VAR for thought

Posted: 2:50 am
August 22, 2011
IT Business
Comments Off on VAR for thought

For a moment let’s ignore the looming global financial crisis and European Union debt refinancing, ignore the fact that Apple is now worth more than Exxon Mobil or more than the 32 largest banks in Europe (combined!), ignore the terrible PC shipments and outlook from Dell, even ignore Microsoft and virtually every other SMB PC company that’s killing it’s channel program. I think each of those is a blog post of it’s own and it’s something that Kate @ http://www.lookscloudy.com has been covering rather well – but the present is not really what’s all that relevant to your future business development.

Let’s for a moment look at the consumerisation of IT and it’s impact on VARs. It’s a concept and a word so foreign to the Microsoft VAR that even Microsoft spell check can’t hold back it’s red squigly underline and the audience reacts like this:

ostriches-head-in-sand

The biggest news of this past week was not that HP decided to kill the OuchPad (Artist formerly known as TouchPad).

The biggest news of this past week was not even that HP has decided to spin off (read: for the love of god, someone take this boulder off our shoulders) it’s PC business.

The biggest news of this past week has been what HP intends to do to continue growing it’s business.

hpt_ouchpad

Apparently, it’s not this. Remarkably, they are so convinced it’s not this that they are willing to sell out the whole inventory for $100, which is less than you’d even pay for a digital photo frame.

The biggest “corporate” challenge to iPad failed so hard and so abruptly that HP is still running nationwide tablet commercials even after they have massacred the product.

What does HP defeated in the area of consumer electronics and disparaged in the nearly $4 billion dollar computer business think it will do in the future? Apparently, it’s enterprise services. What about you?

Here is the billion dollar (or million dollar depending on your aspirations) challenge for the VARs:

Are big box PC makers just criminally mismanaged in a sense that they not only believe they will never catch the iPad but that indeed their best PC years of selling hardware and networking are over?

Regardless of the correct answer to that question, the biggest marketing backers of the SMB VAR (including the partner purging Microsoft) are throwing in the towel and getting in the IT services.

To which the obvious question becomes, what exactly are you going to be managing a few years from now if all your vendors are either calling it quits or competing against you?

I’ll withhold my opinion for the time being and let you ponder on this as quietly or as loudly as you wish.

I will however offer this parting thought: Q1-Q2 and what I have of Q3 so far marks a higher decline in overall VAR activity than we’ve seen just around the Bush recession and financial collapse in 2008. Yet, profitability and revenues are higher than ever before. Simply put, people that are contemplating stuff are dying. People that are working are thriving. With the more apparent shift in the relevance of IT services, what does your business look like 2-3 years out? What are you adding value to in order to get paid if even your existing vendors don’t see themselves in their business lines anymore or show a bleak outlook?

Food for thought indeed.

There are times I wish I didn’t care

Posted: 1:19 am
August 16, 2011
Boss, IT Culture
Comments Off on There are times I wish I didn’t care

Last Wednesday, our main data center in Dallas suffered a catastrophic power failure. While the inbound ExchangeDefender service went on as expected without skipping a beat, the less redundant services didn’t fare so well – Exchange 2010 was out for about 4 hours, Exchange 2007 for about 6 and various other services between 3 – 12 hours.

At this point it’s Tuesday and I’ve been pulling double shifts since last Wednesday evening working with partners, our partners clients, our vendors and everyone in between because I’ve taken this issue quite personally.

I’ve spent nearly my entire adult life building a reliable email business. Call me crazy, but I expect it to be up 100% of the time. That’s what it was designed to do, that’s what it’s built for and that’s how we manage and scale it. This isn’t some sort of a thing where a startup cuts costs here and there and hopes nobody notices – this is a major product in it’s 7th revision and some of the newer stuff (LiveArchive, outbound routing, apps – web sharing, encryption, etc) didn’t respond the way I had expected. So I’m fixing it.

We deal with crap every day. Power outages happen a lot more often than you think – not big catastrophic ones but isolated ones – blown power supplies, malfunctioning UPS and battery packs. Hard drives die far more often now than they did 10 years ago while the RAID cards and the amount of data they manage are exponentially higher. It’s not an easy business but it’s a fulfilling business. I would rather have this job than anything else in the world.

Here are a few takeaways.

Positive

The data center staff did an amazing job, in as short of a time span as they did.

I have by far the best partners on earth. Honestly, the feedback from you guys during this episode is what’s been keeping us awake.

Redbull & Monster Energy. Personally, Pirelli tires, Ducati and Aprilia.

The few issues that became apparent during this experience are going to be fixed within the 30 days and then we get back to the domination with the features.

Personally, learned a lot from our partners and just how well our service is received out there – it’s far more positive than even I thought but then again, people always bring me problems so I definitely had a wrong impression. Definitely makes me want to work harder.

Negative

Assholes. We all have asshole clients but you’d think people would be smarter than to try to kick someone while they are down and while they are trying to help them.

Irony. This was caused by a power failure in a piece of equipment that is supposed to switch the power from the utility to power generators.

