Depression

Posted: 11:28 am
July 12, 2009
Microsoft
5 Comments

It’s something you hear in the voices of many IT people these days, particularly those in the Microsoft Partner world whose business was established on one primary vendor.

So I have a question for you: What would you do for a living if you lost your job?

Presumably, if you are reading this blog, you work as an information worker in some faucet of maintaining and managing IT.

I have been hearing these “woe is me” stories for a couple of months now. Yeah, there is growth out there but it just doesn’t seem to be enough for many that have seriously stepped up their marketing and services. Gain one client, lose two. Get some labor but lose a reoccurring service account. We can somewhat anecdotally match this up at OWN where the calls to buy ExchangeDefender direct and without going through a partner have skyrocketed. With record layoffs in the technology sector it’s not a good time to be a techie.

So why say depression? Because almost everyone I have talked to is pinning their hopes on the recovery in IT spending on Windows 7. It’s awesome! It’s faster and more stable than Vista. It finally let’s you use your computer and not have to constantly frustrate yourself with it. It also makes you obsolete.

We are on our way to New Orleans for Microsoft WPC where I believe Microsoft will announce a whole slew of “visionary” products (to them; they have already had all that Microsoft plans to announce in production at Apple, Zoho, Amazon and Yahoo for years) that come one step closer to Microsoft being a consumer company, not a technology burden company it is today.

Now, I know many will say that there are good odds Microsoft will mess this up, that there will still be a need for someone to manage complex technology, deal with migrations, that there will always be business.

And that’s given – despite urban planning there are still millions of septic tanks out there – and there will probably always be a need for that guy that attaches the hose and hits the suction switch. I just highly doubt that the guy sucking crap makes much above minimum wage. So perhaps we’ll always have the guy running around the office blowing dust out of the back of a power supply, or trying to figure out why the newest antivirus update got corrupted.

But much like his septic tank pumping pal, he won’t be making more than $30K.

Quick, how much do you think the Apple Geniuses and Apple store personnel make?

And that’s the cause for the depression in the SMB / MSP space, and why so many are working so hard to become more efficient consumer companies. Microsoft has the benefit of the size, but not the benefit of knowing how to run a service organization.

It will be interesting to see the post-carnage attendance at WPC and just what their business is focusing on. I can tell you from talking to my very successful partners that they aren’t doing what they were doing a year ago. (and they aren’t the bummed ones either) The big question is: What will they do next year?

Tune in for reports from WPC all this week. Should be a blast.

Google Chrome OS

Posted: 10:41 am
July 8, 2009
Google
Comments Off on Google Chrome OS

After years of speculation.. here is the announcement.

Many are seeing this as a tactical nuke at Microsoft’s monopoly, however, let’s keep in mind that Google too often dreams big but things never quite catch up (see: backpack, Google Talk, Docs).

It’s going to be fun to see. With Google becoming serious, stripping beta tags, supporting the IT community and even the SMB community, things are certainly very interesting all of a sudden:

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

I agree with their assumption, I’d love to see it delivered even more.

Community 2.0

Posted: 9:59 pm
July 6, 2009
Podcast
1 Comment

When in Course of IT events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the marketing budgets of larger companies which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the free tshirt, the separate and equal station to which the cost of Stuff We All Get entitle them, a decent respect to the weight of carryon luggage of mankind requires that they should pillage the expo wisely.

Yes. We do have a problem.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to The SPAM Show:

www.facebook.com/ExchangeDefender

Now sure, I talked about it yesterday, but really the whole point of the IT community is that you learn from your fellow peers and if you’re lucky, form some great friendships. I have been blessed to make many friends around the world through my work and we are letting you in.

You can call me a liar if you do what I’m about to tell you and don’t laugh.

So you don’t like podcasts. Maybe you don’t like geeks or business. Maybe you have better things to do. But let me ask you… how was your day? Pretty tough, right? I want you to ignore all that you could learn from me and my friends. I want you to even ignore how much money our collaborative efforts can make you. I want you to even ignore everything you know and think of me. I just want you to allow me to make you laugh.

SPAM Show #11:

[audio:http://www.vladville.com/media/own-spam-show-11-swag.mp3]

10 minute outtake at the end of the show, covering the strategy for collecting swag.

Enjoy. If you like it, please blog and sneeze it.

