The downturn in the economy has affected many of our partners, between downturn in business, longer collection periods, tighter credit market and more have made the reoccuring billing business a lot more difficult.

As the CEO of Own Web Now, I am here to tell you that we stand by our partners and we are willing to work with anyone that may be going through a tough time collecting money from clients. We’re in on this together.

However, in the interest of fairness, if we cannot contact you we cannot assume the collections expense that goes with avoiding calls and emails – we are simply not in that business. With the launch of new ExchangeDefender, new Shockey Monkey, new systems for our entire hosting platform we simply must turn our focus to the software and professional services our partners demand.

Today, we have had to say goodbye to a number of our partners that have had a poor payment track record (6+ months declines/delinquencies of 10+ days or more). In plain terms that means that we’ve had partners who have missed a payment every other month and that raises the fees for everyone which is simply not fair. Our partners and clients expect us to spend every dollar on R&D and enhancements, not collections.

I wanted to offer you our billing collections process so that you’re aware of our attempts:

1st of the month: If the transaction has been declined, retry transaction and document.

2nd of the month: Open support request in our portal (https://support.ownwebnow.com) about the past due invoice, retry transaction.

5th of the month: Retry transaction. If it still fails a phone call is made to the billing contact on record, if they were not contacted directly (secretary, voicemail) support request is updated.

8th of the month: Retry transaction. If it still fails a phone call is made with the 2nd notice, support request is updated.

10th of the month: Final retry and suspension notice is given in the portal. Partner is given 24 hours to provide valid billing information.

11th of the month: If the new billing information is not provided, all services are suspended.

We are not heartless, we are more than willing to work with companies that are affected by the economic downturn. Unfortunately, if we cannot contact you on the phone, if the support portal is ignored and over a week passes with repeated notices, we have no choice but to move on.

Today we have permanently suspended companies that have abused our kindness and had a consistently poor payment track record. It is within our right to suspend services within 3 days, charge reconnection fees, etc: We usually do not. However, when our company is clearly abused we have no choice but to reconsider whether it’s fair to other partners to let a small group of companies abuse the billing concessions we have made.

So to recap: Collections are expensive and we’re a software company; that meant that we’ve had to remove a number of partners that abused our billing grace periods. We know it’s tough out there, reach out to us and we will bend backwards to help you.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Vlad Mazek

CEO, Own Web Now Corp.

After many months of development, feedback and suggestions we are happy to announce the Autotask integration with Own Web Now. We are the first vendor to offer full support request syncronization, allowing Own Web Now to handle full support of all it’s products through the Autotask API – free of charge! No more double ticket entry, no more searching two portals, no more running around – everything is in Autotask.

Additionally, we have eliminated one of the most consuming administrative tasks regarding ExchangeDefender: Mailbox counts. With Autotask, this process is automated. Own Web Now will submit mailbox counts to Autotask and keep them in sync so they can be billed automatically, making sure you are paid for all the services you are paying for – automatically!

Finally, while the integration whitepaper and process is free, many partners indicated that they would rather have us handle the integration and support for them. We are offering this service for $199 one-time fee during the launch to make sure you hit the ground running. In addition to saving you some time and making sure everything is perfect, this package also gives you actual support for the integration should things change or you ever experience any issues.

We are proud to also start a new training series featuring whitepapers, webcasts and podcasts covering the way some of the best in business use the Autotask integration with Own Web Now to be more efficient and profitable. This is included at no additional charge with the Support Package mentioned above.

To get started, check out http://www.ownwebnow.com/autotask

Have a great day!

As noted previously (and discussed in our portal, conference call and newsletters) the enhanced SMTP security policies are now in place. Going forward, all SMTP traffic on our networks (inbound and outbound) will have to pass through ExchangeDefender in order to reach it’s target server. This network change affects all servers and all networks controlled by Own Web Now Corp.

If you have a requirement for plain SMTP connectivity for mail relay please either consider establishing a VPN directly to your server (if you are a dedicated/virtual customer) or upgrade to Microsoft Outlook and use RPC-over-HTTPS proxy available for our hosting customers. If you require SMTP for your client needs (Thunderbird, Outlook Express) please use SMTP-over-SSL (TLS) in your setup.