Two Big Lessons: Shedding and Perspective

Shedding is good. This is particularly true for me as well as for many of you that have been in touch with me – in the grand scheme of things, a few hours is not a catastrophe – not to marginalize it at all but let’s face it, typical hardware outages last far longer. Compared to other big cloud services that are riddled with privacy concerns, questionable financing/management, days worth of outages and eventual data loss, for the most part all this did was reinforce just how important redundancy and failover and proper training are. Yet, it seems that the hardest hit folks are micro clients with a few seats here and there whose businesses apparently barely made it through the few hours without email. Here are some comments:

“Frankly I don’t want a client that is ready to jump ship on one outage, just had to share.“

“Ray of sunshine: Lost a 3 seat client that has been on my to-fire list for months.”

Perspective is good. Every single day I have conversations with partners who are scared of the Microsoft/Amazon/Google Apps business model. They don’t take it too kindly when I tell them to position the comparable products against it and if you lose to Microsoft or Amazon you probably don’t want that type of a client.

I’ll let you imagine the fireball response I get to that one.

But here is the perspective. If you Google for the kinds of outages and downtimes and other horror stories you get with Microsoft/Amazon/Google, you’d be insane to accept that kind of a compromise. But there are people that will – and you really don’t want them as your clients, trust me.

The initial reaction to any outage is – what happened? can we switch to something more reliable? I won’t lie, I thought the same thing last Wednesday until I realized that the reason we based our core operations in Dallas is because this is by far the best data center in the world. And while the initial reaction to downtime is always going to be tough, since Wednesday the feedback has been good and with the changes we are making our partners will be more successful.

Some will leave. That’s inevitable. And I’ve even been forwarded some folks celebrating the event on the newsgroups. I understand, enjoy it.

But what really matters at the end of the day, the big picture, the perspective – is that a whole lot of stuff rides on email and that this is a great business to be in. While the demand for the cheaper more compromised cut down product will be there and will be appealing to those that don’t know the risks, more often than not, people will choose a premium solution – which is good for us and good for our partners. You have our ongoing commitment to make the most scalable and most reliable offering out there and I look forward to bringing it to you.

…

P.S. Since last Wednesday I have been working with partners, partners clients and I’m pretty sure that I’m getting an ear blister from being on the phone all day and night. To all those of you who have spoken to me and those that have sent encouraging emails, I can’t tell you how much it means to me. Everyone from our biggest partners to the smallest partners to even the competitors that have gone through this – I appreciate the kind words and keep on forwarding them to my team. Absolutely everyone here cares about this stuff and what we work on every day. My message inside my company is that the bits and pieces of what we do are inconsequential to you – it’s the service that matters and whenever we make our partners win, we win. There really are times when I wish I didn’t care – wish I could shut down my laptop and let my management just deal with the problems. But my management, their staff and everyone involved has for better or worse sold themselves to you as your data center backoffice and we don’t quit.

To everyone that faced any bit of inconvenience as a result of all this – I am truly sorry. As you can tell from this blog post, I know how it feels. Stay strong, stay focused and remember that this is the difference. Most people in tough situations quit, switch, look at the greener grass on the other side and.. well, eventually you come to that sad realization that the only consistent thing in all your failures is you. The alternative is to just work harder – turn those negatives into positives, learn from the mistakes and show that work ethic trumps any inconveniences and “shit happens” moments that are just a part of life.

Here is the comment from one of my partners that literally had me smiling for hours this weekend. His client complained about the outage and the ABP muscle flexed:

Client: “Dude, WTF, it’s been two hours!”

Partner: “Yeah, and remember that $6 thing you wanted me to try and beat because you thought our stuff was too expensive? Well, if you think you’re crippled now what do you think will happen when your production system collapses without a managed backup or you finally get that audit?”

The pimp turned around an outage complaint into a $16,000 reoccurring monthly managed services deal. My response: “Sounds like you just earned your Ferrari payment!”

ABP.

ALWAYS be pimping?

Posted: 3:12 pm
August 4, 2011
IT Culture
1 Comment

As a firm believer in the ABP methodology it pains me to even ask if you should always be pimping or whether there is perhaps a time that it’s not appropriate. So consider this as a part of public service.

First of all, I understand. Economy is tough. Lot’s of people are unemployed or facing unemployment on the horizon. Market is oversaturated with talent which drives wages down and IT Solution Providers are more careful about how they spend their money. So you’ve got to earn it.

Professionally speaking, big trade show off hours are a virtual job fair for many. It’s the best place to go if you are looking for the next step if your career.

With one huge exception: Trade show hours when we interact with our clients. This is not the time to be selling me stuff. I know it’s easy, I know it’s fast and I know that you can pin someone in a corner – but it’s disrespectful. We spend a lot of money to present our solutions and if you come to a booth trying to sell something I always say the following:

“That sounds interesting and I would love to consider it. Right now I need to focus on dealing with our clients so if you don’t mind let’s schedule something – give me your card and I’ll follow up with you.”

