Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

The first official day of the SMB Nation is almost over and I’m skipping out on the drinking party to give all you lazy bums an update on what went down (okay, thats mostly a joke, I realize a lot of you had family and professional issues that have kept you from attending) so if you aren’t here you are losing out and you need to make sure you’re here next year.

Morning started with a keynote from Steve Gugenheimer, VP Small Business. He is the guy publishing Orlando’s own Chris Elliott’s stories so it was nice to see how far Microsoft has gone to embrace the small business and small business IT Pro and VAR businesses. On the other hand, I’ve been through a ton of TS2/Connections seminars all over Florida so I did all I could to stay awake. I re-introduced myself to Bob Hood from the Chicago SBS group and I finally met Tavis Patterson, who has been very helpful with his group marketing ideas for us in Florida.

First break I took a minute to meet with Lawrence Kim, the gentleman that provided us with the Imate SP3 phones a few months ago. We had a long chat about mobility, how the community embraces them, where they fit with clients, how they are positioned, etc. I dragged Scott Buchanan into our chat and we spent well over an hour trying to figure out what we can do with Mr. Kim. I’m extremely enthusiastic about what we can do with him, very cool guy.

Stopped by Anne Stanton and gave her a shirt to thank her for the excellent CRM presentation we got in August. Susan Bradley put up our flag in the MVP booth so we’ve made our presence known. It is amazing how many people have heard of us.

I also got to meet Robbie Upcroft and Susanne Dansey from UK. Very nice folks, and it turns out Robbie is from Australia. Took a few seconds to get the foot out of my mouth on that one. Susanne is the UK lady I posted on here a few times, she runs the SBSPI UK board and the british are definately starting to group like we do in US…. and they are a lot more vocal than we tend to be. And yes, she is as gorgeous in person as she is on the picture on this blog (hope this settles all the questions that came up during the last group meeting about the strange people that seem to find my blog in the cyberspace).

I also met Beatrice Mulzer today (the lady that wrote the 70-282 exam primer that I also had a cameo apendix in) and the book cover does not do her justice. I actually spent quite some time talking to her a week or so ago and we got a chance to catch up on the new book plans. If you like the primer you’re going to LOVE her new project. IMHO, this new book will be as popular as Harry Brelsfords famous guide to small business consulting best practices.

Despite all the negative feedback, I went to see Robin Robbins and I am so glad I made it to it. We’ve had a very successful marketing effort at OWN and ExchangeDefender but if you’ve got a limited budget and only grow by the word of mouth, you need to take a look at what Robin has to offer. I was definately “sold” on what she presented. There has been a lot of negative chatter about how she is a marketing and pushy sales person and…. well…. no s***, thats what she is good at! I am sure people get a lot more than they ever wanted to know when they talk with me about Exchange, thats my bag baby! Same with Robin, she is a marketing/sales person. She made an amazing presentation about the package and partners that have experienced a ton of success with her help. I’ve seen your clipart postcards (Yes, Dave, I am talking to you) and you need Robin. The offer at SMB Nation was $1000 for the entire package (which retails for $5k) and Harry offered a $100 buy-in on top of that. Worth the price of admission? Yup.

Last presentation of the day for me was on managed services / plans and I honeslty went in just to see how partners view the “managed” bit. It was quite refreshing, and quite interesting: not everyone is ambitious enough to work 22+ hours a day like some of us try to. Amy Luby, of ISA fame, talked in very realistic, business terms and offered her input in how Mobitech offers “managed services” — another bit of PRICELESS information in my humble opinion. Ever wondered if managed services decrease the face-time with your clients, and how you balance that? Yes? Well, hope you were in Redmond today!

I also got to meet Marie McFadden, from the Microsoft PSS private newsgroups that I know most of you rely on (or at least you should). I’ve been posting stuff in the newsgroups for years, a lot less now that we have such a big community in Florida, and it was very nice to see someone from the support team was allowed to get off the phone/keyboard. Having been a tech support guy in the previous life I have enormous respect for some of these folks.

I introduced myself to Guy Haycock who you will see in a few weeks in Orlando, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. He is the Senior Product Manager of SBS marketing and I for one look forward to seeing the SBS tour. As always, I offered our little group for the guinea-pig tests. Same with Jeff Middleton whom I’ve solicited in the past, I am standing behind my promise to let important people know that Florida SBS partners mean business. Expect to see both of these folks in Florida very soon.

After the presentation I found Eric Ligman and… good news… he is alive. Roger Otterson joined a very lively discussion on what else… licensing. And we attacked it from every angle possible! Very real guy, we had a long chat and I think I’m starting to figure out where Eric fits in the entire smallbiz puzzle. Still no Florida person but the hire should come about soon. But definately a person, and no, despite the many questions, he did not have a trailing room of monkeys on typewriters while chatting with me 🙂 Roger also gave me a great overview of how to set my Microsoft community expectations, I really wish he had given me this reality check a few months ago at TechEd. Still have to talk to him about the installfest ideas, will do so tomorrow.

The evening wrapped up with a Texas Holdem poker dinner and I spent most of it hanging out with John Vighetto from South Florida chatting with everyone that passed by. I met just about all the other SBS MVP’s that I have not met the previous day. Chad Gross was there, you might remember him as the gentleman that presented the SharePoint/Infopath for us in Tampa last month. I made it a point to thank him on everyones behalf, I know that was one of the best LiveMeetings we’ve had an it inspired the great CRM presentation by Anne Stanton.

Our old pal Ron Gandiza of Culminis was with us all day long, very helpful, very enthusiastic as usual. Spent even more time talking with

So what have I learned:
1) There are way too many people that know who I am.
2) Nearly nobody seems to be offended by my comments! I must be doing something wrong.
3) I did not get beaten to a pulp by Susan Bradley’s 2×4. As a matter of fact, I got a hug!
4) Just like groups are a great way to meet the community and grow your business skills and professional network, the SMB Nation is a great way to learn from the folks around the world.
5) I am hiring Tim Barrett from the Kentucky SBS UG to be my agent. He talks the way I write, including the profanities I (try to) strip out of my posts. Definately the most entertaining individual here.
6) You *need* to be here. I have been to every Microsoft sponsored event, and Harry is clearly kicking their ass with SMB Nation. It has been exceptional so far!

Note: I will have pictures up soon. I’ve taken a picture with just about everyone whose name I recognized so if you’ve ever wondered what some of these people look like, you’ll know soon. For a bunch of geeks, we seriously can’t work a camera — everyone looks at least 2-3x better in person than in any picture you’ve seen on the net.

So I woke up bright and early this morning (around 10am east coast time) to a few hndred messages, one from Brian:

I have to tell you I’m bummed you’re not posting from Seattle. You’re
messing with my morning routine; make coffee, take the dog out, drink
coffee while reading vladville, check email…. 😉

Sorry folks, it has be a very nice social atmosphere so far and Ive had 6 hours of sleep in 3 days. Its great, Ive met most of the famous sbs folks. Will update later. I had a few meetings yesterday, things are looking great for SBS in Florida and worldwide!

This should be a relatively slow week coming up considering most of us will be attending the SMB Nation conference in Redmond, WA. I’ll make it a point to bring a ton of “stuff” back for the group and we will reserve about 15-20 minutes to go over everything that was discussed.

I will also have meetings with several important Microsoft staffers that have expressed interest in working with our IT Professional communities in Florida and will do my best to represent all our interests and concerns. If you’ve ever attended an IT Pro or SBS group meeting you already know what the issues are and I hope a lot of positive momentum comes from my discussion with the interested parties in Microsoft. Whether as employees or IT business workers we all have a vested interest in working with Microsoft as partners and I think they are starting to realize it as such. To this day, however, our support comes overwhelmingly from the local Microsoft employees who believe in the development of their community as much as we do and go out of their way to help us when it really is not their job. Those guys are Greg Boyd, Rene Alamo, Blain Barton and Orlando’s own J.J. Antequino. I hope this trip adds more support to our efforts as it is really a net benefit to everyone involved.

Have a wonderful week and we’ll get back to business on Monday.

-Vlad

One of my buddies, and a close friend of our Orlando IT Pro group, always opened his seminars with a story about how one of his friends never bothered upgrading his Office 97 because it was “just good enough”. His response was: “Of course it is good enough, because you use it the same way” reinforcing the message that the new features of Office 2003 lead to greater productivity, security and accessibility.

That is quite clearly Microsoft’s direction – you need more features! With the exception of Microsoft Outlook 2003, I on the other hand use about 5% of the features of Office 2003 and could quite easily get by with Office 2000. So could nearly all of my customers and partners and if it were not for the fear of security threats that a discontinued product presents, I’d be writing this text in Word 2000.

I am not alone. Earlier this week the Massachusetts state government dumped Microsoft Office for a less functional but free, open and working alternative. People go against Microsoft solutions every day, but the news here is that customer(s) are starting to accept the feature-price tradeoff if the alternative is “good enough” while also being free and secure.

What is even more important is how will your business change if more businesses go with the minimal solution that just gets the job done. Significant part of the IT VAR revenues comes from platform upgrades, and if the next release upgrade cannot be justified, where will you make money? Just something to ponder…

It was nice to see a handful of our members made the trek to Tampa last Wednesday to see what’s new with the SQL Server 2005. Thank you for stopping by and saying hello and I hope you had the time to chat with Greg Boyd and Mike Powell, two of the former Microsoft Connections presenters that have been a huge asset to our IT community. They both seemed much happier and happened to regain some of their hair. In case you didn’t get the chance to go here are some of the notes I think you’ll find interesting. If you’d like to know more, or if you have any questions, Blain Barton will be presenting SQL 2005 during our meeting. Please RSVP.

Here is what you missed:

• Price for SQL Server 2005 will be higher than for SQL Server 2000. If you have been holding off SQL 2005 projects until the release, obtaining SQL Server 2000 with Software Assurance will run you less than SQL Server 2005 with Software Assurance.
  SQL Server 2005 is set to launch on November 7th, 2005 at the same time as Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk 2006.

• There will be a local Orlando Launch of SQL Server 2005 scheduled for December 8, 2005. This is a free, all-day event with two tracks: developer or system administrator (ITPRO). It will be held at the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) on International Drive so this will be a big event.
• Keynote address was delivered by Francois Ajenstat, Microsoft GPM for SQL Server Core BI Engine. He claimed SQL 2005 was the most successful beta product ever with over 785,000 copies distributed. Hope this gives you an idea of the potential demand you will see shortly.
• SQL Server 2005 will feature 10-12 second failover, online re-index operation without shutdown (reindex without dropping clients), snapshot isolation, reduced surface area services (only SQL Server Engine is installed by default), storing encrypted data in the database and the channel encryption using PKI, included Best Practices Analyzer to give you idea of which settings to tweak, Upgrade Advisor to let you know what might go wrong with SQL Server 2005 deployment, SQL Server Migration Assistant, integration with Business Score Card Manager 2005, CLR support (meaning stored procedures and scripts can be written in any .NET language) and most things are now database objects (queue’s for example).
• Most relevant to most IT Pro’s still reading this horribly mangled run-on list: You can have SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 running on the same system, side-by-side, with all tools and support software at the same time. SQL Server 2005 installs in a separate directory as a separate instance, so your migration from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 can happen with little-to-no downtime.

Douglas Crumpler, member of our South Florida sister group, has been working with the Florida EOC and FEMA to render assistance to the IT Professionals affected by the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina. Doug has sent out invitations to IT Professionals in Florida that may be willing to help with the recovery and rebuilding process of the IT infrastructure in the affected areas. Orlando, to one degree or another, was struck by three hurricanes last year and I know you all remember trying to make it without power, broadband or perhaps even a few roof tiles. People in the gulf states have it much worse, most having lost their houses, businesses or even worse.

If you have the means and willingness to help in the enormous task of rebuilding the IT infrastructure please get in touch with Doug and offer your assistance.

We’ll be at the Windows IT PRO (SQL Server Magazine) SQL 2005 roadshow in Tampa today. I know a lot of our members will be out there so take a minute and stop by. Culminis was kind enough to provide us with a table thanks to the efforts we made to get the word out so hope you have fun.

I know our old buddy Greg Boyd will be out there from 10AM – 1PM so see if you can find him. If you can’t see him, you need new glasses.

There are many (many, many, many) rumors that the Vista Beta2 will be feature-complete in a few weeks and Microsoft has already put the Beta 1 in front of enough eyes to get some feedback. If you weren’t part of any Partner Technight’s, IT Pro group install-fests or such here is your opportunity to throw in your two cents.

Kevin’s Blog Entry asking for Vista feedback

Kevin is an IT Pro evangelist, not a product developer but he is in the chain of people that provide user feedback to product groups. If you have a concern, especially a business concern on how to sell Vista, you need to speak now while they are still listening.

In a true “as seen on TV” move, Microsoft has purchased Teleo, the startup provider of VoIP services common in nearly every VoIP provider, IM and even cable package. I know I’m not alone in asking this but have you ever turned on the TV on a Sunday morning and just questioned the sanity of people buying some of the crap people are advertising? It slices, it dices, it cuts tomatos and hammers!

So what kind of a hammer or tomato will Teleo help cut for Microsoft? The VoIP functionality is already provided in MSN and Windows Messenger. The SIP for corporate use is already provided in Office Communicator through Live Communication Server. The click-to-call is already part of PocketPC Windows Mobile 2003 SE. Voice, even video chat is available through just about every connected presence app out there.

So what is Microsoft up to? Is this just going to beef up the Messenger to help it fight Google Talk or is Microsoft entering the VoIP market? Looking at the Microsoft product portfolio though I hope they got the Carlton Sheet’s 30 day unconditional money-back waranty if they are not completely thrilled by the product 🙂

Update: Apparently BBC knows something that I don’t. Article goes on to talk about IM->Phone line chat which was available in MSN IM years ago. I remember using it. Then they restricted it to 5 minutes of free time so I find the story a little humorous.

Windows Server R2 RC0 has been released. Talk about a cryptic title! The R2 is an upgrade to Windows Server 2003 SP1 that adds a ton of enterprise features (thus the “rev 2” title) and the first CTP has been put on the web.

You can register to download it here but please keep in mind that this is a CTP, RC0, alpha, beta… pick your word for broken and there you are. Do not roll this onto a production system.

Why R2? Well it includes improved branch office server solutions, identity and access management and storage management and the thing I’ve been raving about: SharePoint TrustBridge technology that allows different companies to share parts of their SharePoint sites with other SharePoint sites. You could syndicate your content to your business partners SharePoint web and integrate your information. Very cool.