When it’s over (seriously, it’s time to let go)

Posted: 6:38 am
June 23, 2009
Gaypile
7 Comments

Folks have been trying to sucker me into this debate that started yesterday with CRN about “the cloud” and how to find a profitable way to it (I believe the title was “Running behind the train you’ve missed and why your sales # isn’t ringing anymore.”)  Everyone from CRN to Joe @ VAR Guy and the endless stream of shameless opportunistic weasels elsewhere are now entering the debate on a conversation that for the most part ENDED nearly three years ago at WPC 2006 with Kevin Turner.

I feel there is some value in encouraging the channel to change when it becomes threatened by technological evolution. My body of work, however ugly, is a reflection of that.

I, however, see no value in shamelessly cheerleading it to the grave. But hey, we all need hope in despair, so by all means you’re free to continue to be delusional if it makes you feel better.

So what’s changed to start this debate over the cloud again? Nothing, really. VARs  started losing money and clients to the cloud, like they were told they would, and now they are ready to pay attention and form a strategy for the cloud. Too late.

A friend of mine writes a blog in which she spends 10% of her time bashing the cloud solutions (many of which she actually uses/plays with) and the other 90% of her time demonstrating why DIY “on-premise” IT Management is about as much fun as doing your own root canal. And all while all her key vendors including Microsoft and Intuit are sending her a clear message – IT’S OVER – she persists to question it. Good news for her is that she has a real job – but the VAR? Not for long I’m afraid.

One of the more vocal folks about the change has been my buddy Karl (smbbooks.com) who last night wrote: “I want to sell that client a new PC every three years until one of us dies.” I (heart) Karl. But what Karl gets, and many others don’t, is that business survival requires change, which was the topic of that post to begin with. What made money yesterday isn’t making money today. The customer has changed the preference.

Does this mean the death of the VAR world? Of course not. In my humble opinion, it’s been dead for at least 2 years and the economic collapse just accelerated the inevitable.

The only bright news for the VAR industry is that there is plenty of work out there painting and putting up drywall in all the forclosure properties.

What about the IT Solution Providers aka “VAR with a business plan not stuck in 2002”? They are doing quite well as far as I can tell. As I’ve written here over, and over, and over, and yes even again today – business is about fulfilling the market demand. So people don’t want to pay for Vista. Or antispyware. Or email. So what if they don’t want a new computer – there is so much money to be made optimizing processes, improving security, mobility, remote access, business continuity, business intelligence. You can focus on that – or sit in a webcast with other defunct businesses trying to get on top of the trend they already missed.

Focus on what the clients want. It doesn’t matter what you want, you’re in the business for the sole purpose of making money. Either get comfortable with that or grab a paintbrush.

Bittersweet WPC

Posted: 8:29 pm
June 19, 2009
Microsoft
Comments Off on Bittersweet WPC

Earlier today the team wrapped up our Microsoft WPC plans and agenda. We will be sponsoring the event that I’ve traditionally made my biggest deals at. Microsoft WPC used to be THE event to meet big decision makers, spec out new vendors, work with peers and learn from the best in business.

This year we will be sponsoring WPC for the very first time, coming to it as a stronger and more profitable company than we’ve ever been, with the record growth to boot a very promising future.

Yet, this event will be very bittersweet. Despite the record amount of business we do with Microsoft, they have never been a more irrelevant part of our business future. Our of all our key relationships, we work with Microsoft the least yet send them the most money. Between Dell, HP, Autotask, AhSay, Sophos, ConnectWise and Microsoft, I have the least bit of a working relationship with Microsoft. I’m simply a consumer of their goods.

As someone who has built a company trying to emulate Microsoft’s success in the approach with the partners, I have to admit I’m sad with the direction they have taken the company. I have to admit, even though they are now competition, that I am even more disappointed that it’s not working. Last year I posted a very (appropriate or profane, you be the judge) picture of what Microsoft did to it’s partner base – and by all accounts it’s done more to alienate people from Microsoft and make it less popular than ever before.

As a partner and as a stock holder, I am disappointed.

