Managed Services Survey Results – Era Beginning, Middle, or End?

Right now the managed services paradigm feels a lot like an economic forecast. Depending on who you ask, managed services is just at the start of its era. Others feel it’s in the middle of its “run.” And a few even think its hype has reached the point signaling its era might be peaking and on its way down. These are casual observations gleaned from numerous conversations. But I wanted to get the facts instead of opinions (which everyone has). So I offered a short managed services survey in the month of June and added past survey data to write up this Perceptions column.

Let’s jump right into the data.

Q: Are you seeing an opportunity to provide managed services to your clients? If so, which businesses in your market show the most promise?

Small businesses under 50 employees	80%
Small businesses with 51-250 employees	20%
Mid-sized businesses with 251 to 1000 employees	0%
Large businesses with over 1001 employees	0%

Harryb’s take:  According to our data, it’s safe to say that the managed services concept is a small business concept. It’s not getting traction in the mid-market or enterprise space. But here’s the irony. I’m convinced that over 15 years ago, companies like CA were “this close” – as Maxwell Smart would say – to nailing managed services. CA’s Unicenter was providing much of the monitoring and remote management embraced today. And – the irony part – Unicenter was at the enterprise-level. What if CA had brought that thinking to the small business-level?

Q: If you’re not offering managed services today, what is your biggest barrier to establishing this offering? (Check all that apply.)

Market acceptance	50.0%
Current sales staff’s ability to sell and support managed services	40.0%
Current technical staff’s ability to support managed services	50.0%
Investment required to establish managed services offering	30.0%
Ability to track, manage, and bill for services offering	30.0%

Harry’s take: I suspected the market acceptance response would score high, but I am a little surprised that staff training was equally strong. That tells me that the real challenge for ISVs providing MSP support software and services is training the actual SMB consultants to best utilize “managed services.” Lots of headroom for learning more about the MSP paradigm. Note to self: Add more MSP training content at the SMB Nation Fall conference!

Q: What type of managed services are you offering most today?

Remote Management and Monitoring services	84.0%
Data Security – data back- up and recovery services	52.0%
Business Continuity services and solutions	44.0%
Help Desk services	64.0%
Print and Document Management	4.0%
None	8.0%

Harry’s take: Confirming what I believe to be true, remote management and monitoring led the way with managed services and largely define the managed services paradigm. I am surprised that business continuity services scored so low (44%). Why? Because I’m really pushing the “mini-management” concept with the Trusted Business Advisor tagline. I’d like to see the business continuity question score much higher in the next poll – even ahead of the techie stuff like remote management and monitoring.

Q: Where do you see the most opportunity to build your managed services portfolio?

Remote Management and Monitoring services	54.2%
Data Security – data back-up and recovery services	37.5%
Business Continuity services and solutions	50.0%
Help Desk services	29.2%
Print and Document Management	12.5%

Harry’s take: This is a forward-looking question. I am pleased to see that folks have more excitement about business continuity services in the future. There is much less excitement for help desk services and even remote management and monitoring services are downplayed. This response set suggests that the managed services paradigm will be changing shortly.

Q: Do you partner with other VARs or MSPs on a regular basis? If so, how many subcontractors do you work with in a month?

1-2 subcontractors per month	40.0%
3-5 subcontractors per month	8.0%
10-15 subcontractors per month	4.0%
More than 15 subcontractors per month	0.0%
None	48.0%

Harry’s take: There is good news and “room for improvement” with this response. The good news is that a simple majority (52%) believe in the power of peer-to-peer partnering. But just under half (48%) haven’t gotten religion yet about partnering.

Q: How much revenue have you generated from your managed services business?

Under $500,000	68.0%
$501,000 to $2 million	20.0%
$2.1 million to $5 million	12.0%
$5.1 million to $8 million	0.0%
$8.1 million to $10 million	0.0%
Over $10.1 million	0.0%

Harry’s take. In our third annual salary survey (SMB PC 2Q), we asked what percentage of your overall revenue is derived from managed services. The most popular response (statistical mode) was that less than 10% of your revenue came from managed services. The majority of responses (over 50%) reported less than 30% of your revenue came from managed services. So it doesn’t surprise me that the majority response (68%) above was in the smallest revenue category. That’s what I call a direct correlation. Likewise, when I participated in a managed services Webinar with Jim Hamilton (from the MSP Partners trade group), he defined someone as having a managed services business model if over 10% of their revenue came from managed services. And he commented that he didn’t expect SMB consultants to have more than 50% of revenue from managed services. This suggested hybrid-like business models, not “either/or” mutual exclusivity.

Q: Are you using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to manage your business? If so, which ones do you use and why?

Harry’s take: We allowed narrative answers for this and the usual suspects appeared, including Zenith, Houngdog, Autotask, Connectwise, Kaseya, and the most popular response: NO.

Q: If you are offering managed services, what do you consider the biggest business challenge facing your company? (Check all that apply.)

Contracts and Billing Workflow	18.2%
Improving Services Workflow	18.2%
Increasing Tech Efficiency	31.8%
Coordinating Scheduling and Dispatch	4.5%
Getting My Business Organized	18.2%
Improving Profitability	18.2%
Winning New Customers	68.2%
Delivering Your Managed Services	18.2%
Accurate and Timely Reporting and Business Metrics	27.3%
Accessing All of My Business Data in One Place	22.7%

Harry’s take: Dog bites man! Isn’t winning new customers always the biggest challenge facing SMB consultants? Hang in there – it’s like the concept of time: it has no start and no end. You will always be engaging in business development your entire career. See my casual correlation next.

Casual Correlations

So I left you hanging on that last question. Winning new customers means a lot of business development activity. And that means a lot of lunches that might have direct or indirect biz dev efforts. So on a trip back East in early June to scope out new SMB Nation Spring 2010 venues, I found myself in Lloyd Neck, NY, (Long Island) having lunch with Joe Panaterri from MSP Mentor.

Harry and Joe at lunch!

While Joe and I do not have direct business between us, we’re stakeholders in the SMB technology community and its good to get together and compare notes. We both agree that the managed services opportunity is huge, and I can tell you that few outlets have capitalized on it like MSP Mentor. Visit this site (www.mspmentor.com), read Joe’s blog, and tell him harrybbb sent ya!

ShoutOuts!

A couple of tweets.

• Thanks to Brian at AutoTask for assisting the design of the managed services survey.
• Thanks to Neil Roiter (TechTarget) for his coverage of this topic and for including me in his article titled Managed services a learning process for VARs, customers (http://bit.ly/qtL5L).

