LocalCloud 2.1
We’ve released an update to the desktop version of ExchangeDefender LocalCloud. We’ve spent a few days sifting through bugs reported via (The bug section) @ support.ownwebnow.com for ExchangeDefender LocalCloud and those are the ones we focused on and fixed. Listed below are the hand full of bugs that were isolated and corrected. You can find the most recent version (v1.2), here.
· Fixed an issue that would cause the application to crash upon launch.
o This issue was caused by invalid .ICO files being supplied for branding. Even though it explicitly states that you must provide .ICO files for the Product Icon:, we had users uploading (jpg, gif, png) files.
· Fixed an issue that would prevent files from being deleted from the cloud upon request.
· Fixed an issue that would cause the application to continuously download/synchronize files.
While out team was busy correcting the issues reported for the desktop version of LocalCloud, we finalized our initial Web Version of the file sharing software. The web interface is a slightly trimmed down version of the Desktop Software, for what should be obvious reasons.
The Web Interface Offers, (Fully Integrated – into the admin.exchangedefender.com (USER) control panel.) the ability to view, download and upload files to your personal /shared LocalCloud accounts.
The accounts you have access to will be located in the left panel and their content is located to the right. You can easily transverse through the file structures to either upload or download a desired file. Complete with real time file upload & download status and located at the bottom of the screen is your storage quota. Now you can view & access your files from virtually anywhere.
Blogging Something New
If you’ve followed our blog for a while you have seen us mostly focus on the product development, support, marketing and all things related to ExchangeDefender. No change there, but I have something new: we have chosen to start adding more technology consulting content that can help you with our solutions.
As we have grown so have our partners. Many of whom are hiring technical and business staff that doesn’t have in-depth knowledge of the increasingly complex and legally challenging landscape of modern communications. As our solutions help businesses manage operations, communicate, store data and collaborate it’s on to us to help you tell a compelling story.
Simply put, we are doubling down on the educational and training resources at ExchangeDefender.
Our webinar on August 28th will feature a lot of new stuff and we will cover the new versions of ExchangeDefender, Shockey Monkey, Unicorn, LocalCloud and several new initiatives meant to help you grow your business and make your clients more efficient. We will use this blog as a run up to that webinar, posting educational content that will give you more background about everything we are doing, how we see our partners taking advantage of our solutions, where opportunities are and what potential pitfalls you need to avoid.
You have to pay attention. Or choose to ignore it. I have many conversations with our partners on the polar opposites of satisfaction with our content: To some our information and our people are priceless – for others there is just too much stuff and stuff is hard to find. Strategically, after much debate and internal arguing, we have chosen to continue putting out more content and Google search for specific questions that folks ask us for from time to time. If you can’t find it on the web site, call us or chat with us and we’ll track it down. I have to be honest with you – the business IT is now far more serious than it was 5 or 10 years ago, the legal exposure is great, dealing with liabilities and regulatory compliance is a challenge that is a part of our value proposition. We will take our time to train you and make you successful because if we cannot jointly solve these problems and help our clients succeed above those that don’t care… then there is no reason for us to be in business. I truly believe that and the whole team at ExchangeDefender believes that.
We believe that our most profitable days are ahead of us which is why we are spending money on these solutions just as others are trying to sell theirs for scrap: The difference now is that the easy money may have already been made and the most profitable projects ahead will require skill beyond IT and ability to provide guidance beyond what can be found in a quick Google search.
We will help you as little or as much as you need us and on behalf of the entire team here, thank you for your business.
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, ExchangeDefender
vlad@ownwebnow.com
877-546-0316 x500
ExchangeDefender Managed Launch
We are holding a very special webinar on August 28th to announce the launch of a new service to supplement our ExchangeDefender Exchange, SharePoint and Lync offering. If you currently work with ExchangeDefender and have a growing business I cannot possibly encourage you more than to attend this event and learn what we are doing to make it possible for you to grow faster. Please register as soon as possible as seating is limited and recording will be available only to active partners:
Wed, Aug 28, 2013 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM EDT
Seriously, if you attend one webinar of ours this year.. make it this one. People have been begging us to offer these services through our partners since the launch of Managed Messaging last year and we’re going at it 100%.
We have a limited availability of the new services we will be announcing and they will be limited to our active partners as we hire on more people and scale the service out to meet the demand that we expect to be off the charts.
If you have not had a chance to hear our last webinar, please take a look at it. We have spent the past 9 months on reengineering our new solutions and implementing a new level of discipline across the organization including the SSAE16 audit. The amount of work, efford, training and migrations we have executed has prepared us to take this next leap into helping our parters grow faster.