Then I proceed to tear up the card.

Sell to me in an elevator. Sell to me at lunch. Sell to me while we’re walking to a meeting. Sell to me at a party. Sell to me in the hallway. Even interrupt me while I’m having a meeting in a lobby. But if you attempt to sell to me while you know well enough that I’m actually working – in my booth during show hours nonetheless – I’m sorry, I have to pass.

It’s all about the first impression. If I don’t know you and my first impression is that you’re disrespectful or worse (unaware) then even if your offering is somewhat intriguing I will not associate a positive feeling to what you are selling.

So yes, always be pimping. Except while someone else is pimping already.

Beyond The Next Hype

Posted: 10:06 pm
July 31, 2011
IT Business
Comments Off on Beyond The Next Hype

Tomorrow morning I’m going back on the road for what will hopefully be the shortest conference trip of the year for me – CompTIA Breakaway. It promises to be a great event and while both Looks Cloudy and ExchangeDefender will be there in force, I’m trying to look beyond it much like everyone else. What’s the next big hype that will fall flat on it’s face?

At this very moment, the cloud is a money printing machine.

Aside from that, not much is going on. People are still afraid to make major investments and when they do so they aren’t putting it into traditional hardware and software as you can tell by warnings and financial reports of tech companies. What they are selling like crazy is consumer electronics and that’s happening relatively untouched by the MSP/VAR community because consumer experience is both direct and disposable – lower total cost of ownership.

While I’m quite excited for this years Breakway, I’m also going to predict that it will probably be the greatest one ever – because the conversation is certainly changing. The future of small business IT isn’t in credentials nobody has heard of or an audit board trying to hopelessly chase one fad after another (security, virtualization, health care). It’s this:

futureofit

This is a retail storefront whose tagline is “PC & MAC Repair” and their draw is a virus removal special starting at $49. They also apparently sell hardware and software, used laptops and generally everything your variety MSP / VAR happens to do.

A decade ago an A+ credential meant something because it was widely recognized as a hardware expertise certification by the IT managers that were hiring IT workers. Ditto for vendor certifications such as Microsoft Certified Partner. Finally bottoming out with Microsoft’s Small Business Specialist logo which separated small business IT experts from attorneys ordering the action pack. But massive new business influx as a result of a new logo – not so much.

OK – Now What?

If you’re heading to CompTIA Breakaway, don’t waste your time getting lost in the vision of things. The current small business marketplace for technology is dictated by the vendors and by the IT Solution Providers that are implementing various bits and pieces of those vendors to deliver their own solution. It’s not the next credential. Or the next vertical. Or the next hype cycle.

Lot’s of people missed the MSP train. They managed.

The Healthcare IT was all air. People moved on.

Many of you will never choose to deal with the cloud. And you’ll be fine too.

Point is to sit down and work on your service delivery and solution – that is ultimately what will make the difference.

It’s you vs. Microsoft/Google/Apple/Dell.

Own Web Now (my real job) makes 90% of it’s revenues from less than 20% of our partner base. We’ve had spectacular growth this year despite cutting our conference budget by 75%. Next year we intend to cut it even more – another half. Not to buy more Ferrari’s but to help you be more successful – there are far more cooler things we could be doing with our cash for our existing partners than spraying conferences in attendees in hope of finding a new partner. It’s clear to me you guys like what we’re doing – the referrals are through the roof and Shockey Monkey, a product with exactly $0 marketing budget, is adding people daily.

One thing I’ve been hearing a lot is:

“Vlad, I’m tired of being the middleman for all this. Just cut me a check.”

I hear you. I’ve been saying the same as well to my vendors – and we’ve been outsourcing stuff aggressively this year. Competitively speaking, you’ve got to pick what you want to be good at and stick to it – but make money on virtually anything. I’m pretty sure that’s the very definition of hustling 🙂 don’t quote me on it though.

This is quite possibly the best time to be in business IT. The opportunity is tremendous because among all the confusion, people going direct, new hypes and new promises of untapped blue oceans and amazing financing schemes – really hard working people are making tons of money selling the cloud which in turn is fueling their project work and all the other stuff that goes along with it.

To pimpin’

Look forward to seeing many of you at CompTIA – my window there is quite tight – I get in around noon tomorrow and leave after the vendor festival on Tuesday evening. I don’t plan to sleep though so you’ve got 24 hours of my time – easy! Yes, I’ll buy you a beer. No, you can’t have the iPad.  In the meantime, sign up for this:

New ExchangeDefender Archiving Solution Pack

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/275688153

August 4th, 2010 at noon EST – Thursday

Remember, if it’s not something easy that’s going to put $ in your pocket every time you do it, it’s not worth it.

The Grand Revelation

Posted: 8:52 pm
July 27, 2011
IT Business, IT Culture
4 Comments

Today two big, obvious, truths were revealed to those who held their sword aloft and said “By the power of Greyskull…”:

1. I am a shameless, selfpromotional opportunisitic guy.
2. I am neither Vartruth nor The Channel Watchdog.

Here is the truth. I spend a truckload of money to attend, sponsor, wine & dine, iPad-coat and act as an overall Santa to the channel. And all you people want to talk about is some tween shenanigans of stuff we all know but don’t sit around and talk about because there is something grander at hand: success.