Small Business Server 2003 Group Policy and Software Update Services (book excerpt)

Hello everyone – I am Harry Brelsford, publisher of the Advanced Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices book. Periodically I like to post of book passages as a virtual book reading – I blast from the past! Today’s topic is GP and SUS. And did you know – this is exactly the type of thing discussed in our annual fall conference, the 7th Annual SMB Nation event (October 2-4, 2009, Las Vegas).

So let’s rock!

Group Policy and Software Update Services While we are talking about Group Policy, let me mention that you should be using Software Update Services (SUS) to keep your client machines updated with security patches. I only mention it here because it is administered with— you guessed it—a Group Policy. You will need to download SUS or the yet-to­be released (as of this writing) Windows Update Services (WUS) at: www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sus/default.mspx. SUS Server-Side  The initial setup is pretty straightforward. Run the setup executable and provide an installation path. Once SUS is installed, you perform administrative tasks using a Web page with the following URL: //servername/susadmin. You need to configure only a few settings to get the SUS server-side operational. Set these under the “Set options” link on the welcome page, as seen in Figure 4-5. Figure 4-5  Configure SUS on the Set options page.

 

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	SUS setup will automatically set the proxy option and put in the SBS 2003 server name. Then you must decide where your server will synchronize SUS content. Some consultants prefer to run a SUS server in their consulting office and have their customer’s SUS servers synchronize from the consultant’s office instead of Microsoft itself. You can also choose to have SUS automatically approve new versions of Microsoft updates or to ask for approval (which is my personal preference). Another option allows you keep a copy of the updates locally or have each client machine pull them down from Microsoft. You can greatly reduce your bandwidth demands by keeping a local copy of the updates on your server. Another option allows you to select which languages you would like to support.If you look closely at Figure 4-5, you will see the Synchronize server link on the left. Here you have the option of a one-time immediate synchronization or configuring a schedule to automatically synchronize. The first synchronization is very time consuming (as of Fall 2004, 239 updates for the English language needed to be downloaded!). After you synchronize your server, you need to select the Approve updates page and select which updates you want to be applied to the clients. There is no “approve all” button, so you will need to select the desired updates one at a time. I found a rapid way to approve these individual updates: Select the first update you want to approach and then hit Tab, Tab, SpaceBar. Keep repeating and if you get to an update you don’t want to apply, hit Tab instead of SpaceBar. That is all there is to setting up the server side of SUS!

 

SUS Client-Side

And now for Group Policy! The SUS client-side configuration is handled through GPOs. If you are running Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Windows XP without Service Pack 1 (SP1), you will need to download the new SUS client at the Microsoft download URL (www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sus/ default.mspx). If your desktops are more current, you already have the new SUS client. When the SUS server was installed, the Administrative Template was added to allow you to create or edit SUS settings.

 

pter CHAPTER1 ☛4 So You AdvanceWant o Setupan and SMB DeplymentConsultan 

To automatically update the client computers with approved updates, follow this procedure:

1. Logon to SBS 2003 as the administrator.
2. 2.     From the Start menu, launch Server Management. 
   1. 3.        Expand Advanced Management, Group Policy Management, For­est, Domain, yourdomain. 
   2. 4.     Right-click on Small Business Server Client Computer and select Edit. 

The Group Policy Object Editor will appear.

1. 5.        Expand Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Win­dows Components and select Windows Update. 

Four options need to be configured for SUS to automatically update the client computers.

1. 6.        Select Configure Automatic Updates. Check the radio button for Enabled. 

Select the frequency you would like it to check with your server Select the install time

When satisfied click next 

1. Click Enabled. Complete the URL for your SUS server in the form of http://S ervername.

Populate the Update and Statistics server fields with the same URL since the SBS 2003 server machine will perform all of these roles.

1. Click Next Setting and configure the client update schedule. The default is five minutes. There is one caveat if your users are running with Local Administrator rights (which Susan Bradley will warn you about in her Security chapter): the updates will not be auto­matically applied. Instead, the updates will generate a system popup message indicating that updates are available. The user has to click OK to download and install the updates. Until these updates are installed, NO FURTHER UPDATES will install!
2. Click Next Setting, where you will make a decision about client computer automatic reboots after updates are applied.

As much as I would like to tell you to leave this disabled, I have found
it causes a lot of turmoil with the users to have machines unexpectedly
rebooting in the middle of their projects. So it is probably better to

 

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	enable this option, which effectively disables the automatic reboot. Remember: if you are confused by any of the choices, just use the Explain tab on each policy settings page to get more information.GPO Exception or Override As powerful as a GPO can be in the affirmative, an exception GPO can be just as powerful and useful by effectively denying some behavior. I’ll give you an example of an exception or override GPO. One of my clients had his users creating all sorts of local user accounts on the desktops when I arrived as the new SBS consultant. This local user malfeasance caused potential security holes in their SBS network. When I pointed this out to the guy in charge, he asked if I could lock down the system so we could control who logged onto which client computer. I created a neat little GPO that forced everyone to logon with a domain account, which prevented local logons. Note that work was performed in the SBS 2000 timeframe and can’t be exactly replicated in SBS 2003, so kindly accept the above discussion as explanatory in nature. To create an exception GPO: Logon to the SBS 2003 server machine as the administrator. 2.   From the Start menu, launch Server Management. 3.   Expand Advanced Settings and Group Policy Management. 4.   Expand Forest, Domains, yourdomain, MyBusiness, Users, SBSUsers. 5.   Right-click on the new OU you created earlier in this chapter titled LimitThese. 6.   Select Create and Link a GPO Here and name the new GPO OverRideNoRegeditNoRun. Right-click on this new GPO and choose Edit from the dropdown list. 8.   Expand User Configuration, Administrative Templates and click Start Menu and Taskbar. 9.   Double-click Remove Run menu from the Start Menu. Select the Disabled radio button and click OK. 10.                    Under Administrative Templates, select System. 11. In the right pane, double-click Don’t run specified Windows appli­cations. Select the Disabled radio button.
	Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.

 

	pter CHAPTER1 ☛4 So You AdvanceWant o Setupan and SMB DeplymentConsultan	4-27
	12.  Click OK twice and close the Group Policy Editor.13.  Right-click this newly created GPO and select Enforced. 14. Under Advanced Management in Server Management, Group Policy Management, Forest, Domains, yourdomain, Group Policy Objects, click the OverRideNoRegeditNoRun GPO. 15.  Click the Scope tab in the right pane. 16.Under Security Filtering, click Remove to remove Authenti­cated Users. This is shown in Figure 4-6. Figure 4-6 Authenticated Users will be removed in the Security Filtering section.

