In Defense of Arnie

Posted: 3:33 pm
March 8, 2012
IT Business
3 Comments

Note: Prior to writing this blog post I actually did some research because I’m extremely biased towards money and as everyone in this business, privy to some rumors and grapewine complaints. This is something that has been on my mind for a while and it appears many of you disagree with me. I am offering this post therefore as my opinion as a devils advocate. While I’m sure it will offend you, the goal is not to offend you but explain the circumstances as I see it and hopefully find a common language towards a more productive way of working together.

Business Perspectives

The Vendor

It’s a crisp spring morning.

The iPad 2 has just been announced and you’re starting to resign yourself to the fact that you need to follow the marketing in order to sell the technology. Screw it, let’s call our clients in for a cocktail hour next week and show them how their iPad hooks into all that stuff we’ve sold them.

It’s Thursday, cocktail and hors d’oeuvre are carefully surrounding your banners as the clients pour in.

You’re trying to be a good host while still staying at least six feet away from those Costco cookies. Yes, they do put crack in them.

Wonder how much business we can drum up from this?

The Client

Man, this is a nice office!!! Must cost a fortune.

And is that a BMW? I remember when this ass was delivering our PCs in a pickup truck.

55” LCD as a sign? A friggin sign? They burned $1,000 just to show off their logo to people that come to their office?

This is why we pay so much for their “Managed Services” – I bet you they don’t do jack. And god help me if I meet that prick from their helpdesk, I’ve been waiting months to punch him right in his square mouth!

Wonder what they are going to try to sell me today?

The Vendor-Client Tug of War

In every transaction there is a little component that is never put on the invoice or on the receipt, but it’s huge. The Respect. Clients feel like they are handing over hard earned money and that the person charging them should treat them with outmost respect. This is why everyone hates dealing with the DMV. Meanwhile the service provider feels like they are providing something truly unique and that the clients are nowhere nearly as grateful as they should be for what they are getting.

Nobody has drawn more skepticism from the community than Arnie Bellini and ConnectWise with their investments/acquisitions/takeovers/purchases of LabTech, Quosal, HTG and CharTec. The best public display of this is available for your consideration here: Observations from IT Nation.

Back when I first read that blog post my reaction was decidedly different:

Kate: So at what point is it going too far when you’re trying to sell everything all the time?

Vlad:

That depends on the clients bank and their overdraft policies. It’s OK to keep on selling until you’ve put their account $200 into the red. At that point I’d switch to a monthly reoccurring charge.

So I’m just after the money? Yes, that’s what we’re in the business of!

Hell, Arnie is being nice here. If I were him I’d be buying a hosting company, an antivirus company, an offsite backup company, a marketing company, a web design company… you got urinals? I’ll sell you a cake.

At that point the rant got too dirty even for Vladville but those of you that have seen me do my act live can probably guess that the list went on for a while.

Here is the thing – this is just capitalism at it’s finest.

Unfortunately, capitalist behavior puts the client at the disadvantage. While the business is pursuing it’s next rising star and funding it with the cash cow, you feel like all your hard earned money isn’t being spent in the best possible way to provide you with more services. After all, you’re paying for it and the moment the ink on the check dries you’re expecting more in return for it. So when the vendor spends money on something that isn’t directly and significantly benefiting you it starts to leave a very sour taste.

Truth is, you don’t want the alternative. The alternative is the vendor solely focuses on the product or service you’ve paid for and pays no attention to anything else. While this may sound great immediately, in the long term (and history has shown this in the software business over and over) the companies that aren’t constantly expanding and growing tend to die in either relevance or profits or both.

There is no loyalty in business. This isn’t a marriage. This isn’t a family. This is a transaction. Those of us that want to increase the frequency and sizes of those transactions have to get better at what we’re putting on the invoice. VARs change solutions and tools more often than their underwear – so if the tools and solutions don’t evolve and grow at a faster rate they pretty much face certain obsoletion.

I (and I’m sure almost all of you) have been on the receiving end of this as well, when a client “chose to go in a different direction” because they didn’t like the direction the company was taking, found a product that was $1 cheaper somewhere else or generally reduced you and your service to a discount rack at Dollar General.

Clients reserve the right to take their business elsewhere. Businesses live and die through their investments.

Fundamentally, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s not always perfect (sales might be much better than support departments so it may seem like the company cares more about dollars than clients) and it’s not always fair (company may have to push discounts or spend more on marketing to cover for lost business) and it’s never easy (sometimes meeting client expectations requires a lot more work than it’s worth) and it’s usually hard.

In my opinion, what Arnie & Co did and what they continue to do is in their best interest and therefore the best interest of their clients because it continues to fundamentally strengthen the core product and the company.