So now you know what will happen to the next sucker who asks me about the sensationalism in the channel. First, I will tell you I know exactly who it is. Then, I will proceed to pin you in a corner and pitch stuff so hard that cash will bleed out of your ears and eyes. 

What Started This

My ex-wife sent me a txt late at night saying that she was defending my honor whenever my name came up as the obvious identity. Her comment:

“Don’t make me look stupid.”

My response:

“One way you can tell it’s not me is that everything I do is for the goal of promoting myself.”

Obviously you all think it’s me.

And since everyone thinks it’s me – and nobody has claimed Vartruth or The Channel Watchdog – who am I not to exploit it for attention? It registered more people than the last corporate webcast I ran.

You’ve seen this blog for years go after Microsoft, Apple and other folks that I tried to work with. It was self-serving and opportunistic at every step – and I put my name/reputation behind it. Now I was stupid and in my 20’s and the way I justified it at the time was because I could not afford to buy the kind of publicity that things like SBS Show, SPAM Show and Vladville generated when I voiced the displeasure of the community.

But at some point I grew up (I’ll admit I’m still stupid) and found a better way to get things done. Then again, it’s easy to look back from my skybox and point a finger at a 20-something Vlad that was working 20+ hours a day.

Faceless destruction for the sake of damage makes no sense to me. Even The Channel Watchdog asked:

“I have a load of stuff on Chartec, Labtec, and SMB Nation that I am putting together for release. Attacking Harry worries me a little though because everybody thinks he is a saint and my politics are shakey right now”

My response:

I’m not sure what your motivation for doing what you’re doing is but whenever I start to second guess myself I ask “How is this going to make me money?” — if I figure out a way, I go with it. Otherwise, why bother?

You see, we all have a reason for doing what we’re doing.

What I learned from this

Just like almost everything else in the channel, most people are not paying attention. Which in this case is a good thing.

Surprisingly, most people found the stuff generated by Vartruth and Channel Watchdog Unprofessional / Offensive. It’s surprising to me because if I don’t find something amusing or interesting, I ignore it.

I also found out that my deep disappointment in my friends low opinion of me as a shameless selfpromotional pimping machine can be cured by 30 minutes of shameless sales pitching.

What you need to know

Vartruth has disappeared. The Channel Watchdog is still around. But if you’re offended, why do you talk about it, ask who it is, secretly snicker about it all the time.

Would knowing who it was make any bit of difference to you? Would you stop doing business with them, today? If so, it was Scott Barlow. For both. Oh and whoever runs Office 365 and Google Apps. In fact, they collaborated on the whole deal! But if you believe that, you’re an idiot.

As I mentioned in the webcast today, if you continue to pay attention to baseless rumors and support the sites that sensationalize stuff that is not immediately relevant to your business, this will continue. What’s even worse is that if you’re a vendor, it’s only a matter of time until a slow news day makes you the next target.

It’s a cycle. When you legitimatize rumor mongering vendors flock to it because they want eyeballs. They spend big money for even the smallest of banners and ads and then a magical thing happens – there are only so many ways you can touch the same press release you get from your vendors blog, twitter and Facebook. So you know what happens? You stop paying attention. Yes, the traffic dries up. There are only so many times people will care about whether they are the top 10, 100, 200 or 500 people in the industry – and then you read baseless stuff like “Hear folks are making career changes” or “Which service provider is going under next, stay tuned” – which happens ALL the time but you still click, still move stuff around and then act surprised when the very form you legitimized is somehow offensive to you because it publishes stuff that is slightly more controversial.

The marital infidelity of certain popular channel vendors is every bit as interesting as who just got fired from a major distributor as is the brand of bike or car I’m buying this week. The only trouble is when you pay attention to some of it you no longer get to choose where the line between appropriate and offensive happens to be. And by virally spreading it, you don’t get to pick who the cannon is pointed at.

So to the shocking number of people that filled out the survey and attended the webinar – I hope you enjoyed the prank. Remember what I said: At this very time dozens of great seminars and training opportunities are taking place and you chose to hang out with me. I hope I made it worth your while. It’s not that we as grownups don’t like a juicy rumor, it’s that we as grownups have a responsibility to focus on business first and foremost.

Who the folks behind the avatars happen to be doesn’t matter to you one bit. What matters is whether you choose to be sucked into it or choose to run a business.

Vartruth, Channel Watchdog, The Var Guy–who are they really?

Posted: 3:39 pm
July 26, 2011
IT Culture
Comments Off on Vartruth, Channel Watchdog, The Var Guy–who are they really?

The fever surrounding the daily channel soap opera has come to new heights as VARs apparently find their day-to-day jobs boring. You’ve probably heard or seen Vartruth video series on youtube as it spanked one vendor after another (or the even more hilarious public spanking of Harry Brelsford by Robin Robbins as a result of it) or the more recent outing of MSP vendor dirty laundry by the Channel Watchdog.