Despite enhancements in the security products and reduced cost of antivirus products, SMTP based attacks have continued to rise through 2009. We are committed to protecting our customers and limiting exposure that comes with an open SMTP port.

Dear Friends, Clients, Partners, Happy New Year!

Thank you for a fantastic 2008. Not only have we seen our service deployments and contracts grow at a tremendous rate but we have also undertaken a record expansion in our Global Network Services platform offering Exchange, SharePoint, Enteprise Offsite Backups, Virtual Hosting and more from the European Union (United Kingdom, Nethrelands, France and Germany), Canada as well as Australia. Our flagship product, ExchangeDefender, grew from a pure security service to one that also plays a key part in the business continuity and disaster recovery.

We look forward to an incredible 2009. With key hires and services delivery platform built for speed and value we believe that our solutions will be a great answer to what may be a tough economic cycle.

We will be introducing several new products in 2009.

We will also be making some interesting changes to the support of the existing offerings.

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2009!

It’s no secret that we’ve had a phenomenal year at Own Web Now, thanks to the thousands of our partners that support, guide and deploy our products worldwide. Today is the day after Thanksgiving in United States, also known as Black Friday where frugal shoppers wake up early to get the best deals and save a lot of money.

As a small business, we know a lot about saving money.

And as a small business that was built on top of really hard work and dedication to the mission, we want to do something special for the people that work as hard as we do – while most are taking a day off. We want to do something we’ve never done before.

We’re going to hold our own Black Friday special sale today and today only. If you are currently an active partner (meaning you have some paid services with us) you can buy the following to run your own business:

Up to 5 Hosted Exchange 2007 mailboxes

20 GB Mailbox limit

20 GB SharePoint v3 DB limit

ExchangeDefender MSP Branding

$1 / month / mailbox (each)

Optional: $99 BES (setup), $0/month.

Valid from right now till midnight, Friday, November 28th, 2008. No rainchecks, not for resale (your own company only), not crippled/limited (full OWA, Outlook/MAPI) not a promotional offer.

Please place the request through the Services > Buy Services and mention this offer in the notes. Due to the expected demand there may be a 48 hour delay in activating your service. Offer valid only for partners with active/paying services on record prior to this posting.

SE

Dear Partners, Clients and friends of Own Web Now,

Thank you for your loyalty.

Due to the unprecedented growth in our product portfolio that was built on the feedback and testing of our awesome partner base, the success of the new wave of OWN products from ExchangeDefender to Shockey Monkey, from Offsite Backups to SharePoint + Exchange and ongoing growth in the cloud services…. we’ve grown, again!

Starting yesterday we have added three new support teams already trained in everything we do across all platforms. This means better support for our products, ability to launch the new products and extend more commercial support for upcoming announcements (stay tuned)

You read that right. In this down economy we have invested in our future and doubled our support staff to keep you ahead of the curve. I hope this makes up for the recent support issues some have experienced, nearly all of my available support staff has been in training and training the new folks to make sure the support is perfect from day one.

This is our mission, this is our promise: As we grow, we will improve our service and deliver more value. Thank you for making this possible and for your continued business. To thank you for bringing your business and helping OWN grow I want you to keep an eye on the new pricing to be announced on this blog tomorrow. Pricing will go up (across product lines, some significantly) but current clients and providers will be paying even less in certain cases and will have the pricing tiers grandfathered for all future orders.

How is that for the true partnership? Again, thank you all!

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp

Own Web Now Corp and Scorpion Software are teaming up on an exciting new service that helps your passwords more secure and less likely to be compromised, guessed or sniffed by hackers. Using token-based (keychain) one time passwords improves the security of the organization by allowing remote and mobile workers to provide one time passwords when they login remotely from a less secure location.

How does it work?