As a sponsor and a business man, I’m moving forward with Microsoft looking for the win. However, when relationships become “just business” people soon only look at the numbers.

This is a good, albeit tragic, thing to pay attention to no matter where you are in your business maturity: there is a reason why people work with you. If you don’t nurture the very reason people work with you, they will consider your competition even if they don’t win “the feature spec battle.”

1-way PSA “Automation”

Posted: 8:55 am
June 16, 2009
Shockey Monkey
Comments Off on 1-way PSA “Automation”

So earlier yesterday we were going over our launch plans for our PSA integrations and one of the API’s just doesn’t have the same level of functionality to create and manage contracts and companies remotely. And as I mentioned here, if I do something for one group and not the other the holy war ensues.

So here is the problem we are trying to address: Most of OWN’s services are subscription based and the quantity of subscriptions can vary from month to month because the only way you can make money in services is by giving the end user full control to add / remove / modify services when and how they please. This creates an awesome income effect, until the last of the month when you have to reconcile the accounts between us and your PSA.

Now, you could just enter the service changes into your PSA as OWN notifies you of new services and changes. And I’m the bunny Vlad that makes the cookies.

The So-so-solution…

Yesterday we talked this over and we just can’t find a way to make it happen with a 2-way sync as we do in the other PSA integration.

So I coined a new phrase: 1-way automation. It works like this:

Just tell them to create all the contracts manually. When a new contract is created, we’ll just automate our side of notifying them to create a contract so we can update and modify it remotely.

You call it a crappy email alert. I’ll call it 1-way automation 😉

Now obviously that still falls into the category of “your job is so worthless it could be done by a retarded monkey” so it’s a no-go. We also have no proactive way of running a kick-start script as we do with the other PSA.

So the only thing we got left is screen macro playback. This is the software used in software testing where you can record case scenarios and the software moves the mouse, fills in input fields, scrolls down, fills pages, does stuff in sequence. We can automate creation of a macro that would go through your software, locate company, locate appropriate tabs, create products and services and notes – so we can then automatically sync them via API.

If this were the only way to shave off what is at least 2 hours a month in double data entry, would you do it? Got a better idea? Please voice all your comments and ideas to your OWN/ExchangeDefender Partner Account Manager (not me, please don’t bother as I’m not touching the @vladville.com email until next week as previously noted)

We’re still planning as next Monday being the launch day for all our PSA integrations, 1-way or otherwise 😉

What I had meant to say is….

Posted: 8:41 am
June 11, 2009
Vladville
Comments Off on What I had meant to say is….

So I mentioned I was going to be a bit silent on the blog for two weeks previously, but that apparently also means “let’s email Vlad for comment” 😉

I appreciate the love, don’t get me wrong, and I enjoy the Vladville character and all the entertainment it brings to those that follow it, but the Vlad that worked 20+ hour days and did more for others than for himself died on Oct 8th, 2006. Today I have a wife, a kid, a dog and over 200 babies that cry for attention / training / paychecks / direction / inspiration every day.

So, give me the two weeks… please. I promise you will enjoy what OWN is putting together for you.

Out for 2 weeks

Posted: 10:26 pm
June 7, 2009
Vladville
1 Comment

I will be out of the office over the next 2 weeks and will not be available a lot on the phone until after the Microsoft WPC in July. While I’m out you can count on the Orlando and Beverly Hills offices to take care of your every need.

As for me, thanks to many of you, I have a new house and am helping coordinate all the upgrades. After that, I am giving all my time to the ExchangeDefender dev team, reviewing the launch plans for the new line of business and a few other things.

Open letter to OWN/ExchangeDefender and Autotask / Connectwise community

Posted: 12:04 am
June 4, 2009
ExchangeDefender, OwnWebNow, Shockey Monkey
3 Comments

Every now and then we come to the difficult decision, or a set of decisions, that might impact the way our partners work. This is my personal attempt, as the guy who is paying to make all this happen, to explain our situation and answer the questions before you’ve had a chance to form your opinion based on the first few keywords that upset you.