17. In the Security Filtering section, click Add.

1. 18.   In the Enter the Object name to select field, type Administrators, click Check Names, and then click OK.

You have now created an exception GPO.

 

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	BEST PRACTICE: If all you want to do is keep a specific GPO from being applied to a user or group, the easiest way is to remove the Apply Group Policy permission from the GPO itself. Do this on the Security tab of the GPO property sheet, as seen in Figure 4-7. Figure 4-7 Select Deny for Apply Group Policy as a permission restriction. You will receive a warning message relating to a Deny selection (the warning is that Deny is very powerful).

SMB Nation Virtual Spring Show – Wednesday, June 10th

It’s HERE! SMB Nation Spring Virtual Conference!

We are introducing a presentation paradigm that is especially well-suited for the SMB with our virtual conference. Turns out, that virtual conferences are gaining mindshare in the technology and business community, as witnessed by this excellent article in INC magazine: [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090501/sales-and-marketing-nice-meeting-your-avatar.html]
Block out time to visit our SMB Nation Spring conference this Wednesday, June 10^th from 8AM PDT to 4:00PM PDT (UTC-7) for LIVE DAY! So here is the “411” of information for you regarding this hip happening event!

Sign-up for the complimentary online conferrence HERE

Content!

• Are You Essential Business Server 2008 Secrets (Greg Starks, Steve Bourne) Customers outgrowing SBS?  Larger opportunities knocking at your door?  Come find out what Essential Business Server 2008 is all about.  Learn how it is positioned vs. SBS and how it will help you simplify managing a multi-server environment.  Discover what hardware you will need to sell with EBS, how to plan for shared storage solutions, and insights into deployment methods.  Be ready!
• Creating, Selling and Funding Managed Services (Eric G Steinberg) During a jam packed and entertaining 90 minute presentation, Eric will take you through the step-by-step process of selecting and delivering each component necessary to build a winning, recession and competitor proof MSP practice.  Next you will learn how to successfully attracted and engage with new and existing clients through a systematic process of professional solution selling techniques.  Finally, Eric will provide you with a series of effective and creative ways to finance your new MSP practice.
• Total Small Business Management Using OneNote 2007 (Todd Colbeck) This class will discuss how to add 25% or more in new revenues to any small business (including your own) using Microsoft OneNote 2007.   One Note 2007 is to a business owner, what a palette of paints is to an artist. Everything the artist needs to paint his picture is on the palate. It is up to him how to blend the colors and apply them to the canvas. Every feature a business owner needs to execute a business plan is in OneNote 2007, it is up to him how to blend the features to create his dream business. A lot of lip service has been given to the paperless office; OneNote 2007 is a paperless office! In this class we will discuss:

1. A brief review of the features in OneNote 2007.
2. Customized templates and applications for running the business of a Microsoft Small Business Specialist.
3. How to customize and apply the templates for improving the businesses of your customers, regardless of their vertical.

• We will be going extremely deep on greatly improving the sales and marketing cycle using OneNote 2007. We will also discuss how to use its collaboration features to reduce workflow time by 15 to 25% in most businesses and sometimes more.
• OneNote 2007 is always a great tool to create a WOW from your current customers and create competitive advantage for yourself when winning new customers. This class will help position you as an expert for all areas of concern to a small business owner in addition to technology.
• NOTE: To view the speakers, please go to the back of the trade show hall and visit the lecture screens (shown below). Remember to navigate using your ARROW KEYS!

Time for bona fide content lectures!

This is the academic lecture area that launches the video lectures!

• LIVE CONTENT!
  • HP 9:00-9:30AM PDT Windows Server Foundation: Building a valid infrastructure foundation with HP ProLiant. Registration link https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/236773209
  • Symantec 12:00-12:30PM PDT ALL-IN-ONE, EASY TO MANAGE PROTECTION FOR YOUR BUSINESS. Did you know that antivirus is not enough? Registration Link https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/247843800
  • Intronis 2:00-2:30PM PDT Securing your data with online backup and recovery. Registration Link https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/613123024

Speakers!

Steve Bourne - Steve Bourne is a Program Manager with the Windows Essential Business Server team. He has worked on multiple v1 server products during his 8 years with Microsoft. Steve joined the EBS team at the beginning of the v1 product cycle, and was for responsible for areas including OEM relationships, virtualization, performance, and Base SKUs

Todd Colbeck - Todd Colbeck, MBA, is an industry   veteran and business coach. He specializes in helping business owners grow their practice by increasing client loyalty and getting clients to actively promote their business. He uses OneNote 2007 extensively in his own practice. He coaches every business owner he works with on using OneNote to massively increase revenues and reduce workflow time in their business.

Eric Steinberg - The idea of providing fixed fee network administration services became the obvious choice for Eric and his regular clients back in 1986.  Though hampered by technical limitations, it provide critical to the success of his “bootstrapped” business.  Eric was then tapped by Microsoft as one of the first 25 MCSEs in Windows NT 3.1.  Combining his technical and business knowledge he provided a CIO perspective for early adopters.  As head of professional services for Citrix’s largest specialty distributor he shifted his focus to the virtualization revolution.  There, he developed a series of presentations that demonstrated its business value.  Today he focuses on developing MSP solutions for clients and is involved in a start-up company that delivers the first true peer-to-peer SMB social lending network.

Greg Starks - SMB Solutions Program Manager, Hewlett-Packard. Greg has been with HP and Compaq for over 20 years, contributing in the areas of electrical and software engineering, IT management, solution architecture and technical marketing. He is now part of a new team driving SMB Strategy and GTM for the Industry Standard Server division. Greg has presented at 10 SMB Nation events and contributed technical content, including TechTalk videos for Harry’s 2005 – 2007 worldwide workshop tours. He holds MCSE and MCDBA certifications and is a graduate of Purdue University with Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering Technology.

Sponsors (Visit the cool booths to learn more)

1. AllenPort

2. StorageCraft

3. Aastra

4. Lenovo

5. Windows Home Server

6. MSP Partners

7. TotalTel

8. Untangle

9. MG Technology Group

10. LabTech Software

11. Trend Micro

12. CRU Data Port

13. eset

14. Kaseya

15. Symantec

16. AVG

17. NETGEAR

18. Level Platforms

19. Symform

20. AutoTask

21. HP

22. Highly Reliable Systems

23. Lightwave Consulting Group

24. D & H Distributors

25. Wesbell Technologies

26. TBA

27. Intronis

28. Interwork

29. Doyenz

30. CompuVault

31. eFolder

32. Reflexion

33. Zenith

34. Virtual Administrator

35. Windows Mobile

36. Microsoft Action Pack (MAPs)

How To Attend

To attend the SMB Nation Spring virtual conference NOW, click HERE [http://smbnation.com/Events/SMBNationSpring09/VirtualSpring2009/tabid/257/Default.aspx] and complete the following procedure.

1. Complete the alias field and select your gender as seen in Figure 1. Hit your ENTER key when your cursor is in the Alias text field.

Figure 1

Give yourself a name, gender and hit ENTER.

1. Complete the identity page seen in Figure 2 with core demographic information and select Submit.

Figure 2

Standard Stuff – tell us about you!

1. Welcome to SMB Nation Spring- Virtual! You are looking at the ESET, Kaseya and Symantec booth. Basic show floor navigation is easy using ARROW KEYS (now your mouse. For example, to move UP, use the UP ARROW KEY (typically found on the lower right of a QWERTY keyboard).

Figure 3

Over 30 booths await your visit in the Marketplace Expo Hall. Really cool!

BEST PRACTICE: Also join our TweetUp on Twtvite this Wednesday as well: http://twtvite.com/m4bntu

Click HERE to attend the SMB Nation Spring VTS on June 10th

Biz Dev Job at SMB Nation – Bainbridge Island

Business Development (Bainbridge Island)

---

Reply to: job-tvjxb-1211954514@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}
Date: 2009-06-08, 3:14PM PDT

Description:
Using a consultative approach to sales, the Business Development position will provide outstanding customer service to our vendor/partners, while driving sales through strong customer relationships and proactive account management. The Business Development position is responsible for the management of client relationships – from prospect identification and sale of media and marketing packages, through to their execution. The Business Development position will also work to assist project teams with the successful completion of media and events projects: on time and on budget.

The ideal candidate must be energetic, proactive, highly organized, is able to multi-task and possesses strong communication skills. The ability to represent SMB Nation with the highest levels of professionalism in public is paramount.

Responsibilities:

Sales Management
• Daily monitoring of various news alerts, press releases and/or product announcements in order to identify possible new business prospects
• New Business Development, including prospect identification, distribution of media kit(s)/marketing materials and sale of media and marketing programs in the SMBPC Magazine, online at www.smbnation.com and sponsorships/exhibitor space/special programs for various events
• Proactive account management of existing vendor/partners relationships, including sale of media and marketing programs in the SMBPC Magazine, online at www.smbnation.com and sponsorships/exhibitor space/special programs for various events
• Development of custom promotional programs for vendor/partners, including the research of each potential vendor/partners’ interests, needs, key competitors and current marketing initiatives
• Identify SMB Nation prospects/clients that are ideal for cross branding partnerships
• Work with CEO and other internal teams to integrate marketing strategies, ensuring a consistent marketing “message” is conveyed
• Ensure that SMB Nation content hosted on clients’ websites is presented according to SMB Nation Brand/Usage guidelines

Administration
• Make and document 100+ outbound phone calls per week to prospective clients
• Obtain annual/monthly sales quotas as set by management
• Utilize the NetSuite SFA and Marketing functions to their greatest potential
• Measure advertising campaign and sponsorship performance to ensure that vendor/partners’ goals are met and recommend campaign optimization tactics therein
• Provide monthly review of marketing and sales efforts to both SMB Nations’ vendor/partners and internally to SMB Nations’ Management Team(s), detailing success on goals, other accomplishments and challenges
• Drafting sales contracts, insertion orders and other sales and marketing related documents
• Write and submit RFP’s for print and online media campaigns
• Manage online advertising and magazine advertising inventory
• Manage sponsorship/exhibitor space/special programs inventory for various events
• Facilitate invoice management
• Traveling to various conferences, workshops and tradeshows, including booth duty in SMB Nation booth

Requirements:
• Must be extremely organized and detail-oriented
• Self-motivated, excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Strong project management skills; flexibility to manage and maintain multiple projects
• Willing to go the extra mile to meet deadlines and achieve results
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in advertising sales/marketing coordination
• Solid PC skills, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Adobe
• Previous success in a deadline driven environment
• Overnight travel required

About SMB Nation:
SMB Nation is a publishing and events company, targeted at the Microsoft Small Business Specialist (SBS) community. SMB Nation spreads the knowledge of SMB technology trends through its books, magazine, online services, conferences and world-wide seminars and workshops. As an active participant in the technology community, SMB Nation has a long history of advocacy and evangelism.

The company was founded in 1999 as Matthew\Brelsford Associates and became SMB Nation in early 2003, to promote the books and consulting services of Harry Brelsford, the author of a successful series of books written for Microsoft’s global Small Business Specialist community and IT consultants, and a popular conference speaker on Microsoft-centric SMB consulting.

Today, SMB Nation conferences, seminars and workshops bring forward-thinking IT consultants, technologies and vendors together, sparking new opportunities in the SMB space. Being THE information source for SMB technologists and Small Business Specialists worldwide, SMB Nation delivers complete business solutions to help them better manage their business, technological and marketing needs. Whether it’s delivered in print, online, or in person, everything SMB Nation produces reflects our unshakeable belief in the power of information to spur a profitable global community.

Go to www.smbnation.com for more information

Say What? IBM Plucking Off MS Small Business Server Partners?

I’m a bit concerned with the undertone developing in the SMB technology community where many Microsoft partners privately express to me that the Microsoft Program has gone 80/20. That is, the focus is on select elite upper-caste SMB partners and their peers (typically upper-middle class males – this is the top 20%) that bring in 80% of the licensing revenue. Engaging in an 80/20 strategy is fraught with issues including creating opportunities for your competitors.

Surely there is some SMB ISV out there that wants the 80% whom I like to call our SMB Nation tribal members aka Joe the Plmbers with greater ethnic economic diversity?

That SMB ISV is IBM with its Lotus Foundations product and today it is reporting it is plucking off MS small business partners at an alarming rate of over 200 per month.

Below you will find the press release from IBM in its unchanged entire format. Note that over the summer I will be testing Lotus Foundations side-by-side with SBS 2008 and writing an article on my findings for release at my 7th SMB Nation Fall conference in Las Vegas (October 2-4, 2009).

Submitted for your approval:

200+ Microsoft Partners Per Month Flocking to Sell IBM Lotus Foundations Appliance

ARMONK, N.Y. — June 4, 2009 — Facing waning demand for Microsoft products, more than 1,000 Microsoft Business Partners have already signed up to sell IBM Lotus Foundations (www.ibm.com/lotus/foundations) “office-in-a-box” appliance for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in the first five months of 2009.