As you will hear me say repeatedly during the webinar, the time to gain a massive market share in the cloud is now. This is likely the only time you will get to properly position your solution as the one that has support backing and is designed and managed for business, not for freebie advertising sales. While we do not have anything against the solutions offered by Microsoft and Google, the problem businesses have with communications are far different than those of consumers and everyday email consumers. Communication is critical to a business, as is compliance, protection from lawsuits and ability to enforce corporate policies, encrypt sensitive information and have an organization that will answer the call and help with an email issue any day.
Please join us. We feel that the hundreds or thousands of dollars you will earn on the very first deployment are well worth being there. You need to understand the business model and we are here to help you build around it.
ExchangeDefender SQL Balancer Maintenance Window
This Friday, July 19th, 2013 we will be conducting an upgrade, stress testing and DDoS simulation against ExchangeDefender SQL backend, load balancer backend and the overall infrastructure fault tolerance starting at 3PM and ending at 6PM EST.
During the maintenance window mail flow will not be interrupted and mail delivery will not be delayed. Access to email, LiveArchive, mobile services and so on will not be interrupted either. Access to https://admin.exchangedefender.com site, including the ability to make configuration changes or release SPAM, will be interrupted periodically. Again, no email will be lost or delayed.
Following the upgrade our capacity across the core ExchangeDefender network will be increased which will enable us to launch additional services that will be discussed in the upcoming webinar. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes your clients as they may be presented with the message “We are currently conducting routine maintenance, please try your request again in a few minutes”
Scope of the effort
Isn’t this something you could do outside of the peak hours?
Yes, and we routinely make changes and upgrades during the standard weekend maintenance intervals.
For the purposes of this upgrade and an assessment of the new failover systems brought to the new version of ExchangeDefender, we wanted to run a maintenance interval during the peak usage and ascertain both our ability to handle traffic with the brains of the system offline (ExchangeDefender SQL) as well as test geographic redundancy during peak hours.
We felt it was better to have this done at the same time on a scheduled and controlled circumstances than under the unplanned service outage or DDoS.
As I will discuss next week, we have spent a fair amount of money and time upgrading the network not just to be able to sustain excessive outages but also distributed attacks, hacks and so on. We expect to be able to operate the network in a distributed and autonomous environment should we experience massive changes in Internet routing and availability of global networks. If you’ve been paying attention to the news, international government response to NSA espionage, rise in sophisticated hacking and network exploit activity, the reasons and the manner in which we are executing this maintenance window should be self explanatory.
As always, our staff will be available in higher than usual counts so please count on us.
We will also be providing a play-by-play updates as usual via NOC and our @xdnoc twitter.
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, ExchangeDefender
877-546-0316 x500
The Price Is Right–Maybe
Before joining ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey full time in September 2012, I was a business owner of two I.T. VAR/MSP businesses spanning over a decade. That said, I am fully empathetic of the decisions that have to be made by all who hold that position. Being one of two Partner Communication Managers working for OwnWebNow Corp. (Anastasia Wiggins being my colleague), I speak with our partners on a daily basis. Inevitably, one of the subjects that come up doing a partner conversation is how much they are charging for services rendered–whether we are discussing our services or labor costs in general. Ultimately the conversation starts by the partner asking me what the going rate is for other partners reselling our services. My answer is always the same: It depends…
The reason for such a vague answer is because the answer primarily involves taking into account two major considerations:
1. The location the service is being rendered, i.e. city/State, and/or region; and
2. The time/complexity it takes to render said service, e.g. setup time, monitoring time, complexity of the technology, etc.
Let’s delve further into these two considerations and come to a more defined answer for your particular business.
The Location of Render Services.
As Partner Communication Manager, one of my jobs responsibilities is to attend I.T. events that ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey sponsor. These events are held all over North America. The summer months have definitely tested my love of travel. However, by visiting these different cities and regions of the United States; I have come to understand that Midtown New York can charge $3.50 for a 20 ounce Coke Zero that costs me $1.50 in Schaumburg, IL. The same is true with virtually every product or service between the two aforementioned locations. Similar to the real estate market, the location (location, location) will greatly dictate your pricing. Densely, fast moving cities tend to price higher than more rural, spread out towns. The reasoning is maddening to understand because most times it simply boils down to the fact that people are willing to pay more for services rendered in cities that never sleep. Even stranger, this can be totally independent concerning the amount of competition available to the customer. By that, I mean even if there are numerous competitors in the area, people will still pay an inflated price in bigger cities. This is due to something called involuntary competitive pricing. This is where a price for a particular service was set by a business and the competition set their pricing +/- 10% to show an added value or discounted price while maintaining close proximity to similar business offering like services.
The Time/Complexity to Render Services.