But you should consider your options as well – if you have concerns over the vendors you are choosing and their level of respect for your business – then the data and the business better be portable so you can switch to those greener pastures when they present themselves. This is true for all of your software, all of your hardware and all of your cloud solutions as well. When you lose control of your data you lose decision making control over your business and arguably your ability to run your business.

Business of fairness is hard to reconcile. It’s seemingly only unfair when you’re the one paying the bill. If you run a business you don’t apologize for being successful, you celebrate it. We all (from the biggest to the smallest) care about profit, about margins about utilization and about stickiness. Yes it sucks when the shoe is on the other foot but that’s why we all work so hard. I (and I know some of you will disagree) believe that even the most opportunistic folks out there happen to be good people and being successful in business means embracing competitiveness.

Folks, it’s all about the money. The end.

…

Now this is my opinion and how I run and build my business. Personally, I’ve had plenty of people offer me advice on how to run ExchangeDefender and why not to focus on Shockey Monkey (because they already bought Autotask or ConnectWise) and they left anyhow. If I didn’t invest in a total cloud management platform I never would have the level of success we have today and we’d be holding a dying antispam business backing something that nobody wants to do anymore – manage onsite Exchange. Now I am in a spot where I am simultaneously launching an MSP of sorts (for the partners that don’t want to do the cloud in house and only want the profits and their brand on top of it) and I need an RMM on the backend that is going to monitor and help support that entire business. I’m partnering with a bunch of vendors and sponsors and my partners on everything else that’s needed.. That’s my deal. External parties rarely get the big picture of what is going on and if I fail none of them are going to feel bad and pay for my kids college.

The conversations, emails and discussions I’ve had with some of you over the past few days have been truly eye opening in terms of how this goes both ways. Strangely enough, these were calls ranging from my largest clients to the folks that don’t do any business with me at all. That’s community – we try to help one another even when we don’t get anything out of it. But once the cash changes hands that is a completely different story.

Please don’t use the comments here to bash Arnie & Co, I only mentioned them because they happen to have the most public commentary about this issue and it’s one that is going to get even bigger as there is more MSP tool consolidation. Same stories floated back when Dell bought SilverBack, when Autotask bought VARstreet and it’s just a nature of business. If you don’t like it, make your data more portable and less dependent on a single vendor – but that comes at a cost too.

Implementing LTBPCS to solve VAR challenge

Posted: 5:04 pm
February 28, 2012
ExchangeDefender, IT Business
2 Comments

I’m creating acronyms now – LTBPCS – Long Term Business Process Cloud Sales.

I base the following argument (and well.. a multimillion dollar business behind it) on talking to some of my successful partners that are really at the top of their game. Here is what you’re saying:

Things are great, we are really busy and we would really like to get started offering some of these solutions but we’re too busy and the margin isn’t there. Plus there is no love in the cloud with everyone trying to sell directly behind our back. Then there is the cost of billing, support and everything else, it’s hard to build a business around it.

This is something I hear from the partners that are really successful selling the cloud. When you focus on the actual itemized cost of a cloud service it is not a huge component of the overall VAR invoice – but when you look at the amount of new business brought in due to the cloud offering – it’s the #1 growth driver across these providers!

So here is the dillema – You want to use the cloud to bring in the new business, but you don’t want to deal with the low margin cloud business. You want the high end managed service advisory services and NOC management but it only seems to come as they look to outsource/remove in-house server mess. You can’t have it both ways and your sales guys are throwing the baby out with the bath water when they don’t want to pursue Hosted Exchange or Offsite Backups or SharePoint or low-margin (or low commission) cloud services. At the same time you’re not going to comp them the same for the cloud as for the other sales but you know that it will be a more and more relevant part of your business.

Did I get that right? Smile

Major vendors are looking to offload your technical services – outsource your helpdesk, outsource your NOC, outsource your management – everyone is fighting to get the really profitable (at scale) parts of your business but nobody seems to want to take a part in trying to actually make you money.

I don’t know if we’re just nice (we’re not; we’re in this for the $) or if we’re just way ahead of everyone else but here is what we’ve been working on.

End To End Cloud Sale and Implementation

Of course, it starts with Shockey Monkey.

You can embed the storefront on your website, dictate the pricing and all the other stuff right off your portal.

Once the form is filled out, it comes to us (and you) in Shockey Monkey as a pending case:

direct1

Staff can review the order and start the sales and implementation process. Yes, the implementation is a part of sales, it tells us all the other stuff we could sell them once we’re “in the account” so to speak.

direct2

Review their order and start the process of delivering the cloud service:

direct3

The client gets a welcome message saying:

<Generic Welcome Text>. Our goal is to roll out your service correctly the first time without surprises and delays.

