This week has been dedicated to improving the core mechanics behind our Exchange Defender Compliance Archive software and increasing the functionality it offers. This product was originally designed over two years ago, with limited functionality. This product has definitely been one of the more challenging software platforms to design and implement on a large scale. However, it’s been a very enjoyable program to design and launch. This week has been very productive and we have got a lot of new features and new tools to talk about!

· Misc. rending issues have been resolved.

· Elevated domain level access.

· Message download (.msg format).

· Import Tool ( Still being developed )

One of the biggest challenges when creating front-end GUI browser software is getting things to look and respond the same way across several browser platforms. It seems (chrome, Mozilla, opera, IE) all have their own recipe when it comes to rendering different component. One of the first issues we addressed this week was minor rending issues, increased performance and logic loops for displaying messages in the browser. None of these were huge issues, but an eye sore none the less.

We’ve had this request for a while and we finally implemented (Elevated Domain-Level Searching). This new feature allows domain admins to examine messages inside any user’s mailbox that is within the selected domain. Using this feature, you have full control inside of that mailbox just as if you were signed into that compliance mailbox. However, there is currently no way to wildcard search all mailboxes within the same domain at the same time. The processing load that would generate would be tremendous and would not be a pleasant searching experience.

One of the more elaborate features, (at least behind the scenes) is message downloading. In the past you could download messages in .eml format, which left a lot to be desired. Well, we’ve changed that this week. Now when you request a message download, it will generate the file in .msg format! Looking at this from a developer’s perspective and for anyone who has ever worked with Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook controls will understand the heartache in this area of development. The control exposes a lot of information, if you just want to look at elements and examine a message contents. However, the second you want to use the component to perform any useful operations that’s when it becomes a challenge.

The last and most important area of concern was importing mailboxes into the compliance system. This is something we’ve been working on and it should be ready in a few weeks. We’ve made a tremendous amount of progress with this tool and are very excited for its launch. When designing this tool, we’ve put message integrity at the top of the list. Some of the concerns we had about this software was handling duplicate messages and keeping them from being inserted into the archive mailbox. We also added the ability to handle program/internet crashes while messages are being imported and the ability to resume the import process.

Hank Newman
VP Development, ExchangeDefender
hank@ownwebnow.com

Dear Own Web Now Partners & Clients,

At approximately noon yesterday the data center hosting the hub of our US operations suffered a major power failure that momentarily interrupted all network services. More redundant services resumed operations immediately (ExchangeDefender) while others started recovering through emergency systems around 5 PM EST. We are incredibly sorry for the impact this has made on your operations and promise not just to compensate you through service credits but also enhance service redundancy so that this never happens again.

On behalf of the whole ExchangeDefender team, I am sorry we put you into this situation. Much like you we’ve spent a part of yesterday in the dark with no clear ETA on when the services would be restored or how this failure could have happened in the first place.

The facility that our main US operations are in boasts N+2 redundancy, over 30 days of generator fuel and is one of the largest and most reliable in the world. As a matter of fact, we consolidated our central operations here due to the issues we had in California and Florida. The facility has had an incredible service record and has allowed us to provide the same level of service to you. Yesterday the facility experienced a failure in Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) equipment designed to switch the power feed from live utility power to the power generators in the event of power loss. This was the piece of equipment that was designed to keep power available and while it is also redundant with A/B feeds, the data center distribution routers were not connected to both power banks. While our equipment remained powered on, the network connectivity remained down. This was the technical root of the issue.

Thankfully spare ATS was available and the utility, data center and supporting vendors were all available on site within the hour and completed the replacement within 5 hours of the service interruption. We did our best to keep everyone informed of everything we knew every step of the way through our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ExchangeDefender) and our Twitter @xdnoc and @ExchangDefender.

Our operating procedures also call for use of emergency failover systems should the primary systems be down for more than 4 hours. At roughly 3:30 we began restoring services to our web sites, redundant Exchange clusters and continued restoring services well into the night as the data center facility restored full operations.

ExchangeDefender inbound service was not affected by this incident as it’s massively redundant through multiple data centers. However, a disruption to the major central control in Dallas effectively flooded the failover sites and some of our partners reported email delays from minutes to even two hours. Worse, our Exchange hosting clients were impacted for 4-6 hours and with the lack of ExchangeDefender LiveArchive to back them up, it completely failed them. Again, we are sorry for this issue and will address it immediately.

