Tell a friend. Smile

Strategery

Posted: 10:49 am
August 15, 2012

IT Business
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For years I’ve been writing about industry developments and trends on Vladville and I’ve been remarkably correct about what is going on. Not because I’m smart or because I have a crystal ball, but because I actually work in this industry and it’s one thing to have an uneducated opinion as a reporter who regurgitates what other CEO’s want them to believe… and to actually experience market shifts and trends as someone who puts the money on the line with tons of real data points around the world. For example, anyone can fill out a survey with any bit of fictional data they want to – which explains why Gartner has been so consistently and remarkably wrong about every study they were paid for – and why so many small business IT companies have grown at such a remarkable clip. It’s one thing to be optimistic and guess that things are going to look great 12 months from now – but the reality of cutting services and removing mailboxes as you trim staff is the real indicator of business trends.

Want my advice?

These days the rumors about ExchangeDefender are louder than even our own PR and webinars. My competitors are slinging more crap at us than ever but we’re more successful than ever in spite of slashing our traditional marketing expenses into a tiny fraction of what they once were. I have one piece of advice for everyone, friend or foe:

Successful business record of today does not predict the successful business track record for tomorrow.

Quite simply, things can turn quickly because we are at the mercy of the consumer. Consumers are fickle and have no loyalty. Therefore every day should be about what the consumer is willing to pay for, not what is best for the consumer. In crude terms: we’re a vendor, not your mom. In Axel’s words: If you’ve got the money honey, we got your disease.

Reconciling Irrationality

Over the past 15 years my single most successful business strategy has been bridging the gap between the things consumers want from the enterprise and delivering it to them at the consumer price. It’s remarkably simple when you consider that consumers want a very limited set of really high powered solutions – and they are willing to compromise so long as those few big features they get are ridiculously easy and reliable. It’s why Apple and Google have been able to pick apart their more successful, more sophisticated, more feature-filled competitors. People like the idea of having everything but they don’t need everything – and they sure as hell don’t want to pay for it. Solution then happens to be simple: Give people what they want at the price they are willing to pay for it.

Easier said then done but that’s the game, right?

What We Are Doing

We’re remarkably open about what we do. But we only happen to share it with our partners at ExchangeDefender. I appreciate loyalty.. and I repay it. I also have to prepare the business for the next few years because like it or not, you are consumers and you will vote with your dollars for the services you can make money on. It’s my job to make those services today so that we’re ready when you get there.

Consumerization is the number one priority at ExchangeDefender.

Remember when I started Shockey Monkey? Over 8,000 solution providers later we are the largest IT PSA in the world. Yet we’re not a PSA at all and the IT market is not our ultimate target. Yeah, I know it’s nice for people to try to pretend that we’re a ConnectWise and Autotask killer and that we’re after them… but if you do some basic math (or if you’re aware of not-so-private partnerships we have going on) that’s just not the case.

Then we launched LooksCloudy. Several hundred posts later, we continue to build a consumer-centric voice for the cloud built on common sense that gives our partners a business advantage.

Now there are (many false) rumors about Agent Perry Nukem solution we’re building. Supposedly it’s an RMM, even though I’ve publicly stated and blogged at numerous occasions that we’re not building an RMM.

The folly of mankind throughout history is that it’s only able to interpret things in the context of their existing surroundings, blissfully rejecting any new ideas as insanity. Yet time and time again, innovation drives us forward through the visions of the few people who tweak things.

Let’s assume I’m not a genius. There? Good.

If the present tense of IT management is all about PSA, RMM, NOC and other acronyms that will be obliterated by consumerization.. does unwillingness to pay for those solutions invalidate the value those solutions present to business? I don’t think so.

So if the net commercial value of those solutions is $0 but the solution is still necessary and demanded.. how can we continue to deliver the solution without asking for a direct compensation for it?

I’ve been in the IT business for a while and I’ve seen much bigger and much smaller companies go under for no other reason than conviction and arrogance of knowing better than the client. If that’s your mindset, you’ll soon be working for someone else.

