The State of Managed IT

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Pricing Pressures?

2010-01-22T08:47:00.002-05:00

I've had a number of people asking me about pricing pressures lately...customers telling them that they need a price reduction, flat out. Now here's the kicker... They don't want less services, just a lower price.

Our company has seen a number of clients down-sizing over the past 18 months. We've seen comapnies go from 25 employees to 6, from over 100 employees to 35, and most recently we were talking to a company who has gone from 1000 employees to 100. We don't seem to have net-fewer clients but a number of our clients are definitely smaller.

MSP are telling me, however, that even clients who haven't had to down-size are asking for a lower price. It's funny that several years ago, we went to these clients, showed them how we were going to cut their IT spending in half and now they are demanding that we cut it in half again.

I always tell people that, if they're going to bring me a problem, they also need to bring me a potential solution. Unfortunately, the most popular MSP solution in this case is reports back to their clients showing all that they've been doing.

So let's talk about this for a moment... This is something that the MSP needed to be doing all along as part of their MSP deliverable. The big danger without reporting, if you're doing a great job, is that the client starts to think they don't need you. After all, if everything is great, why do they have to pay you every month. Part of your job is to show your client, on a regular basis, that everything is great BECAUSE they pay you every month.

While we're on this topic, reports alone are not ther answer. Similar to Jerry Seinfeld telling you that no one really wants to go to your wedding. Let me be the one to tell you, your customers don't really want to see reports...but they like to know that they're there. If you've built a real MSP program and you have more than a handful of customers, you should have some sort of a vCIO (Virtual CIO) interfacing with your clients. And if you do, it should be your vCIO's job to look at those reports and notify your client of the highlights...bring attention to the things that they need to know about. Other then that, your clients just want to know that the reports exist. It'll help you justify your existence, but it wont help you with porice protection.

To justify your pricing, you essentially have to sell your program all over again. You need to show your clients how much it cost to have an internal IT department and the total cost of ownership attached to purchasing, maintaining, and training their users on the various components of IT. Then you need to show them how much you can save them by having you manage their IT by bringing to them the value and diversity of an entire IT department vs. just one or two semi-trained individuals. Finally, if you can eliminate some of their hardware, licensing and/or refresh costs by delivering some services via HaaS (hardware as a service), now you're really showing them the value of what your company does and they will understand the immense cost of trying to reproduce what you are doing for them.

That's MSP.
- R

MSP is dead!

2010-01-08T17:21:00.001-05:00

Don't you wish...cloud boy! Buah, ha, ha, ha...

I just thought I'd start off the year with a big controversial headline. The reality, of course, is that MSP is alive and well, in spite of the economy, the cloud and the flood of wannabes that are emerging from the woodworks, adding MSP to their line card, and coming up with "me too" offerings.

I'm actually very excited about 2010. My company has actually changed its sales model (a bit) and the changes are putting me back (somewhat) into the forefront of the sales arena and I'm very excited about it.

To start with, a few years ago, we came up with several "lite versions" of our MSP program. Sure, we had great reasons for doing it but I think, in the end, it turned out not to be a great idea. We now have a remote only offering, we have a "mostly monitoring and patching" offering, and I think we did a crappy job at positioning those products. Instead of defining when those products needed to to sold, in order to fill a niche, they were positioned as lower priced options. The reality is that our full service, total care offering is the best value. The lower priced options could end up costing more, if it's not what the end-user really needs.

Of course, everyone is ready to blame the economy..."companies are only willing to commit to our lowest price option". This is just not true. Yes, companies are looking at every dollars but no one will take something that appears to be lower priced, if they understand that it's going to cost them more. Instead, they become disgruntled. They remember the lower contracted price and will act bewildered at why their bills are not fixed at that price.

I recall years ago, before we had the lite versions, talking to other MSPs who had multiple offerings. They were always surprised when we told them that all of our customer were "full on MSP, total care, and (for the most part) AYCE, All You Can Eat". They couldn't seem to get their clients onto that model...but 100% of our clients were there. I believe the reason was, because they had lesser plans and we didn't. Because they had plans with a lower price of entry, their salespeople were taking the easy road, presenting all the plans, and failing to sell the client on the higher value proposition slightly higher priced plan.

Well, "Phoooey!" on that. I'm back in sales and I'm selling full-on MSP to clients who are going to be 100% satisfied with our services. And it's got to be even easier now because I can reduce my clients IT spending even more by leveraging our hosted-"cloud" solutions, SPLA, HaaS, the list goes on.

I said, "Look out boys, I got a license to fly".
That Caddy pulled over and let us by...

Until next time.
- R

Stereo: Two Speakers

2009-12-04T22:33:00.003-05:00

OK. First read this article in MSP Mentor from a few weeks ago...
http://www.mspmentor.net/2009/11/05/google-managed-services-shifting-to-applications/

Then, remember the original title of my blog, "Google Must be Stopped". Am I the only person that remembers the movie, The Net? Here's the basic theme: It was about a time when all companies were connected to a central network, not unlike the Internet, and one company took control of it in such a way that it could hold everyone else hostage. Of course, when this movie came out, everyone who saw it envisioned Bill Gates' Microsoft. I think Microsoft has become Google's brilliant decoy.

Don't forget, I could be easily convinced that the Internet (or maybe Google) is actually the antichrist. Think about it..."he will rise from obscurity", "he will try to change the laws", "he will confirm a covenant with many", "he will not answer to a higher earthly authority", “he will do as he pleases”, "he will be worshipped by many people", "his name will be related to the number six", OK - possibly 666, whatever, "he will be empowered by the devil himself". Need I say more?

But seriously, back to that article... Is Google serious? Right now there is a land-grad to be had. Every MSP needs to get out there, maintain relevant to your customers, show them the value of having you there and knowing where their data resides, whether its at your data center or theirs. But up until now, if you have a 20-user clients...you're charging to install it, you're making a few dollars on the licenses, you're taking responsibility for that server's health and charging to manage it over the next three or four years. If you put it out in your data center, then you are providing it "as a service" to your client, potentially forever. And, best of all, if you're doing it all properly, your customer is getting a bargain.

Instead, Google wants you to give them your client and lose all that revenue, in exchange for about $200, and essentially go figure out a new way to make your living, maybe go back to being a break/fix house, and leave your customer with sub-standard service and support. I don't know about you, but anyone who thinks this will work for them...go for it.

I'm looking for clients who see the value in our local relationship and customer touch. I want customers who have BMWs in their parking lot. They already know that when you pay a little more, you get a much smoother, much more comfortable and quite ride, and if there's ever a problem, you get World Class customer service. My business partner always uses the term, "pennywise and pound-foolish". No thank you.