Later this month we (Own Web Now Corp) will be announcing our next generation integrations with Autotask, Connectwise and yes, even Shockey Monkey. This is a significant effort, a significant gesture – because it is in no way a part of our products functionality – to help you think about OWN a lot less and make a lot more money. I will go a step ahead and even say that what we are bringing to the integration picture (and beyond, in custom software for the platforms) is unlike anything available on the market… and if you’re an MSP you owe to give us a look.

On to the imaginary questions:

Q: How are we going to implement the integration? Can I have the white paper? Can you walk me through it?

There are two possible ways to get Own Web Now integrated with your PSA deployment:

Supported – Under this scenario we will offer you the whitepapers, create the integration workflows, queues, service boards, dialin numbers, offer best practices and support the integration when it breaks. This service will come at a reasonable one-time cost and will include training and ongoing best practices from others that use it.

Unsupported – Under this scenario we will send you the whitepapers and wish you the best of luck. This will be available free of charge and will include all the features of our integration suite. No support is available. If you choose this route you will not be able to upgrade to the supported product in the future. I know, I know, while it may make sense for you to try it on your own, fail, and then blame my staff into doing it for you for free while also training you to use your PSA, it is really not a fair scenario and not one I expect to see – you know exactly how much time goes into supporting, managing and billing the solution, so if there is even an ounce of question of whether our service is worth $500 then you have more serious questions to address.

The integration is available between us and Connectwise, Autotask and Shockey Monkey.

Q: We use ____ PSA? Will you integrate with that? When will you integrate with it?

No, we only integrate with Connectwise, Autotask and Shockey Monkey. We never (ever, ever) expect to integrate with anything else. If your product doesn’t contain Connectwise, Autotask or Shockey Monkey we will not integrate with it.

Q: Will the integration be different between different platforms?

While we have tried to bring the identical level of integration to all platforms, there are many factors prohibiting us from offering the same feature set across all platforms. Things contributing to differences between platforms can be attributed to the maturity of the API we are using to integrate with your platform, similarity of data types for services / contracts / products, vendors willingness to assist with problems, vendors restrictions of features across product lines.

Most importantly, our technical inability to create an integration point because of our unwillingness, incompetence and BSTDWOT (better “stuff” to do with our time). It’s not that we are bad people, it’s that your feature request will never generate enough money for us to justify writing the software in the first place.

Q: But..but..but… Vlad! If you can make this work with Autotask, why can’t I have it in Connectwise? Why does it work on the dedicated installation of Connectwise and not hosted? I have this feature in ConnectWise but I’m moving to Autotask Go to save money, I can just assume it will work the same right?

I don’t want to oversimplify this but here it goes: If you see a feature that you don’t have in Connectwise, it’s Arnie Bellini’s fault. If you see a feature you don’t have in Autotask, it’s Bob Godgart’s fault. If it’s a feature that you don’t have in Shockey Monkey then it’s coming in the next release.

Joke aside, see the above answer. The platforms are too different for us to offer the same feature set. If you see a feature in Connectwise that you need in Autotask or your business will implode, please switch to Connectwise. Or vice versa. Again, we are not bad people, we just need to explain that it’s not really apples to apples out there:

All OWN workflow and order management is designed on top of Shockey Monkey. That work is then ported to an extent to two different sync APIs. Some stuff will work with your PSA, some will not. That’s just the reality of software development.

Q: Is this just an elaborate ploy to sell more Shockey Monkey?

No. As a matter of fact, we will not take competitive orders for people looking to switch from Autotask or Connectwise. Truth is, we develop software for our platform and then extend it, within reason, to our partners platforms. We do not have any more advanced access to either platform than any other vendor, we are bound by the same legal and licensing as every other vendor and it’s a leveled playing field.

Q: When will you do ____?

Official answer will always be no. I cannot stress this enough, we are talking about software and features that save you money and make you more productive – I do not want to put more pressure on my staff or shift their focus from our tasks. We don’t write our software in India or China for $2/hr so the feature you are looking for will be available in the next release (maybe not the very next one)

This may sound harsh, and I wanted to give you an idea of the possible conflicts I see in this initiative so you can know where our line is drawn. We will do everything in the power to help out the people that see the value in this.