Otherwise, listen to your clients. Listen to their wallet, not their mouth – because everyone has an opinion – what really matters is what that card swipes for.

You will never go broke taking money from people that can’t wait to give it to you.

Common sense seems so simple when you’re willing to let go of your bias. Everything else is just details.

ABP

Birthday Meatcake Beefporkcalypse

Posted: 10:37 am
August 8, 2012

Awesome
5 Comments

I’ve known my boy Los longer than I’ve been able to speak English. He was my college roommate and saw me kick a computer through a wall when I lost 3 hours of work once. He’s been there from the earliest days of ExchangeDefender and today works at ExchangeDefender as the Vice President of “WTF Broke Now?” – long history.

So when he decided to turn 33 and try to outlive Jesus.. I had to step in. With the meat birthday cake. Behold, step by step. Warning: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

Step 1: Prep the braided bacon icing. Line a foil with some pam and start crossing it one slice at a time.

Step 2: Mince onion, garlic and 2 pounds of beef in some oil. Drain when done and season with whatever you want.

Step 3: Line the bottom of the baking dish with PAM and start layering beef and filo dough. I went with 1 cup between sheets. As far as calories go, filo dough is worse than the 93% ground beef so if you want to cut corners this is where you can do it.

Step 4: Seal it in. Pour 5 beaten eggs on top and let it soak. Boil some oil and pour over the pie, this gives it a nice glaze that you’ll see later.

Step 6: This is where it gets obscene. Dump in 1lb of crumbled bacon and top it off with genoa salami.

Step 7: Broil it.. this will give your meat cake a solid foundation.

Step 8: Take the meat pie out of the baking dish, flip it and allow it to cool a bit. Apply your bacon braid icing. Back under the broiler.

Step 9: Peperoni minis.. Write your message. Back under the broiler to seal the letters in.

Step 10: Pray to whatever deity you believe in.

Step 11: Lipitor

Step 12: Aspirin

Step 14: Update your will

Step 15: Dive in.

Calories: You really don’t wanna know. This pie serves 6 and yeah, each serving is well into 4 digits. Cheesecake Factory, suck it.

No, Thank YOU

Posted: 3:04 pm
August 3, 2012

Boss, ExchangeDefender, Friends
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I often remark about how most of our great software design ideas come from our partners. Much of it starts with “You know what would be cool?” and it goes from there. Sometimes I even get marketing advice so I am going to introduce you to two bits of praise I got from my partners this week and elaborate tomorrow (obviously paraphrased):

“We are moving everything to you because you seem to be the only company that is actually innovating out there. Every time I talk to you there is something new. <Your competitors> are just announcing distribution and partnership agreements, and even though they have good support, there is nothing new in terms of value with their products and when they add something they are just reselling someone elses poorly integrated stuff.”

“We decided to build our cloud business lines on you because of all the Exchange providers out there you were the only one that seemed to value a partnership and didn’t treat us like people that lay down the bricks. Every time I call to ask for something it turns out it already exists and within minutes I get my sales collateral and customized marketing and one of your support guys even got on the phone with me with my clients IT guy to discuss a migration plan.”

Conversation with a competitor, while laughing at another “competitor”:

Well, they will be our competition soon. Did you hear that they are rolling out Exchange soon?

Vlad: You know what, I don’t consider that competition. Anyone can install Exchange. I’ll call them a competitor after they take a few years to design Exchange that fits the business model our partners happen to use.

I’ll go ahead and gloat about this tomorrow.. but in the meantime, I’ll just sit here and grin from ear to ear at the fact that I’m the luckiest mofo on the planet to be able to do what I do, at the level of success I’ve been able to attain thanks to so many people worldwide. I have way way way too many things to say about how lucky we are now (and how sweet it is after what it took to get us here).

And folks.. no thanks needed, it’s a privilege to take your money and help you build a more successful business. It’s also hard to take the credit for any of it considering how much bigger ExchangeDefender is than Vlad and how many people lost their health/hair/mind to make it what it is today.