At the risk of repeating myself, Microsoft is the good guy here, people. Microsoft is on our side. Of course, survival mode says that they are going to have to compete against The Goog, and we will most likely be the casualties. So it's every man (or MSP) for himself. Is the end in-sight? Not if you know what you're doing... It's time for the land grab.

But you know what worries me? Does anyone else remember the '05 Connectwise Partner Summit when Arnie Bellini said, "we are declaring war on Dell"...? On the other hand, here's Google, at the same Summit, four years later and telling us how they are going to take away our clients, give us 200 bucks, and we should go do something different. Yikes!

Well, I gotta run. After I update my blog (using Blogger, owned by Google), I need to go update my Google Ad Words, and Google a few of my competitor to see what they're doing on Google. So now I have a Googlaphonic stereo with a moon-rock needle. Not bad for a car stereo, but I wouldn't want it in my house. (Old Steve Martin joke - not for everyone.)

Peace
- R

You in trouble nah...

2009-11-20T19:04:00.002-05:00

You done landed on Mr. Gilmore's property.

In case you haven't heard, and you probably haven't... I wouldn't be making any big announcement either. Last week, at TechData's TechSelect 10th Anniversary Partner Conference at the Contemporary Resort (Disney World) Hotel in (or at least near) Orlando, Florida...they made me President of the Advisory Council. Yeah...me?

What does that mean? Well, the only thing that I know for sure is, I don't get to vote...or maybe that was just something we made up for Sam? Speaking of Sam...my friend, my cohort, "my partner in crime", Sam Ruggeri stepped down to the position of Past President, which he will hold for a year. Talk about a hard act to follow... Sam is probaly one of the most well-liked people in IT today. You'll never find anyone who is as personable and gives so much of himself to the IT community. Seriously, a guy who would give you the shirt off his back. Now...they have me to contend with. :)

Of course, a few minutes before the big announcement, they asked me if I would be OK saying a few words up on stage. I said, "sure...no problem". So they called my name, I said a few nice things about Sam (knowing I could draw some additional applause) and then I fumbled threw a few quick words and sat down. I'm surprised the crowd didn't start chanting, "Sam... Sam... Sam", and demanding an encore performance. But they didn't, and now they are, for the most part, stuck with me.

I think we're going to to great things with TechSelect in the coming years. The first ten years saw its infancy stage, some growing pains, and some great accomplishments. As we enter it's second decade, it's time to step-it-up once more and drive even greater value to the membership. I'd like to see an organization that is heavily driven by its membership and continues to propel TechData as a leader in the industry. I think the PeerSelect groupings at the 10th Anniversary Conference was just one of many thing to come to promote the sharing of best practices and camaraderie among the membership.

I'm looking forward to being a part of it all of it...and, I'll do my best not to piss off too many people along the way. No promises... :)

- R

Private Cloud?

2009-11-06T14:15:00.001-05:00

What the hell is a private cloud? It's almost bizzaro that everyone is talking about cloud computing and most people can't even agree on when it's a cloud and when it's not. Let's recap... :)

When you plug your hair-dryer into electrical socket in your living room (and it turns on), you have no idea where that power is coming from. It might be coming from that power plant near your business partner's condo, it might be coming from that nuclear (pronounced New-Q-Lar, that's apparently the Republican pronunciation) power plant that's up the road a bit, or it might be coming from somewhere else. The point is that you don't know and it isn't very easy to figure out.

This is the same way that Google's search engine works. You throw something into that search bar, it throws it out into the cloud, and somehow, within microseconds, huge piles of servers, that could be located anywhere in the world, decide what to send back to you and BAM!, it appears on your screen. Where did that come from? You don't know and it isn't very easy to figure out. That's cloud computing, my friends.

If you think that throwing a bunch of servers into a rack at a datacenter and giving your customers some terminal server licenses is cloud computing, you are way off base. That's just hosted services..and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not a cloud.

Like everything else that we do, our company is building out a hybrid suite of services based upon our Guaranteed Networks IT management platform. Our solution, through proprietary equipment, as well as partnership with established hosted infrastructure providers, will create the best of all worlds. We don't believe in the one-size fits all approach. We know that some customers will want premise based computing, others will want to go to a data center, some of them will demand a cloud but almost every one will require a hybrid solution...and that's what we intend to deliver. We're delivering it right now.

The other day, someone told me they were building a "private cloud". Instantly, I thought that was brilliant. I imagined a series of redundant data centers, linked with a backend private fiber infrastructure (that didn't hit the Internet), and all kinds of security and data loss prevention measures on the front-end. I got very excitied. This is what we're doing...with data centers in Miami, Boca Raton, Atlanta and Nashville.

After talking for a little while, I realized that he was just building a bad-ass Citrix server and providing some hosted services for his clients. You can imagine my disappointment. On the up-side, he taught me the lingo..."private cloud". Then I realized, hey...we're building a private cloud too. Unfortunately, the terminology is already getting misused. I guess I need a new name for what we're building.

What are you guys building? I promise not to steal the name. :)

- R

You're in then you're out...

2009-10-23T13:12:00.001-04:00

Is anyone else noticing a dwindling of MSPs out there?

I've actually talked to a number of former self-proclaimed MSPs who have said, "I'm not doing MSP anymore". Some of them felt that they weren't delivering sufficient value to their customers or, quite honestly, they just could never figure it out.

At the same time, I think there's a lot more folks who have added it to their portfolio and that's really the dangerous part for those of us who are true MSPs. If everyone starts saying, "we do managed services too", then we all have to work even harder to differentiate ourselves. It also serves to commoditize our offering. All of your competitors are going to download your marketing materials, change a few logos, and create their own "Me Too" marketing materials. Then they're going to go to eveyrone of your customers and devaluate what you've been doing by offeing Me Too at a lower price.

I think this where we the "Lifestyle MSPs" needs to look alive. We can't just develop our offering and then leave it alone for the next 10, or even 5, years. The would be like Microsoft releasing XP and then thinking that there would never need to be another operating system..and just like Microsoft, we're occasionally going to relase something like Vista and we'll have to backtrack, but we gotta keep it going. We have to be vigillant and on the move. Remember, a rolling stone gathers no moss (of course, you could end up looking like Keith Richards).

My other word of advise is... Don't do anything to commoditize your own offering. We've all done it, we think it's the right way to go, and then we have to do all sorts of undoing. There's a lot of yo-yos out there who are pricing their services by the seat, by the server, by the site...OK. You have to start somewhere. But I don't think this is ever something that you want to publish because MSP isn't about that. That's for Dell and CDW so that they can SKU it up and then have the lowest bidder go out and do thew work. We're MSPs. We need to evaluate each client and charge them based on their needs and the complexity of their network infrastructures. When clients add PCs, their price shouldn't automatically go up by a certain multiplier. Sometimes, YES...other times it might stay the same. If you don't know why, well then... you are one of the yo-yos...and I'm done talking to you for today. ;)

- R

Time to Dis-A-Peer..?

2009-10-09T22:38:00.001-04:00

Get it? :)

I remember the day that I thought we needed more peer groups. I am a member of a peer group organization but we are a small and exclusive group. Not anyone can join, you have to be invited. There are a limited number of seats, we share financials, we act as each other's Board of Directors, and we expect the members to be at the top of their game. But one fine day, I was thinking that others deserved the peep groups experience too. I have several friends in the industry who I thought could really benefit from a deep peer interaction but, for one reason or another, didn't qualify to be in my group....but, I guess that the Trouble with Tribbles. They multiply...quickly.

I am a member of TPG (True Profits Group), the original IT and MSP peer group. Steve Bowser, our fearless leader, has been doing this longer than anyone in the industry by far. I guess I should check my facts before blogging but, I'm pretty sure that Steve started doing this with the Microage Computer Center franchises back in the early 90's. The automotive industry had been doing this for year. New car dealers regularly get together, even used car dealers regularly get together and they strategize, share best practices, collaborate on how to make more money, but never in IT industry. Most of the boneheads in the IT industry see everyone else in the industry as a competitor instead of an ally. Peer groups have gone a long way towards repairing our fragmented and un-neighborly industry...but how many do we need?

For years, TPG was the only game in town...and, IMHO, still the one where you want to try and score an available seat. Then, "that guy" started facilitating some. Sorry...I always forget that guy's name. You know who you are. Then I heard that Larry Schulze from the Taylor Business Group was doing some. I like Larry, his Service Management Workshop has gotten great reviews from my serv ice management team...although his utilization metrics are often trigger a number of debates in our organization....but that's topic for another time. I got Larry involved with TechData and the BIG (Business Improvement Groups) that we have going inside of TechSelect. The membership is loving those.

HTG is out there. I don't know too much about HTG although, I guess I could easy learn more. The company that we recently acquired, Guardian Angel Computer Services in Norwalk, CT, was a member and HTG's fearless leader, Arlin Sorensen, and I serve on the ConnectWise Partner Advisory Board together. What I do know about HTG is that it's essentially run by a peer, Heartland Technologies...and (again, I should double check my facts but) a former member of TPG. They've got quite a thing going on over there. It sounds like a number of smaller peer groups but then they ALL get together once a year or something like that. Again, my feedback has been that the members get a lot out of it.

Recently I've heard that others are facilitating peer groups or asking some of the existing peer leaders to facilitate groups for them. There are peer groups forming just for N-able users, there are peer groups forming just for Autotask users...Larry seems to be involved in both of those.

Next month, at TechSelect's 10th Anniversary Partner Conference, we're going to be introducing a peer component. We're calling it PeerSelect. This isn't going to be any kind of a formal peer group group session, instead we're going to allow the members to pick their peer group, then we're going to keep those groups together for several sessions throughout the conference. The concept is that, "peer interaction" always seems to be rated very highly with regards to why our members love the TechSelect conferences, so why not give them more of that. I also think that members are more "open" when they know who is in the room. We'll see how it works out.

Lately I get a lot from, what I would call, Local Peers. We're based in South Florida (with offices in Atlanta and Norwalk, CT - shameless plug) and regularly get together with other South Florida IT service providers. We sit around for a few hours, drink a few beers, and talk about what's working and what isn't. Most importantly, we learn each other's strengths and figure out how to work together realizing that there's plenty of work out there for all of us and that together we can become better and offer a greater breadth of services to our clients.

So if you're like my friend, Curt Jacobson (Corporate Technology Group), from Missoula, MT, and you're in a relatively small MSA with only a few resellers fighting for every last bit of business, maybe Local Peers wouldn't really work out as well as (maybe) arm-wrestling. OK. I'm not saying that it's for everyone...but otherwise, give it a shot. You'll find that you have a lot more in common with you local competitors than you may think. PLUS, you know that customer...? The one that uses one company, doesn't appreciate the services that we provide, complains constantly, we give them great service and, in the end, doesn't pay their bills, then switches to another local service provider? Oh, yes... You're going to want to circulate a list of those. :)

So, until next time... Don't Dis(respect)-A-Peer?

- R

Everything's big in Texas

2009-09-21T20:27:00.002-04:00

Holy crap...

Dell to Acquire Perot Systems for $3.9 Billion, Creating Comprehensive, Customer-Focused IT-Solutions Company for Rory's birthday. Aww... You shouldn't have. But I love the wrapping paper...and since you did, please include the reciept in case I need to return it.

I love that they want to create this "customer focused" company. I wanted to create a company where everyone just plays on Facebook and shops on eBay all day but now this customer focused thing has me thinking.

So, how hard is Dell trying to remain relevant?

I think this is a good move for them, actually. Dell has made some good money in their time and anytime that they are in a (somewhat) dead business model (like selling commoditized PCs over the web) they can acquire a larger customer based and not get (obviously) behind the power curve.

I have a feeling that the average IT company will be wondering how this wil affect them... Why would it? Were you seeing big competition from Dell or Perot before? Maybe if you were partnering with soem of the big guys on some larger accounts...'cause that's what this is about. This isn't about you and me, this is about Dell being able to compete against the likes of IGS (IBM Global Services), which, in my opinion, they had never been able to really do effectively.

Now we'll see how good they are at integrating large scale services. The Everdream acquisition was nothing compared to this (and I'm not even sure that Silverback had customers). My guess is that it'll all be status-quo for quite a while. The ownership of the bus might have changed, but the bus drivers will stay in place.

All in all, I'm thinking this makes them a pretty big company.
Then again, everything's big in Texas.

Cheers
- R

Cloudy Govt. Reputation?

2009-09-16T11:48:00.004-04:00

They think The Cloud could change the government's reputation!
Just how powerful do THEY think "the cloud" really is?

I'd say the cloud showed-cause with yesterday's announcement that the White House has launched Apps.gov, an online storefront for federal agencies to quickly browse and purchase cloud-based IT services, for productivity, collaboration, and efficiency.

The White House? Sure, I would have expected this from Al Gore, after all, he invented the Internet, but shouldn't the government have like a Department of Homeland IT? Whatever.