   Step 1: Verify the order

   Step 2: Confirm basic service requirements are met

   Step 3: Outline service rollout and deployment

   Step 4: Schedule and deploy the service

In most scenarios this can be done on a single phone call in just a few minutes.

All under your name.

All done by our staff representing your company.

All done from your own web site with no licensing components to worry about, software to support or solution to figure out. We handle it all.

Long Term

We’re going direct. As you.

Over time this will create a revenue stream large enough for you to hire dedicated sales with their own commission structure and get them involved in upselling to the end user.

In the meantime, you don’t have to worry about billing, support or service – they are still your client and you still collect the commissions but you now have new opportunities and revenues.

Here is where it gets really really cool – Kate and I have been talking to other IT vendors in the industry (if you haven’t spoken to us contact me immediately) who want their stuff sold through this process as well.

Your catalog of potential solutions is exploding and you don’t have to sit there and figure them out!

This isn’t just another take on the “Master MSP” concept or the telemarketing sales outsourcing.. this is the extension of your business process to take on the cloud and cloud services without having to deal with all the sticky pieces.

This also isn’t a reduction of your business into just making you a sales guy – it creates a whole division of your company that can be used to bring in new business (cheaply) and use it to fuel existing business lines of everything else you sell.

Just think of Shockey Monkey as an app store for MSPs.

Like I’ve been saying ever since Shockey Monkey launched… it’s not a PSA. And you ought to expect a lot more. Who loves ya?

Kateless

Posted: 10:03 pm
February 27, 2012
Boss, Pimpin, Rant, Work Ethic
2 Comments

I don’t often write about my personal life on Facebook, I don’t think anyone cares and quite honestly it’s not that exciting at all. I am making an exception today because I do not want anyone to have to go through the kind of harassment I’ve had to endure over the past two years. Perhaps you can share in my pain and know that it.. gets better.

I first met Kate at an IT event a few years ago.

Even though she was from Kentucky she wasn’t married to her brother nor had her hand been promised to kinfolk.. there she was.. a 20something girl at an IT event. She could read and write and that probably should have been my first warning sign that something deeply troubling was brewing underneath. I started working with Kate more closely while she was at her previous job and told her about several areas of my business where she could help launch several community initiatives. This is where the fatal attraction started.

At first it was work related.. “Vlad, I want to go on a trip with you. Let’s go to some IT conference so it seems like it’s work” but quickly got more aggressive “Let’s share a cab.. room..” – When we got to the event it got even more awkward – she would stand next to me, talk to our clients about me, constantly ask me about what I was doing that evening..

Things in the office were not any less hostile. For example, every single phone call started with her flashing us.

kateds

As I made it clear that my feelings were not the same, things got very weird. A strange mix of intensity and disillusionment. And bad hair and body odors. Now I like to think of those as the “good days” when she at least bothered to put on clothes.

Compounded by hundreds of instant messages, voicemails and emails. All supposedly work related but dripping with innuendo and lust.

hairlikeaboss

It got so bad that I gave Shockey Monkey away for free, with free support and then some in hopes that I would bankrupt the company and make a clean, legal break that would not result in my tires being slashed.. or worse.

I gave her the Looks Cloudy blog in hopes she would meet some other people she could obsess about but that made it even worse as she found even more excuses to talk to me about all the men and women and what she thought of them.

Capture2

Eventually she got the message and is finally moving on.

But Seriously…

Obviously all of the above is made up. 🙂

As a CEO of a small business you know the kinds of people that work for you and exactly what their departure from the company is going to look like. Most people are gone with a whimper and replaced with a video, shell script, automation, software or just a simple email reassignment. Then there are people that are, for better or worse, critical to the business because they are both versatile and capable of adjusting quickly to a fast paced nature of ever changing technology business.

Some people are only leaving ExchangeDefender in a body bag.

Others in handcuffs.

I hope I leave in a blaze of glory carrying an empty shotgun, lighter and an empty canister of gasoline in one hand and a letter to Lloyds of London insurance group in the other.

Then there are those that from the moment you hire them you know they are destined for something bigger and you just hope to keep them interested for long enough and that they build a solid foundation for new lines of business down the road.

I originally pitched a gig at OWN two years ago and although I had considered dozens of folks for it, she was pretty much the only one that could do the job. The pitch was simple: “I have a few business plans underway as we transform the cloud business but to be honest they are all just a mess of concepts that you’ll have to clean up and build into real product lines or services” – several months later you saw the launch of Shockey Monkey as a commercial product, then a few months later the launch of Looks Cloudy and tons of other services that you’re yet to hear about.

At ExchageDefender we work as a team – even at the Vice President level – and meet almost daily. Kate didn’t do what she did on her own but she brought a unique skill that very few people have – she was able to read my mind. I could explain what I was thinking about or looking for in very crude terms and she could deliver something real out of that. There was no need to micromanage or be involved on every project, both the little details and the big picture were taken care of without me.

