Many of you first heard about Shockey Monkey when it launched about a month ago at CompTIA. Now nearly a month later, and well over 1,000 portals strong, Shockey Monkey has been an overwhelming success. It has consumed nearly all of our development resources as the delivery of Shockey Monkey and it’s deep integrations is critical to all of our partners success in the cloud.

We have done a great job with the feedback that you’ve given us and are on-schedule to deliver the Service Manager functionality next week. In fact, it will be the core subject of our townhall webcast next week, and it’s a great time to ask questions as the entire team will be present:

Shockey Monkey Townhall – Service Manager
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/656778440

We have already shipped the Import/Export Wizard and Email integration and we have committed to delivering full ExchangeDefender suite to each Shockey Monkey user – free or pro. With the portals generating an enormous amount of email, and our partners relying on them more and more, we simply had to make sure you would stay in business in case of a catastrophic data loss event. Let me repeat that – when you sign up for Shockey Monkey, your organization gets full ExchangeDefender free of charge.

Why?

I have been asked this question in a number of ways: Why do I need Shockey Monkey? Why do I need Autotask or ConnectWise if I can get Shockey Monkey? Why would I use this if I already have a PSA? Why would you develop this if you’ve already developed integrations to other PSA’s. Allow me to answer this in two parts.

1. Regardless of which PSA solution you have, you will have Shockey Monkey by the end of September. Our investment in Autotask and ConnectWise is not going away, but we have a huge need for services that we could not offer through third parties because of both legal and development (API) constraints. First, in order for our partners to win in the cloud their name and logo must be the first – the only – thing the client sees. Our partners spend an enormous amount of time building their brand and client trust & loyalty: so we must deliver a solution that makes it easy for our clients to manage their cloud solutions with a brand that is uniquely our partners. Everything from checkout to self management to documentation is Own Web Now’s responsibility to provide, and by integrating it with the rich experience we deliver in the Service Manager there is only one way to do it.

2. Let me say it again – our investment in Autotask and ConnectWise is not going away. Shockey Monkey does not compete with these solutions nor is it designed to replace them. However, the level of self-service and client management we deliver as a part of Shockey Monkey is not yet possible with the third parties, but we still expect you to count on them for support management, billing integration, executive reporting and service statistics.

To sum it up: We have designed Shockey Monkey for you, to help you build a better client-friendly cloud business. It’s free and it’s really all about you and your users. You need Shockey Monkey because your users need this feature set and these products. If you don’t provide it, someone else will and we’re here to help you win.

That said, I encourage you to go ahead, sign up, and check it out. And please make sure to register and tune in next Wednesday.

I will be discussing this today, live, around 1:05 at MSPU in Washingon DC: http://www.mspu.us/livebootcamp