My favorite part of this article is...

The cloud initiative is supposed to - finally! - break
the well-deserved reputation of federal IT as broken,
corrupt and brain-dead.

Again I ask, powerful do they think cloud computing really is?
It's still going to be run by the government!!!

But seriously, you should go to: http://www.apps.gov/
And check out the very well-done video in the upper right hand corner.

Now here's the other (no surprise) revelation... in the artcile we find out that "Google plans a cloud-based offering for government next year". Of course they are going to have a goverment focused offering, we all saw the movie The Net , didn't we? Sandra Bullock, before she did Hope Floats and I had to cross her off the "must see" list.

Maybe we need to pass a laws... 1) The goverment's cloud has to be certified resilient, redundant, backed up, geographically dispersed, etc. 2) They are not allowed to use Google.

That's all I'm saying.

Cheers
- R

Over 100,000 customers!

2009-09-10T11:23:00.002-04:00

That's right. Between me and AT&T, we have over 100,000 customers... :)
They have 100,000 and I have my two or three.

I also know this guy. Between he and I, we've given millions to charity.

But hey, read this.
http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2009/09/07/daily21.html

Although, it doesn't actually say that they have 100,000 customers. It says that AT&T has "lined up" 100,000 customers. What do you supposed that means? And, more importantly, can you see this line-up from space?

Of course, instantly there are people out there going, "Oh no... now AT&T is competing for my business". No they're not. They are charging $75 per hour (200 minutes for $250) to remotely help someone (including phone support). What happens if it takes longer than that? What is AT&T doing to make sure the problem does not recur? Nothing. This is "break/fix" 10 years after we decided that break-fix wasnl;t the business that we wanted to be in.

Stick to your gun, my peeps! Charge a flat monthly fee, be proactive, take responsibility for your customer's network. If you find someone who thinks they only need $250 per month of remote technical services, refer them to AT&T a focus on finding yourself a target client.

I think that's all I have today. I was also going to talk about the benefits of guacamole over Botox but I can't seem to find my reference article. Maybe I imagined it back during Mexican Day?

Cheers
- R

Don't HaaSsle me, mon!

2009-08-21T12:24:00.002-04:00

There's been a lot of talk lately about HaaS vs. Leasing. Apparently there's a lot of people out there who don't see the difference. Hmm...? They require a vision test before they let you drive, maybe we should have a vision test before you can be an MSP?

Leasing is a financing method. HaaS is a way of delivering IT.
Can I go home now? Oh, wait... I am home. I guess I should go into the office then.

It's true that a lot of HaaS deals could involve leasing and, for many, HaaS and leasing may always go hand in hand...like I-95 and the Florida Turnpike, but they end up in completely different places (and only one of them gets you near Disney World). Is anyone still reading?
Hello?

Leasing is a financing tool, a way of obtaining equipment. If you or your customer needs to purchase a server (or three) and you don't have the cash, you could go borrow the money, rob a bank, or consider leasing. Whether you or your customer is leasing the equipment the leasing company owns the equipment and they are leasing it back to you. So now you can take those servers put thekm wherever they need to go and pay for them by the month. Whoever leased them needs to take care of them...it's as if they were your (or your customer's).

If you lease them, you can then put them at your customer's site, manage them, and be responsible for them and THEN and only THEN are you getting into the HaaS (Hardware as a Service) business. You see, in your customer's eyes, the servers are yours. The customer did not buy them, the customer did not sign a lease for them, the customer is not responsible for them. YOU are providing a service and (apparently) as part of this service, you had to put some servers at the customer's site. YOUR servers.

Does this make sense? We sell a product called DoubleCheck. It's an anti-spam solution and there is an appliance involved..but we NEVER sell (or lease) our customer the appliance. We buy the appliance, we place it at our customer's site and we manage it (remotely, of course). If it breaks, it's ours - we fix it. If it get's stolen, we're on the hook. We are providing our customer with a service, the hardware is a necessary evil to provide the service. That piece of Hardware sits at our customer's site as part of a service. It's not a rental and it's not a lease. It's HaaS.

Now take it on a larger scale. Let's say that I buy some "big iron". I don;t know what that it, that's why I'm generalizing... But let's say that I buy a few big bad IBM servers and tie them together (not with rope) and build an infrastruture that could host a pile of virtual machines. Now let's say that you had customer who needed virtual machines. Well, you could provide that couldn't you? ...and after you give your customer a price, they might ask, "does this include the hardware?" ..and what's you answer?

Some people might answer, "there is no hardware". OK, I'm done talking to you.
Of course there is hardware. Everything has to be somewhere, even virtual stuff. The answer is YES, it included the hardware..you already have it, it's yours. It might be leased or you may have bought it with your lottery winnings but it's included. You customer is getting the Hardware as (part of) a Service. The financing part of the equation is destinct and separate from how it is that you're delivering services.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Caio
- R

SLP acquired GACS

2009-08-07T11:52:00.004-04:00

We're not Kansas anymore. Hmm..? I guess we never were in Kansas.
I also think I've never spelled Kansas before, doesn't look right. [head tilted]

That said, we ARE in Connecticut now...and I have spelled Connecticut before. Never could get that one right until I figured out that it's the word "connect" follwed by "icut". Strange but it works. So where was I? Oh, right... Kansas, Connecticut.

Yes. It's official. As of August 1st, 2009, SLPowers susstantially acquired the assets and operations of Guardian Angel Computer Services in both Norwalk, CT and Melbourne, FL., which means that we know have people in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Connecticut.

Laura Steward (formerly of GACS) has joined SLPowers as our Director of Healthcare Services.

I know, I know... This has nothing to do with the State of Managed IT, it's just a gratuitous plug for our merger...or is it? Does it speak to consolidation in the industry? Does it speak to larger managed services companies expanding geographically by acquiring smaller MSPs in strategic growth geographies? Yeah...no, gratuitous plug. That was it.

But hey, I got no time to blog. I have businesses to merge. :)

- R

Chrome O/S...!!!

2009-07-17T19:11:00.003-04:00

Did you see the announcement or feel the buzz in the last few weeks?
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

Just about a year ago (blog entry, July 22nd 2008), I said Google would be releasing their own operating system. Well, here it is Google Chrome OS. Not a big deal, on the surface, but wrapping Google's name on an open source OS may be exactly what the open source community needed to get some traction and credibility among the common folk (that's us).

