To continue to elaborate on the value of Emergency’s feature set to keep your customer’s moving. Remember that the POP3 and IMAP deployments can be applied to any mobile device of your choice or any email client of your choice. POP3 and IMAP4 function on the standard ports for both SSL and Non SSL traffic. The only feature set needed by you to keep them fully functional during an outage and beyond the web client (which provides FULL functionality), would be to furnish them with an SMTP server to relay through.

The Mail Client/Mobile device should be set up to the following ports at emergency.exchangedefender.com. Everything requires authentication and they’re set to be the same as our current ExchangeDefender Essentials primary email address and password.

POP3
   *110
   *995

IMAP
   *143
   *993

Next week I’ll follow up with screen by screen set ups for iOS, Android, and other popular desktop browsers, in case you’re not familiar enough with the URL and port assignments in the settings for these clients. If you have any questions about the features discussed here feel free to shoot me an email and I’ll try to help you out as best I can.

Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737

ExchangeDefender Essentials has been released out of beta. Everyone is running the 2.0 suite in production as of earlier this week. This is not news – both Vlad Mazek, our CEO, and Carlos Lascano, VP of Support Services and R&D, have blogged this week about the release. The biggest noteworthy item with the release is the inclusion of a new piece – ExchangeDefender Essentials Emergency (E3). I’ll leave you to the other blogs to read about the details of E3, but to sum up, it’s a scaled-down business continuity solution that we felt it necessary to include in order to make Essentials worthy of the ExchangeDefender name. And it’s free, built into ExchangeDefender Essentials for every user.

You may be wondering, why do we keep releasing more versions of our products? Aren’t the ones we have already supposed to meet the needs of our small and medium sized business clients? And why do we keep making things free?

Let’s take these separately.

Why do we keep releasing more versions of our products? Aren’t the ones we have already supposed to meet the needs of our clients?

It’s all about price points, people.

Sometimes ExchangeDefender, the full flagship suite will make sense. The ExchangeDefender suite was designed to fully protect users with LiveArchive, Encryption, Web Filtering, Secure Web File Sharing, and much more. Thing is, this complete solution is just $2 per month per user.

Just the same, in some cases the client won’t want or need all those security features, and will be looking for ways to reduce costs and simplify. As Vlad Mazek, our CEO, said in his recent post about the launch of Exchange Essentials Emergency (E3), “I cannot advise you on the level of risk you or your clients are capable of taking on, or guess what your tolerance level for downtime and performance killing issues may be. All I can do is offer the best product at the best price point and let you pick what fits your budget.”

This is where ExchangeDefender Essentials comes in.

In the great compromise between features and price, the classic Goldilocks question, there is no one absolute right answer. But with the version 1 beta launch of Essentials we learned that the reality of small business outages was such that some kind of business continuity was so often needed that we simply couldn’t reconcile delivering a solution branded under our name without it.

But again, in the compromise between features and price, we ended up building this into the offering for free. While we haven’t formally released the new pricing structure for Essentials 2.0 just yet (it’ll be out February 1, we are more than comfortable announcing that E3 will definitely be free. Which just begs the next question.

Why do we keep making things free?

This is where E3 becomes really important. As far as we know, none of our competitors or quasi-competitors is offering anything like this. We are giving away business continuity because we believe in value, and we believe in our partners. We believe in giving our partners a competitive advantage where and when we can, because ultimately that is a competitive advantage for us, too. ExchangeDefender Essentials Emergency is free because we want you to have it, and deploy it with your clients.

We know it will help you sell more solutions and more Exchange 2010 hosting and support services and training services and then some and address all the needs of your clients of all shapes and sizes.

Do you find this information useful?

If you’d like a lot more in-depth discussion about the cloud and how it affects you and your clients, visit Looks Cloudy http://www.lookscloudy.com where I blog daily about the adoption of the cloud in SMB, conduct live webcasts and podcasts with industry leaders, and more.

Kate Hunt
VP Community Development, ExchangeDefender
kate@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x777

As you may have already figured out from Carlos Lascano’s post (“ExchangeDefender Essentials Emergency”), the beta period for ExchangeDefender Essentials 2 suite has concluded and everyone is currently running the suite in production. I wanted to offer you a bit of executive perspective as well as the success this product has had so you can position it appropriately in your solution stack and sales management.

