Shockey Monkey’s open letter to the IT community

Hello community, Vlad here. I wanted to take a moment to openly write about some of the questions that I have received in private that I feel should be a matter of public knowledge. Things are going great, we’re enabling more of you to do more with your day and we’re working on some great features that you keep on suggesting.

We got some great and insightful coverage from MSP Mentor and SMB Nation last week and I encourage you to check it out for additional perspective.

As for mine, you can go through years of blog posts on the Shockey Monkey subject, or IT Business for that matter to figure out what I think. But this isn’t about me, this is about you – all of you: our users, our partners, our vendors, our competitors and generally curious technology employees trying to kill some time.

Here are some of your questions with as candid (as in “get me in trouble”) answers as I can provide.

Why would you even do this?

It’s better that I say what’s on my mind and deal with the consequences… than have my partners, vendors, sponsors, users or competitors get some rumored “oh my god, you know what Vlad is doing..” stuff that just puts strain on stuff. I can count the number of people I don’t like in this community on one hand – and believe me, they know it. As for the rest, I love you, let’s kill some drama.

What is the biggest criticism Shockey Monkey gets?

Shockey Monkey has, does and forever will be seen as Vlad’s side project.

This is kind of annoying considering that Shockey Monkey has been available since 2006 in various alpha, beta and commercial stages. Not sure what more I can do to say that we’re serious about it but I can tell you that we’re making (lots of) money with it so the opinion overall doesn’t bother me a lot. Software development is not like Subway, one sandwich artist can’t just go back and add extra lettuce or cheese on your sandwich, for every change we need to deal with review, documentation, marketing and involve multiple people in the process so big features will take a while to get. However, since 2010 we’ve been rolling out significant updates to the monkey on a monthly basis and at this point thousands of people use it every way.

It will always be an evolving process as we continue to build Shockey Monkey further into the IT business and use it to replace more and more components that we currently (over)pay for.

Can Shockey Monkey replace what I’m currently using to manage my business?

This is apparently the second most popular question with the presales support. The answer is obviously yes.

You can absolutely replace your existing solution with Shockey Monkey.

Now that assumes that you are willing to live with the sacrifices and compromises. Which of course you’d only know if you tried the software and embraced it completely. Which of course should be dead easy to do because it’s completely and absolutely free of charge.

But it’s free because there is a catch, I’ll have to pay for stuff eventually?

It’s free and it’s going to stay free.

Shockey Monkey users resell the heck out of our cloud services – ExchangeDefender, ExchangeDefender Essentials, Exchange 2010 + SharePoint Hosting, Exchange 2010 Essentials, Offsite Backups, Web & Email Hosting, Blackberry, etc. Not because they are forced to – but because we make it dead simple and easy to do so – and we’ve even opened up sponsorships for Shockey Monkey so other vendors and providers can also make it easy to get tools you can make money off of.

True story: A few years ago Arnie and I were sitting around at some HTG event and we talked about working together on a global cloud services push. “You know Arnie, I already have that in place.” He seemed very excited about tying the two systems together – that’s why you have such a kickass ConnectWise integration with all the ExchangeDefender services – with billing data and agreements available in ConnectWise YEARS before they made it possible through their API. You don’t have to push people down under the guillotine to make them sell your software, you just have to make it easy. This is the core value of Shockey Monkey and why it’s going to remain free.

I make more money with Shockey Monkey being free and being exposed to more people than I can ever make by selling it or by turning it into a display advertising model (see next section).

I am not sure so sure if I want advertisements in my portal.

I understand and I appreciate the concern. However, these aren’t your typical display ads where you’re going to click on the wrong thing and have to scramble to turn your speakers down. We’ve only extended a limited number of invitations (I haven’t even sent all of them out) to people that we feel fit well strategically into the Shockey Monkey business model.

If you don’t want ads, it’s only $29/month and $9/month for any additional staff you have in your company. If it’s the sight of an ad that bothers you, that’s an easy problem to solve.

However, consider the power that these sponsors will have with the platform. Not only will they be able to get their message in front of you but they will be able to position it when you’re having an issue. Say you’re dealing with a support request about an infected machine – wouldn’t that be a good time to know about a product you can use to fix the issue? How about your sales opportunity – selling a new server, what if there was a tool (QuoteWerks) that would make it easier for you to get the right pricing right away and push it directly into Shockey Monkey. Dealing with lost data – well Intronis will show up on the side with the info you would have otherwise ignored or saved for later viewing.

We as software vendors have an annoying habbit of always being there when you’re in a middle of something but never there when you need us – this is a complaint I have been getting since I started this business – well, Shockey Monkey changes that. Sponsors are not just embedded into the solution from the display standpoint, they are there from the solution standpoint as well.

For example, all of the sponsors get space and time not just on Shockey Monkey portal but also on LooksCloudy.com, the site I have dedicated to educating the channel. We can guide people along and deliver exponential amount of value to you and your staff – without ever having you leave your desk.

So you’re making money by pushing us to Pro?

This is another common misconception, folks are constantly trying to figure out how we’re going to make money like we’re some Silicon Valley startup – even though I’ve been very clear that majority of our revenues comes from our product and service sales.