In two years here Kate turned more concepts into products and services than I ever expected. Her role at ExchangeDefender will not be replaced as she has turned one VP role in what will likely be fielded by 3-5 different product managers and editors.

Folks always ask me about defining professional success: It’s leaving far more than what you found when you got there. That’s capitalism, that is entrepreneurism – building, growing and constantly looking to make things better.

teamshot

Kate is leaving the ExchangeDefender family and I could not be more proud of what she has accomplished here and what she has helped us become. It is in no small part thanks to her that thousands of IT organizations now have an amazing platform to build their business. The new role that she is taking on will be announced next week and I know she will do an outstanding job at it.

We will miss her.

P.S. Yes, her severance package does include a hairbrush. Smile

Designing Consumerization

Posted: 11:31 pm
February 26, 2012
IT Business
Comments Off on Designing Consumerization

Sidenote: If you’re curious what I’m actually working on, tune in to the ExchangeDefender Executive Podcast series. It’s me and my upper management talking about the projects we’re working on this day/week/month/year. Vladville articles are for the most part my general takes mixed in with some humor and other commercially inadequate concepts.

Before I explain what I’m up to allow me to put the whole consumerization concept into perspective. There is a reason big box manufacturers are struggling and that reason is often not discussed because it’s not commercially viable to a lot of people. It’s not just the cloud that is exterminating the dinosaurs of the IT age, or Apple alone for that matter. It’s not only Microsoft’s mismanagement and lack of focus, nor simply the  workload shifting onto mobile devices at a more rapid pace. It’s that the design parameters have changed:

Over time every point of the server grade equipment became mission critical. It also became so expensive that the tollerance for failure in a single box almost vanished. At the same time, the old .NET development model (who cares about the bloat, just tell them they need more resources) got displaced by something else.

Instead of buying a monster server with monster storage and a monster Oracle or Microsoft database that was licensed per processor, folks started using open source databases and spreading stuff over multiple systems once we didn’t have to design a single point of failure for the sake of hardware and software pricing savings.

If all of this makes no sense at all you’re understanding this perfectly!

For example, a storage server used to be a very beefy high end server with high end storage controller, storage controller battery backup, high end server case with redundant power connections and high end drives. And while we’re spending all this money, whats a few hundred or even thousand more to get high end drives – we can never afford for this stuff to crash! But then boom, up in smoke it all goes and we end up looking like idiots. To an extent, we are, because there are different ways to design storage when you focus on replication and plan for failure instead of hoping that the redundancy will make the failure go unnoticed with fast failover.

When you look at companies like Amazon, RackSpace, Facebook and even some of Microsoft’s public designs, there is no high end hardware in sight. It’s all commodity gear all constantly replicating and completely disposable at any point in time. It’s not turnkey by any means though, design of the software – from access to storage to backups and replication – all has to fit and be designed to deal with less than 99.999% and deliver even better results than that: with spikes in demand to boot!

Designing Shockey Monkey RMM Backends

Note: The title is highly misleading; We’re not making anything nearly as sophisticated as Level Platforms or Kaseya because we business owners aren’t going to start writing scripts – but they are going to want to know when the hard drive is about to blow up.

In order for Shockey Monkey RMM to work and for our RMM partners to fit into the Shockey Monkey model perfectly we need to be capable of processing an insane amount of data. Which ain’t gonna happen because Shockey Monkey is free. Just because it can be monitored doesn’t mean it needs to be logged and reported, just because it can be logged and reported doesn’t mean it’s relevant to anyone and just because it might be relevant doesn’t mean it needs to be accessible quickly.

Moderm RDBMS (SQL stuff like Microsoft, Oracle, MySQL, etc) are designed with the old school servers in mind – fast, redundant and fat. All the data you wish to keep gets recorded and accessed at roughly the same speed and similar medium which can be related, indexed and cross-referenced as necessary. Except.. well, read the paragraph above – there is far too much useless crap which may under certain circumstances become mission critical.

How do you design for something like that? Even if you go cheap and use free software like MySQL you have a limitation of roughly 10,000 tables under ext3 and performance tends to drop off well before that.

Event Proxy – Event proxy is a simple load balanced application that will look at all the data that is being fed from an RMM. Some of that data is relational (devices, alerts) and some is junk (software updates, application notifications, error context/data). The job of the event proxy is to look at the kind of data it’s being sent to it over the network and dump it to the correct data storage medium – some nodb, some mysql, some into plain text files. Yeah, we’re partying like it’s 1999.

Report Proxy – The reverse of the above. Once someone asks for relevant vs. junk data reassemble it back together.