Untweakable

Posted: 2:21 pm
July 30, 2012

Uncategorized
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Over the past few months I have had discussions with many of you as the race to the cloud picks up pace. This post is not so much about the cloud as it is about encouraging you to manage your technology business correctly.

First: Come to terms that the future of your business depends on your ability to manage a business, not IT.

Second: Peer up – you need a wider view of the industry than your office walls. With respect to the IT gurus, coaches, legends, experts and grandmasters, many of them have barely been successful at one iteration of IT – few have ever been able to transition that success into the next wave of technology (which kind of goes without saying; if they knew it they would be doing it not trying to sell you advice).

Here is the not-so-secret secret: Your current lines of business need to finance the emerging technology training and marketing. As one line of business sunsets the profit margin on it should be significant and can either operate on a skeleton crew or be farmed out to someone else for profit.

Your business needs to become more about marketing technology than fixing technology.

This is a very stark contrast to how most traditional IT Solution Providers got here. Many sold hardware with a huge margin, deployed software and management service for that software at an even bigger margin and dealt with a handful of vendors. Fast forward to today: margins are tighter, there are tons of vendors, IT personnel is unqualified or extremely expensive and everyone is starting to compete for the larger piece of the puzzle.

So what can a small company do that Microsoft, Amazon or IBM can’t?

Microsoft doesn’t do house calls.

IBM doesn’t do them unless you can put a lot of zeros on the check.

Personal service still has an immense value but it needs to be focused and structured.

For example, Arnie Bellini’s Modern Office concept was a good suggestion a few years ago when he talked about looking at your clients office and trying to manage all of the technology they buy. Today the very notion of “office” is changing – with mobility, collaboration and productivity – companies are far less interested in buying stuff and far more interested in getting things done. Many of you are facing the same frustration when you try to do your own pitch for the modern office pie – you often find the device is already managed by someone else, would be unprofitable for you to take on and sometimes the very vendor that brought it in is pitching for your IT services pie.

Even though this process is frustrating – and companies are buying less stuff – they are spending a lot more (more than ever before) on services. That is where you need to be. Coincidentally, “services” tend to displace “stuff” and there is far less comparable shopping among services because they don’t come with a SKU and an MSRP.

So which service do I start offering?

~~Whatever Vlad Sells.~~

Whatever you can explain sufficiently enough to sell to the client and make someone else do the hard work without you spending any money.

Start a newsletter and a blog covering things on Mashable. Focus your time as the CEO at being the rainmaker of these technologies in your region, industry, vertical, audience. Explain how these services make sense for small/medium/your business and tell them that you’d gladly help them make it work for their business.

Why should anyone hire you? Couldn’t they just go and do it on their own? Yes, if they are one man shops with nothing to do between browsing freeones and lunch they would. What you find in most companies is that people have jobs in order to perform a given task. If they aren’t performing that task (and have time to goof off on mashable) then why are they working here? Let’s get some better employee monitoring software!

Companies are desperate to manage the growing amount of unmanageable information that they need to stay on top of. Technology is becoming more mainstream and the security of that information is soon going to become a big deal for many.

When Microsoft killed SBS it didn’t really kill a product as much as it just removed a crutch so many small business IT consultants held themselves up on – truth is so many of you are selling so much more than SBS/Windows/Office as was the case in the early 2000’s. There is far too much stuff out there and nobody wants more of it. They want new solutions – even if they don’t make as much sense even if they aren’t cheaper even if the experts are against them – because they have gone as far as they can down this road of accumulating stuff and they want something simple. They want something disposable. They don’t want stuff that needs to be managed and babied – they want crap they can get fast and dispose of quickly when they no longer need it.

I have been fortunate enough to receive many bad pieces of advice in my business life – listening to my clients about the solutions they want to buy has rarely sent me in the wrong direction. Do likewise.

