Later this week I will be sending invitations for an exclusive webinar covering ExchangeDefender 7. We will be doing a preview on March 17th, beta the week after that and full ExchangeDefender 7 release roughly 2-4 weeks after that depending on how broken things are. The beta window is very open and we will not ship it until it is perfect.

I, however, wanted to offer you a direct update on how things are going at Own Web Now because we are getting a ton of praise but also some concerns about the changes we are making and how the marketplace in general is developing. In particular, I wanted to address the areas of our service that are not perfect and what we are doing to address them:

1) Phone Support – The good news is that we have a lot of new staff to help you around the clock. We also have more personnel dedicated to the portal operations and one frustration many of you have experienced is our VoIP service. There have been reports of bad call quality, extensions not working, phones ringing dead in Australia and so on. We’ve made adjustments to all of these areas and I hope you’ll start to see significant improvement here.

2) NOC Alerts – We have been asked over and over again to provide an email feed in addition to the NOC blog postings. I want to make it clear that we will never do that. However, we will soon start delivering service alerts via SMS, online service monitor as well as to your RMM and PSA software. We simply have to have a failsafe way of contacting you and email is just not the way to deliver service alerts. This will probably be the biggest improvement that will come from the Managed Messaging part of our product that will be available across our products.

3) Client Software Support – Typically, this has not been an issue but we have gotten some louder requests for help with Outlook troubleshooting, DNS troubleshooting and connection troubleshooting. This part of the service is not something that Own Web Now is responsible for, workstation side of the management is our service providers responsibility. Since we make all our revenues with our partners, I have always encouraged my support staff to go above and beyond when the partners encounter an issue in the field but there is a limit to that as well.

4) Client Training – This is an area that we will dedicate a lot of our resources to going forward. We (all of us) simply must do a better job helping the clients understand all the failovers and redundancies that are built into the system and how to use them. Anyone that honestly expects a Microsoft environment to be foolproof and have a 100% reliability, respectfully, must not have been around Microsoft software for more than a month. Every month we deal with a slew of security and performance patches released by Microsoft along with a ton of other vendor partners that are continuously releasing security and bug fixes. Keeping this entire infrastructure at an optimal level is a job (for a lot of folks) that work around the clock testing, deploying, managing and addressing problems. Outsourcing the email infrastructure does not mean those problems are eliminated, it just means someone else (Own Web Now) is dealing with them around the clock. We all have a vested interest in helping our clients understand the many failsafes and alternatives in the system and I can honestly tell you that we’ve spent and incredible amount of money to make sure that email is always available.

I appreciate the feedback, good or bad, at all times and encourage you to keep it coming.

We’ve been working extremely hard on ExchangeDefender 7 and the Managed Messaging and all the support infrastructure behind it (Exchange 2010, Shockey Monkey… yes, even SharePoint). I hope you like what you see in 10 days, all but 3 feature requests have made it into ExchangeDefender 7 UI and the feature board is blank!!!

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

We are very excited to introduce another product to the ExchangeDefender outbound network:

Outbound JR is a new highly-redundant high-speed outbound SMTP network designed to quickly deliver automated messages and system notifications.

The way email is sent and processed has changed over the years as we have become more dependent on it. It is used for conversations, receipts, marketing, monitoring, file sharing and more. The more that people rely on a communication system the more attractive it becomes for spammers and hackers – and SPAM filters that serve to protect those networks.

In the recent years we have seen many email providers adopt an “IP Reputation List” process of filtering SPAM. Protocols such as DCC, Pyzor, Razor and other checksum houses monitor the volume of real mail coming from systems and adjust their SPAM scores according to the likelihood that the message is SPAM. If we only receive SPAM from one IP address we are more likely to believe that the next message will be SPAM as well, so additional scrutiny is placed by organizations that by design don’t trust one another over SMTP.

Technical jargon aside, it has become impossible to assure quick delivery of real mail when it’s accompanied by all the legitimate junk: marketing, newsletter subscriptions, out of office responses, read mail receipts, delivery notifications, etc. Organizations that insist on sending automated notifications at the same time as they carry on regular conversations impact their reputation and can often cause false positives to happen.

The Solution

ExchangeDefender is now offering Outbound JR as an additional gateway for automated mail. This way you can send your notification and system management mail through a different gateway and help improve the IP reputation. By enabling our partners to help clients tie in their systems to the proper way of email delivery, we hope we can improve everyone’s email experience.

What can I not use it for?

You may not use this system for anything that violates our AUP. Outbound JR is not a system that can be used for unsolicited email, junk mail, viruses or any other violation of our Acceptable Use Policy or Terms of Service.