Reverse Configuration – If you look at the RMM agents they tend to be pretty dumb and lightweight, most of the data intelligence and manipulation happens on the server. In order to make something free we’ll have to turn the tables on this. First, the agent will have to become a lot smarter in terms of interpreting the rules of what needs to be saved on the server and what could be saved on the client itself. By contrast, servers need to get better at tracking their agents and start pulling some data instead of just waiting for it. After all, the agents aren’t dumb by accident, you can’t make them be the biggest resource hog on the workstation, they need to stay lean.

What about the consumer?

Most people misunderstand the concept of consumerization.

It’s not about something being free, that’s a marketing gimmick.

It’s not about something being basic, that’s why there are so many apps that nobody ever downloads.

It’s all about what the consumer wants: Which is simplicity.

If the user has to think, follow directions and steps, calculate tradeoffs or consider alternatives.. all you’re doing is giving them reasons not to use your app.

This overcrowded, overpriced and overcomplicated industry can survive and thrive.

But in order to do so it must build the bridge between the users expectations (free and simple) and business demands (redundant and accountable).

Obviously, we’ve built Shockey Monkey to be that bridge. And it’s working.

To hire or not to hire remote workers?

Posted: 12:25 pm
February 24, 2012
Boss
Comments Off on To hire or not to hire remote workers?

The question about remote employees comes up a lot and “remote work” is simply the norm these days, regardless of your opinion of it. I only say that it’s an opinion because of the connotation that some of the older generations tend to have towards their standards of professionalism which are constantly changing along with our society. These debates often come down to the matter of opinion in the end so I’ll try to focus on the facts at least as they relate to my business.

Pro – Costs. Office and all it entails (food, drinks, parking spaces, office equipment and space) tends to be quite expensive in terms of cash. Also in terms of productivity – if you’re dealing with a fire or have stringed back to back shifts I don’t want you driving. If we need to get something done I’d rather you take the 2 hours you would have spent in traffic and use them towards getting things done.

Pro – Talent. Sometimes you can’t get the same level of talent locally. Keep in mind that in the modern world (ex-retail/manufacturing) the “talent” doesn’t only consist of skills but also a social fit with the organization and the people you work with. We’ve used the same designer for the past decade – and I met her twice. She has designed virtually every web site and every product UI at OWN mostly because she knows what I want and has consistently taken my concepts and turned them into reality. Are there better, cheaper, more qualified people in Orlando? In a sense of the above criteria (mind readers) I’d have to say no.

Cons – Taxes. Dealing with the payroll, unemployment, city and state taxing systems is a nightmare. Particularly in the states that still allow you to marry your cousin and where 1/2 of the GDP comes from muddin’ and coon huntin’. If you hire someone out of these states or municipalities (where tax forms are still being filled out on a scantron with a #2 pencil) you will waste a lot of time and money.

money-toiletCons – Accountability. Most employees are not accountable. Even in an office setting – where they know every click, screen and email they send is logged, recorded and subject to review – I am constantly seeing people watching NBA videos, posting on the boards, watching Youtube videos or other stuff. The following is from the recent job review:

“Typically he is good. But if it’s one of the days when he decides to take a vacation at his keyboard all bets are off.”

So even though it’s very hard to keep people completely accountable anywhere (without running a military operation) home work suffers from accidental unaccountability. This is when they are actually working but the one time you needed to speak to them they went into the bathroom or went to answer the door or were out to lunch.

Reconciling Cons & Pros

First, you should only hire remote workers if you can trust them.

Second, even though you trust them, it should be convenient and fault-proof to track them – we use video conferencing excessively and we even have video streams to folks and offices on big screens around the clock. When I need to talk to someone all I have to do is look at the monitor and talk to it like you were in the office.

Third, try not to think about the money, think about the goals and milestones. Business owner brain is trained to think in the output per hour per dollar metric. If you shift that to get it done by X metric things get much better. For example – if I can’t reach you when you’re supposed to be at work, and you took a long lunch and you have a vet appointment and your roof is leaking and you need to reseal it right now – ok. But the following items need to be on my desk by tomorrow. Tends to work. This doesn’t mean that your employee won’t want to stab you while working at 4am to get stuff done, but you also aren’t dragging them into a disciplinary meeting because they were an hour late to work.

Remote or stay-at-home work can deliver tremendous benefits to your organization and if you employ some of the technology that’s practically consumer grade and free these days it can do wonders for you. Of course you should track your remote employees better by sign up for Shockey Monkey, which coincidentally was almost 100% developed content-wise remotely. The success of the relationship depends on you as much as the employee – if you understand that the levels of discipline, wardrobe and hygiene at home are not the same as they are in an office then you can start to focus on the results people can accomplish when they are comfortable instead of the results they are forced to achieve when they are tightly controlled. Balancing both at the same time can be a challenge – but you’re hiring remote workers because they are better than what you have locally to begin with so it comes with a bit of give and take either way.