Brought to you by SMB Books.com, MSP University.us, SMB Virtualization.net and ExchangeDefender. And the community evangelist without whose participation none of this would be possible.

The SPAM Show

Posted: 1:02 am
July 6, 2009
SBS Show
1 Comment

xdlogo In the long, long ago, Chris Rue (happy birthday!), Susanne Dansey and myself put on the SBS Show: dedicated to the world of small business technology and technology consulting. The time for the SBS Show had come and gone, with over 26+ hours of recordings and thousands of downloads it was clear that the industry was no longer interested in the basics of SMB technology. Most of us that started and grew businesses in that era had moved on to the bigger concerns.

Say hello to the SPAM Show. In a way, it’s a show to address the topic of working in the business of technology. One of my biggest challenges, as my business grows, is explaining to my new employees that come from diverse backgrounds just what IT Solution Providers do, what we do, what our values are and what our mission actually means. Onboarding people is a painful and expensive process and there are few resources to help you align your organization with your vision, the new opportunities that present themselves daily… but that’s just me.

Over the past few months a few of my close friends (who also happen to be authors, vendors, industry leaders, speakers, CEO’s and so on) have put together over 11 hours of content on a very simple subject: What’s going on out there?

Until now this was only available to Own Web Now Partners. Now, it’s available to you, free, via Facebook. Click here.

Show regulars include Karl Palachuk, Erick Simpson, Dave Sobel and Mark Crall with special appearances by Stuart Selbst, Bob Godgart, Joe Panettieri, Chris Rue, Tim Barrett, Clinton Gatewood and more.

The agenda is to help the people we work with get an entertaining and educational take on what we do for a living. So fan us on Facebook or hit the Community tab in the OWN support portal. You won’t regret it. Money back guarantee. And yes, please tell a friend!

Happy 4th of July

Posted: 12:07 am
July 5, 2009
SBS Show
1 Comment

Hope you had a wonderful holiday. Earlier tonight I stood in the front yard of my new home and watched the fireworks over Cinderella’s Castle in Magic Kingdom / Walt Disney World. I don’t mean that euphemistically, like being able to see it on the TV in the living room, I am lucky enough to live that close to it!

So today, I wanted to thank all of you that do business with Own Web Now, resell and promote ExchangeDefender, trust us with your data and with your clients, and by proxy, make it possible for me to have what I have. Thank you.

So today, I get to say thank you. Later today I’ll post the latest SPAM Show #11 recorded Friday, perhaps the funniest SMB / Business podcast ever produced. Details to follow on Sunday. Hope you’re having a wonderful weekend and again, thanks from my family to yours!

The Difference

Posted: 6:44 am
July 2, 2009
OwnWebNow, Vladville
3 Comments

A few weeks ago a buddy of mine asked an open ended question: What makes you different? In a market where change is constant and companies range from deadbeats to broke to $30 billion a quarter, how are you positioning yourself and your company for success? Almost everyone has their one word or tagline if you will, as do I, but for a moment I’ll ignore the BS one I use for marketing and share the real one. I don’t happen to be immensely proud of it:

“Persistent ability to fail and try again.”

It doesn’t look good on a shirt. Or a company mission statement. Or as an introduction to a new client. However, looking back and looking forward, every step in the evolution of my company involved my brain crack slamming the wall at 200 mph, looking back at the carnage and finding a way to move it forward.

People are so afraid of failure that they absolutely, totally, positively have to be right. About everything. Ten years in the past, ten years in the future. And in their quest to be so sure and so positive and so firm in what they are doing, they are paralyzed. They never give themselves a chance to do anything and grow beyond where they are. Some are OK with being stuck in the rut and they treasure the life without change or challenge. Eventually, as with almost everything, they fail as well and move on. Look at the carnage in the IT industry over the past few years, look at the hundred year old financial firms that folded last year, look at governments, empires… everyone fails.

The key difference for me is that as the sky is falling down, I am learning all that I did wrong and how we got to the point that we’re at. Then I work to eliminate those mistakes and just try again.

Which brings me to the monkey wrangling circus. How do you train the people around you? Pass on all the great knowledge you’ve amassed and sit there in disappointment as they never live up to your expectations or their own potential? Or throw them in the fire and see if they burn or start coming up with ways not to be in that situation again?