First of all, ExchangeDefender suite is the king and product that should be the leader in the solution stack when it comes to email management. We know it will help you sell more solutions and more Exchange 2010 hosting and support services and training services and then some because it addresses all the needs businesses of all sizes have when it comes to email. And for just $2 it’s hard to find a business that would pass on it with LiveArchive, Encryption, Web Filering, Web File Sharing and so on built in at no cost.

Sometimes.. businesses have tight budgets and are willing to make compromises. For them, we offer ExchangeDefender Essentials. Sometimes both the businesses and their IT Solution Providers (you) are willing to make extreme compromises, so we offer CloudBlock.

I cannot advise you on the level of risk you or your clients are capable of taking on, or guess what your tollerance level for downtime and performance killing issues may be. All I can do is offer the best product at the best price point and let you pick what fits your budget. It’s your choice.

ExchangeDefender Essentials was born out of the compromise between features and price. Philosophy of our flagship ExchangeDefender product is security and features without compromise. Unfortunately this is not the philosophy we share with the majority of our competitors and our partners were at the disadvantage when trying to position our service against the marketplace that starts with basic SPAM & Virus filtering but charges for everything else that we consider bare minimums for an email solution. We compromised and offered ExchangeDefender Essentials – but with the 1.0 one compromise that we could not sleep with is the fact that it had no independent business continuity built in (your mail wouldn’t bounce but you wouldn’t be able to access it until your service was restored). ExchangeDefender Essentials 2.0 addresses this problem and goes well beyond the call of duty as it’s most popular in small business.

Reality of Small Business Outages

ExchangeDefender protects businesses and organizations of all sizes. This is what made LiveArchive an undisputed champion of business continuity for companies with redundant Internet connections, large maintenance windows and an all-Microsoft network infrastructure.

Small business outages and service interruptions tend to be different. There is only one Internet connection. Only one server. Standardization is not frequent – some folks are on Outlook, some are on Thunderbird on a netbook, others may only work on their Blackberry or iPad. It depends.

ExchangeDefender Essentials Emergency (e3) was built to solve this technology challenge by using open standards. While you can access ExchangeDefender Essentials Emergency via the web securely (https://emergency.exchangedefender.com, you can also setup a POP3 account on any device, even without commercial software (Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail) across multiple software platforms and set it in a dormant/inactive state. When it’s needed it can be enabled and the client is back in business.

One more thing, ExchangeDefender Essentials Emergency it’s free.

As for one final thing.. the pricing will be revealed in February and all subscribers to Essentials will automatically have their pricing lowered to the new rate. By popular demand we will also allow direct purchases of ExchangeDefender Essentials for partners who would rather not be involved in the billing activity for smaller accounts.

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
(407) 536-VLAD

Hosted Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010, the ExchangeDefender security suite, our offsite backup solution, and other products from ExchangeDefender are remarkably easy to manage – the Service Manager enables even completely non-technical users on your team to provision and manage our full suite of services in a clean, simple web-based interface.

The simplicity of this solution and ease of management is one of the reasons that ExchangeDefender has been successful since 1997. We want to make your business more profitable, and we’re always working on incremental improvements.

One of the biggest projects that the ExchangeDefender team has been involved with recently has been the launch of Shockey Monkey 2.0, “Reloaded.” Shockey Monkey is a free business management platform which was developed in-house by ExchangeDefender team. Shockey Monkey delivers support board and ticket management, client relationship management, project management, invoicing and billing, tasks and scheduling, sales pipeline and opportunity management, and the most unique feature, the client portal. Clients can open and view Support Requests, adjust their settings and preferences, access the Service Manager to provision and manage their own ExchangeDefender services, and more.

By combining the power of the Service Manager with the Shockey Monkey Client Portal feature, you can deliver a self-serve portal, allowing clients to manage their own ExchangeDefender service accounts, that not only helps you focus your valuable time and resources on more valuable functions, but also helps your clients see you as an important component in their technology management strategy.

The Shockey Monkey Client Portal is completely brand-able and customizable, down to the specific price points for ExchangeDefender products that appear in the Service Manager, ensuring that you’ll always promote your own brand and that you’ll be able to mark up and turn a profit on the services.

With all that said, here are a couple of important thoughts regarding the powerful combination of ExchangeDefender Service Manager and Shockey Monkey Client Portal:

First, it’s optional. You have the ability in your Service Provider portal to completely disable the Service Manager feature so clients cannot see it when they log in to their portals.

Second, it’s just not right for everyone. In some cases, a key part of the value you’re adding to your relationship with the client is alleviating the burden of managing and administering technology services. It may not make sense for you to offer clients the ability to do this themselves.