What can I use it for?

You can use Outbound JR if you need to send:

• Out of office responses
• Delivery receipts, read receipts, postmaster notifications
• High volume email services for network monitoring (Kaseya, LPI, etc) or support ticket notifications (Shockey Monkey, ConnectWise)
• High volume receipts, mailing lists, distribution groups, web site notifications, event invitations, etc.

Great, what else do I need to know?

First, the implementation. Just change your outbound SMTP relay to outbound-jr.exchangedefender.com

You will notice that this is a redundant network and it is designed for speed. You will still be able to send encrypted email through it and use all the functionality of ExchangeDefender with the exception of LiveArchive archiving of outbound mail. Your inbound mail will still be archived free of charge with LiveArchive, but your outbound mail will not.

This is the compromise we had to make in order to make the system lightning fast.

What now?

Evaluate your usage patterns and start moving your clients to outbound-jr.

We will start contacting our partners that will have to move to this system if they are sending a lot of automated messages or marketing mail to this new system.

We believe this new addition to our portfolio will help our clients with the choice of being able to route system notifications, marketing messages as well as human-to-human email more efficiently.

Thank you for using ExchangeDefender!

Oh, by the way – it’s free. Enjoy!

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

Allow me to welcome many of you to Orlando for an exciting week of IT conferences.

Tuesday and Wednesday we will be at the HTG All Summit for some lunch and learns, seat at the table and the vendor expo in the evening.

Thursday we’re sponsoring the CharTec UnHerd Conference where we will be all day to give you info about ExchangeDefender, Cloud Service Separation and more.

Finally, on Friday and Saturday we will be at the ConnectWise IT Nation, working the vendor expo and anytime before and after you wish.

We’re spending the whole week there, get in touch with us if you want to chat privately: Stephanie Hasenour (Email | Blog) and Anthony Fernandez (Email | Blog). Vlad Mazek, our CEO, will also be around.

We look forward to talking to many of you and we have something special to share with our partner base. If you actively work with us, we have some prizes and incentives for working even closer with us. Last week Vlad Mazek announced several changes coming to Own Web Now that would give our partners more power and work closer for a win-win. Specifically:

1. We would like to know which of our upcoming ExchangeDefender features are more relevant to you so we can focus more development efforts towards them and ship sooner than later.
2. We want to get a general sense of how we are doing, both for marketing purposes and for training purposes (with as big of a product as ExchangeDefender it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks and documentation not to be read)
3. We want to know what we could do to be more instrumental in your success in the cloud. We have partners that are making thousands of dollars in the cloud with relatively few resources and other partners struggling. We’d like to share the wealth

If you would like to help us, please come and see us and let’s figure out a more profitable cloud for all of us.

Own Web Now owes a lot of it’s success to you – our partners.

Nearly all the features in our products are suggested, sold and conceptualized by our partners who also beta test, document and help us position our products in the marketplace. That has been our secret to success in the marketplace, we don’t try to do it all and as a result we have the insight to what our clients really need. It has made us tremendously successful.

As we continue to grow and offer more solutions we want to both recognize the partners that help us as well as be more diligent about collecting feedback and acting on it accountably. Those of you that have worked with us for years have seen the company mature and fight through the growing pains – so we want to make sure that our next growth cycle is more rewarding and more focused.

We are organizing an advisory council for ExchangeDefender and I invite you to fill out the following survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RPTBRYC

Please fill out the survey and work closer with us on our new projects.

Important: Own Web Now Corp is sponsoring the long list of events in Orlando next week: HTG, CharTec and ConnectWise. I urge you to stop by our booths, collect some swag and see what’s driving our success. I will not be present in my usual capacity (family comes first) but I would love to meet with our partners throughout the week – Monday through Friday. If you wish to meet with me in person, fill out the survey and I’ll gladly sit down with anyone in person that wants to discuss our business.

The most frequently asked question by folks I meet with at IT conferences is about the general company activity. What is new? What are you guys up to? Truth is, our most profitable and successful partners work very closely with us on projects, promotions, service upgrades and updates and we certainly have a very open and thorough notification, support, forum and NOC system in the business that is designed to serve it’s partners.

Yet, most partners don’t participate. Unfortunately, you get the most out of your relationship with Own Web Now when you work with us on the entire portfolio of solutions we have. There isn’t much we can do about those who don’t invest in making a close relationship – but we can do a ton to benefit those that do.