PIC-0170

So now that you know a little more about me, I need a favor. This is a room in our new office in downtown Orlando. What you are looking at is a shell of a few hundred square feet that we have absolutely no plans for. After Nicole and I hook up the Garage Band and reenact the scene from Risky Business we are a bit out of ideas. This office already has a room set aside for the video studio and there is even a podcast studio (foam padded broom closet that 2 obese geeks can fit in with a box of chocolate rolls, a 16 piece bucket and a mic).

So, what can we do with this room to help out our community and better serve the people we work with? I’d love your input. One thing is for sure though: the first few things we try we’ll fail at.

Ideas and comments welcome, or email vlad@vladville.com

ConnectWise swallows up HTG

Posted: 12:20 am
July 1, 2009
IT Culture
14 Comments

Congrats to Arnie and the team for taking over HTG Partner Groups; Yeah, yeah, strategic partnership sounds better in a press release but when you force software and invoices down the entire organization it’s pretty obvious what happened. You can read about it here (Peer Power), and listen to Arnie and Arlin here (MSP Mentor). 

Moves like this, that close doors to the competition and force solutions, are almost exclusively bad. However, to those of us familiar with the HTG process and mission, this makes a lot of sense on a lot of levels. Arlin has blogged recently about the change over at HTG and how important it will be to have the process implementation shared between peers so that metrics and best practices can be shared and implemented – getting the same reports and intelligence can expose problems and present opportunities much faster. Doing so with a single PSA, that has a significant revenue number on the line in pleasing it’s members, creates a nice VIP role.

Two big questions remain to be answered and I think only the time will tell:

1) Now that ConnectWise controls the PSA solution behind the HTG peer members, what incentive does ConnectWise have to improve and compete on price and features? Given the ConnectWise community commitment they have made as of late with their user groups, it should be interesting to see the features that come out of it tailored specifically for the peer environments.

2) What happens to the people using Autotask and other PSA solutions? That seems to be pretty clear. Make no mistake, there is a significant business behind the membership dues, sponsors, events and so on – so any bets on how quickly we’ll see someone seize the opportunity to launch a peer group organization based on Autotask as the core?

Next year is going to be very interesting indeed. What this move makes painfully clear is that the wave of consolidation is about to hit the IT Solution Provider space very quickly as margins get pressed and big players enter the market (Dell, HP, Microsoft & Co.) The smaller players in the field seem to have no other choice than to look much bigger than they really are through resource / peer groups and networks in order to compete. Having a software capable of supporting and facilitating this networking is pretty much critical.

Disclosure: My employer (Own Web Now / ExchangeDefender) sponsors HTG, ConnectWise and Autotask.

Blogyear in Review

Posted: 4:58 pm
June 28, 2009
Vladville
3 Comments

Last week of the quarter, half and fiscal year for Vlad Media, Inc aka Vladville.com. Time for a look back:

Financially, vladville.com (the Google ads) made more money than two average crackheads working the McDonalds drivethrough. I don’t want to gloat but I am sure University of Florida would proudly display my 25% income bracket I make as a professional writer. And a terrible, terrible insult comic. 🙂 Florida alums get paid!

Last years agenda was to talk more about business development and maturity, simply because this blog is nothing if not the venting grounds for things that piss me off during the day and I have nobody I can talk to. Karl meditates. Dave drinks. I blog.

The Economy

What a terrible time to pick to talk about business, right as the confidence in financial markets tanks, financial mismanagement / theft / fraud runs rampant by everyone from the bank teller stealing the bank pens to Bush and Obama, people lose their jobs and the iconic businesses that built this great country simply go under over the weekend.

As bad as it was, if you were smart, this was probably the best time you’ve had in business. It’s certainly the story at ExchangeDefender and Own Web Now. Yes, we had several lines of business get massacred, but the new lines of business propelled us to the highest financial records in the history of the company. I have heard the same from many of you reading this blog, good job!

Looking back, for many this was a trying time. Time to prove you’ve got your s$#% together. Nowhere was this more true than in the ExchangeDefender world – nearly all the partners that didn’t go out of business actually grew in the same space!

The Vapor, The Cloud, The NBT

Last year we announced “Lucy’s Sail” which included series of projects we launched to help partners compete with Microsoft and Google’s assault onto the SMB channel. At the same time I became The Public Enemy #1 for saying that we won’t sell SBS 2008 and a year later OWN has not sold a single seat. I can tell you from talks with many of our partners that even those that had high hopes for SBS didn’t fare much better. It’s just a sign of the times, technology is no longer seen as an investment or expertise and with so many tech layoffs a career in technology has never been more uncertain.