Just to clear the air, I’ll explain the four revenue streams for Shockey Monkey:

Advertising / Sponsorships – Revenues from third parties that want their solutions featured in Shockey Monkey and LooksCloudy.com

Pro Subcriptions – Revenues from Shockey Monkey subscribers that want SSL certificates with their own domain name, advanced technical support and no advertising in their portal.

IP Licensing – Revenues from third parties that want a business management, helpdesk and customer relationship platform embedded in their existing solution.

ExchangeDefender – Revenues from our products and services sold through the portals.

There is no gateway drug inside Shockey Monkey, there is no hidden toll, limits on the number of users or administrators or your usage. It’s out there, it’s free and thank you for selling our software J

How is the relationship with ConnectWise, Autotask and Shockey Monkey?

This is the drama that some folks want us to play a part of and I’m sorry to disappoint but things are going great on that front. I can’t comment on who has chosen to sponsor Shockey Monkey but I can hint that you’ll see some of these relationships taken to the next level very soon.

There is no tension or problems and we’re committed to making a deeper integration with both platforms. There are just some things that they do better than us and then there are things that we will just never do because they don’t fit our MO.

But you know what’s interesting? We’re bigger than both of them. How is that possible? Well, drama focused MSPs and channel experts only look at the 10,000 or so companies or MSPs and don’t consider all of the other companies out there in the VAR chain that provide technology and support services (hint: it’s an obscenely large market, much bigger than the little MSP universe). By bringing those folks into the fold we make a transition to Autotask that much simpler – so the referrals will always outpace folks that may want to switch from Autotask to Shockey Monkey for example.

But secretly, they must hate you.

Listen, I’ve been to both headquarters. Neither one had a Vlad voodoo doll. My foot doesn’t suddenly hurt for no apparent reason every day at 11AM. I’ve never had my car spray painted nor has my house been TP’d.

The problem that we all have is that we’re aiming our solutions at a very limited number of companies and it’s natural to see us as competitors. However, it takes a lot of effort to sell the service and presale/marketing/support for something that may not pan out is ridiculously expensive and requires an investment on the side of the clients themselves.

With Shockey Monkey, we remove price as an objection. Here you go, use it and see how it fits. It’s clear to see not only why they wouldn’t hate me but why they’d pay for me to be their best friend and make sure those referrals float up to them instead of a SalesForce or elsewhere.

I noticed that ExchangeDefender is required. But we have Postini and..

ExchangeDefender is required for inbound mail functionality (email-to-ticket) and for advanced outbound mail stuff (mailing lists, marketing, etc). This will get more and more prominent as we add some cool new features to ExchangeDefender in 2012 J

Now, our API is open and another email provider can choose to write an API to replicate the email-to-ticket functionality in their product. As a matter of fact, ExchangeDefender has a free email-to-ticket gateway to Autotask.

I would love to have you resell ExchangeDefender compared to anything else, if we’re being honest, but the restriction isn’t in place to lock others out – others just aren’t interested. Don’t blame me J

We would like to host Shockey Monkey in our data center.

I know. We have Shockey Monkey running on an appliance and are going to be offering a HaaS and a VSaaS model later this year. Basically, you’ll be able to put Shockey Monkey on your network.

Right now, everyone is hosted and we have users on our databases in UK, Australia and United States. From the regulatory standpoint, you’re good. And once we make Shockey Monkey appliances and virtual servers available we’ll hit you up first. Folks that use Shockey Monkey most actively get the first dibs and we go down the list from there. So if you’re serious about using Shockey Monkey and want it in your own network, you better start using it now or it’s going to be a while before it gets down to you.

What is next?

Sponsorships officially kick in Q2, so April 1st. By that time we’ll know who our strategic partners will be and which solutions we’ll have to develop on our own and which solutions we will develop deeper and deeper integrations with to make them nearly seamless.

Beyond that, ExchangeDefender as a company needs to take a more active role in the cloud service marketing and deployment on behalf of our partners – we’re being pushed to offer billing, support and management services. Our most successful partners are slammed with work and they are letting opportunities slip – stuff that we will be able to deliver on their behalf. In order for this to happen we need friendly customer service staff that faces actual users, we need an RMM platform that can be used by our techs to provision the service, we need a more sophisticated training and service oriented process and so on. Expect to see all of those in Shockey Monkey in 2012.

Strategy-wise, like I said, Shockey Monkey will first firm up the few holes we have left as a technology tool and then expand the verticals a little and make Shockey Monkey an all purpose business operating system that helps you manage customer, vendor and partner relationships as well as human resources and overall social functionality that is a given. Big part of it is backwards integration with your email, mobility and service.

So there you have it. No drama. No catches. No hidden trojan monkeys – we’re giving you this for free and hope you like us enough to resell and use our services. If you need more than what we offer for free, we got you there as well with the Pro. If you need sales funnels and have issues with silos of chaos, I know a guy. If you need a quoting tool or a backup tool or an ERP tool, I got you there as well.

ABP. A Always. B Be. P Pimping. Who loves you?