With that in mind, I’m proud to introduce you to the OWN Staff Blogs:

Support: The Monkeys’ Tackle Box
Teaching other tech monkeys how to fish, one blog post a time.
http://monkeys.ownwebnow.com

Development: The Monkey Wrench
OWN Development
http://tmw.ownwebnow.com

Marketing: The Marketing Match
Marketing to “match” your business!
http://marketingmatch.ownwebnow.com

Sales: That Sales Blog
http://thatsalesguy.ownwebnow.com

Everything else: The Schism
Work and personal separation
http://theschism.ownwebnow.com

These blogs are written by our teams and people you’ve talked to on the phone, support portal, forums or even met in person at a conference. The content is completely up to them and the opinion is solely theirs and is in no way associated with Own Web Now Corp or it’s many brands.

Typically, the information at OWN, much like any other corporation, is from the bottom up: topics are suggested from interaction with partners, prepared and eventually released here. There is a bit of latency and a lot of consideration when writing stuff on behalf of Own Web Now and it’s partners.

With staff blogs, we hope to change all that. By empowering our staff to talk to you directly, in the manner they consider valuable, we hope to connect you closer to what we do here. We’re all on Facebook, Twitter and we’re very easy to find at nearly every conference and on the phone – so we encourage you to check us out and what we’re all working on.

Every day we come to work trying to make everything we deliver better – faster – efficient. We invite you to take a closer look at how we do it all.

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

First of all, let me thank you all for such tremendous support of ExchangeDefender and all your help with the new release. As I mentioned, the product has been rewritten from the ground up with the 5.0 release to allow us to be more aggressive and introduce new features, faster. This of course is never a flawless or simple process, it caused several snags in the rollout that we’ve addressed quickly with our partners and the product is now on a very solid foundation that we look forward to protecting all our partners with.

You’re already seeing some results – we’re the first and only platform to provide billing sync with both Autotask and ConnectWise. We’re the only ones that offer all-you-can-eat features in the cloud, giving you web filtering, encryption, business continuity and some cool new stuff – free! Plus the big MSP news in March.

We had hoped that the promotional special price would be a great token of appreciation for our growing partner base and something that would help you add clients during the off season from Thanksgiving to March 1st, 2010. I’m proud to say we’ve done that and the numbers show it as well.

The big question is…

Can you extend the promotional pricing for … The answer is unfortunately no. The promotional pricing is over and we do not anticipate bringing it back again. This was the most massive development effort in the company history, since the first time I hacked sendmail to prescan mail for Exchange 5.5.

So the promotional period is over on March 1st, as expected.

We will consider offering a few concessions for partners that are working on larger accounts that have not yet moved over. Here are the details and requirements:

1) You must have an active service provider account with us with at least 1 paying promo pricing client signed up since December 1st, 2009. If you don’t, we won’t have that pricing available for your account and when the code expires on March 1st we won’t be able to add it into your company profile.

2) We must have a list of domains that you intend to move over. This way we can activate the service in our billing system with 0 users.

3) You have to add them over the next 30-60 days. There will be no way to add domains that were not mentioned in point #2.

4) All requests must be approved by Shannon Brewer.

I hope the concessions above are enough. I know that some of you would want more than that, and I understand, but the billing systems just do not make that possible.

New pricing will be announced on Monday. I cannot thank all of our partners for helping us get to this point and I hope that you’re seeing all the new stuff we’re doing as an overwhelmingly positive thing to your business development.

On a personal note: I was recently presenting ExchangeDefender at a conference and stated point-blank that all of this stuff will soon be free. The same goes for the other products and services you provide. The opportunity to build everything in, offer everything and reimage your business as a service that doesn’t exist as a point or a solution but as a peace of mind is now. If all your products and services do is solve a problem that the client is able to identify, you will find that they quickly start to question why they are paying so much money for the problem they no longer deal with day in and day out. The time to go beyond solutions and point products is now, and we’ll help you deliver that.

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

As promised, I held the ExchangeDefender Web Security launch today. Documentation, features and downloads will be available on this blog this weekend. In the meantime, please download the webcast and watch at your leisure. Note: You should play it in full screen to get the smooth page transitions. If that doesn’t work, the PowerPoint is also included.