By all means we’re going to do everything in our power to give our partners an advantage with their PSA choice. All of the above will be made very pretty contract language with blog posts and screenshots to follow.

Say hi to Jen

Posted: 12:37 pm
June 1, 2009
OwnWebNow, Vladville
6 Comments

jensober Another record month, amazing 2009 and the future has never looked better for OWN and ExchangeDefender. We’ve worked very hard to make this possible and huge credit goes to our partners who keep on helping us build the best damn offering out there. Over the years the part of community and involvement was mostly an individual effort, Vlad(tm), but as we started producing more documentation, the SPAM Show, more conference calls and developer feedback… well, we needed someone whose full time job would cover interaction with the community. Meet Jen.

Earlier this Spring we started producing the SPAM Show, many of which Jen has produced and edited. As we add a newsletter, magazine, syndication and few more things we needed someone to handle all the communications, scheduling, etc. You’ll be hearing and meeting Jen who will take over a bulk of my effort with goal of making our training and community outreach a constant. So many people have made SPAM Show (SBS Show prior to that) a core of their training and community participation that it really needed someone in charge of making it a consistent full time presence.

jendrunkJen will also be joining Nicole and Travis on the road more in the coming months. As Karl noted earlier, I am not qualified for the after-hours sessions that turn into competitions of who can drink the most and still make it back to their hotel room, so we made sure to hire only the best:

“I was so drunk that night I puked 6 times.”

I can’t wait for her to meet Chris Rue and Mark Crall.

So while I’m sure we’re violating some child labor laws with Travis and Jen, they should keep the spirit of Vladville on the road as I roll out of the scene on my walker into my thirties.

MSP Week in Review

Posted: 11:54 pm
May 23, 2009
IT Business
1 Comment

I’m blogging this at 30,000 ft aboard Airtran 737 – and by the time you read this on Sunday, I will be living the Pirates of the Carribean scene: “So you just layed around on the beach and drank rum?” 🙂

I have been called out for not blogging as much as of late – sorry guys, business is booming and I am staying on top of it all – so I figured I’d give you all a bit of inspiration.

Over the past two days OWN (myself and Nicole made it to Baltimore in person) got to help contribute to the success that MSP University bootcamps are becoming. They are by far the best conference and the best organization that we are partnering with at least when it comes to aligning organizational goals. If you aren’t attending these free events, I’m not sure there is anything I can say to encourage you to check them out, it’s simply your loss, but let’s move beyond that:

Make no mistake, we are a business and we are a sponsor for these events. That means we give them money to pull these events off. In return, we get to chat with attendees and try to sell our stuff. Thats the goal.

This can be remarkably valuable, or incredibly flawed. I’ve blogged about the Tent of SMB Failure festival, be it on east or west coast, so I’ll just share this tidbit:

Attendees were free to roam the sponsor area. But once the sessions started, Erick and Gary were out herding people back into the conference room. This is very much the opposite of the general conference, where attendees are driven towards the sponsors and away from mediocre content. So what is MSPU admitting to here?

Simply put, these events have the attendee and the industry in their best interest. Where most conferences benefit from the foot traffic and bodies, MSPU is a subscription based business. If it’s members don’t pay attention to the content, which they came to Baltimore to learn, they will not succeed in business. They will not make it and the subscription goes away. While on some level my initial reaction is “Damn man, let me finish my sales pitch” the big picture here is that if the guys miss out on the role playing, sales training, marketing implementation, process control and service delivery…. my pitch makes no difference at all, they won’t have the skills needed to position my solution. In effect, MSP University is training my sales and support channel!

I hate to make this sound like shameless plugging but this is as close to the strategic goals of OWN that I just cannot hold back my respect for seeing this executed properly. If the partners aren’t successful, their clients aren’t successful and the vendors who partner with those VARs won’t be successful either.

This is not something that is easy to verbally explain, or to quickly quantify on a spreadsheet because relationships and success are long term proposals. For folks with incredibly short attention span, this is a terrible concept! I even skipped completely on the sales aspect of my presentation and just talked about what I do in my day-to-day and what we’re seeing. As a result, we’ve made a lot of new friends and partners than we’ve done at any other conference this year, much larger ones too!

Point is, we are in this for the long term. It’s so nice to see so many organizations that are on the same page, that’s all.

Being a long weekend gives lots of folks an opportunity to consider their direction, process and goals – take the peace and quiet to determine exactly where you want to go and what you want to do. I hope OWN is a part of that because we are still growing and very much committed to this marketplace…..

… in the meantime, I will be on the beach in Puerto Rico, having a Mojito on y’all.

Thanks for reading Vladville.

Blogging High

Posted: 6:17 pm
May 20, 2009
Awesome
3 Comments

Really high.. 30,000 feet high! I’m on my way to Baltimore for MSP University bootcamp, flying my favorite airline, Airtran. Airtran is pretty much a bus with jets, a step above Greyhound and a step below BlueJet. But when you need to get somewhere (and I mean get there without delays and broken planes or visiting mother@#% Charlotte, they are the best). 

And now they have wi-fi onboard during the flight. $9.99 for the trip, $69 for the first class upgrade. Gotta love it.

Speaking of MSPU, if you’re already up there and a fan of the blog (or better yet a client of OWN) email me at vlad@vladville.com – I’m buying dinner tonight.

Really looking forward to MSP University Bootcamp

Posted: 4:05 pm
May 18, 2009
Events, IT Business
4 Comments

I am really looking forward to the MSP University bootcamp this week. It’s in Baltimore at the end of this week and is my last big thing for this quarter before we get into the summer of announcements.

I’m excited because I’m trying out new content. For years I’ve done a variation of “Vlad Mazek, MCSE, CEO… I’m here to make you money” followed by 20-30 slides outlining our company. This typically went over the head of 50% of the audience, the other half would come and chat with me for a free tshirt and we’d get about 10% of them to try out our stuff. Worked great but at this point in our business and in the marketplace (where we are already working with just about everyone in the SMB market) it’s more about getting to the core of the problems we find in this business together than just trying to earn that next IT guy that’s never heard of us.

My new deck starts with:

Vlad Mazek, Philanthropist, Remote Viewer, Prophet.

Should be interesting. Should be unique.

For years I’ve had the benefit of observing my fellow peers / clients / victims at the events and one of the constants until 2009 has been the perpetual lack of progress. People kept on coming to events, to the extent that I doubt they ever did any actual work, only to be seen at the next event slightly disheartened about their lack of progress.

But they fixed it that night at the bar.

In the morning they were back with lack of progress, lack of a cohesive approach to their market and no concrete process driven environment that can be replicated and grown as the news of their service spread.

But they fixed it that night at the free drinks party that some vendor invited them too.

The next morning they were still going and getting nowhere, but they had more friends.

And then it ended….

2009 came around, economy fell apart and their prize 1-2 clients went out of business and along with them a huge bulk of their revenues. Dell entered the market, other shops smelled the blood and the local competition intensified. Are you the next one to jump the shark?

The tragedy here is that it didn’t have to go down like this – because for the most part the business owners had all the control, had all the opportunity, had a demanding market, had a thirsty audience with nothing but problems and broken infrastructure on hand – and so many people failed to capture it.

Why? Because it required hard work.

This is why I love Erick’s events and am so dedicated to helping folks that are part of MSP University bootcamps. They aren’t swag collectors sitting around in hallways waiting for the next snack break or for the big dinner – MSP University is a bootcamp. Classroom all day, homework at night.

It’s so easy to find out who will not be with us next year – they will be at the bar all night!

When you listen to Gary and Erick present with their minions, one thing is clear – this stuff is not difficult, but you gotta get on the ball right now. Not tomorrow.

Times are tough, for many…. there is no tomorrow. I’m accounting for so much in my presentation and not even bothering to talk about OWN and all the ways we can help produce revenues and grow the client base – because if the fundamentals and process of our reseller aren’t solid…. then we’re just wasting time setting up reoccurring billing.

Welcome to the new world.