Third, however, many find that it does make sense, as it can be a huge time saver, efficiency builder, and profit booster for your business. Imagine not getting those calls about adding aliases or turning off the email accounts of terminated employees – how much time would your team have to dedicate to more important projects and client issues? What could the impact be on the bottom line if that time was available?

Fourth and finally, full documentation on the ExchangeDefender Service Manager is available at www.exchangedefender.com, and detailed training on the Shockey Monkey Client Portal is at www.shockeymonkey.com.

Do you find this information useful?

If you’d like a lot more in-depth discussion about the cloud and how it affects you and your clients, visit Looks Cloudy http://www.lookscloudy.com where I blog daily about the adoption of the cloud in SMB, conduct live webcasts and podcasts with industry leaders, and more.

Sincerely,
Kate Hunt
VP Community Development, ExchangeDefender
kate@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x777

This past week we have revisited a piece of software that was originally written over two years ago. Since our initial launch of XDSYNC back in 2009, it has become a widely used application among our partners. For those who may not be familiar with XDSYNC and what it does, let me explain.

XDSYNC is a service that you install on your local Exchange Server for accounts you wish to have protected by ExchangeDefender. The application monitors the structure of Active Directory & Mail Users and automatically provisions existing and newly created accounts into the backend system of ExchangeDefender. This allows an almost hands free experience for our partners when it comes to managing additions and removals inside of an organization.

Over the years one of the biggest requests has been for two additional components to this software. The first request was to have the ability to restrict/block an account on the server from being included in the automatic provision list. The second request was to implement a way to synchronize passwords between ExchangeDefender and the remote Exchange server. These requests have finally come to surface in our newest release of XDSYNC!

Exclusion List

The exclusion list is very straight forward. Upon configuration of XDSYNC you will notice an additional tab within the software. This tab will be populated with the current list of mail users on the Exchange Server. You simply check any accounts you wish for the software to ignore from the processing component and they will not be sent to Exchange Defender.

Password Sync

This process is currently being designed in a single direction due to limitations within the Windows environment. Initially it will not touch any existing users that existed before installation. The password change event will be triggered upon a password change request within ExchangeDefender.

For Example:

· Either an admin or users changes the password on “test@yourdomain.com”.

· This account is now flagged for “Password Sync”, if enabled.

· The next time XDSYNC pings for changes, it will be included on the list.

· The change gets processed and the password is updated on the Exchange server.

You may also notice from the screenshot we have included a “Notifications” section. This will allow you to enable and configure a recipient to be notified each time an account is either added/removed from ExchangeDefender via XDSYNC.

We are very excited to release this new version as it takes advantage of many code advancements and should operate at much higher level of performance than the previous version. Good news is that the new version is currently undergoing testing and should be released Friday of this week!

Hank Newman
VP Development, ExchangeDefender
hank@ownwebnow.com

Here is a quick Marketing tip about the importance of planning! The objective of great marketing is creating something today that will bring you success in the future. The key to that is good PLANNING!

Marketing is the glitz and glamour and creative side of business, right? Most of the time, yes, but other times it is what sets a company up for future success or failure. Let me give you an example, let’s say that there is a new book written about how to use current Social networking sites: Facebook , Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. The marketing campaign for the new book could have been amazing, book signings, billboards, commercials, you name it… However, with the public becoming more and more technically savvy, social networking sites and communities are changing almost daily. Once a book is written and published it is stagnant. The information contained within its’ covers is in the past and cannot be updated. Therefore, the sales of a book like this will likely be terrible. No one wants to read something that will no longer be true next week.

Take this lesson of poor planning and put it into your business. Business owners that don’t plan ahead are constantly playing catch-up with their competitors that are better prepared and proactive. Stop that from happening to you. You can be the leader!

Devote some valuable time really planning ahead exactly what you want your business to look like and the message that you send out to your prospective clients. Set aside some time to plan out what you want to achieve, sales goals, new products or services, etc., and build marketing campaigns around those goals and you will see that you are much more efficient and proactive. Goals set guidelines and guidelines provide structure. It is so much easier to be organized and stay on point when structure is in place. However, leave some room for creativity!!! Don’t just plan for next week or next month, but strive to look on a grander scale to a year and beyond.

Remember, success is about setting goals and having a plan and strategy to get there! Good luck!

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com

Whatever your clients’ needs are, you can get your foot in the door and start building a strong relationship (or deepen an existing one) with the powerful combination of Hosted Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010 and Exchange 2010 Essentials from ExchangeDefender. Now you can offer your clients an attractive combination of rich features, affordability, security and flexibility on our globally-redundant infrastructure that even most large enterprises cannot build in-house.