Perspectives on Invincibility

Posted: 1:27 pm
July 25, 2012

Boss, Vladville
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I have a quick piece of advice I’d like to share with you.

Win big.

Lose small and often.

As you build your business or businesses and manage different strategies and goals you will inevitably fail at most of them. Not because you’re an idiot but mostly because when you don’t have complete control over all the factors and aren’t giving it 100% of your undivided attention and don’t operate in vacuum things can sometimes work against you.

The bigger things get the more often stuff will work against you. You can only juggle so much.

Those of us that fail a lot and often learn to put things into perspective – and that perspective is that there is no such thing as immortality and invincibility.

So when you win big..

Do this:

What would I have done next if I was wrong and I lost?

It will keep you from thinking you’re far better than you actually are.

It will reset your risk calculations as well. Success is hard to come by and money is far too easy to give away. You’re happy when you win so you don’t take the time to truly reflect on what it took to get the win – you only seem to think about it when you lose. So when you win.. be humble, be thankful, consider your next move like it’s the last one you’ll make.

~~Or drink so much that the walls start to move and hope you hit a soft target on your way down as you pass out.~~

It’s one of the few “secrets” I’ve had on my way up. It’s also remarkably inexplicable that it’s a secret that so many aren’t aware of – which is why so many successful people make remarkably dumb moves. Rappers, wall street crooks, gay bashing legislators and pastors getting caught in the airport bathroom stall with a man, etc.

Win big. Lose small and often.

Update on the NDA items

Posted: 2:43 pm
July 20, 2012

Beta, IT Culture
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Several people have followed up with me directly about the progress of the betas and other NDA software and solutions discussed at the few NDA webinars I held last quarter. Here is the official unofficial statement on those and just the statement of the obvious in case I may have mislead some with my optimism.

We have several huge pieces of software coming out over the next year.

Some of it will step on the toes of our vendors, sponsors or competitors in the marketplace. For obvious reasons we aren’t going to talk about these out loud until they are ready and we’ve got our partners ready to rock and roll.

That said..

First, this is a business and in business we’re going to go after the people that have the largest accounts with us even if they aren’t the most ideal test case scenario. If they are volunteering their time and paying us a ton of money, I will not tell them they aren’t good enough to play with my broken software.

Second, loyalty matters. I know many people are all about “right tool for the right job” and to that I say “I’ll get right back to you”; It’s no secret that no matter what the scenario (business or personal) you take care of your friends. So when I have people who are my undying supporters that sell and push me harder than I even do myself – yeah, they go way way ahead of the Microsoft and Postini fans. While I’m sure it’s in our better business interest to pursue our competitors clients and offer them exclusive stuff if they were to switch their antispam or hosting stuff to us.. I have a shitload of money but I don’t have a shitload of friends – so my friends come first.

Finally, we have limited resources and I’m tired of shipping crap. We don’t get second chances anymore. The stuff that we put out there has to be pretty much perfect and our partners are just as busy as we are with even fewer resources. We can’t afford to drag these tests out for years – so the way it works (and some of you have figured this out working with Chelsea) is as follows:

1. Vlad’s VIP list. Call them in sequence.

2. High rollers. Call them from top to bottom.

3. Everyone else. Call from top to bottom in order of MRR.

In most cases, we don’t even make it down the VIP list. These are typically the people that have been working with us forever and I trust their opinion. When we do – Chelsea calls down – if you don’t answer the phone that we have on the record your entry goes to the bottom of the list. This is why most people never end up on the beta. For what it’s worth – I understand, I am typically too busy to answer phone calls too – but those are the breaks. We’re essentially begging people for help here and whoever has a time and is willing gets a hit.

It’s a two way street

Being on a beta is not necessarily a huge benefit to the organization nor is it a critical piece to how you run your business. I think that way more than 99% of our clients do not participate in our beta (assuming that the crap we actually put out is called “release”) process.