ExchangeDefender Web Security Webcast video (.wmv)

ExchangeDefender Web Security Webcast PowerPoint (.pptx)

The past couple of weeks I have taken it upon myself to help expand my sales/business knowledge by reading “The Prime Solution” by Jeff Thull.  It’s a fairly easy read of about 200 or so pages sprinkled intermittently with stories of companies who have successfully implemented his techniques to not only win the sale, but increase revenues and in most cases even change the way they run their business.  I personally found the book to be fairly repetitive at times, but I also found some techniques and exampled that screamed “Managed Service Provider!” So basically what I’ve done is condensed the book to give you guys somewhat of a summary if you will of what I read.  Take a look at it (as you will spend far less time reading my summary then the actual book, and lets face it… Time is money) and next week I will do a follow up. I will basically be trimming the fat and pulling out the substance to where I believe we can actually apply The Prime Solution to our way of thinking in the MSP world to create more opportunities for sales, and a more mutually beneficial relationship with our clients.

Part One: SWALLOWED UP IN THE GAP

Ch. 1: The Elusive Prime Solution

This tells the story of IBM’s CEO Lou Gerstner’s influence on the company during his tenure. After a shocking loss in 1992, IBM was ready for the fresh new start. Gerstner’s background of IT systems made him privy to the fact that IBM’s target market had no concern of the actual commodities that was being sold, they wanted solutions. Gerstner in turn refocused the company with his implementation of “Global Services” which provided customer solutions to their problems and challenges by delivering on the value of promise. All in all, his vision accounted for 80% of the company’s growth during his term with IBM.

A solution failure occurs when the value promised to the customer is not achieved. This occurs several ways: 1.The product or service itself can’t deliver on the promise made. 2. The customer is unable to implement the technology properly. 3. The customers’ expectations have not yet been met. This hurts potential as well as future clients.

The Value Gap is often created by the frustration and animosity of trying to fill the gap between the promise of value and its ultimate fulfillment. The failure of this is impertinent to avoiding barriers that sellers will encounter.

Ch. 2: Three Eras of Value Dilution

The value gap is something that has been created overtime driven by the ever changing definition of the word value. Abrupt changes typically shoot up a red flag for us to make an adjustment, but slower changes over an extended period of time can leave us behind. Innovation and technology advances push sellers to add value to their offerings as a means to create advantage over their competitors. These advances, while impertinent, add to the complexity for all parties involved. Let’s look at this by exploring the changing definition of value over the years:

· Era 1: Obvious Value- (1950’s-1960’s) Businesses created a product and sales people went door to door trying to persuade people to buy it. Buyers easily understood the function of the product and easily saw the value it would present to their problems.

· Era 2: Augmented Value- (1970’s-1990’s) Products were sold with a range of possibilities stemming from generic, to fulfilling customers’ expectations, to exceeding customers expectations with added value. For the most part buyers still understood their own problems, but they need the sales person to ‘problem solve’ and show them that their expectations could be exceeded.

· Era 3: Complex Value- (1990’s-Present) Because of technology advances, buyers have a difficult time understanding their own needs, and problems. For the most part they know their goals but are unaware of how to achieve them. Sellers must help them diagnose, design, evaluate and implement the solution.

Ch.3: Five Barriers to Keeping Value Promises

Each barrier has a consequence and must be understood and addressed before closing the value gap.

· Relevancy Barrier: Sellers decide for themselves value in the service and apply this rule to all buyers, and are unable to actually produce meaningful value because of generalization

· Inflation Barrier: Sellers only sell the benefits and features and avoid their duty in walking the customer through the steps, and risks involved with achieving this value and completely undermine the business relationship.

· Comprehensive Barrier: Sellers assume that the customer fully understands their own problem and the complex solution being provided to them. This sets the customer up for failure with the solution. Comprehension only grows as the solution becomes more widespread.

· Dilution Barrier: Customer’s take control and approach the situation from a price based decision, and completely dilutes the value and benefits of the solution. Don’t let buyers strip the components out of your solution so that they can compare ‘apples to apples.’

· Implementation Barrier: Sellers leave the buyers ill equipped with the implementation of the solution and don’t take accountability when for their customer’s lack of value achievement.

To bring down these barriers, there are 3 main considerations to keep in mind:

1. The cause of the barrier is not to assign blame, but to overcome these obstacles and establish a relationship. The dilution(cost) barrier is often used because the buyer is afraid of getting taken advantage of.

2. On barrier often supports and reinforces another one. Always be prepared to address all five barriers.

3. The point where the consequences of a barrier manifest is often not where the collision takes place. It can flow from R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, to Support. Overcoming all 5 barriers and closing the value gap involves participation at all levels.

Part Two: PRIME SOLUTIONS AND THEIR PROTOCOLS

Ch. 4: Value Leverage for Business Performance

Value maximization is the cornerstone. Sellers must identify the factors that are significantly affecting the customers, and show the absence of value, and link their solution as a strategy to fulfill the buyer’s ultimate goal. Define, address, and connect with value on the customers’ terms. Sellers must be able to point out all the components of a high quality decision including priorities, change, investment, commitment and risk.