Tomorrow, at 2PM EST, Channel Watchdog and Vartruth will unveil their identity:

Click here to register!

Please join us for this one-time-only webcast during which we will not only introduce you to the folks behind the controversy.. but also back it with the live interview, email logs and more.

But what if you can’t attend? Well, you can still play and win an ExchangeDefender tshirt. Just complete this survey and email vlad@vladville.com when you’ve done it – and you’re in!

Who is behind Vartruth and Channel Watchdog? Think you know?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/?C7QFFG6

Join in the fun!

Microsoft WPC Impressions

Posted: 10:22 am
July 24, 2011
Microsoft, SMB
3 Comments

So many of you have emailed me to ask about my impression of what was said and done at Microsoft WPC that I have to make this brief post about it. If you ever have a question, feel free to email me at vlad@vladville.com

First of all, the attendance. I wasn’t there so I can’t speak to the count of people that Microsoft says was on hand. My staff (we sponsored Microsoft WPC and were there as huge Microsoft fans) was there at a booth and mentioned to me that we had a lot of foreign audience – so I see no reason to doubt the numbers and I don’t think that really matters as far as the big picture is concerned. I know many of you feel like WPC is a waste of time for a small business and that there is no ROI to it. And you’re wrong. And perhaps Microsoft would put in more SMB tracks if there was more SMB interest in working with Microsoft. It’s a causality loop – and I’m not playing the devils advocate here just pointing out the common business sense – you have to spend your money with Microsoft to make them care about you, not the other way around.

Second, Office 365. No big surprises there. But suffice to say if you’re not doing this, your clients are being marketed to and you’ll soon be pushed out of those accounts if you don’t have an offering.

Third, Apple. Every year Microsoft shows it’s remarkably low level of class when it addresses whoever is pissing them off at the time – be it IBM, Oracle, VMWare, etc – and they seem blissfully ignorant of the fact that the audience is not their staff and is not brainwashed to believe that Microsoft is the only technology capable of making money on the planet. Same mentality exists at Apple but at this point Microsoft is doing more than just shamelessly copying Apple products poorly – they are going after their business model too.

3screens

better_togethe-mac-app-stor

I tweeted recently that when you see the flamboyant loudmouth (CEO, Ballmer) of the company say the exact same thing as the guy running the company (COO, Turner) there should be no doubt where the company is heading.

It is what it is.

Microsoft doesn’t need partners in a sense where partners are a part of the solution. It needs partners in a sense of partners being a part of completing the transaction.

This is a major change since the days of technical complexity requiring a geek – the world is changing to the one that is decidedly geek free. It’s not there yet but it will get there eventually.

The decision for IT Solution Providers seems quite clear: Are you providing a solution or are you making a sale? If it’s the later there needs to be a clear and major distance between you and the Microsoft brand.

Timing vs. Demand

Posted: 11:05 am
July 5, 2011
IT Business, SMB
1 Comment

One of the more neverending debates I have with my entrepreneurial friends is over development of new business lines. Regardless of how big or small you are, venturing outside of your comfort zone tends to require new skill, new connections and cash. Most of all, it’s about the right timing.

There are a few things that success is not about:

Potential. Ever hear someone tell you that they have an awesome business, incredible revenue growth and potential – but they just don’t have the cash to grow as fast as they possibly could? Bullshit. Investors love great ideas and growth potential – what they don’t like the risk. So if you have an incredible potential and incredible risk – you’re like everyone else out there.

Uniqueness. Almost every hopeless entrepreneur that has sold himself his own dream believes they have a unique business model. The problem with that is that business models are easy to copy and more savvy people can get things done faster than people obsessed with perfection and quality.

Connections. It’s all about who you know, right? Unless you deliver a total disaster. Then those connections are your enemy because nothing spreads faster than bad news. In every new venture, you have to establish new partnerships but that is by no means the primary vehicle for business development. For some reason, many people I’ve met in business spend an incredible amount of time trying to network but it rarely works out – I suppose because it’s more enjoyable and easier than actually working.

Right Message, Wrong Timing

Even if you have a great product, if your timing is wrong you’re going to be spinning tires. For example, if you just decided that you were going to start building networks or selling computers at the time when the world turned to the cloud and tablets, you’d be out of luck even if you got fancy with financing because you’re pushing in the wrong direction. Marketing hardware and large investments in a bad economy is the wrong message.

But let’s say you had the right message – it’s all about the cloud now so let me ride the hype! I’m gonna build me a data center! Well, slow down Bob. First, what is different from your data center and thousands of others that are already built and not at capacity.. aside from not having SAS70 Type II audits, bandwidth redundancy, power redundancy, business history – you know, the stuff that takes years to develop and prove? Being right alone is not enough if you’re showing up late to the show.

Right Message, Perfect Timing.

The trick to having the right message is research, experience, case studies, test marketing. That part is relatively easy.

In terms of timing, you have to be lucky.

There you go, class dismissed. Do some research and toss the dice and hope they come up lucky. Hey, the blog is free Smile

On a more serious note, I wanted to write this because I speak to a lot of you that are currently reorganizing and refocusing your companies to move them forward. Not all business models work forever – we had a great run with managed services. The cloud move in the small business we are enjoying right now won’t last forever either.

Focus on growing a dynamic, versatile company. Don’t fall in love with what you’re trying to sell, try to build what your customers want to buy. Demand should drive sales which should drive marketing which should drive more demand. If your chain is not spinning in that direction or is missing any of the components you’re going nowhere fast.

Most of all, accept failure. For every Own Web Now, ExchangeDefender, Shockey Monkey and CloudBlock I’ve got 20 other things I’ve tried to build and it just didn’t work out. Remember all that hype around Health Care IT that flopped? Well, what if you sunk all that money and effort into the cloud? The point isn’t to dwell on the stuff that didn’t pan out but to stay focused on building the next thing.

Do your research.

Stay ahead of the curve.

Stay loyal to your clients and deliver what they are asking.

Everything else will fall into place given enough passion, effort and luck.

The End of You; The Start of YOU

Posted: 8:09 am
June 29, 2011
Uncategorized
12 Comments

Office 365 to Partners: “Lower your shields and surrender your clients. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

There, I saved you an hour and a trip to Los Angeles for Microsoft WPC.

Several years ago when Microsoft first announced their cloud ambitions they briefed the press using the term co-ownership. Under this new concept, Microsoft and the Microsoft Partner (ie, you) would co-own the client: Microsoft would service, bill, support and well.. do everything – you would get a 6% commission for nodding when the client asked if the product would fit their needs. Effectively, it was a license to kill the Microsoft Infrastructure Partner.

If you didn’t tune in to the Office 365 launch here is the summary:

hollywood-1 

The eulogy was delivered by Ballmer himself who no fewer than 14 times repeated that Office 365 is something you don’t need an IT department or an IT person to do. The message to the partner base was clearer than ever:

There is an opportunity to build a business around migrating clients from their old “need IT help” solution into the Microsoft cloud. Then climb on in and close down the lid.

Take it on and it will be your last IT project ever. This is the end of you.

The Start of YOU

The introduction to this post isn’t meant to smear Microsoft or shine a negative light on their business model, frankly this is the best option they have and in my humble opinion the correct one. It’s also nothing new. The world of technology is turning towards services – you don’t get to pad a cell phone bill with a 100% margin. Unless your clients are unusually bad at math – you don’t get to lease them hardware at an insane margin or the kind of interest rate that required the act of congress to limit banks from charging. You don’t get to build an enterprise network in a small business and make them pay Fortune 500 fees for running their IT. We have all built our businesses on that but there are two problems with it:

1. The pool of stupid people is shrinking. Ten years ago you needed an associate degree in MIS to send and print an email. Now your grandma does it from her phone.

2. The number of options and alternatives is growing. Ten years ago you had to build a network and you had a choice of one telco provider. Today you have at least four and that’s just in your pocket. And you don’t need to read an O’Reilly book to get to the Internet, you can go to a Verizon store.

Don’t take it personal, Microsoft didn’t build this coffin for you. Microsoft built it for Google Apps. Google Apps on the other hand built it to support their search business. The string of .com’s and Web 2.0’s and giant telco and media and entertainment companies that benefited from connectivity that we all wanted and we all willingly paid for.. for the simple human need for a sense of belonging (in geek terms: connectivity).

For all intents and purposes, this is a good thing. It’s time to accept it and move on – don’t sit there asking for Microsoft to let you bill the client, don’t sit there and blame them for excluding you from their products and most of all – don’t wait for someone else to solve the problem that isn’t theirs.

But some of you can’t let go of Microsoft. Here are Top 10 reasons why Microsoft should not allow partners into Office 365:

1. Control of experience: This isn’t a matter of controlling the billing, it’s a matter of controlling the experience. Microsoft is responsible for the promotion, sale, support and upselling the clients through their system.
2. Upselling: Microsoft has not been extremely successful with it’s partner base loyalty beyond what they built: Office and Windows. If Microsoft pulls off #1 well it stands to reason that it’s other properties will do much better without partners trying to pull the client towards the solution they get most margin on. (Hint: Notice how many times you saw Windows Phone yesterday?)
3. Cross Selling: Microsoft is more than Office 365. It has always had the ambition of becoming everything to everyone but it has always had partners that stood in their way – from infrastructure to hardware to service provider – everyone always wanted their logo there. If Office 360 works out, it would be easier to position hardware, services, consulting and more.
4. Ground Rules: In the traditional network, IT department calls the shots. In Office 360, Microsoft does. Their terms. Their rules. Their features. Their network maintenance levels. By removing intermediaries, things become much simpler.
5. Patents, Patents, Patents: Microsoft is the richest software company on the planet and thereby the biggest target of patent lawsuits. When you’re playing in an open market you have to step on some toes to gain share – when you police the ocean (Office 365) you can easily keep others out.
6. Revenue Flexibility: With Microsoft controlling the billing and the client, they can control the price and the offering. Microsoft’s entire business model is built on multiple revenue streams off the same code base. With ultimate control comes the ability to tier the cloud and make even more money as companies get bigger.
7. Migration non-interference: Microsoft’s name is on the bill – it’s who you call when you have a question or need advice. Microsoft will never sell a migration from Office 365 to IBM’s hosted Lotus Notes solution.
8. Identity: Remember Microsoft Hailstorm? By having complete control of the client they have complete control of each licensed seat’s identity: One that extends to their Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, etc. At this point features become irrelevant: You’re more likely to buy something that fits than something that looks cool or fits the business model a little better.
9. Simplicity: Microsoft beat Apple by being open and allowing everyone that could write drivers to use their system. By locking out partners here Microsoft becomes that trusted advisor: Recommending apps, solutions, implementations and even suggesting your vacation. They don’t have to fight their way past the IT department to roll out ActiveX controls or the next technology they want to.
10. Borg: The collective has not been growing. Look at Microsoft’s 10 year stock chart and you can see why people are starting to demand Ballmers head and why so many in the Microsoft’s leadership have been sacked. Cloud bet is huge and partner resistence is futile – Microsoft wants to own SMB computing. At 90% they pretty much fulfilled Bill Gates vision of every computer running a Microsoft OS – but for the price to climb to fulfill Steve Ballmers vision of maximized shareholder value – everyone must be assimilated.

You’ve got the same story over at Google. So go ahead channel, resell Microsoft and Google – I dare you!

Of course, things are only this simple if we ignore the reality.

The Reality

Picture is worth a thousand words:

office365

You see, the Google & Microsoft & Apple vision only holds up in their marketing.

In the real world where most computers are s#@(, applications are written in India and business owners are cheap trying to save $100 on their Internet connection the same day they have to decide if they want to drop $8,000 for the Dayona seats in their Ferrari (don’t hate, I told you this stuff was gonna happen in 2007) the computing experience tends to suck.

Yet, millions and millions of people bought an iPhone despite the fact it’s the most locked down solution and just about the only phone whose worst feature is it’s ability to place a phone call.

The point here is that there are years upon years of profitable IT business to be done if you stop focusing on what everyone else is doing and start thinking about what you can do.

Now to all my Microsoft friends and their managers that got this forwarded to them, here is your problem.

Your partner base feels they brought you to this point and that you’re being outright rude to lock us out of your success because we’ve been abused as your customer service department for years. For us, the argument is more emotional than it is factual. You’re dumping us and telling us that you’re gonna marry our best friend at the same time that you’re asking us to pay for your honeymoon trip in Tahiti.

Now that we all understand each other, let me say something that I’ve been saying for years.

The Start of YOU

Let’s face it friends, we’ve had it easy for years. Microsoft spent billions of dollars in marketing and making our clients want the solutions they were building. All we had to do is set it up and hope it doesn’t blow up at 9AM. Which it did. Again and again. But things got better.

As big of an opportunity as Microsoft sees in the cloud, I see an even bigger one for each and every one of us. What you sell now is not Microsoft or Windows or Android.

Now you’re selling you.

The focal point is no longer the solution. No longer the price. No longer the business card with the trail of software vendors and certifications nobody but IT staff has ever heard of. The focal point is you.

“I’m going to get you everything you need. If you don’t like it, I’ll bring you something else. The point is, you’re paying me so you don’t have to do it yourself. And my time costs a heck of a lot less than yours and I’m going to make sure it stays that way.”

In the Fortune 500 marketing, Microsoft is fighting with Google who is fighting with Apple who is fighting with Samsung and they are all fighting for a market dominance 10 years from now.

My name is Vlad and I’m here to help you build your cloud business today, the same way I do for over 20,000 other IT businesses. Go here. Then email me at vlad@ownwebnow.com. We let you control the billing, the solution, the features, the implementation and if you’re insane enough – the maintenance cycle itself. It’s the cloud on your terms on your brand and your price. We just take on the responsibility to keep it up, back you with an SLA, financial and legal liability and one more thing – We’ve been doing it for 14 years.

It’s time we all thank Microsoft for a great ride and amazing software and solutions. But now it’s time we take it from here ourselves and accept that partnerships don’t last forever and business is a game of strategy and opportunity – and in my unbiased and humble opinion – I’ve got one.

Who loves ya baby?

Ironman: The Business Design Challenge

Posted: 10:40 pm
June 27, 2011
Boss, Friends, IT Business, SMB
2 Comments

At a recent conference I was asked if I’d consider doing the ironman push again.

For those of you that aren’t devoted Vladville followers, I worked 90 days straight from January 1st – March 31st. No breaks, no vacations, no days off, no Nyquil. It was a brutal schedule that allowed me to break through some crazy personal and professional obstacles and reach new milestones.

I’ll never do that – but allow me to offer some perspective. If you’re squeamish you might want to skip the next section. Scroll down to The Business Design Challenge.

The CEO

Best job in the business.

Flexible hours, obscene pay, minimal supervision and unlimited opportunity.

Then you kind of wonder how shit like this happens:

vladwin

To all my friends in business and those who want additional responsibility: be careful what you wish for. While it’s easy to only see the nice parts of the job, there are those emotional aspects of it that you don’t get to leave at work at 5:30. Most employees think their bosses are awful and that work can ruin their day. Then again, most employees can find another job in a few months and they are only accountable to themselves.

Slightly more pressure on the management. You see, a crappy toxic employee not only sucks at their job but also happens to antagonize everyone else they come in contact with – both employees and clients alike. In a way that would affect that business for a while. It’s a domino effect that affects the performance of the entire organization – if the manager has a bad day, so does everyone that works for them. And everyone those people touch as well.

The job of the CEO is two fold – deal with the employees and deal with the customers. Defend your team, listen to your customers. Represent your customers and argue with your team over the right direction of the company. Empower employees while guiding them. Guide them while attempting not to lecture them. Take their feedback while dismissing their concerns and opinions of the overall direction. Line up the marketplace demands with the client expectations with the employees ability to do their job in the goal that the company delivers on it’s promises at a scale that generates a profit.

Oh yeah, try not to offend anyone while doing it.

Maintain composure throughout this process while that nagging little voice of no confidence and risk aversion keeps on whispering: “If you fuck up, you don’t just fail and move on – you affect thousands of jobs, companies and business relationships that have taken a lifetime to built.”

The Business Design Challenge

Every small business owner has an idea and a passion. That’s how it all starts.

After you reach any reasonable level of success the ideas you’ve had as the entrepreneur take on a life of their own, different employees take on the vision and drive the delivery of those ideas and solutions to the marketplace. But because you’re so disorganized and relentless in pursuit of your dream in it’s early stages, little cut corners and “problems that will be fixed later” snowball at this stage: The Avalanche.

The Avalanche: Trouble with problems in small business is that they never get smaller. They only get bigger. And more complex. And involve more people. And require more money. Oh – and end up distracting the whole company to get resolved.

I’ve seen most of my entrepreneur friends crack and burn out in this stage. They either fire everyone around them and attempt to blame everyone but themselves for the issues or throw their personal life in an repairable disarray.

The trouble with the avalanche is that the person that caused the problem must both be strong enough to let those around them in on the issues and help own the problem and fix the solution – while the person also admits they created the problem while showing confidence that they know how to fix it.

Describe the problem. Explain it, solicit input, delegate, lead through the fix.

As the company grows from being a small business / startup mode in which everything goes, growing up takes forever. Designing a large business is not the same as a small business maturing – it’s about sustainability, mentoring, delegation and elevating your game to the next level.

Most people crack here. Personally. Professionally. Mentally. At the end of the day, is all this hassle worth a few more million or am I bored with it?

This is where most small businesses end. Either in a tailspin out of business, or an acquisition… or hopefully something better.

Motivation Process

My Ironman was an admission that I couldn’t deal with the pressure of fixing the problems I’ve caused in designing OWN for a full year that it would take to address them. So personally, I decided I could do it in 3 months if I absolutely focused and did nothing but work. I was right. So here are some tips:

1. Recognize the problem.
2. Admit it’s your fault.
3. Ask others for ideas how to solve it.
4. Ask inside / outside. Employees and clients.
5. Draw up a plan.
6. Sell the plan.
7. Cut the plan up and delegate it all away.
8. Draw up reporting.
9. Design milestones and rewards for reaching them. Start here.

You wanna line up a lot of witnesses to you don’t wuss out. What people often make a mistake of doing is hiding what’s going on – it’s easy to quit when you don’t have a bunch of people that will watch you fail. Call it motivation.

My Challenge

I’ve been fortunate enough to be around some great people while building Own Web Now. I’ve seen some succeed. I’ve seen many fail. Those that flunk out and get jobs aren’t going to be writing books about it. Those that succeed have businesses to run. I on the other hand don’t sleep a lot.

You’re not gonna read a book about it. But boy will you know when the problems you’ve created in your business are bigger than you or your ability to solve them yourself.

My problem was that I had a lot of really wacky ideas that I built into products and services from 2003-2007. Then as the cloud stuff started picking up steam all of my crackheaded ideas turned into big products. Then from 2008 we had to focus on service and grow up fast – away from grunt work of infrastructure and data centers to a mature business model of delivering services. It was a huge transition. And while we figured out all aspects of the business – running a business is more than just making it through the day. That’s business management. Running a business is about taking it in a direction. At the beginning of the year, we had a hustler problem – we could do everything but you needed to know someone. That doesn’t scale. So my challenge has been to document the business, delegate it away and dedicate more of my day-to-day on what the business needs to do next.

I made it through my ironman and my company, my team and everyone we serve is much better off as a result of it. Own Web Now is operating on a different level in June of 2011 – instead of at some point in 2012.

That, I hope, makes all the difference. After all, I now play in the big leagues.