The advantage is in hearing me talk about what the solution does and hearing all the other background behind it so you can better formulate your business plan. For example, what if you knew that there was a significant part of your service provider infrastructure coming for free if you’re my partner? Would it twist the way you market and position your product when you can do so on someone elses dime? Sure. Would it be any less valuable 6 months later? Probably not. But it sure would be more convenient knowing about it ahead of time.

That’s all I’m saying! Smile

Short Term Fads, Long Term Trends, Profit Both Ways

Posted: 8:18 pm
July 19, 2012

ExchangeDefender, IT Business
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As I’ve mentioned just about every chance I get, we’ve been at this for about 15 years. Every year or so I look at my lines of business and wonder if it’s going to make it around for another year or two. Most of them don’t. When we first started Own Web Now, I was wondering if we could keep on selling domain registrations. Then web hosting. Then ISDN dialbacks. Then reselling T1’s and circuits. Then web design. Then web and email hosting. Then security. Then email. Every time we make it into a new technology it takes 2-3 years before it becomes easier to obtain that the fad tide rides fast and then you either catch a new one or fade into obscurity.

Today, with the launch of ExchangeDefender CloudShare, I’m going to say something unusual that I’ve never said before.

I think that CloudShare – combined with all our other lines of business – has not just added another two to three years.. but at least 10 years to our relevancy in an SMB organization.

Shifting Paradigms

First we had mainframes and dumb terminals.

Then we went from mainframes to most computing being done on individual PCs.

With Internet revolution we started marching back towards the client-server model and now on to the cloud which in essence is pushing most of the storage, processing and intelligence back onto a mainframe like monster system.

I think the mobility trend is here to stay for at least another decade.

Small businesses are adopting it at a record pace. Our hosted mail products are smacking around on-site deployments – and soon there will be a time where nobody but the biggest shops will be building high end servers in their offices. Everyone thinks so, including Microsoft that just killed SBS.

Reality Check

As I wrote previously, we do not for a moment believe that businesses of any size blindly trust the cloud. The problem with software design and software industry is that you don’t design solutions for the edge cases, you design for the mass market – and the reality is that you cannot sell massive amounts of software to businesses that are paranoid of the Internet.

This is where I think they are wrong and I’m betting a lot of money against them.

Not sure if I placed enough emphasis on that one. Smile

Here is the thing, small businesses are going to keep on moving more and more stuff to the cloud. It just makes sense. It plays well with mobile devices. It’s easy to budget and it’s relatively cheap to maintain because it’s someone elses job to do all the nasty antivirus, backup, migration and so on. So the cloud + mobility stuff is here to stay.

The catch is that the cloud takes all the control out of your hands. It offers damn near zero compensation in the case of a data loss. Everything is at your own risk – and in business we try to minimize risk and maximize profits and remove uncertainty.

So how certain are you that the cloud won’t lose your data? Would you bet a $1,000/year business on the cloud? Sure. How about a $10,000 a year? Maybe. $100,000? Maybe, but I don’t feel comfortable. $1,000,000? No way. $10,000,000? Trust? What’s that?

I believe that our CloudShare extends our business by ten years. Simply put – cloud providers have no incentive to create a backup system for you. Absolutely none. They are better off spending $ on their own infrastructure redundancy and charging you more for more frequent backups that they manage. Play Russian roulette with your data, would you like to point a revolver loaded with 4 bullets or 1 bullet to your head? Go ahead, just squeeze.

We have always seen an advantage along the lines of common sense and low risk.

We’re rolling out a software solution (CloudShare) today. It will keep your files in the cloud and sync them locally to all your PCs.

This fall we’ll be rolling out a hardware appliance that will bring all the cloud files to your office. Then all of your email messages in the ExchangeDefender Hosted Exchange. Then Twitter. Then Facebook. Then other providers.

The better the cloud and mobility does, the better you’ll do.

And I think that makes a difference that no cloud will be able to bolster.

Differentiation. For a decade. Let’s spank this!