The old adage still applies: Time is money. And when the complexity of the service rendered increases, ultimately the time it takes to implement and/or monitor said service increases as well. As a result, you could be looking at a nice pay day. However, the inverse is also true. If your service can be seen as less a specialty and more a commodity, you may have to supplement your income to make ends meet. How can your services be seen as commodities? Increased competition, for one. The lack of complexity is another. If end-users are willing to take on the additional pain of implementation and monitoring services to reduce their operating budget, there isn’t much you can do to win that business except provide additional value added services they may not get by taking on the responsibility themselves. Be careful of this, however. If you give away too much, you will end up working twice as hard for less money. Never, ever, ever work for free. Assuming you are a for profit business, never forget that one of the primary reasons you started a business was to make a profit!
The Sales Pitch (You can skip this part if we ever spoke on the phone about ExchangeDefender services.)
ExchangeDefender is a partner-driven company–meaning without our partners, we might as well close shop and sell empanadas. We price our services to you with the idea that you can make as little or as much as these two considerations allow. I have seen markets where partner can make as much as a 33% profit margin on our products and services. Other partners literally give our products away as value added services in order to balance out their labor costs. The latter is normally performed to illustrate good form in giving something to the customer at no charge to you. In other words, they simply pass on the cost of the product to the customer or carry the cost themselves in order to sign an annuity contract. Point being, if you need assistance in reselling any of our products, pick up the phone and give me a call. You have 99 problems as a business owner, but making money off our services shouldn’t be one of them.
Michael D. Alligood,
Partner Communications Manager
ExchangeDefender | Shockey Monkey
877-546-0316 x707
How do I get more referrals?
You’ve all seen the commercials; it starts something like, “refer a friend and get $50 off your next bill” or something of that nature. In traditional consumer-based businesses, this type of targeted marketing may have its place, but in SMB and B2B businesses it just comes off as desperate. Of course, this is not to say that it may not have worked for your IT business, but hoping to bribe a customer to give up a referral is not good practice.
Another common but bad business practice is asking for referrals upon closing a sale. Whether a salesman hands you a paper and asks you to write down some friends who might also be interested in their product, or one that simply asks for a referral at the signing, this practice is not only useless, but makes for a bad first impression. The problem is that the salesperson, and more so the company has not yet proven their service, so asking for a referral at this point in the game is bad practice.
There are a few ways of getting referrals without the used car approach:
1. Refer Business to Your Customers – Referrals are a two-way street, start by sending business to your customers. Set up meetings and soft introductions to introduce people to your loyal customers. Not only is this a good business practice, but also your customers will reciprocate.
2. Ask When Receiving Good Survey Results – Surveys are a great way to gauge how you are performing for your customers. When receiving good reviews simply ask customers if they know anyone that might also be interested in getting excellent service as well.
3. Face-to-Face QBR’s – A good time to ask for referrals are at face-to-face QBR’s, or quarterly business reviews. Make it a part of your QBR to ask for referrals at the end of every QBR. It may seem like much to do it every time, but getting a hot referral can be all about timing.
The majority of MSP’s would tell you they get the majority of their business from referrals. This makes practicing good referral gathering techniques an important aspect of your business. Be sure to only ask for referrals once you have established a relationship with a customer, and create a documented process for your salespeople to follow.
Compliance Promotion Is Ending Soon
It’s summer time and we are promoting two products for the month of July! Right now we are offering fifty percent off Corporate Encryption and Compliance Archiving. Not sure if these services are right for your customers? Here’s a brief overview of each.
Compliance Archiving
Two things to consider when wondering if this is something your clients need or should consider:
1) The name of the product speaks for itself, compliance. ExchangeDefender’s Compliance Archiving service is compliant in accordance with HIPAA, FINRA, SOX, and SEC as well as many other standards that are published by nearly every industry. Compliance works through the Exchange journaling technology; once the service is set up all messages sent and received will be delivered to the compliance service. In addition to meeting requirements of archiving all inbound and outbound mail, Compliance Archiving also covers interoffice email which can help your clients in HR disputes and lawsuits.
2) Don’t worry about storage costs. There are other products on the market similar to ExchangeDefender’s Compliance Archiving, but those products require contracts and additional storage fees forcing you to compromise on the length of storage or which data gets archived. ExchangeDefender provides unlimited storage and stores ten years worth of email beginning on the date the service is set up (p.s. We can also import your old mail as well). Compliance Archiving allows you to offer your clients a long term storage solution in addition to giving them access to years’ worth of emails at the click of a button without a compromise of excessive storage fees or selective archiving of only the “important stuff” because when people get in legal trouble everything becomes important and relevant.