One of the most powerful – and least understood – features in the ExchangeDefender suite is the Live Archive service. If the possibility of an occasional bout of downtime isn’t the end of the world to the client, and they really just need a secure email-and-only-email solution, then Exchange Essentials 2010 is probably the right fit. With a cost difference of a mere $4 per mailbox per month, though, it can be quite easy to upsell the Live Archive feature of Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010 to those clients whose bottom line is threatened by email downtime.

The LiveArchive service is always on to ensure that no matter what, whether your email server crashes or the power goes out in the office, users will always be able to access critical email and stay productive in case of anything. Using ExchangeDefender’s secure standby servers, up to a year’s worth of inbound and outbound email is available and actionable through Outlook Web Access at all times.

LiveArchive is one of the industry’s best-kept-secret Awesome Deals. It’s always on, powered by Exchange 2010 across two data centers, archives sent and received mail, and users never have to deal with training, management, maintenance, or software installation. Why is it a best-kept-secret Awesome Deal? Because LiveArchive – and the ability for users to resume work right where they left off no matter what happens – is included with every ExchangeDefender account. It’s astonishing to realize that other email providers charge as much as $49 per user just to be able to keep working in the event of a technical glitch or outage.

Do you find this information useful?

If you’d like a lot more in-depth discussion about the cloud and how it affects you and your clients, visit Looks Cloudy http://www.lookscloudy.com where I blog daily about the adoption of the cloud in SMB, conduct live webcasts and podcasts with industry leaders, and more.

Kate Hunt
VP Community Development, ExchangeDefender
kate@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x777

It’s the holidays, and things seem to have slowed down. It’s not that there isn’t anything to write about (there’s plenty), it’s that a bunch of folks are “checked out” mentally (or physically or both) for the season and there’s not as much going on as usual.

Many of our clients are probably in “vacation mode” now, too. Some of their employees and customers are Out, too. The phones are quieter. The service board seems empty. It can be tempting to slow or halt our own operations in response to this, but these quiet periods do not constitute an excuse for us to check out as well. In fact, choosing to follow suit on this one could be quite costly.

Think about it this way: when clients’ businesses are slower, they’ve got that much more time and bandwidth to sit down and have meaningful conversations with their Trusted Technology Advisor. Conversations which, when properly leveraged, can translate into real business gains for them and profitable work for us.

When are we most likely to get the time and attention of a busy CEO? Assuming that person is not out already, this is it. That busy prospect decision maker just might be able to carve out a few extra minutes during this time when they have less of the normal “day-to-day” to deal with.

The smart MSPs are kicking sales and marketing efforts into high gear while many others seem to be resting. The team probably has more downtime than is normal, as well.

Get on the phones, schedule those meetings, write up the reports, then get out there and Sell, Sell, Sell.

Do you find this information useful?

If you’d like a lot more in-depth discussion about the cloud and how it affects you and your clients, visit Looks Cloudy http://www.lookscloudy.com where I blog daily about the adoption of the cloud in SMB, conduct live webcasts and podcasts with industry leaders and more.

Kate Hunt
VP Community Development, ExchangeDefender
kate@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x777

We’re going to take it back to the basics, because as we grow, we get new batches of partners which in turn comes with a new batch of tech support staff. And let’s face it, their knowledge of mail flow can vary from the guy that can write his own sendmail/postfix custom scripts, to the guy that just had great upbeat personality that most of tech folks lack. So… here we go.

There you are minding your business, possibly catching up on your company allowed tech blogs then your phone lines explode and you hear the dreaded words “We have not received any mail in the past “x” hours!! FIX THIS NOW”! Here at ExchangeDefender, this is easy to handle and you don’t need to call anyone, you don’t need to open and wait for a ticket for 99% of the scenarios.

Step 1

Check the mx record.

From windows:
nslookup -type=mx domain.com

From linux:
dig mx domain.com

From the web:
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/

The one and only result you should get back is:

inbound30.exchangedefender.com

If you have anything else in there, and you’ve been getting complaints about random mail not arriving, the odds are great that they arrived at the alternative location and got bounced because of IP restrictions. But let’s not get sidetracked.

If there was no mx record in place, that’s your problem. Contact your client’s DNS provider and get inbound30.exchangedefender.com added ASAP. If inbound30 is the one and only record in place, go to step 2.

Step 2

Send a test message from a non ExchangeDefender domain. Here’s why, we route all outbound mail directly to the mail for processing speed so it won’t show up on your client’s mail log, but yours. Once you’ve sent your test message you want to note the from and to address and go to Step 3.

Step 3

Log into https://admin.exchangedefender.com with your Service Provider ID (Hint: it’s not a domain or an email address). Once you’ve logged in, click on Mail Log. Now you can search the Mail Log for your client for the very message you tested with and your answer will be at your finger tips.

 

You will see a line by line log of the SMTP transaction the most important one being the last one to your delivery IP. Generally, it will tell you exactly what the problem is, ranging from your ISP blocking the port, or a new tech blocking the port from us, or the email server running low on resources it’s all right there.

Blue – The recipient servers and the status returned, if it starts with a 2 it was accepted, if it starts with a 4 it was deferred, if it starts with a 5 it was permanently rejected.

Green – If it was accepted and your end user says they don’t see it. You can search the mail logs on that server for the message ID. (odds are there’s a rule in place if you get this far.)

 

Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737

Value is a word that carries many meanings among many people. According to dictionary.com value is defined as:

“Monetary worth, importance, the worth of something in terms of the amount of other things for which it can be exchanged or in terms of some medium of exchange.”

However, “value” in a marketing sense is expressing the benefit in your offering and you should strive for value to be the number one goal for your business to get across to your potential clients. This quick marketing tip can help you produce amazing results on an ongoing basis.

At ExchangeDefender, we are adamant about the importance of pumping as much value into your products or services as possible.  The marketplace is fed up with always seeing the normal or average products and services. Thus, when a product or service comes along that exudes great value; they LOVE it and feel as if they got to HAVE it.

This also goes along with a statement that is important to remember: “There is no business on the earth that will buy a solution for a problem that they don’t have.” Yet, most marketers and businesses jump right into features without taking the time to fully understand if the people that they are trying to market to believe that they even have a problem to begin with. Thus, the marketing challenge at hand turns into a whole new task: “sell the problem”.

This creates an interesting oxymoron. Most people aren’t willing to acknowledge that they even have a problem unless they also believe that there is a solution to the problem. So a huge part of selling a problem is hinting that there’s a solution that others are using. The key part about that is letting them know that the solution they will ultimately need or be looking for is YOU! This is accomplished by marketing the VALUE and benefits of your solution and presenting it in a manner that allows them to see the solutions to the problem at hand.

How to Add Value to Your Offering?

One way you can increase the value of your offering, is to lower your prices or fees associated with your product of service.  While this method can be effective, it can also drag you down into a price war.  Another reason to stay away from this option is that many people that are attracted solely to low prices, are the most likely to leave and change providers as soon as another company beats your price; and that is exactly what you are trying to stay away from. In my opinion, it’s far better to find ways to pack a ton of value into your product and sell your offering for a great “value for the money” price, rather than to offer an average product and sell it cheap.

How ExchangeDefender Offers YOU Value

At ExchangeDefender we help our partners to offer VALUE in the most simplistic ways. For example:

· All of our products and services are all-inclusive. This packaging structure makes it easy for you to offer your clients services that contain a lot of VALUE to them, but yet you are not being nickel and dimed for every feature. This way you can focus on what is most important to your clients and be able to offer it to them, thus becoming the solution to their problem without the additional cost associated with it.

· There are no minimums with our services, no contracts, no additional fees. Whether you have 1 or 100 users, you can use our solutions. This allows us to cater to businesses of all shapes and sizes to offer them solutions that can help to make them profitable.

· We offer marketing collateral and proven best practices. We believe and know for a fact that you are busy! As are we, so we make marketing collateral available for partners to use for their clients so that they can focus on the business rather that how to sell it. This creates value because it is one less thing that you have to do. Also, we have a wealth of knowledge that has been documented from our partners success with offering ExchangeDefender’s services. These profitability best practices are great ways to get ideas on how to market services to your clients and maintain profitable relationships with them with the help of us here at ExchangeDefender.

· We don’t compete with you. We work with you to make a sale by offering you a solution set that will be of value to your clients and provide support of those services.

· We are available 24×7x365! We have support via the phone and through are ticketing system to be here to support you and make our partnership successful.

There are many more examples of the value that we offer our partners and help them to embrace the cloud.

Ultimately, the marketplace is attracted to VALUE – The bigger the value, the more attracted a customer will become. By making your product offering as valuable as possible, you will never have to rely solely on selling based on price again!

If there is anything that we can help you with, please feel free to let me know!

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com