From a Google perspective, this gets the planet closer to the future that Google sees where nothing needs to start with the letters MS. So what kind of customizations does someone have to make to their latest flavor or Linux before they slap their name on it? Dunno. But I can make my next safe bet... It won't be long before everyone figures out that Google Apps, GMail, and everything else The Goog provides will be optimized for Chrome OS. One of these days you will be able to buy a dirt cheap netbook, it'll boot Google OS, it'll run the Chrome Browser, and it'll connect you to Google for any services that you need.

My guess is that it'll probably be completely free if you live in the great Seattle area. The Goog loves doing things like that in Bill's backyard.

Cheers
- R

ConnectWise & HTG

2009-07-03T10:17:00.005-04:00

That's right.
ConnectWise and HTG sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s...

Here's what I'm taking about, in case you're on an IT media hiatus:
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/218500720

Before addressing all the nonsense, let me start off by clarifying: 1) my company has been using ConnectWise since July 2003; 2) we love the product and are deeply entrenched in it; 3) I am on the ConnectWise partner advisory board (unless Arnie reads this and fires me); 4) I am not a member of HTG but know of HTG and consider Arlin "top notch" and a friend; 5) Arnie, Arlin... It's getting confusing. I may start calling one of you Dave.

This is fantastic, isn't it?

Like the CRN article states, just not in this order...

HTG...peer groups where VARs can share ideas, set goals and have other members push them to achieve those objectives. About 90 percent of Heartland Tech Groups' 230 members use ConnectWise.

So this move only affects the 10% of HTG members who aren't using ConnectWise. HTG is simply defining "peer" a little more granularly. They are saying, for us all to be peers, we all need to be using the same software to run our business.

I must admit, when we look for a peer to work with, somewhere in the US, where we don't have presence, we love finding another ConnectWise user. It instantly lets us know that this company is probably a lot like our company. We already have a basic understanding of how they probably run their business. They are, indeed, our peer. So I endorse this, I think it makes a lot of sense.

The question becomes, what are the other 10% using? If the other 10% is using a mixed bag of products, then the whole thing becomes unmanagable...but maybe there's a peer group of its own there. I'm no mathematical genious but 10% of 230 might be 23. If, let's say, 15 of those 23 were using the same other product why not make them their own group? Of course, I don't know the ins & outs of running peer groups, so maybe that wouldn't work. Maybe that whole 10% consists of VARs from Muncie, Indiana who target the hospitality market? Whatever.

What I think is interesting is all the buzz about this. Why is this such a big deal? Not a rhetorical question... Someone please tell me why this is such a big deal. I guess if you're an HTG member, loving your HTG and loving your "other software" and now you're either going to have to switch or drop the membership, I could see where that could be a little irritating but other than that... What?

I saw a comment from someone that said, "I think this is a very serious blow to organizations like VTN."

VTN? (That's Ingram Micro's VentureTech Network for those of you playing along with the home version.) What does VTN have to do with this?

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid, my peeps! I had N-Central from N-Able Technologies once upon a time. I loved the people who worked for that company but we switched to Kaseya (which we still use), although we do most things with SaaZ from Zenith Infotech. I also had a RX-8, one of the first 6 to arrive in Palm Beach County. I loved that car, I traded it in on a Tribute that actually started and worked as expected.

We’ve been using ConnectWise since 2003. We love ConnectWise but if there was something better, we could switch it out faster than my Mazda. It’s just a tool. Some people act as if these "platform vendors” are the heart of your organization. They are not. The heart of your organization is YOU, your processes...and your people. Remember, a heart transplant might be painful but it can be done and the patient will survive. So take a chill pill.

Then there's this guy...
http://www.vladville.com/2009/07/connectwise-swallows-up-htg.html
Who is this guy? I probably shouldn't link to him. Now I'm guilty by association.

But seriously... He asks, “Now that ConnectWise controls the PSA solution behind the HTG peer members, what incentive does ConnectWise have to improve and compete on price and features?”

Did I already ask, "who is this guy?"
Holy Tail Wagging the Dog, Batman. I think ConnectWise has to be more on the ball than ever. There are now 230 VARs out there who could gang-up on ConnectWise and tell then that it's either our way or the highway. If I were in HTG, I'd be negotiating special pricing for HTG members. It just got a whole lot easier for ConnectWise to lose 230 (minus 10%, of course) customers if their solution fails to keep up with the industry and/or compete favorably on price.

Personally, I think it's great.
Congratulations and keep up the good work, Dave. ;)

- R

It's Mexican Day!

2009-06-19T21:47:00.002-04:00

...or at least it was last week.

What's he talking about, you ask?

The Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. Four days of camping out, drinking beer with friends (both the ones that you bring with you and the many that you make on-site), and non-stop listening to music...which starts around noon on Thursday and, basically, doesn't stop until Sunday night/Monday morning just past midnight.

This was my second time attending, second year in a row, and although last year I knew more of the acts on the line-up last year, I'd say this year was every bit as fun. Bonnaroo is an incredibly organized event. Just imagine having 90,000 people show up to a 700 acre farm in the middle of freakin' nowhere to camp out drink and listen to music. It's crazy. Yet it all runs smoothly. They say that during the festival, it becomes the fourth largest city in Tennessee. I wonder if that's true?

This big headliners this year were Phish and Bruce Springsteen. Phish was actually scheduled to play on Friday night and again on Sunday. Bruce was playing on Saturday, but on Sunday night he came out and did a song or two with Phish. Personally, I'm getting a bit tired of The Boss. What was up with that acoustic concert a few years ago when he demanded that all the concession stands be closed? No beer = no Bruce... No, thanks! Yes, we left early that night...and Bonnaroo, what's up with all the Gaelic sounding stuff? You're killing me, Boss. It may be time to promote the General Manager.

Phish is awefully popular at this event, as was Widespread Panic at last year's Bonnaroo. That's Widespread Panic, or as I like to call them Phish II. :)

If I had to pick my favorite three acts this year, I'd have to go with David Byrne, Nine Inch Nails, and Ben Harper. All three had different music, all three blew us away in one way or another. And speaking of different music, my fourth choice would have to be Merle Haggard. Loved his show. The best part was tghat while he was singing one of his signature songs, White Lightning, we found some people in the crowd who were passing around some genuine, home brewed, South Carolina Moonshine, aka White Lightning. Yikes!

So what's the techie twist to all of this?

Well, at our motorhome, running during the entire event was our WatchGuard wireless firewall with G3 cellular card, thus creating our own little secure wireless hotspot. Nice! I know.

Oh, and Mexican Day... It was great. The tradition started last year. Of course, this year we were prepared. We declared one of the festival days, Mexican Day. We had Mexican beer, we had tequila (about 4 different kinds), we had ground beef and chorizo tacos (hard shell and soft), we had freshly made guacamole... It was glorious.

And that's what I did about managed services last week... :)

Cheers
-R

One Year No Beer

2009-06-05T19:14:00.002-04:00

Yeah, that's not going to happen.

A guy I know actually tried this. I hear that he every year for New Year's he decides to give something up. Usually something that he really likes. I mean, get this... He and his girlfriend went to Prague because they heard there was good beer there. Then, not too long later, he decides to give up beer for a year. Huh?

I'd almost completely stopped drinking beer until I rediscovered Yuengling. It's a delicious beer and they claim to be the oldest brewery in America. But that's not what I wanted to talk about today. I actually want to talk about the media.

I can't remember precisely where the idea originated but a buddy of mine was telling me about a book he was reading. It sounded like a lot of non-sense but one thing that the author of the book was suggesting was that everyone take a "media hiatus". Just disconnect from the media for a while. No TV news, no news websites, no newspapers. Get your news via "watercooler news". In other words, you'll know about anything important in the world because you'll hear others discussing it.

Well, welcome to June 2008. I did it. It's now been one year since I disconnected from the media. I tried following the book's advice about disconnecting for a week or a month or something but it was like quitting a bad habit. I am free. I haven't wanted to go back and there's no need to go back. In a year, I haven't watched the news and I don't miss it one bit. I knew all about the elections, I found out that we couldn't eat tomatos (for a while) but I missed all the media hype. I guess I should say, I didn't miss the media hype. I didn't miss it one bit.

The best part about tuning out the media is that I have no idea what people are saying about the economy. I don't miss the doom and gloom, if it's still there. According to the watercoller news, it's still there...but it doesn't bring me down. At my company, we're making decision based on what makes sense and what we've known to work in the past.

They say that things that work well in a down economy will work wonders when things turn around. So seriously, take the media hiatus... focus on what you know works, focus on what your customers are asking you for, make the investements that you know will grow your business and stop listening to media hype. Your life and business will reward you for it.

Remember, around here you always get you money's worth.
Uh... what did you pay to read this? :)

Cheers
- R

Picture THIS

2009-05-29T12:11:00.001-04:00

Someone complained that there are never any pictures in my blog.

Hey... This isn't one of those artsy-fartsy blogs with all kinds of wierd photos...but I decided to look around and see what I could find. Naturally, I went into enemy territoty... The G-word. I turned off "safe search" and headed for the image search.

Needless to say, there is nothing good there.
And so... my blog remain photo-free.

So let's discuss a previously dangling topic... Sales Numbers
If your salespeople are hunters, focused on bringing in new business, how much new business should they be bringing in?

I can't tell you how much your salespeople need to be bringing in or where your sales quotas need to be. You will need to determine this. One thing that I've learned from my various friends in the sales management buisness is that sales quotas need to have reasoning behind them. They should be designed so that, if met, everyone meets or exceeds their goals. The company achieves its goals, the sales department acieves its goals, the salesperson achieves their goals... monetarily as well. Also, not everyone should be able to make their quotas, only your best salespeople will make their quota everytime.

For our company, the numbers are so simple that it's almost rediculous.
Are you ready? Drum roll, please...

10.

Got it?

OK, remember, we're just talking about managed services here. We've already figured out how much pull-through revenue comes from the average managed services engagement. We know that an account that pays us $4K per month (or $48K per year) will also require a certain amount of additional professional services and they'll buy a certain amount of product from us. So all we need to focus on is the number of average accounts. Right?

If you throw out our very large clients and our very small clients, our true average client pays us about $3K per month. 10 of those is $30K, right? So we just need each salesperson to bring in an extra $30K of monthly recurring revenue, per year. Any way you slice it, that's pretty reasonable. Think about it... You have all year to bring in 3 $10,000 per month accounts, 10 $3,000 per month accounts, or if you must, a whole pile of $1,000 per month accounts. Uh... thirty of them, to be exact. :)

Sounds like a cushy job, doesn't it?

Let's discuss.

So what's the problem? I guess with that run rate, the problem will become tech services. If we have four salespeople, and they are bringing in 40 new accounts per year, will tech services be able to on-board them all? That's about 3 1/2 new accounts per month. No troubles, right?
I guess that might be a future topic.

That's all for today.
- R

Keys to the kingdom...

2009-05-08T17:38:00.000-04:00

After my last post, all sorts of people gave me a hard time. Internally, externally... everybody. The basic complaint was that maybe I shouldn't be disclosing so much information in such a public forum. I heard everything from, "you're telling the whole world how you pay your salespeople, are you crazy?" to "don't you worry about your customers reading this?" or "don't you worry about your competitors reading this?"

I can answer all these things with one word, "NO".

Let's take those one at a time. I've learned that any plan that works for me, will not necessarily work for you. To strart with, from the time I give someone a successful plan, they will start thinking about how to make it better or how to make it fit their organization. In the end, no two companies end up with the same plan.

Years ago, when I was traveling around speaking on managed services, it was the same thing. Some of our competitors attended my talks. Many of them tried their hand at managed services but never got their program off the ground. Others started an MSP practice and have been successful at it but no one ended up with a plan that worked anything like ours. This is the exact same outcome as if they never heard me speak. So what's the difference? The keys to the kingdom are not in some secret sauce, somewhere. It's all in how YOU implement what you've learned. And let's face it, we all implement differently.

The other argument is that these discussions shouldn't be out there for our customers to see. One argued that your customer get the idea that you're making a lot of money, they will look upon you disfavorably.

Maybe it's because I live in the Palm Beaches but making money is not a negative. We charge a fair price for our services and we save our customers money, everyday. If someone was saving me a lot of money and they could make big bucks while doing it, why wouldn't I want to wish them well and continued success. I believe that our customers want us to make money. I know I like it when I see our vendor's annual reports and they made money. It's what makes the world go 'round. The biggest disservice that we could do to our clients is to charge them so little that we can no longer afford to take good care of them.

So...
"you may be right, I may be crazy" - Billy Joel
"but that's all I got today" - R

Hi TAM...

2009-04-24T08:17:00.004-04:00

Does anybody else remember that spreadsheet that was going around in the early days of "managed services" whereby a salesperson was going to bring in $6K per month of new recurring revenue and the whole thing was staggeringly profitable in about a year?

Everyone I know (all three of you) had implemented some part of that formula. Parts of it included an up-front commission for closing the business and some amount of recurring commission paid for the duration of the account, for account management purposes. The thing that wasn't covered in that spreadsheet was a look into the distant future. What happens when sales slow to a crawl or maybe, through no fault of your own, you even lose a few clients. After all, companies go out of business, companies get sold, your chief engineer starts dating the CEO's ex-wife...things happen.

One thing that I, and several other MSPs, experienced in the last few years was that our top salespeople could bring in zero new business, even lose a few clients, and still make a ton of money. Is that fair?

The answer is that it's not fair to anyone. It's not fair to the company and it's not fair to the salesperson. It's not fair to the salesperson because when management looks at a declining market, tough times, whatever you want to call it - and they are making huge bucks while the company is struggling to pay them, you can bet they are going to be on the chopping block.

Unlike many companies, particularly the soulless big ones, we didn't want to simply fire-away and start over with less expensive salespeople. We try to think of our clients and employees as family. We clearly needed to shift account management into a customer care position and turn our salespeople back into hunters. Our plan went into effect back in February and will finalize by this October. Our services-led sales team basically has this eight month transition period to convert their existing clients to our new contracts and move forward one or two years of commissions, based on either a one year or a three year contract. That's not a typo.

The first part of the plan is to put our Technical Account Manager (TAM) place. Some folks call this the VCIO or Virtual CIO. It's a customer care position. We're assigning this role to a high-level senior engineer, who has been doing sales engineering for many years and truly appreciates taking care of customers from a technical and business level perspective. Our TAM will become the main liaison between us and our managed clients. He'll get sales involved as needed. In the meantime, sales will be out hunting - not doing account management. This will be a win-win and customers should appreciate our non-sales-based approach to account management.

Sales will also need to take these eight months to build a pipeline, because, on October 1st, the recurring commissions come to an end. I know, it's a little confusing. The basics of the plan are as follows: Sales needs to hunt for new clients. Sales will be getting paid primarily on new clients. They'll get a big up-front payoff, instead of a recurring trickle of monies forever. We'll take care of the account management so they can go back out to bring in another one...and to be fair, we're allowing our salespeople to convert existing clients into our new contracts and paying them as if they were new clients through the end of September. Could we be any more fair?

This is why (I keep saying that) my sales department compensation has been so high this year without that big of an increase to the overall managed services revenue. But I can promise this, for our salespeople to make the same money that they made in 2007 and 2008, they are absolutely going to have to bring in new business in 2010.

So how much new business does/should a salesperson need to bring in?
Great topic for next time. :)

Cheers
- R

Those who can...

2009-04-10T09:42:00.004-04:00

Holy crap. Has anyone noticed the number of MSP experts who have suddenly appeared on the scene? How are all these guys staying in business? Perhaps like any good actor or actress they are waiting tables at Denny's hoping for their big break.

So, I don't want to crack on these guys, some of them are my friends...or at least they were before today's blog entry, but it's getting a little bit like being a "life coach" out there. I have to laugh (just a cuckle, actually) every time I meet a life coach. There's suddenly a ton of them. Now-a-days I ask, "what qualifies you to be a life coach?" I've yet to get an answer that makes me go - YES, I want to be like this guy..."coach me".

On the other hand, I met a guy on an airplane the other day. I want him for a life coach. He was a professional surfer during the first part of his life. He traveled the world to go surfing. Often he only had enough money fore a one way trip. He'd figure out how to get back once he got there. (I guess every country is willing to deport America surfers.) Once his surfer days ended, he bought a sailboat and went sailing. He's been sailing ever since. Now he gets paid to cover sailing events and he's even getting funded to do some sort of sailing related reality show. "Yes - coach me."

But back to managed services... If I were going to hire or contract someone to help or mentor me on managed services, I'd want to know what they did in their managed services business. I'd want to know if they are where I'd want to be. Remember, MapQuest works reasonably well, but if you're trying to get somewhere in New York City, you're best bet is someone from New York City. There's no substitute for being there and living the life.

Next, when they tell you what they've done, make sure they can back it up. My company does a million dollars a year in managed services. I don't need someone who figured out how to get to $30K per month in managed services revenues gi9ving me pointers. I want to learn from the guy who built his managed services practice to $6 million per year, sold it to an even bigger player, put big bucks in his pocket (and in the pockets of all who helped him get there) and now he lives on his sailboat 6 months out of the year. During the other six months, he's telling folks like me what he did...out of the goodness of his heart.

No... I'm not saying that I want to sell the company. Why...how much do you have? I'm just saying that's who I'd want to learn from. It's time to step it up guys. If you're going to say you're an expert, you'd better be an expert.

Cheers
- R

Principal Based Selling

2009-03-30T12:39:00.003-04:00

Everybody out there seem to be preaching "principal based selling" (PBS) these days. In a nutshell, this mean that YOU, the principal of the business, needs to play head salesperson. The theory is that no one is your company will ever be able to communicate the message and instill the virtues of your offering in your prospects like YOU.

I have to agree that to get traction, particularly in the managed services space, if YOU built the program and YOU deeply understand the offering, then YOU are probably the best one to communicate the message with enthusiasm and get your customers on-board. PLUS, we all know that, in most companies (not mine, of course), there is often a disconnect between marketing and delivery. As the principal, YOU are uniquely positioned to understand what you should be delivering, what expectations are being set with your customers and then making sure that your technical staff makes good on those promises.

In the early stages of principal based selling, it seems that YOU will need to be involved in the entire process. You are the warm-up act and the headliner. Once you have this going, you can have someone else in your company be the warm-up act. In other words, someone else is "bird-dogging" for clients and warming them up. Then YOU, as the principal, swoops in for the close. It's a good methodology and known to work.

My problem with principal based selling is mainly the lack of scalability. YOU can only scale so far. Not to mention that the same people who had spent 10 years telling me, "Rory...you need to work ON the business, not IN the business"... Now they are telling me that I need to work IN the business. Because if principal based selling doesn't sound like working in the business, then I don't know what does. I like spending my summers in Colorado and I'd like to start spending some winter days in the BVI (somewhere near Jost Van Dyke). But I don't want sales coming to a screeching halt while I'm enjoying Bushwhackers on the beach outside of Ivan's Stress-Free Bar. So it can't all be based on me.

I've had this conversation with the evangelist of PBS and their recommendation is that I not be the only principal. I think they are suggesting we steal a chapter from banking, where everyone you meet seems to be a Vice President...or even President (of the branch). I guess you could have territory presidents, maybe a managed services president or VP? You could definitely empower others via title and authority but that's not really the name of the game. You still need to get them into your head...excited about the offering and understanding that every prospect who doesn't sign-up is doing themselves a dis-service. Right?