This is a debate that will go on until the last CIS graduate, last VAR, last MSP and computer repair shop left standing. Personally, if I had some great future insight I’d probably be selling research reports. As I said to someone today, I’d rather be dead wrong and paid than be right and broke. It is one of my bigger disappointments among my colleagues and peers, the incessant need to debate the future while ignoring what’s going on today. Today is when people are ready to cut the check, take the money. Until Vegas starts booking odds on the survival of a given computing technology I’ll just keep on growing the company in the direction of people waving their cash at me. Slimy Vendor Whoring at it’s finest.

So… What do you do?

Oh has this changed in the last 12 months or what? I used to get two answers in the past: 1) I write software or 2) I keep it running. You were either a developer or in charge of IT. But as the basics of computing got simpler (iPhone, Mac) and more affordable (as in free: Google, Facebook, Gmail, Netbooks) we’ve seen the premium and respect for technology skills plummet.

These days I talk to people who are anything but the two noted above. Even some of my dearest friends that have worked with me for over a decade have radically changed and diversified their technology service. To be fair (many, many, many) many others have also closed shop for good in the face of financial climate and technical obsoletion. 

The iNotMicrosoft

Tough year for Microsoft. Much tougher than I ever thought it would ever be. Microsoft is still the company that I have always looked up to and likely always will – but man this year hurt in so many ways. Too many to even discuss but I’ve certainly covered them through the year.

One thing I did not see coming is the iPhone domination. Even with the full Blackberry recovery, iPhone just pwned Microsoft in every possible way. They also brought their friends in Google and Facebook and once it became apparent that a computer network can run stuff not made by Microsoft the doors were blown wide open. Almost in spite of all the money Microsoft spent on marketing, it’s competitors are just out-innovating them.

Then the layoffs. Ooof. 

The Year Ahead

About the only nice thing you can say about this economic cycle is that it has washed out a lot of pretenders and humbled a lot of business owners to consider the fundamentals: What does the client want?

Therein we find the first great challenge for the new year: Pricing pressure. Nobody is buying. And when nobody is buying, it’s haggling time. The price for IT should drop a lot (a lot more than it already has) but we’ll make more because we’ll have more clients and higher level work commands a higher pay. We are experimenting with some marketing ideas now but suffice to say it will be the #1 thing going forward.

C-c-c-changes. Yes, virus filtering will always be necessary, but it’s heck of a lot easier to stay protected than it used to be. Apply this to virtually everything you know: All the services you provide now will still be necessary and in demand: you just won’t be able to make a living doing it. Doubt that? See thousands of people who thought they could do what they were doing before, now firmly engaged in the sales roles offering 2 apple pies for $1 with your happy meal.

Tighter circle. As my buddy Karl just wrote, get ready to compete with everyone. When the #1 thing becomes your marketing effort and not your technical skill (because you technical skill can be replaced by the 1st or 2nd result in Google) then a lot of the technology peer corrodery tends to go up in flames. Good news is, organizations like ExchangeDefender/OWN, MSPU, SMB Books and so on are still channel champions and will pay to get people together. But trust a peer for impartial advice? Don’t leave your house without your Amex.

At the end of the day, all we’ve got is our money and our relationships. The world is changing and the money is out there for those willing to work hard enough to take it. As always, thanks for reading this blog and sending your opinions to vlad@vladville.com.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Palm Pre and Exchange, so far

Posted: 7:33 am
June 27, 2009
Exchange
1 Comment

palmpre Recently Sprint started offering Palm Pre device, touting a revolutionary new WebOS and integration with social networking. Initially, this device was described by it’s funding partners as an iPhone Killer and has certainly attracted it’s fair amount of attention for it’s very cool feature set. But how about using it in business, with Exchange?

The Setup

Click here for Sprint Interactive Setup Guides. Sprint also offers a very handy interactive setup for Exchange, just click on each step and it will highlight the part to click on. (Exchange Setup). For ExchangeDefender purposes:

1. Tap the Email icon on the Quick Launch.

2. Note: If you have already set up an email account and want to add another one, tap the Email applications menu > Preferences & Accounts > Scroll Down > Add an Account, before following these instructions.