You can’t try to get organized

Posted: 12:37 pm
February 23, 2012
GTD, Shockey Monkey
1 Comment

My phone has been on fire since the last blog post. I wanted to address the biggest question we get about Shockey Monkey (and really all of our solutions) and what that question means to me based on the track record, statistics and everything else I happen to know from dealing with the same issue:

Can I try it out for free?

There are several variations of this question: Can I have the Pro for free to see if it’s right for me? Can I host it in my data center? Can I have access to the source code and will you ship a developer to my basement so we can custom tune it to…

While I never say no (because just about all of those are on the roadmap this year) I tend to forward those questions elsewhere because it tells me that you aren’t seriously committed to becoming more organized.

It’s quite simple, allow me to explain.

Yes, all marketers are liars

If Shockey Monkey cost you $500 or $5,000 or $500,000 you bet it would have to sell you on the fact that it would rapidly transform your business to the point that you wouldn’t be able to recognize it and you could spend all winter skiing, all summer boating, all fall golfing and maybe you’d have to cut your spring break short a week to file your taxes. Cake!

Then there is the reality, in which most of the large ERP deployments flop or at best fail to deliver on the promise.

Why? The human factor. Humans don’t like change. Even if you’re in charge of deploying it, you will find a way to do things outside of the system which will slowly errode it’s day-to-day usefulness and when the whole organization is not in it, it doesn’t work. Unless they are forced to, like with Microsoft Outlook. Or for compensation, like with the punchclock. Either way, there needs to be a level of commitment and a level of resolute force at hand in order to drive adoption.

There is one exception – if you make it simple.

The reason folks do stuff outside of the portals is because it’s easier. It’s easier to write stuff down, it’s easier to make a quick call, it’s easier to walk over and ask someone a quick question instead of sticking it into the system.

Unless the system makes it easier to do stuff and makes it far more convenient. It’s easier to go ask someone a quick question and it might even be nicer to get away from actual work – yet people do it with SMS and instant messaging all day long. In the business concept, this is simplicity driving adoption.

We have our tools embedded into Shockey Monkey and it’s done tremendous things for our hosted Exchange and SharePoint, our ExchangeDefender and all the other stuff. Does it mean that our partners can’t just resell stuff from someone else? Not at all, they can sell whatever they want. We just made it incredibly easy and tied it with the rest of their stuff. So the monkey stays free because it’s a win-win for everyone.

There is a point at which you have to decide whether you’re just going to try to simplify your approach and just make a decision to get organized and process oriented.. or if you’re going to keep on trying different things all the time and never really getting what you want out of them. My job isn’t to experiment, my job is to make it easy so people will use it.  I head a good idea, I try to use it. But until you make the decision to actually commit to a process, the price tag or the “unknown” don’t really matter at all.

Besides, when I talk to my successful partners you all tell me you’re busy. If that’s the case, aren’t you far more likely to just go with something that’s ready to go right away (www.shockeymonkey.com) instead of trying to think down 3 years worth of customization efforts?

Keep it simple.

Flipping The World of SMB Marketing

Posted: 1:06 pm
February 21, 2012
IT Business, IT Culture, SMB
Comments Off on Flipping The World of SMB Marketing

Disclosure: This is a massive pitch. Please don’t misunderstand though, it is not meant to sell you or convince you – it’s a direction that I’m going in and if you’d like to hop onboard with me, you’re quite welcome. Enjoy.

…

We have just come out of a massive VAR extinction level event. Somewhere between automation, consumerization and overall technology just getting remarkably better and easier to use a large segment of the “IT business” population either got jobs or found a place in other industries. It used to be easy to make money, even if you didn’t like to market, sell, promote, manage people or even if you were not that great with technology and keeping up your skills. The easy money is gone.

With the easy money gone, companies that want to grow rapidly are finding it harder and harder to find qualified partners in a crowded field and reaching that next new partner is both expensive and logistically complex – they don’t attend shows and they aren’t just going to buy stuff for the sake of small incremental revenue: It has to fit the strategy and it has to impact the core business significantly to get promoted, sold, deployed and delivered over time. Without the ability to address a massive performance annoyance (spam, viruses, downtime) or critical business component (backups, failover, continuity) the solution sale and resistance (and effectively the cost) are more prolonged.

I knew this was coming. It’s why I wrote Shockey Monkey. It’s why I gave it away for free. It’s why we currently enjoy a rapid increase in the number of resellers and the level of activity across those resellers. Not just by showing the blueprint but by executing it ourselves. And you ought to listen to the folks that are actually making money and copy them. Wanna know why? Because the alternative sucks.