According to Microsoft Business Partners, sales of Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS) software bundle have stagnated due to lack of innovation and partner dissatisfaction with their inability to add solutions and services. Microsoft partners are looking for an alternative that provides SMBs with more collaboration computing power for less money and more reliability in these challenging economic times.

“Lotus Foundations is a complete, cost-effective solution that easily scales as a business grows. When you add users, you know exactly what it will cost and the functionality you’ll get,” said Bernie Leung of Mesa Technology. “With Microsoft SBS, you always have to worry about what additional licenses you will have to purchase – the SQL client is just one example.”

In addition, some Microsoft partners have expressed disenchantment with Microsoft’s new strategy of battling Linux encroachment in the SMB market by offering a skeletal version of Windows Server. Named “Microsoft Foundation Windows Server,” it can be positioned as a loss leader to up-sell customers a variety of other Microsoft products. Seeing rising customer demand for lower cost, more secure and open source alternatives, many Microsoft partners are looking to sell Linux-based solutions.

IBM Lotus Foundations provides all the hardware and software needed for a business to get up and running and grow exponentially without incurring any upgrade costs. The IBM product enables businesses to move to a single platform for all their IT needs, a stark contrast to Microsoft SBS, where additional software from Microsoft, as well as hardware and software from third parties must be purchased.

“And with Lotus Symphony, we don’t have to pay for Microsoft Office. Most importantly, Lotus Foundations is simple to use and easy maintain. It eliminates the expense of having a full-time IT expert on staff,” said Jose Lopez Gonzalez, CEO, Lopez y Cortina, an insurance provider in Monterrey, Mexico.

“If you sell servers to small business or non-profit organizations and you want one that has everything they need to run their network in one box that is extremely easy to manage, you owe it to yourself to look at the Lotus Foundations appliance,” said David Lawrence, President, Smart Technology Enablers.

IBM Lotus Foundations is designed to simplify the IT experience for small businesses. Before Lotus Foundations, small businesses were stuck with the many hassles and technology pains associated with traditional IT solutions.

IBM Lotus Foundations provides SMBs with positive change from the status-quo

New IBM clients such as Lopez y Cortina, Murak & Associates LLC and Calvary Baptist Academy are indicative of many small businesses in North America and around the world. For these organizations, who lack the luxury of dedicated IT personnel, keeping expenses in check is a top priority. As such, these companies are looking for ways to make dealing with technology easier.

Business partners too are looking for more effective methods to drive their business and support their customer base, and many have found that Lotus Foundations is the answer. The following are comments made by a sample of IBM clients and partners who have signed up for Lotus Foundations in the past five months.

“Lotus Foundations….dramatically improved our email platform. And instead of using disparate software, every user has the same comprehensive solutions, creating a common experience and standardized security and back-up protection across the company.” — Jose Lopez Gonzalez, CEO, Lopez y Cortina.

“For us, collaboration is paramount. With the VPN and file sharing features in Lotus Foundations, our consultants around the world can access information just as if they are in the office. And with this solution, we know our data is safe. The backup process is completely automated. It’s one less thing for us to worry about.” — Gerry Murak. Principal, Murak & Associates.

“Our IT setup consisted of a series of old desktop computers. Our file management system consisted of information stored on CDs, disks and hard copies of important documents. We needed a system to help centralize and simplify our file storage, but we didn’t have a huge budget. Lotus Foundations enabled us to implement a complete data storage system and stay within budget. And as an added savings, the included Lotus Symphony software enables us to cut all future costs tied to buying and upgrading Microsoft Office licenses.” — Kathy Rutledge, teacher, Calvary Baptist Academy.

“With Lotus Foundations, we were able to get a more complete solution and cut our costs significantly. The full year cost of our Lotus Foundations environment is equivalent to what we paid for only about one-and-a-half months with our SBS solution. That means we can spend more money on developing solutions that help our customers improve the way they do business.” — Dr. Tim Miller of EnVision.

“Lotus Foundations is like a giant aspirin for the IT headaches that plague business owners every day.” — Greg Gould of GDomino.

“The Lotus Foundations server is a wonderful device – the ease of install and configuration makes getting right to work a quick job. For the money, we could not have come close to finding this functionality anywhere else – enterprise quality in a small business box.” — Robert Thresher, owner, Thresher Enterprise Systems.

“With Lotus Foundation remote management, we have eliminated 50% of the support travel time allowing us to grow our Managed Service Provider division. As a result, we have grown sales and our customer base by 80% in the year 2008. With all the technology opportunities today, we are seeing a large number of customers looking for long term solutions outside of Microsoft, and Lotus Foundations and IBM Symphony are two great alternatives that offer small business organizations an IT solution that grows as their business grows – and adds value without taking away from their bottom line.” — James Sulfare, Solinkit, LLC.

“Lotus Foundations allows us to service our more than 100 different clients remotely. In fact, of all of the clients we’ve serviced that have IBM servers running the Lotus Foundations, we’ve only ever met two face-to-face. Lotus Foundation’s ease of setup and management allows us to ship out an unconfigured unit to our client. Upon receiving the unit, I have frequently instructed over the phone, the secretary — with zero computer experience – on the setup and configuration of the unit,” said Hari Boukis, owner, Advertising Magic.

“We chose Lotus Foundations from IBM for its high availability and ease of maintainability. Lotus Foundations also helps companies keep costs down do to its reliability, all-in-one office software suite, ease of use and maintainability. Additionally, since our solution is Windows-based, the ability to run Windows applications alongside Linux applications makes the Foundations environment a complete SMB solution.” — Jim Abraham, Managing Partner, Line Fifty Software.

For more information about IBM Lotus Foundations, visit www.ibm.com/lotus/foundations.

# # #

Respectly – your fellow “Joe The Plumber” in SMB.

cheers…harrybbbb

CEO | SMB Nation

Co-author: Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 Blueprint

SMB Salary Survey Results from SMB PC Magazine

3rd Annual SMB Salary Survey

By Harry Brelsford

Good news! We’re a successful and optimistic lot. Choosing a career path as an SMB consultant and channel partner has rewarded us in good times and allowed us to survive and thrive in bad. We’re sleeping soundly at night, masters of our own destiny as owners of our consultancies and not beholding to a boss or layoff threat. It’s the best of times amongst the worst of times, and you believe you’re going to get through this economic epoch.

Welcome to our third annual salary survey. Stick with me, as I truly believe the surprising results will daze and amaze you. This year we asked about all that standard stuff—like education, experience, and income—that allows us to have year-over-year comparisons. But we have now added interesting questions allowing you to determine who/what is HOT or NOT in the worlds of social networking and blogging.

