I earned my MVP wings today

Earlier today, I made a class-A jackass of myself, with a full on rant about the return of IT projects and the end of IT nightmares of just keeping it all organized and operational.

That at least is the crack we smoke at Own Web Now, the same crack I probably should have had before I decided to open my mouth.

But one benefit of MVPdom is that on Tuesday I was with Exchange MVPs, folks with big enterprise jobs working for HP, Coke, EMC, Quest. Today, I spent with the guys from Down Home Computers, Correct SOLUTIONS, Calvert, Black Warrior. Think all these guys are scared about losing their jobs/companies as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc, go to the cloud?

Nope.

Truth is, there is a consulting company for every shop. Users will always need advice, a signoff, a confidence that they are making the correct decision for their shop. One of my sales guys was working a new lead that didn’t know the difference between POP3 and Exchange hosting, he’ll be serving one man and startups, DIYers that just need an extra pair of eyes. My SBS compadres will be serving the small businesses that want strategic technology. Larger businesses will still serve the mess of middleware.

I aim to be in the middle of it because I believe I can beat Microsoft and the garden variety of ultrabig providers that have never been service companies and failed in every attempt to do it. So I am not giving up.

And I don’t want my fellow ITPROs to give up too. Listen, this game is far too big and it is evolving. Managed services is just a little fad stopgap of providing reliable services in the upper small business and higher, small business in the future will be going to something far more affordable and reliable…. but don’t think that because you aren’t selling an SMB thousands of dollars of infrastructure you are going to lose out on thousands of dollars of income – quite the opposite – you just will not deal with thousands of dollars of trying to make Microsoft stuff work, someone else will do that.

But where will the thousands of dollars end up going?

Into your pocket, for the services that only IT professionals can render. Development, business information flow. Your job will evolve from keeping stuff together and running into getting the stuff arranged in a way that it makes more money for the company.

I know you doubt that, but I can share thousands of stories with you of people who discovered a ton more money in their business thanks to Shockey Monkey (and alternatives) that simply organized their business and got it together. You can deliver the same promise to your customers.

Whether you’re one guy.

Whether you’re ten guys.

Whether you’re like me.

The future looks good, what we do is evolving.

Evolve with it, or die.

As for my rant today, it was brought to you by the makers of Nyquil.