Enter in the your Microsoft Exchange email. For this example, press J to prompt one to fill in.

3. Tap the Password field and type in the corresponding password. Here, press 0 to prompt one to fill in.

4. Tap Sign In.

5. Tap the MAIL TYPE field then tap Exchange (EAS).

6. Verify the information in the other fields and change the info as needed based on the information you obtained from your email provider or system administrator. Server names are either donald or daisy or scrooge or huey or duey or … In support.ownwebnow.com click on Service Manager > Exchange Hosting and click on the Info tag for any of the accounts you require information for. You will need the full server name as well as the domain name (which is the OWN NT domain name, not your fully qualified domain name like yourcompany.com)

7. Once the information is complete, tap Sign In.

8. Once setup is complete, you can exit the application by first pressing the Center button.

9. Click the animated arrow to simulate throwing the card off the top of the screen, to close the application.

The Security Gotcha

There are several factors you need to consider when deploying Palm Pre in business with Exchange. Namely, the Exchange Remote Device Wipe feature is not present at the moment so you will not be able to wipe the device from your Exchange Outlook Web Access. There is an alternative however, Palm Pre supports SMS wipe:

“Enhance security by remotely erasing data from your device if it gets lost or stolen without the need for IT support regardless of what email system you are using.”

Disclaimer: “Remote erase deletes all data from your phone including files stored using USB drive mode. Remote erase command sent via SMS and must be received by activated phone within 24 hours. Wireless coverage area only. Requires data services at additional cost.”

The SMS message must be received by the device within 24 hours in order to wipe the device. If someone steals your device, powers it down for at least 24 hours, you will not be able to remotely wipe it.

This restriction may cause you to consider storing sensitive data on your device and is a good cause for establishing other security policies like a complex device password, keeping a limited amount of data on the phone, etc.

Other Exchange Security Considerations and Exchange requirements

Palm Pre does not support ActiveSync Security policies, so if you have a firmly defined security policy in Exchange before allowing ActiveSync (such as PIN requirements) you will have to set those manually on the device before attempting the first sync. From Palm:

“Palm understands that some business customers need support for specific Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) policies. We are working to develop support for EAS PIN and password enforcement, as well as EAS remote wipe, for webOS and hope to announce these new features within the next 60 days. We will deliver the features through our over-the-air update system, which Palm has already started using to bring new updates to Pre users as they become available. Until then, Palm Pre customers can enable a PIN or password directly on a device, and can also remotely wipe a device via a Palm profile. Palm profiles can be managed by Pre users at palmws.com.”

As of firmware 1.0.3, Palm Pre can connect to an Exchange server without using SSL. This is an optional upgrade so if your server does not have SSL support installed you will have to either install a certificate or upgrade to this firmware:

Note: None of the ExchangeDefender servers allow plain text / non-SSL connections. All connections require encryption.

Special gotcha for SBS 2003 users and the SSL Certificate issue: If you use the self-signed certificate automatically generated by CEICW, Palm Pre will attempt to connect to the CN for the .internal host, not the public domain name.

Furthermore, advanced EAS functionality started with Exchange 2003 SP2 so to get the most out of your device you will need to upgrade. The build number for Exchange 2003 SP2 is 7638.2

Conclusion

While Palm Pre supports Exchange to an extent, it is primarily designed as a consumer device and currently does not support the basic security policies required for safe business use. While HTML email, push mail and Exchange sync will work, make sure you consider the security tradeoffs.

Needless to say, the consumer appeal of webOS and Palm Pre will make Palm Pre show up in corporate world just as the iPhone did. Start preparing your network and educating your users now.

Travel Plans this Quarter

Posted: 3:19 pm
June 23, 2009
Events
3 Comments

Here is a quickie overview of where we’ll be in case you want to meet us, hang out with us, get the new ExchangeDefender shirts, etc.

Tomorrow/Thursday – ASCII Chicago – Nicole

2nd week of July – Microsoft WPC NOLA – Vlad, Nicole, Travis, Jen

1st week of August – CompTIA Las Vegas – Vlad, Nicole, Travis, Jen

2nd week of August – MSPU Los Angeles – Vlad & whoever draws the short straw.

There may be other smaller events through August that I am not aware of….