The value impact of a Prime Solution is raised as it is able to connect to multiple customer business drivers:

· Financial- Either Revenues or Expenses

· Quality- Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction, Regulatory Compliance

· Competitive- Uniqueness or Availability

Georgia Pacific Resins, Inc (GPRI) is a somewhat of a commodity based company since they sell resins necessary for paper quality optimization. After dealing with clients that were only concerned with the best price, GPRI took their organization to the process level and now tailor makes the resin for clients depending on the need to help optimize their production, leveraging the value of their solution.

Ch. 5: Multiple Decisions, Mutual Understandings & Ch.6: Effective Execution, Measurable Results

Business managers are usually not well equipped to make high-quality decisions. Sellers combat this situation with either a reactive, proactive, or interactive relationship level. The most effective of the three relationships is interactive. This is where the seller helps expand the customers understanding of their own problem, and makes them fully aware of their alternatives. Seller must show them the incentive to change and give them the confidence to invest. You must make them recognize the negative cost associated with not implementing the solution, or they will have no incentive to change.

High-quality decisions involve decisions about priorities, change, investment, commitment and risk. Provide them with the tools they need to measure their results and justify the risk. Act as Partners during implementation and help with tactics, leveraging the value of your solution.

Part Three: IN PERSUIT OF PRIME SOLUTIONS

Ch. 7: Creating The Prime Solution

A Prime Solution should enable your company to:

· Discover and research the companies that are most likely at a disadvantage without your solution.

· Diagnose the problem, close the performance gap by involving your solution, and give them the confidence and knowledge to make the change.

· Design solutions that minimize the risk of change, maximize their return on investment, and provide them with the confidence to invest.

· Deliver measured results and establish the promise of value made to your customers.

Ch. 8 Marketing The Prime Solution

This marketing strategy will prevent the no sale scenario:

The problem with solution based differentiation is when dealing with complex products the customer just wants the best solution.

Diagnostic marketing will allow you to solve your customers most complex problems. This is the most effective method for complex solutions in the market.

When advancing the progression of change you must remember that people are more resistant to change unless the pain experienced by staying is greater than the pain of changing.

There are four tenses of marketing:

· Positive present is describing the customer’s situation in positive terms.

· Positive future is the customers’ need for a better future.

· Negative future is the dangers the customer might face one day.

· Negative present is the current problems or bad situations.

Complex solutions need extensive change there for negative-present tense are the most effective.

Ch.9 Selling The Prime Solution

When selling the prime solution:

It should always be a “win” for the seller. From the customers point of view it is another expense and a preserved loss if the value is not achieved.

A high quality decision is the goal of the sale. It’s based on an honest, thorough and rational evaluation between the seller solution and the customer’s problem.

Ch.10 Delivering on The Prime Solution

Having the ability to accept and deal with change is the main competency implementing The Prime Solution. Accepting change not only from your perspective but also from the customers as well. Yes you are dealing with the ever morphing definition of value, and technology advancements, bur customer is dealing with a lot more changes that you are accountable for making as smooth as possible.

To ensure a successful change management process is implemented it must meet at least two of the following criteria:

· Adaptability- This should be based somewhat on the customers input, and design customized strategies for change.

· Technology- The technology should have no bugs, when implementing the solution for the customer it should in no way disrupt their existing technology.

· Process-The implementation should be a smooth process, one which has been thoroughly mapped out addressing any problems that may occur downstream.

· People- it must address the physical skill and the behavior of the people that the solution is meant for.

Kind Regards,

Shannon Brewer

I would like to personally thank many of you that were concerned about me and my staff in beautiful Downtown Orlando. We are OK, thank you for the emails, texts and calls.

There was an office shooting a few blocks from our office in Downtown Orlando, apparent disgruntaled worker seriously harmed at least 7 people and is still at large with Orlando Police & SWAT looking for him. All banks and buildings are now closed.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the injured and their families. Please assist the authorities with any information you may have.

Sincerely,

Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp

On Monday, October 12th, 2009, we will be suspending our normal and lower SLA response times.

While we do not expect to have any interruptions in the support availability, during certain times staff will only be tasked with responding to high and urgent priority requests during business hours in the EST time zone. We are using a quiet holiday on Monday to roll out our new SLA framework, new call handling and handoff procedures and completely test the systems.

We expect to announce the changes to our support systems later this week and thank you for your patience during this launch. We will certainly do all we can to help during this time, we just wanted to apologize for any inconveniences that may be caused ahead of time.