P.S. So my partners will make lots of bank. Now, here is the thing. This is the last time I’m begging you to join us at ExchangeDefender. If you’re not onboard and working with us, ExchangeDefender Partner Program will soon be going byebye in it’s current form and the entry fee and terms will become quite steep. Truth is, I need to put more resources towards Managed Messaging, Shockey Monkey and CloudShare so training new resellers for free is just not in the best interest of the business and our partners. More details on this later.

What if we’re all wrong about the cloud?

Posted: 10:59 pm
July 16, 2012

Awesome, ExchangeDefender, IT Business
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The cloud fever has finally made Microsoft’s SMB channel too sick to get out of bed with removal of Exchange, joining virtually every other vendor that is only pursuing a cloud strategy. Many consultants, IT Solution Providers and even yours truly have chimed in on the fact that data retention is extremely important in the SMB world. The typical IT scenario for the cloud in SMB has been to offload some of the Internet-intensive workloads to the cloud: web hosting, email hosting, portals, shopping carts and so on have all gone to the cloud. Small businesses spend a small fortune counting on the cloud for disaster recovery and business continuity.

I think we’ve got this the wrong way.

Client behavior suggests so as well.

If you follow the evolution of servers to the cloud from the late 90’s to today you see that one technology after another has slowly trended towards being more expensive, requiring more redundancy and even more maintenance and upkeep. Each generation, in terms of overall cost for software and hardware, has gone up because client demands have exponentially gone up. I remember talking to many IT folks even in Fortune 500 about their 25 Mb mailboxes. Today, that’s an attachment.

The major concern for IT departments today is BYOD. That stands for “Bring Your Own Device” but what it really means is that another piece of infrastructure is ripped out of control of the IT department. Think about it, if you bring your own iPad with it’s own 4G connection and your 4G Android, do you really need anything from the IT department? Or an IT consultant? As both of those parties fight to stay relevant one ugly truth becomes apparent: The IT has lost control.

Years ago the biggest IT concern was proliferation of hosted services. IT departments didn’t like users using online applications for collaboration or team organization because it made IT departments irrelevant. Departments refused to wait for IT guys to get around to purchasing servers, vetting the vendor, testing the system, deploying it, configuring it and often not being able to support it. So the users went around them – opening up team sites and collaborating through the freebie systems. Today those systems – from Gmail to Facebook – are the norm an IT department cannot fight.

Once people figured out how flexible they can be without the gatekeeper they couldn’t get enough of it! Yes proxies and active directory restrictions could keep people in check for a while but even Microsoft killed ISA a long time ago. If even the biggest software manufacturer in the world sees no ability to make money on giving companies the ability to police traffic that ought to give you a big enough sign of what the businesses really demand.

In essence, it’s productivity.

So what do we have wrong?

I think we got the cloud file storage thing figured out backwards.

The entire cloud is racing towards creating a cheaper storage product. Amazon Web Services is battling Rackspace who is fighting with Microsoft Azure and they are all trying to figure out a way to split pennies. Meanwhile, they from time to time lose data and woops, thanks for playing, it’s gone.

How can they get away with it? Simple – their largest customers aren’t small businesses storing precious data. They are social media sites storing political cartoons and memes. Losing your tax records is no joking matter tho.

So what do we have in SMB? We have a ton invested in file servers and we’re spending a fortune to create business recovery scenarios with expensive offsite backups. Or we’re dropping it off into unreliable and unknown void of the cloud – with storage products that have no stated data destruction policies, no security disclosures, proprietary mechanisms that make it difficult to take data out and even some of the most heralded solutions happen to lose data.

This is a broken model.

Small business has to spend an insane amount of money to create reliable local infrastructure. First you need enterprise quality disks. Then you need RAID hardware. Finally, you need some sort of backup software/solution often paired with a BDR with an offsite provider. You need this.

So congratulations, for every bit of data you store you’re paying at least 4x (on your workstation, 2x on your servers mirrored hard drives, 1x on your BDR and 1x in the cloud). That’s if the data isn’t also backed up to a USB disk or using RAID10 or something more sophisticated.