The 411

It’s an Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) world where folks like information instantly. I’m not one to stand in the way of the social mega trend, so here you go—just the facts from our salary survey followed by in-depth analysis.

Core Data from Respondents  

• Has a four-year undergraduate degree
• Has been in the IT industry for 15+ years
• Has worked in the SMB segment for 9 to 12 years
• Is located in the USA (83.5%) but could be in Canada, Ireland, Australia, India, Germany, the Netherlands
• Is self-employed as the owner of a consulting entity (75.6%)
• Is a one-person consulting entity (26%). Overall 63% of the respondents worked in a consulting practice with five or fewer employees/coworkers .
• Serves 15 customers individually, so a five-person SMB consulting entity would have 75 customers.
  • The customer has, on average, 15 desktops but it seems like just about everyone has the “one large customer” out there (even though the polling data didn’t pick this up well with the “mean” statistical measure).
• How did you make it? Compensation occurs in three ways: contractor, employee wages (W2 in the USA), or owner draw, and we found it was a combination of the three. The bulk (60.8%) of the compensation reported by respondents came in the form of a paycheck as an employee of his/her consulting entity.
• The most common response for overall consulting revenue at the company-wide level was $1M to $3M at 17.5% of the answers. But there was really no consensus, as revenue was spread out over numerous response categories. You should read or blog to see the full results.
• Now the GOOD STUFF. How much DID YOU MAKE? There are two answers here.
  • The most common answer at 12.1% was $101,000 to $125,000 USD.
  • But the weighted average was approximately $80,000 USD for the third year in a row. Let’s face it—the SMB consultant has a take-home pay of $80K USD and he/she = HAPPY ABOUT  IT! It’s a good life for many compared to the humble beginnings many respondents had.

 

Who’s HOT and Who’s NOT!

We added several new questions to better understand you—where you go and what you do. Along the way, we got to know you better. You have a high need for affiliation, with 58.8% of “you” belonging to a SBS or SMB IT Pro USER GROUP! Other notable affinity group mentions included (in order of strength and over 10%):

• Robin Robin’s Marketing Groups
• MSP University
• SMB Technology Network (SMB TN)
• Jeff Middleton’s SBS Swing Kit/Groups
• CompTIA
• MSP Service Network
• ASCII Group

Lagging in the single digits were HTG Peer Group, IAMCP, ICCA, NASBA, and Culminis.

Up in the blogosphere, the top five bloggers that you follow are:

1. Susan Bradley – SBSDIVA  (50%)
2. The Official SBS Blog (42.2%)
3. Karl Palachuk – Small Business Thoughts (24%)
4. You had me at EHLO (20.8%)
5. Robin Robin’s Marketing Genius (19.5%)

Note that even though my SMB Dude blog pulled the highest number at 52.6%, I’ve recused myself from this list because I conducted the poll. (What would you expect!) I was also sad to see the MS Small Biz Blog from Eric Ligman pull only 16.2% of responses and not crack the Top 5.

When it comes to information hunger vis-à-vis the newsgroups, you gather your information from these top newsgroup sites, listed in order of strength.

• Microsoft SBS Technical Support Newsgroups (official Microsoft) (36.1%)
• Yahoo! SBS Newsgroup (sbs2k)(25.7%)
• Yahoo! Small Business IT Consultants (smallbizIT) (25%)
• Yahoo! MS Small Biz (mssmallbiz) (22.9%)
• Smallbizserver.net newsgroup forums (22.2%)

With respect to social networking, the sites and tools you use are:

• LinkedIn (75.4%)
• Facebook (64.5%)
• Twitter (25.4%)

The magazines your read include Redmond Channel Partner, VAR Business, CRN, ChannelPro SMB, SMB PC (that’s us!), TechNet, Windows IT Pro. The magazines on this short list with the highest read rate were Windows IT Pro (80.3% open rate) and Redmond Channel Partner magazine (77.6% of you who receive it actually read it). In the electronic realm, the Windows Secrets e-mail newsletter was the most mentioned as read.

More HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR MONEY?!

Let me ask the following question. Does the term “Value-Added Reseller” (VAR) still make any sense or is that an old-school phrase? I suggest we look for another term to define us, such as “Trusted Business Advisor” because of the following data.

What percentage of your revenue comes from product sales versus services?

• Product sales (26.7%)
• Services (74.64%)

And talk about headroom. When asked a question about managed services as your revenue source, you replied with the following eye-opener (short answer = very little).

• 0 to 10 percent                  32.3%
• 10 to 20 percent               18.3%
• 20 to 30 percent               10.2%
• 30 to 40 percent                 9.7%
• 40 to 50 percent                 4.8%
• 50 to 60 percent                 3.2%
• 60 to 70 percent                 9.7%
• 70 to 80 percent                 6.5%
• Above 80 percent              5.4%

The above shocking numbers would suggest good days ahead for Arnie (ConnectWise) and Bob (Autotask) and other players like Tigerpaw!

The Best for Last!

Alrighty, I’m not going to hold out any longer! This is a serious STOP THE PRESS and RUN A SPECIAL EDITION moment. Approximately 75% of the respondents expect their compensation to remain the same (that’s 31% of the lot) or INCREASE in 2009. That is amazing optimism, and I share it with you. The chart below reveals the full response set.

Majority of SMB Channel Partners Optimistic About General Economy!

Wow!

When asked to find words to describe your feelings about the future (related to the economic cycle, your business model, etc.), here are selected phrases that cover the full spectrum: We continue to grow; Smooth seas ahead!; Holding strong, poised for growth; Needs to be stronger with more business action; Fewer HW/SW Sales, more Managed Services; So far, not much effect; Sucks big time!; Ducky…

Correlations to the 2009 SMB Insight Report

I have read with interest Microsoft’s recent SMB-related survey and highlighted several items that relate to our own salary survey. Note there is a slight difference in timing and methodology. Our salary survey had over 225 respondents (worldwide SMB Nation tribal members) in late April 2009; the Microsoft 2009 SMB Insight Report is based on 603 Small Business Specialist (SBSC) interviews in the US, the UK, Canada, France, Brazil, and India in February 2009.

Highlights from the 2009 SMB Insight Report include:

• SMB IT Spending: 55% of SBSCs forecast the same or higher spending among SMBs.
• Reducing staff and IT costs are the most often cited survival technique by SMBs customers to SBSC consultants. The “relationship” of the SBSC to the customer will involve assisting in finding these cost reductions in 2009.
• Backup, IT consolidation, virtualization, mobile solutions, and security lead the opportunities in 2009.
• Unified communications (UC) have the highest level of demand among productivity tools. VoIP ME! A best practice would be to visit our SMB VoIP site, Telephonation (www.telephonation.com) which already has more traffic than our traditional SMB Nation Web site (www.smbnation.com).

 

Summary

Here’s what the numbers don’t necessarily tell you. Maybe you could have made more money if you were a lawyer or doctor. But you LIKE what you do and that’s why you do it. I hear this time and time again in my Hallway 101 conversations with SMB consultants. Most of you wouldn’t trade your day job for nay—except more fishing time. It’s not just the money, but you derive significant happiness and professional satisfaction from what you do. It’s called community, and we’re all in this together. So here’s a toast to happiness, health, and wealth! This column spoke directly towards the wealth component—you’re on your own for the other two. Cheers!

Tiered Storage in the Cloud for SMB consultants! (Webinar in-progress)

Folks – my webinar with Storage Guardian is underway right now and here are some interesting factiods:

Tiered Storage Webinar underway => minority (45%) will trust/consider cloud storage. Majority (55%) still utilize on-premise storage!

Tiered Storage webinar: majority of IT consultants are making daily backups and rotating data offsite (57%).

Tiered storage webinar: Medical record retention is fasted area of storage growth and a TREMENDOUS opportunity for SMB channel partners!

Another factoid => regulatory requirements, like the credit card industry PCI initiative is a fantastic oportunity= data security is mandated.

Also – IRS requirements driving record keeping activites in small businesses including e-mail retention!

SMB Nation Fall 2009 – Conference Update on Venue (Video)

Hi there everyone – I am delighted to share this update, via video, about the SMB Nation Fall 2009 conference in Las Vegas (Oct 2-4). In this video, the first I have posted for the small and medium business channel partner/consulting technology event, I am commenting on our new venue in Las Vegas – the Riveria hotel on the STRIP!

Watch the video HERE!

Look here for other updates soon. We will be releasing content session, speaker names, etc.

Thanks!

cheers….harrybbbb

Harry Brelsford, CEO at SMB Nation

MBA, MCSE, CNE, CLSE, CNP, MCP, MCT, SBSC (Microsoft Small Business Specialist)

PS – my Small Business Server 2008 (SBS 2008) book is now here! J

PPS – my fall show, SMB Nation Fall 2009, is in Las Vegas on October 2-4, 2009.

Brelsford’s Dozen Rules – Low-cost and free marketing opportunities

Hi there folks – I am Harry Brelsford, the author of the accliamed SMB Consulting Best Practices book. I am posting up a especially useful passage on free or low-cost ways to market yourself as an SMB technology channel partner and consultant.

BTW – I hold an amazing conference each fall. The 7th Annual SMB Nation conference is Oct 2-4 in Las Vegas!

Free Marketing Opportunities

“Ah, finally!” you say, your favorite part of the chapter: free marketing stuff. I agree. Many inexperienced business people, SMB consultants included, overpay for marketing functions. There is a time and a place for top dollar and top shelf, but it’s unlikely now is that time. Rather, for the SMB consultant on the way up, it’s critical to keep expenses low in order to keep ROI high (more on ROI mathematics in the Minder section of this book). In this section, I spell out a few freebies you can start using tomorrow.

Brelsford’s Dozen: Giveth business cards

Set a goal of giving out 12 of your business cards per quarter (every 90 days) from this point forward, which amounts to one business card per week, a modest and achievable goal. Over time, this becomes a very powerful tool, as you’re name will spread exponentially in your community.

 

BEST PRACTICE: The above point of “modest and achievable” shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s been said time and time again from the school of life to the hallowed halls of the Harvard MBA program that a successful business person doesn’t do one thing great but does lots of little things well. That is, you don’t need to have the wisdom of Solomon to invent new marketing models to be success­ful. Rather, just give away one of your business cards per week.

Consider some of the group listed in the last section (chamber of commerce, Rotary, etc.) as avenues for you to attend events, participate in meetings, AND give away that weekly business card.

BEST PRACTICE: You can also do what Dorothy did. (No, I don’t mean click your heels and say “There’s no place like home!”) I used to work with a seasoned professional named Dorothy a while back at a national contracting firm called 1-800-NETWORK. At the time, being full of pride, I probably didn’t learn as much from Dorothy as I could have. However, reflecting back and having made amends, I think Dorothy really had a great practice when it came to giving away business cards. Dorothy’s technique was to hand out two business cards at once with the phrase “…one for you and one to pass on to a friend.” Needless to say, it was easy for Dor­othy to meet and exceed her card giveaway quota.

To Dorothy -> you go girl!

Brelsford’s Dozen: Receiveth business cards

Not surprisingly, you now want to endeavor to obtain a dozen business cards per quarter (again, one per week). This is a fundamental SMB consulting marketing activity—and how you build your book of contacts. My premise here is simple enough. In Chapter 7, you’ll learn more about being a rainmaker as I expand on the “building the book” concept.

Brelsford’s Dozen: Attend a dozen marketing events per quarter

Now for one of my favorite activities: eating hotel donuts and drinking coffee at marketing functions. Seriously, your goal is to be an SMB consultant on the fast track. You need to be seen everywhere, much like a rising star in

 

Hollywood. You’re job here isn’t as difficult as the cast of NBC’s top-rated show Friends, who necessarily need to be seen at the trendiest LA restaurants. Rather, it’s to find some marketing venue to attend each week and “been seen.” A couple of ideas:

• Host a table at a Microsoft Big Day/Business Solutions Seminar in the USA. I followed the Big Day circuit for over a year in the Pacific Northwest and had my table with other technology professionals in the back of the presentation room. The idea here was that local technology professionals could register to host a table for the day and speak to attendees (primarily business people) during the breaks and lunch hour. The table sign-up process is shown in Figure 5-16 and is found from the main Microsoft Business Solutions Seminar Web site (www.msbigday.com) by clicking the Technology Providers link on the left side.

Figure 5-16:

Microsoft’s Big Day/Business Solutions Seminar is a great free marketing method for SMB consultants seeking exposure. You must register for a table to present your brochure and other marketing materials.

 

 

BEST PRACTICE: Expanding on the marketing versus sales discus­sion centering around Microsoft Big Day/Business Solutions Semi­nars, I can offer the following. When I hosted a table at these events, I found it to be true marketing. Introductions were made and it was incumbent on me to follow up on the lead I obtained. I never consummated a sales transaction at my table, thus I didn’t view it as strongly as a sales event. Go ahead, host your own table, and make your own judgment. One thing is for sure—the price was right: FREE!

• Join a trade group. Earlier I spoke about the WSTPA trade group I belong to. I consider my monthly meeting to be one of my required marketing meetings. That’s because the WSTPA has a real social element to it where “networking” (the human interaction form, not the multi-layer OSI model approach) is strongly encouraged. Another example shown in Figure 5-17, is the monthly chamber of commerce mixer (typically called “After Hours”). Nearly every chamber hosts such an event and, once you’ve paid your membership, attendance is usually free (or costs little). When you think about it, it really doesn’t cost anything to stand around and talk to the membership, eh? Salute!

Figure 5-17:

As an example, here is the Bainbridge Island Chamber’s announcement for the after hours event and monthly luncheon.

 

 

• Make-ups. So what if you miss a weekly marketing venue? What to do? Like the Rotary club, you need to endeavor to do a “make-up” meeting. You’re not relieved of this responsibility. Like taking antibiotics for a health malady, you can double-up after missing.

Microsoft marketing machine

The Microsoft Partner’s Web site provides a wealth of marketing materials at www.microsoft.com and even some special marketing opportunities. In Figure 5-18, you’ll see a recent SBS promotion (the SBS 2000 channel services provider rebate program) where, after passing an SBS assessment examination, you could be listed in the worldwide partner locator tool. These deals come and go with great frequency, so please continue to monitor the Microsoft Partner Web site closely. A specific link to Microsoft marketing materials is members.microsoft.com/partner/salesmarketing/marketingtools/ default.aspx?nav=rn

Figure 5-18:

At no cost to you, by participating in the recent SBS 2000 service channel rebate program and passing the online assessment exam, you were listed for free in the partner locator tool for potential clients to find you.

 

 

Another wealth of Microsoft marketing support is the “Go To Market” (GTM) campaign I’ve mentioned several times in this book. A recent four-day GTM Hot Lab offered the following ISA Server resources to attendees, in the form of two discs, on the third day of the event, which was dedicated to security (Figure 5-19).

Figure 5-19:

ISA Server marketing materials (disc-based) given at the GTM campaign. You did not need to pay for these marketing materials, although there was a modest fee to attend the GTM ($50 per day US).

 

Notes:

 

BEST PRACTICE: If you’d like to attend GTMs and benefit from Microsoft’s marketing resources, sign up via the Microsoft Partner site at www.microsoft.com/partner. One vendor that presents the GTM Hands-on Labs, Ascentus from Vancouver, BC, listed these GTM campaigns recently on its Web site at www.asentus. net (Figure 5-20).

Figure 5-20:

More and more GTMs can be expected worldwide over the next several years from Microsoft.

 

Notes:

 

Finally, there is the “must read” Microsoft Partner’s newsletter that is shown in Figure 5-21. You can subscribe to this at the Microsoft site for partners explained earlier in this section. This newsletter is a mother lode of free or nearly free partner benefits. Get it! Read it! Use it!

Figure 5-21:

Microsoft Partner’s newsletter. Notice the first item is a free support offering.

 

Notes:

 

Brelsford’s Mailbox Harry‑  I am a consultant at a medium-sized IT firm. My company targets big projects from large corporations. I tried to sell them on the idea of a small business “practice” that would concentrate on building and supporting SBS networks. They showed no interest. Lately, I have been contemplating leaving my firm to develop an SBS consultant business. I am a good tech, but I am not a salesman. What specific steps do I take to get started? Thanks in advance. Sincerely, Ladd Dallas, Texas # # # Hi, Ladd! Thanks for the e-mail and great story. I’d like to emphasize simplicity. In my writings, I speak towards something as simple as giving out your business card this week to a business person. Period. Then next week repeat the same behavior. Likewise, try to receive a business card this week from a business person and then repeat that behavior next week. The road to SMB consulting success isn’t so much knowing the nuts and bolts of SBS (which I assume you already know), but in marketing yourself. This road is paved with a thousand successfully completed simple marketing tasks, not one enormous breakthrough marketing idea. Far too many people focus on the one killer idea and don’t complete very basic tasks, such as giving and receiving business cards. You get the point. The chapter in my SMB Consulting Best Practices book, in which your e-mail appears, is loaded with tons of marketing stuff using the old five Ps of marketing lecture. Combined with the other chapters in my book, you’re probably going to suffer from information overload on what your next steps are. But please! Just take one simple step at a time. All the best to you mate… .harrybbbbb cheers….harrybbbb Harry Brelsford, CEO at SMB Nation MBA, MCSE, CNE, CLSE, CNP, MCP, MCT, SBSC (Microsoft Small Business Specialist) PS – my Small Business Server 2008 (SBS 2008) book is now here! J PPS – my fall show, SMB Nation Fall 2009, is in Las Vegas on October 2-4, 2009.

Configure Real-Time Communications in Small Business Server 2003

Hi! I am Harry Brelsford, the publisher of the Microsoft Small Business Specialist Primer title focused on the 70-282 exam. Here’s a snippet for your reading pleasure.

Configure Real-Time Communications

Small businesses expect to have real-time communication capabilities just as seen in the enterprise. With SBS, you can offer mobile solutions that allow for increased productivity, collaboration, and communication. These solutions are enabled through core services of Windows Server 2003 and taken advantage of by SBS in different forms.

IMPORTANT: Beware of semantics and “plays on words,” as we say in the Western world. Microsoft removed the built-in Instant Mes­saging (IM) communications from Exchange Server 2003 in the SBS 2003 time frame. (IM was available via Exchange 2000 Server in the SBS 2000 time frame.) Microsoft replaced the IM functionality for SBS 2000 owners who purchased its Software Assurance prior to October 1, 2003, by giving these select owners a free copy of its Live Communications Server (http://office. m icrosoft.com/en-us/com­municationsserver/default.aspx). Here is my concern. It would be easy from the above section headline (taken from the 70-282 exam objectives) to infer that Microsoft might test you on this very limited offer to restore IM functionality via the Live Communications Server product. And it’s even easier to assume that all this somehow relates to configuring real-time communications in the context of the 70-282 exam. Such is not the case. You are not tested on IM functionality and Live Communications Server on SBS 2003. Whew!

cheers….harrybbbb

Harry Brelsford, CEO at SMB Nation

MBA, MCSE, CNE, CLSE, CNP, MCP, MCT, SBSC (Microsoft Small Business Specialist)

PS – my Small Business Server 2008 (SBS 2008) book is now here! J

PPS – my fall show, SMB Nation Fall 2009, is in Las Vegas on October 2-4, 2009.