Just about everything else hasn’t worked. “You mean to tell me that the VARs that failed at the game are NOT the best people to tell me how to run my business? But they sold their business for nearly 3 times their monthly reoccurring revenue a month before barely making their payroll! I should ignore that?”

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

The traditional “from the trenches” expert panel of successful MSPs/VARs/Cloud managers is arguably less valuable to you in terms of advice because their model is being challenged by consumerization of the industry. Why should you sit around and listen to a conversation about desktop PC expertise when the tablets are taking over?

Really successful IT Solution Providers are at a junction point: Minimize spending and consider a sale or invest in expansion/transformation to a more consumer-oriented technology business. Considering the premiums that the market is dictating on the MSP businesses that have been acquired so far, most of your sub-$10,000,000 shops are going to transform.

Of course, my sales figures support that thesis Smile What we are doing is not a coincidence or an experiment.

Where Shockey Monkey Fits In

When I launched Shockey Monkey I told everyone that it’s not a PSA. I still maintain that it’s an extension to a PSA model and it’s inherent design isn’t management of your business but the service delivery to your customer – portals, chat, remote access, invoicing and accounting, reporting – in the face of changing demand your customer service is more important to your business than the tech solutions.

Yes, you need a tool to manage the tech solutions. And I’ll give it to you for free.

You also need a system and partners – today we will be inviting many of them to the platform.

You see, the way software and hardware vendors currently market their solutions is by throwing messages out and hoping that they stick. When you walk by my booth at a trade show, I have a few seconds to get your attention. If you enter a drawing or a contest, it’s another opportunity. But it’s only an opportunity to pique your interest about what I can do for your business. I do not get to take you through the whole benefit of my solution. And quite frankly, for some solutions the business decision maker or sales guy or even the support manager may be the wrong person to talk to.

This is where Shockey Monkey, and advertising you will see in it, are fundamentally different. It’s not a game of impressions and hoping someone will click. It’s an annual campaign that can be updated daily. Shockey Monkey users will be working in the portal and seeing vendor messages – almost constantly – and have a clear idea of the value and benefits that are offered. This includes everyone from the lowest paid helpdesk admin to the highest-compensated partner who is only in there to see the quarterly sales figures.

This is a marketing approach that is both new and mutually beneficial for all of us. IT Solution Providers get a free portal experience that ties into virtually all the systems from the PSA (if you have one) to the accounting package to quoting package to the RMM and even your own web site. All brought to you by the vendors who want you to make them a part of your business. But do they get your business just because you clicked on their ad? In a way that we’ve implemented the marketing in Shockey Monkey, they win when you win – and it’s on them to show you how to grow and do so in an assisted, supported and illustrated way. We have a common goal here.

Over the next few blog posts I will go into details on how this will happen. Vendors, hardware and software, have very deep pockets but also very talented people and lots of insight into the industry. IT Solution Providers have the customer service, connections and willingness to do the implementation process.

It makes everyone more accountable. You can no longer overpromise, underdeliver and move on to the next sale – the dynamics of IT business have been flipped from large deals to smaller deals that are earned every month. In order for vendors to stay in partners toolbox they have to deliver every day of every month. In order for the IT Solution Providers not to be removed, they have to deliver far more value. Which means the cost of business is higher, margins are lower, and we’re racing to gain a larger market share.

Shockey Monkey is less of a tool and more of a platform to make this possible. Not only will we make those connections but we’ll turn them into a relationship that is connected at the service delivery.

The synergy of the two potentially turns every single one of us into IBM.

Lowest Common Denominator

Posted: 12:07 am
February 20, 2012
GTD
Comments Off on Lowest Common Denominator

I had an interesting week at work last week. More about that later. Right now I wanted to offer a little bit of realistic take on some of the criticism in general.

Some stuff is only popular because it caters to the lowest common denominator.

Fair enough, but if it’s popular then it makes it the new norm.

Your opinion of the norm doesn’t really matter (in particular to the lowest common denominator folks) but you have a job to do and things to accomplish.

You look at the new landscape, new rules and play to win.

Everything else is just details. Would you rather be bitching and lose or give it your best shot?

Valentine’s Day At Work

Posted: 10:11 am
February 14, 2012
Boss, Humor
7 Comments

This is meant to be funny. If you don’t have a sense of humor don’t read this.

Today is one of my favorite days – nobody is on a diet, it’s cool for guys to buy a ton of roses and you can eat your body weight in chocolate. It’s like an adult Halloween. And yes, we’ll celebrate anything at ExchangeDefender that involves cupcakes.

v3

Valentines Day is a challenge for an employer to pull off because.. and how do I put this delicately.. some men in your company will turn into little bitches because they didn’t get flowers.

Am I attractive enough to even the manliest of system administrators into acting like little girls? Of course! No Question!! I’m sure that’s why most people work here to begin with. But that’s not the point.