Logging into an organization requires a username and a password, but if you are using a shared connection, computer that may have keylogger installed, system compromised by spyware those credentials can be stolen. The token that you are issued as a part of our service has a password that changes every 60 seconds. When you attempt to login to your organization you will be asked for the password currently displayed on the device. Only the server and the token know the correct password at that time so even if your password should happen to be compromised and stolen hackers will not be able to use your password alone to gain access to your organization.

Offer Details

AuthAnvil tokens will be available with full service and support for $20 per user per month. There are no minimums, you can sign up a single user. Shipping is free as is the ongoing support, setup and service. We have worked very hard to deliver a solution that is the most flexible, affordable and meaningful for the SMB market and we look forward to offering you more ways to trust that your information stored in the cloud can only be accessed by you.

Due to heavy demand by our ever increasing mobile customer base, Own Web Now proudly announces immediate availability of BlackBerry Enterprise Server. BlackBerry users can now use fully featured synchronization between their mobile BlackBerry devices and Own Web Now hosted Exchange 2007 services. BES service is available at a low monthly fee as an addon to our hosting services. BlackBerry is the #1 selling smartphone in North America and among the most demanded business communication devices by our customer base and we are glad to finally offer you this option.

In addition to BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Own Web Now fully supports Blackberry, Windows Mobile, iPhone 2.0 as well as every POP3/IMAP based device that can communicate with Exchange over SSL.

SBS Show, famous online podcast originally recorded over the past two years by Vlad Mazek and Chris Rue is back. Joining Vlad as the cohost is Dave Sobel, of Evolve Technologies serving the greater Washington DC / Virginia metro area. Since 2005, SBS Show has built a large audience and many of the older recordings are still used as some of the best references on best practices and growing an SMB technology firm.

SBS Show has grown over the years to build a large audience and a partner-based social network, all designed to help partners discover solutions together and network for greater profit. Vlad and Dave will also be changing the format slightly to compensate for the change in the marketplace and interest among the audience – the show will have more business content and the technical discussions will be at a higher level discussing the more interesting parts of technology and its implementation.

Additionally, the SBS Show now comes with the new “extended cut” subscription with the longer discussion of the subject, available for those who are looking for more details and a more formal training discussion. Further details on this are available at the SBS Show’s new home: http://www.SMBBuddy.com

Take a listen to the show today, in SBS Show #26.5 Vlad and Dave talk about the recent events in the SMB technology field, changes needed to the business in the current economy, growth pains as well as expectations and mission at the Microsoft WPC.

You can listen to the latest new show #26.5 directly from our web site at http://www.ownwebnow.com

. . .

In addition to sponsoring the SMB Buddy we are also proudly announcing a podcast series covering the partner and solution space around Own Web Now services and people and technologies we work with every day. Join us this week to hear from our partners attending the Microsoft WPC 2008.

One day after our UK launch we are taking another giant step in our mission to level the world of hosted business services. Today we proudly announce the launch of our Australian line of business, with Exchange 2007, SharePoint v3, Virtual Hosting with the same features, higher storage limits and most importantly, the same price as in United States and Europe.

We would like to again thank our partners in Australia for making this possible with the help of Equinix, SuperMicro and Microsoft. Our partners from Australia and New Zealand have made ExchangeDefender and ShockeyMonkey into a huge regional success and we are doing our part to help our partners from down under add more services to their portfolios. We believe that making these services affordable will open up a lot of opportunities for our partners to provide additional services on top of Exchange and SharePoint that would otherwise not be possible for customers that are not interested or in a position to design servers and reliable network infrastructure required to support their business.

All services will be branded and centrally managed through the upcoming OWN Service Manager portals that will extend the partners brand over services and solutions delivered from our two data centers in Sydney. Portion of profits will be used to help support the local ITPRO communities across Australia.

We would also like to extend special thanks to several individuals that made these moves possible: Dean Calvert of Calvert Technologies, Wayne Small of Correct Solutions, Robbie Upcroft of Microsoft Corp, Jared Hirst of Equinix as well as thousands of partners across Australia and New Zealand that have done business with us throughout the years and demanded these solutions in their country to help serve the emerging market in need of technology business management beyond network infrastructure design and upkeep.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp