Notes from the road: R2, BB4B, Vista

I started my little tour with Microsoft Accross America yesterday and it was pretty eventful. Thanks to those of you that showed up and said hi, I tried to invite everyone that I could. If you gave me your business card you'll certainly know when anything like this happens in your neck of the woods again.

First Best Buy

The first thing I noticed when I pulled up at the event were four Best Buy for Business trucks up front. Small business consultants tend to hate Geek Squad for a number of reasons but I've personally only heard about the "Best Buy for Business" service which I talked about earlier on this blog. This was somewhat different. The difference between two arms of Best Buy computer repair and consulting is considerable.

Best Buy for Business folks wear blue polo shirts and I got a chance to talk to four of them, one of which used to be one of our customers. The operation seems pretty well put together and organized from promotion to actual sales. They had actual business collateral that most small business consultants don't – flyers, brochures, impressive business cards (impresive in a way that they did not make their business cards on their Inkjet, "Printed for free at VistaPrint", or my favorite: "I ran out of cards so here is my customers card with my name and aol.com address on the back"), Windows Mobile phones, etc.

We chatted a little while about the core product and they talked about SBS quite a bit, they do seem to get it. All of the folks I spoke to had certifications, SBS deployment experience, references, things you would expect from an SBS Consultant. As a matter of fact, SBS is front-page on their catalog – with a hefty markup too – Standard Edition for $900+.

The sales process? "Depends on the client." Good answer 🙂 We talked about the approach and basically these "Blue Shirt" consultants are the ones responsible for the sales and consulting parts of the business. Geek Squad (White shirt, Black clip-on) is responsible for deployment and support. The blue shirt would go into the business and keep up the relationship of evaluating, upgrading, managing and monitoring the solution they put in. But how do you get in the door? Well, any time you buy a server you get an offer for someone to evaluate your network. They take a look at the desktops, servers, printers etc and create proposals. Customer can go through the proposal, work out a solution and move on. They do not seem to be interested in the "managed services" but more in the "managed customer" whereby they constantly evaluate customers needs and help facilitate what the customer wants instead of trying to make the current infrastructure run as smoothly as possible. Support is handled on adhoc (break-fix) basis.

Then I talked about something I personally contract out to SBSC folks all the time – "I need a server deployed in ____, how can Best Buy for Business help me?" – The pricing for that is flat. You get a free consulting and evaluation so we can see what needs to be done. To just put up a server, connect it to the network, run through the wizards and connect it to the WAN the charge is $660. If they need to manage the workstations (install a program, /connectcomputer, etc) the charge is $69. If it goes beyond that into break-fix the price can go as high as $660 per workstation if extensive work is required. They can either service the client on-site or take the system back to their office.

Not every Best Buy store has Best Buy for Business – but they do have Geek Squad. As such, the Best Buy for Business service the entire state of Florida that is near a Best Buy — consulting appointments are handled separately from the break-fix appointments. The blue shirt puts together a proposal but the Geek Squad guy implements it. "Bunch of teenagers?" – Not really, every one of us has been working with servers and SBS for years, BB4B would not send someone that just got their certification out for that. I don't believe them, but I personally know a lot of SBSC's that should not be allowed to touch a server (as a matter of fact, I can't imagine how they got certified to begin with) so the difference between majority of small business consultants and Best Buy for Business just may not be there.

All in all, a large portion of small business IT consultants have a good reason to be afraid of Best Buy.

Then SBS R2 and SQL Issues

During the TS2 presentation a number of complaints came up over SBS R2's inclusion of SQL Workgroup Edition. As a matter of fact, one partner refered to it as the SQL Castrated Edition and remarked that even tough SQL 2005 WG has more features than standard 2000 edition, the applications written for full Standard Edition of SQL 2005 may not work. Thats a bit subjective and questionable but a very good point for people looking to get a SQL 2005 based LOB – make sure it can run on Workgroup.

As for the R2 presentation, this was somewhat impressive and I must say I owe Susan Bradley a public apology for making fun of WSUS integration. First off, JJ's presentation was true to the Microsoft message on R2: "Not a lot here, just a midlife release, not a big incentive to upgrade to it, good first server offer but not an upgrade" – But here is what surprised me. I got into a discussion while trying to field one of the questions from the crowd about the criticism of limitations in WSUS in R2. I tried to explain the goal, the idea, the reason it was put together the way it was and what the alternatives are to getting a full WSUS installed.

After about three minutes of going back and forth on what R2 is and what WSUS is I basically leveled with him: "Listen, this is a bundle. This is something that gives a kick start to people that do not patch centrally at all, that have never bothered to roll WSUS out to begin with. (turning to the audience) Let's have a quick poll – how many of you have deployed WSUS at your SBS client sites?" So with my apologies to Ms. Bradley – ZERO. 0. Not a single one out of a room with 100+.

As for the R2 surprise – after JJ finished his R2 dance and the downplaying that goes with R2 not being treated as a major release he asked the audience if they would upgrade to it. To my surprise over a third of the audience (perhaps even a half) raised their hand. WOW. I am not sure what they saw in it but they definitely bit the R2 product. Maybe R2 is far bigger than I thought?

Vista Googles

The high point of the day (at least in the eyes of Microsoft Partners) was the demonstration of Windows Vista beta. As a matter of fact, JJ Antequino pulled off the entire presentation (several Virtual PC images) on Vista as the host OS. Partners seemed to be really impressed and I think the entire crowd is sold on the Ultimate Edition.