To perfectly balance the need for candy and pretty things with the overall inappropriateness of employer sponsored valentines presents you have to reconcile what men and women expect from this very special day.

v2What women think

Awe. It’s Valentine’s Day! I hope I fall (even more deeply) in love today.

I want candy. I want flowers.

I wonder if I can still fit in that red dress I bought last year. Black shoes with the red dress or red shoes with a dark red dress?

I can’t wait.

Today is going to be a great day!

…

 

v1What men think

Valentines?

Oh shit, that’s today?

That’s alright. I need gas. I’ll get something while I’m there.

Let me make some reservations.. What do you mean you don’t have any availability tonight????

Hmmm… I wonder if Taco Bell does those gameday 12-packs of tacos in pink?

I know what boys like.. I know what guys want…

I’ve been giving flowers to ladies in the office for years..

Every year guys would ask (not jokingly) where their flowers were. I always had the same response: Seriously? You want me to buy you flowers?

Indeed they did. For guys, Valentines day is all about recycling. So here is the recipe for Valentines Day 2012.

Recycling

Every year I have lunch with my lovely wife and discuss my Modern Family at work Smile

Last year one of my (now former) employees finally came out and said what I was too naïve to understand: “That guy is an asshole! Now I have to go and buy stuff.”

It turns out that there is no workplace envy for what the ladies get.. it’s a matter of socialism and them not getting what someone else got.. so they could regift it to their significant others!

Simple enough, but how do you reconcile the single folks with the ones in relationships? How do you balance the right gift for ladies vs. guys with ladies vs. single guys?

Simple.

With ladies you’re pretty much limited by whatever American Express tells you.

With guys you have a wildcard option. Here is what I did:

Ghirardelli’s chocolate box

1 red rose

1 shot of Captain Morgan

1 small bottle of Martini Asti

2 small bags of M&Ms

If they have a special someone, this is pretty much a quiet evening and a romantic movie slam dunk. If they don’t, following up sparkling wine with a shot of rum will put you in just as good of a mood.

Cover all bases.

v4Ok, but what if they are gay?

So this gets a little bit awkward if you’re a guy giving Valentines Day presents to another guy.

They are still guys. Same recipe works. You just gotta go a little bit further.

Cover their floor with rose petals and Valentines Day M&M’s leading to their desk.

But what if you’re wrong about them being gay? 

Doesn’t really matter, after the other people in the office see this display, they’ll think they are gay anyhow.

Upside to this part is that they’ll think you’re gay too.

This is awesome for two reasons:

1) Guys won’t complain about what they didn’t get because it will out them.

2) NOBODY will want to hang out in your office anymore or complain that you didn’t take them out for drinks. EVER.

There you have it – how to use Valentines Day to boost employee morale and keep them from bugging you the other 364 days of the year.

Happy Valentines Day!

What would you like to know?

Posted: 9:44 pm
February 10, 2012
IT Business
2 Comments

The vlad@vladville.com mailbox has been flooding for weeks with questions about Shockey Monkey & ExchangeDefender – good news, it means you guys are busy! I figure I’d open up the suggestion box a little and offer answers to any questions that are really on your mind about the MSP industry or IT industry in general, running an IT / software business or anything along those general terms.

No State of The Union Address

So many of you have asked for a “Big in 2012” post or podcast and I haven’t fulfilled that request because this year you get to write it. The economy is recovering, people are spending an incredible amount of money on the cloud services, reducing infrastructure and reducing technical complexity.

Exactly as predicted over the past few years.

So in my humble opinion, there is no “big” new thing that is coming. Things like mobility, cloud, working remotely, security and government compliance and the like have been discussed, documented and dare I say it, proven in the marketplace as overwhelming successful business models. So there really isn’t a magic new technology that you will be leveraging this year that you didn’t have access to last year.

This year is less about the vendors and tools and more about you and the implementation of those tools to keep on pushing your model forward.

This is the year for you to work in your business. I know, I know, there is great shame associated with working and being deeply involved in your business, talking with your clients, leading your teams and perfecting your business – but this is really the year to do it. It’s what will separate you from owning a long term business or being a defunct organization with it’s leader in search of employment.

So do the smart thing. Focus. Then do the work.

In the meantime, if you’ve got questions, I’ve got plenty of time and opinions that I’ll be sharing with you here and you can always look at www.LooksCloudy.com for the more elaborate discussion, podcasts, webinars and industry big picture stuff from the folks that make them.

Of note: Many of you have asked about Vlad’s MegaMSP which is a project I’ve discussed with only a handful of people. News spreads fast when you ask people not to share it I guess – I’ll discuss that next month after the ExchangeDefender Essentials is rolled out.