Compliance Encryption
Corporate Encryption is especially important for those clients in the health care, financial and legal field or anyone who is in charge of sensitive information. ExchangeDefender’s Corporate Encryption is able to encrypt based on message patterns (lexicons, dictionaries) as well as preset patterns like social security, credit card and sender/recipient email addresses. If you need to block data leakage on a more sophisticated level, such as custom account numbers, we can help you there as well. Encryption is a product we take extremely seriously and it takes about a week to get all the paperwork, testing and implementation completed so please call us ahead of time to get it all set.
Don’t let this slip by you, you have until July 31st. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at: Anastasia@ownwebonw.com, or 877-546-0316 x 739.
On the Road Again…
June has turned out to be a busy month for ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey! Thank you all who stopped by our booth during the Autotask Live conference this week. It is always a pleasure to talk to our partners face to face. With that said, ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey will be represented at the following events in the month of June:
12th International Cloud Expo
June 10th – June 13th
Javits Center, New York City
ASCII Baltimore
June 12th – June 13th
BWI Airport Marriott
Level Platforms MSP Community Summit
June 17th – June 19th
The Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas
If you are attending any of these events, drop by our booth and let’s talk about your business and how a partnership with ExchangeDefender can assist your company in increasing its service revenues.
If you are unable to attend any of these events, shoot me an email at michael@ownwebnow.com or phone call at 877-546-0316 x707. I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you have about ExchangeDefender services and our Shockey Monkey platform.
Michael D. Alligood,
Partner Communications Manager
ExchangeDefender | Shockey Monkey
877-546-0316 x707
Is Changing your Logo a Good Idea?
Some businesses change their logo as often as they change their printer ink, while others have maintained the same logo for decades. Branding your company with a good logo can provide your community 
with familiarity, awareness of your business, and can help to create loyalty. Understanding how your logo impacts your business and why and when to change it can help you to create a lasting brand image.
A simple search on some of your favorite corporate brands will show you the importance of modifying or changing your logo. Companies like Apple, Pepsi, and just about all-major brands have gone through revisions of their company logo over the years. Though there is no standardized rule for how often to change your logo it is definitely a good idea to do this periodically.
Pepsi for instance appears to be on a roughly ten-year cycle for their logo. This has worked pretty well. When you look at the history of the logo image, you can see how it has changed with the times. The logo reflects the period and you can easily see how certain versions now look dated. This is what can happen to your logo as well. Looking at just about any other corporate logo history will have this same outcome of some previous logos looking dated.
A logo and brand refresh can be good for business and can breathe new life and excitement into a business. Though we would caution complete brand makeovers as these can sometimes muddy a brand and confuse customers, and should only be done when it is absolutely necessary. Instead, look at the top corporate companies and take a cue from them. Most of these logos have slight but impactful changes that give the brand a new and fresh approach.
Personally I like the ten year approach to a logo change, though in the IT and MSP world, a five year schedule may be more effective given the amount of change in the products and industry. Changing your logo more often than this may not compliment the goal of brand awareness, and actually can potentially hurt business.
Sun-Sational Summer Savings Promotion!!!
This summer we are going to be running an ExchangeDefender Sun-Sational Summer Savings Promotion! When you use the promotional code you will get Compliance Archiving and Corporate Encryption for 50% OFF! Compliance Archiving will be priced at $2.00/user/month and Corporate Encryption at $0.50/user/month. When the promotional code is used to set up new accounts they will be grandfathered in at this price for the life of the active account.
Compliance Archiving has recently gotten a facelift! With the new design there are many improvements! There is a completely new and improved UI that is easy to use and navigate through. Also, we have implemented paging into the product and fine tuned the search functionality. In addition, there are more customizable options to better fit your needs. This is a solution that you should really add to your solution set!
ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption provides an easy and seamless way for organizations of all sizes to implement content protection and comprehensive control over information being sent through email. It includes pattern-matching encryption, comprehensive reporting, corporate encryption mechanisms, and lexicon dictionaries. Corporate Encryption is very easy to promote and it is also extremely easy to add to your solutions set and offer because there are so many benefits associated with using it. A great thing to point out about Corporate Encryption is the ability to have more control. You can better monitor your network and be aware of things that are going on. You can define keywords and patterns, so that when certain things that you are concerned about happen you will know about them and be alerted. There are also legal and HR benefits of protecting both company data and employees and prevent important data from being leaked or sent out. Both Compliance Archiving and Corporate Encryption are compliant with SOX, HIPAA, SEC and local government requirements to provide you with more protection and powerful auditing.
The promotion will be running all summer from June 1st through July 31st! Use the coupon code listed in the image when signing up a new account and enjoy your savings!
For more information refer to our ExchangeDefender Promotions page.
Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com