The flexibility you get with that data to follow you from PC to PC if you work from home? None. Audit control over the server? Very complex. Access logs of what is touched when in the cloud? Damn near none. And that’s if you deal with reputable people, not Jimmy Joe Bob’s Bait & Tackle Cloud Storage Specialists (I miss my brother Chris Rue).

I think there is a better way.

If all the worlds vendors are hell bent on removing servers from SMB, it just doesn’t make sense to move your storage to the cloud. Seriously, would you keep your money in the worlds cheapest fee bank? Why do you pay for a safety deposit box instead of keeping your valuables in a storage locker at a 24/7 UPS store? Because you value security. And redundancy. You don’t want to drive up to a bank tomorrow and realize that it’s single branch has been turned overnight into the Waffle House.

It’s easy to build affordable and scalable stuff in the cloud. But you’re not going to trust the cloud with your data any more than you’re going to trust the Waffle House Credit Union.

So what if the cloud were merely a backend for your file exchange. Instead of keeping files in a web interface, you keep it on your hard drive and the software on your PC simply syncs it to the cloud provider. If they blow up… ah well, you still have your data. If you blow up, no big deal, just download it from the cloud.

In the meantime, your operations don’t change. Everything looks the same as before, works as fast as it did before because the files are local. The only thing that changes is where this data goes.

But you still can’t trust them..

So what if instead of spending thousands of dollars on file servers that you don’t need and can never pay enough to keep as redundant and as resilient..

.. you keep your data in the cloud but get a cheap appliance that just streams down the cloud content back down to you so you can always keeps hands on your data but never overspend to keep it safe?

It’s what users want. The cost of the cloud for the enterprise storage.

Only problem is, no vendor will want to build a system that takes them out of the service equation or perpetual service subscription. It’s easier to just keep on cutting a cent off the storage fees and hope the cuts are slower than the tumbling cost of storage density. Well, maybe there is someone crazy enough to do it.

The Only Thing I Know For Sure

You will never get it wrong if you deliver what people ask for. Smile

P.S. The comments are closed and you know why… If you have a comment please email me at vlad@vladville.com or tune in to your favorite news site this Thursday.

The wrong concerns everyone has about the cloud

Posted: 11:14 am
July 11, 2012

ExchangeDefender, IT Business
4 Comments

Now some of you clicked on this link accidentally or are probably wondering what kind of insane argument for the cloud I have. After all, your clients don’t want the cloud, don’t trust the cloud, will never want their data on the Internet and are just looking for a good debate. I’ve had that debate for years and this ain’t one of them so I don’t want to waste your time, just follow this link to the place where the folks that disagreed with me inevitably end up at. Sorry, but that’s the harsh reality of business in an emerging technology field and not liking innovation.

Why cloud file servers just don’t make sense..

There is that problem of broadband just not being broad enough for the large files we sometimes move around. Even in the small business with a 10Mb uplink that pipe can get not-so-broad during business hours while everyone is streaming youtube videos.

Then there is the issue of location, politics and regulation. Where is my data stored at? Is it in USA where the Patriot Act is going to authorize the government to see every single of my files? Aren’t all of the employees constantly opening my files just as they read all of my email and my attachments? Will I get sued if my data is not on my hard drive?

There are also questions about longevity – what if the service provider goes out of business? If you move to the cloud and the cloud explodes, are you going to lose all of your files? Since you have no control over it all, what if one of your employees or service providers employees just decides to delete all of your files out of malice?

REALLY: These are just a few of the reasons I don’t believe in the cloud. Yes, I Vladimir Mazek do not have blind faith in the cloud. I do worry that my bank doesn’t have enough deposits on hand and I might one day wake up to having new management there. I don’t trust my data center providers, that’s why I have more then one. I sure as hell don’t trust any of the hardware we use – that’s why they are redundant inside the box, spread across multiple boxes and the redundant across multiple data centers. Yeah, it’s not as profitable as say Amazon Web Services, but I don’t have a backup book selling business to fall back on should ExchangeDefender blow up one day. So while I’m awake (along with everyone here) we try to make sure that we wake up to the same stuff we went to bed with – a fully operational, redundant network.