Our company has decided to take a hybrid approach. We do have several legitimate principals and we are often involved in the selling cycle but we believe in salespeople. If we were depending on principal based selling alone, there would be no way for us to be where we are today. Over the past several months, even while others have been down-sizing, we've been hiring...mostly in sales. Of course, I've been getting beat-up over our very high sales department compensation expenses. I keep saying it's an investment and (I know,) I know it's not an investment until there's a return. Stay tuned. I promise it's coming in Q3. :)

The key has been to not cold start anything. We're bringing in salespeople who have particular skills or a focus in our industry, as long as it's something we can deliver on...things like document imaging, procurement, logistics, software licensing, etc. That allows us to ramp that person up and have them paying for themselves very quickly. Then we train them on how to position our offering to their client base.

Is it working? This is a fairly new concept for us. We've yet to determine the sales cycle and timeframe but the pipeline is filling up and this is separate from our traditional services-led sales, which is still growing strong. YES, even in this, or should I say, particularly in this economy. But don't get me talking about the economy. That's a topic for another day.

Cheers
- R

Wal-Mart EHR

2009-03-13T14:24:00.004-04:00

If there's one thing I like about America it's being able to purchase a set of car tires, a BBQ grille for the backyard, and an electronic health records system all at the same place. And apparently, the folks at Wal-Mart think you'll want that too...as seen in the NY Times: Wal-Mart Plans to Market Digital Health Records System

The interesting thing here is Wal-Mart still believes that everything is about price and commoditization. They say they're a "high-volume, low-cost company". OK...but as you read on, all they are doing is leveraging their buying power to get huge discounts on Dell computers and this eClinicalWorks software. To me, that means that these two companies had to really drop their pants on price if Wal-Mart expects to sell this solution for approximatelty half of what others are selling it for. I can see Dell wanting to get into this deal...after all, PCs are practically entering the end-of-life stage (along with Dell) but why is the software company going for this?
Selling their soul to Wal-Mart in exchange for promises of higher sales? Hmmm?

This whole thing is a weird play in my book. Dells needs partnerships like these...plus now, with every one of these they sell they can try and sel the fries too. "Would you like to supersize that PC...oh, I mean have it managed for just a few cents more?"

But in the end...here it comes...wait for it... I can do it for less than Wal-Mart. Give me some EMR (electrronic medical records) software at any reasonable price, get rid of Dell and Wal-Mart and let me provide it to any number of doctors...hosted and managed. I can do it for less and the doctor never has to worry about the technology. Not to mention, some people might like the idea of getting their IT solutions from an IT company.

Lost in Translation

2009-02-27T14:24:00.001-05:00

OK, you guys wanted me to talk (write, whatever) more about Managed Services and MSPs, and less about cloudiness. Here goes...

The results are skewed.
And some MSPs are full of "male cow doo-doo".

"Printin' lies startin' controversy...

You wanta antagonize me?"

OK, seriously... I was hanging around with a number of MSPs a few weeks ago, in the greater Tampa area, you guys know who you are...and I gotta tell you, a lot of what you guys are doing and counting as Managed Services is NOT Managed Services...not in my book.

Let's go back to our conversation about utilization (sorry, Heath). I heard poeple saying that your service manager and/or the field engineers themselves, look for things to do and schedule themselves accordingly to fill up their days and make sure they are being fully utilized and billing for the following day.

I was sitting there wondering what in the world you guys were talking about because I wanted to talk about Managed Services. Then I realized that a lot of you are really just selling monitoring plus a block of time to bill against. That's not managed services.

Back when I invented this (and Al Gore invented the Internet), we looked at turning around the model and aligning our goals with that of our clients. We give clients a flat monthly fee based on the covered components which may include operating systems, actual hardware, etc. Then we don't deviate from that fee unless we're going outside the scope of maintenance. You guys, however, are looking for things to go wrong at your client's site, so that you can fix those things, and thus, you can make more money. That's not Managed Services. That's the old break/fix model with a little enhancement via remote monitoring and remote control.

Have you seen our video? That's Managed Services.

If you make more money when your customer experiences problems. that's not managed services, that's not a fix recurring fee, and the customer has not shifted any risk to a trusted advisor who knows how to charge a fair monthly price to support a network and still making a profit. AND...you're losing out. You've completely missed the leverage point of MSP. You should be most profitable on your clients with the least problems...they are happy because you are doing a good job. It doesn't cost them more when you do a better job...it's an investment on your part, it lowers your cost on supporting that client. That's Manages Services.

You guys are killing me. I'm dying here. :)
That's it. Next week I'm talking about clouds again.

- R

Manage THIS!

2009-02-16T12:50:00.002-05:00

OK, so here's the feedback...

"Hey Rory, I like your blog (particularly when I'm having trouble falling asleep) but wasn't it supposed to be Managed Services?"

First of all, Wisenheimer, if you're having trouble falling asleep try a ball-peen hammer. Now about this...this is about Managed Services!

I know, I've been talking a lot about cloud computing (which is a bit nebulous) but let's be perfectly clear. The hosted play is Managed Services 3.0. I was on one of those webinar web call things the other day...first one that I'd attended in a long time and I must say that i was extremely disappointed with the content...but impressed by the marketing department. The reason I tuned in was because it was marketed as, "Managed Services: What's next?" or something like that. So I thought I'd tune in and see if our visions were in alignment, close, or perhaps I had missed something.

Yeah, were runnin a little bit hot tonight.

I can barely see the road from the heat comin' off of it.

Well, we weren't even close. I don't think they ever addressed what anyone thought was "next in managed services". The whole hour turned into another one of those - what you should do to get into managed services today - and personally, I think it was more of a - what you should have done three years ago. Unfortunately, there are people out there giving the same old tired advice that they were handing out way-back-when...but times are changing people!

I think managed services, for those of us who have been doing it for a number of year...ten years in the case of my company, is what will enpower us to move forward into the ultimate managed service, which will be hosted, data center based, technology on demand. The way I explain it that customers trusted us to manage their systems - at THEIR place of business. All we're doing is saying, "Now..we can do an even better job by moving your systems to OUR HOUSE". And once we can move their systems to our house, they won't care if they are real servers or virtual servers, they won't care if it's VMware or Citrix, they won't care if it's IBM, HP or that other company...I think their name starts with a "D". Oh, no... I rememeber... Acer.

Anyway..they won't care. They will really not care once they don't even own the equipment and YOU can provide them with computing power...on demand and managed.

If you don't think The Cloud is Managed Services 3.0, just let me know.
I'll let you know when that next webinar is for MS: What's Next?