At approximately 10PM EST I held a webinar for all our partners to explain in detail what happened, how we responded, what we learned and what we intend to do to fix it going forward. You can watch the webinar here (requires GoToMeeting codec)

Going Forward

First of all, we will be providing service credits to everyone that was affected which includes our entire USA client base.

Second, we will begin deployment of redundant control systems for ExchangeDefender: placing additional admin servers across our failover sites, adding more capacity to the existing ones and most importantly providing geographic redundancy to ExchangeDefender LiveArchive.

Finally, we will be adding redundancy to our Exchange 2010 networks in USA.

Expect to see major changes this quarter. While this issue never occurred before and we don’t expect it to occur again, we have learned the hard way that we need to greatly improve certain areas of the product in particular LiveArchive.

Personally, I put my name and reputation on the product and on the service we deliver. I believe we are the best and the solutions that we offer in LiveArchive and ExchangeDefender feature-wise are without comparison. We will make sure that all of the features, not just the inbound mail processing, live up to the 100% uptime expectation you should have and we have maintained on our inbound service for the past decade.

My staff has worked tirelessly throughout the day and night to keep you informed and restore service as fast as possible. I want to personally thank you for your professionalism and the way you treated us during this difficult time. While it’s easy to lose composure and patience when services are down and there is limited visibility/ETA on resolution, almost universally the comments included “Well that sucks but I’m glad it’s you dealing with this and not me.” While I appreciate it, I do feel we failed you.

Our operations will remain in Dallas at the existing data center facility because simply put – they are the best. Even with the power incident which was the first one that we’ve experienced in nearly a decade of working with them, this is the kind of an issue Microsoft, Google and Amazon experience on a weekly basis. Cloud services are about providing an affordable IT solution through massively scalable equipment which is incredibly complex – it is not foolproof nor easy to fix when it goes down but the benefits are that you and your clients are not on the hook for a repair bill, equipment or the amount of manpower required to manage it all. Best of all, problems such as those experienced yesterday can be minimized and we will begin to work on that today.

Again, I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you and your clients. I know we are fortunate to earn your business and the trust you put in us and our features that are designed to keep you up and running when your systems are affected. I’m attaching some resources that you can pass on to your staff or your clients as you see fit. I look forward to talking to everyone that was affected by this and while I work my way through the messages, emails and callback requests I hope the videos and resources we provided so far offer some clarity as to what happened and what we intend to do next.

Thank you for your business.

Sincerely,

Vlad Mazek, MCSE

CEO Own Web Now Corp

Resources:

ExchangeDefender NOC: http://www.ownwebnow.com/noc

XD Twitter Feed: http://www.twitter.com/xdnoc

ExchangeDefender Twitter Feed: http://www.twitter.com/exchangdefender

Partner Webinar about the incident: http://www.ownwebnow.com/media/Cloudpocalypse.wmv

In a few moments we will begin the upgrade of our network to ExchangeDefender 7. The process will be seamless to our users and we don’t expect any issues. We are prepared for the unexpected issues and here are some suggestions:

1. Sign up for the Network Operations Blog updates (http://www.ownwebnow.com/noc)

2. If you don’t like web / RSS feeds, check out our Twitter feed (http://www.twitter.com/XDNOC)

3. Make sure you have distributed the User Guides to your end users so they can navigate the new User Interface. Link to end user collateral is here.

During The Upgrade

Check the NOC first (web / @xdnoc). We will be posting updates there and to the Twitter feed as soon as we identify and document a bug.

If you see an issue that has not been addressed, open a support request at https://support.ownwebnow.com

Call us at +1 (407) 209-3276 if the issue is urgent. Note: This number will be discontinued after the launch on June 1, 2011.

Earlier today we sent a newsletter announcing the launch of ExchangeDefender 7, the integration between Shockey Monkey and Kaseya as well as the educational content that we’re creating for everyone looking to get to the cloud.

Unfortunately, one line caught the eye of many of you:

“Over the past month and a half we have been working with so many of our partners on ExchangeDefender 7 that I’m really sad this will be the final newsletter as Own Web Now Corp.”

Apparently, some of you stopped reading at that point

Allow me to explain: Over the past 2 years we spent significant resources into promoting and marketing ExchangeDefender. It is the backbone of our communications infrastructure, business continuity as well as our biggest and most popular product. Everyone we talk to knows about ExchangeDefender, nobody knows about Own Web Now Corp.

So we’re rebranding and retiring Own Web Now Corp and going forward will consolidate our brands and sites under ExchangeDefender. This has been announced at a number of blog posts and previous newsletters so I feel silly having to state it here again but for the record, we’re not going out of business.

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.

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