So why in the world would you go into a cloud files business?

Because the clients are asking for it!

Wait a minute Vlad, my clients are NOT asking for it! You are insane! Never in my five decades of being an IT consultant have I ever heard of a client wanting to store their files in the cloud. They don’t trust the cloud. They don’t want the cloud. They want their files where they can see them. On a server. In the office. Not everyone is living in 2020 that Vladville is, my customers view of managed print services is when Office Depot delivers typewriter paper and ink ribbon!!!

So the reason the above argument is bullshit is because your/our customers aren’t IT people. They are not going to knock on the door and ask for the cloud. But they are using it and loving it and if they have an iPad they do know the features these gadgets bring to them. You haven’t heard anyone say this recently, have you: “I hate cell phones. I hate how all my contacts that are in Outlook are also on my Android/iPhone and how I can access all of my stuff all over the place and don’t have to lug around a 8lb laptop.” They don’t know that they are using the cloud – all they know is that this stuff is more convenient and it just so happens to run through the cloud.

Screw the cloud.

Sell the features.

But don’t sell it like Microsoft. Sell it like Apple. Don’t sell them voice pattern recognition software that will offload their message to a data center in North Carolina and send back search results. Click on the button and show them what it does.

Here is how you sell it..

Here are a few slides that illustrate the difference between the Microsoft approach and the Apple approach.

What I want to make sure you understand is that this is not a glorification of Apple or a conviction of Microsoft. It’s the mirror of reality: consumers are making purchasing decisions. When it comes to understanding what consumers want, Apple has beaten Microsoft repeatedly, convincingly and decisively – to the extent that Microsoft itself is changing it’s model. Respectfully, so should we.

Appeal to what your clients want. Not to what they need. Because for the most part they are the same thing, but if you phrase it correctly it will appeal more. Here is what your clients need:

Sounds great, right? Except nobody outside of data center business and the accountants that serve them knows what SAS 70 audit is. The redundant data centers are great but it sounds like I’m just going to be paying for a lot of stuff I won’t be using. And as a consumer I am not sure if you’re telling me you’re going to destroy my data or not but I don’t like the idea of it at all.

Now let’s translate the above to English:

This is the conversation that is easier to have.

This is also a conversation in which you’ll easily overcome any objections. For example, how is business level accountability any better than Bob the IT guy that works for me? Well, Bob the IT guy probably has 15 other jobs and without reports, restore tests and ongoing monitoring is he really doing anything or just having faith that the backup job is doing it’s job? And where is the backup going, above his PC?

Besides the fact that backups are things that nobody likes and nobody cares about until they actually lose data. It’s the first time they happen to think about it. And they sure as hell don’t like to pay for it – but they will pay to have their work files on their home PC and their laptop and accessible everywhere.

They will also pay to know who is accessing which files. At what time.

They will also pay when the experience is exactly the same – your files are now on the M:\ drive.

As for the most realistic concern about the cloud that nobody ever asks..

… mostly because it’s a forgone conclusion: do you trust them?

The answer, for the most part, is hell no. That’s the correct answer.

With CloudShare, we have a better answer. But I’m not going to give it to you here, for that you’ll have to tune in this Friday:

Please register for the event today:

Friday, July 13th at noon EST

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/635677224

People love the convenience.. but when you can’t trust them then the price, features and the offering simply don’t matter. They won’t use it for business.

We have figured out a way to solve this. I would like to acknowledge that some of these concepts are shared with folks like Paul Fitzgerald of the Microsoft SBS/WHS fame because they are a trait shared both by the small business and enterprise: even when we’re not in control we want an illusion that someone, somewhere.. somehow does what is in our best interest. In the absence of that, give me the new convenient features with the fond memories I have of the past.

ExchangeDefender partners… please tune in, I’m about to make your cloud different from everything else that’s on the market today.

Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog