Spam Show 4

If you are good enough in business you get to develop great relationships with some impressive people. If you succeed at that, you make some remarkable friends that enrich your entire experience. I believe we’ve demonstrated that to a great degree with this weeks SPAM Show. As I originally stated when we started doing the show, it is all about friends joining and talking about the trends in our business. This week we were lucky enough to get Joe Panettieri from MSP Mentor to discuss MSP business trends and developments.

In particular, we addressed many of the developments and the surrounding economic state we find ourselves in. We all discussed where we are seeing growth and where we are seeing shrinkage, opportunities and threats.

This has by far been the most entertaining podcast I have ever heard or been a part of. If you don’t agree and don’t laugh along there is no hope for you – but if you’re busy, overwhelmed, concerned or anywhere in between – listen to the show #4 and let us cheer you up!

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

Notes: Podcast submitted to iTunes and will be available this week on your iPhones and iPods. In the meantime, you will have to use the feed directly or listen straight from our web site. Second of all, huge thanks to Karl @ SMBBooks for hooking us up with a conference bridge!

Note 2: The SPAM Show now has it’s own landing page for longer show notes, sponsorships and better distribution. Check it out, let us know if you’re interested in sponsoring us: http://ownwebnow.com/spamshow

Own Web Now in 2009

Dear Clients, Partners and Friends,

I wanted to offer you a sincere statement about the state of Own Web Now Corp at this time.

First, the great news: We have posted yet another record quarter with record high revenues, profits and user counts. We are the largest we have ever been, and all products are currently at all time highs. We are on track to release half a dozen new products in 2009, and the feedback over the past few months has been overwhelmingly positive as we’ve introduced massive improvements to financial reporting, service management and support.

The good news is that, despite (or rather, in spite of) the poor economy, we are poised for record growth in 2009. We have worked very hard to introduce the kinds of products that users simply cannot live without and we will introduce new, more affordable solutions in 2009.

All the good news aside, things are far from perfect at Own Web Now. If there is one area we have struggled in over the years, it’s been consistency. This unfortunate problem comes as a result of rapid growth and, at times, overworked staff, poor management and issues with process control. Computers are easier to manage than people, and in an environment where people, objectives, metrics and software change rapidly, the problems become very apparent. We have worked very hard to address this issue, develop additional processes and assure that the improvements we have made over the past few months are sustained and not empty gestures soon to be forgotten.

Over the next few months I will be introducing you to the ITIL methodology we have implemented at Own Web Now. I will also be going in depth about our process, our reporting, our controls and our inputs.

For starters, our documentation efforts are now managed by the very same people that provide support online, in person and over the phone. As you may imagine, we answer certain questions repeatedly. Staff is now allocated time to pick repetitive questions, provide them directly to me and vote on the most complete and comprehensive answer. I believe this will create a reliable training platform and more connected community around our services.

Our communication platform for the most part has consisted of this blog. We have extended this in 2008 with the Network Operations site and in 2009 we have added Twitter as well as regular newsletter mailings. Encompassing it all is a new OWN podcast bringing you not just the news from us, but our industry as a whole. People discover, consume and respond to information in different ways. There is no unified way to alert everyone, so we are responding to the mediums that our clients and partners follow. Podcasts are not for everyone but an equal number of people absolutely despises whitepapers and network maintenance alerts. As a last resort, for the ultra-busy, your PAM is always there to answer any questions you may have. If you want to follow our every move, that’s possible too. For everyone in the middle we have a number of solutions as well. It’s a mix, much like our partner and client base.

The past few months have been all about documenting and improving the company as a whole. As you know from working with us, we’ve done this in the past with our infrastructure. We have worked very hard to get to this point, and we’ve had to let some bad habits die and some grow up, both as a technology and as a company.

I appreciate your continued business. I hope you see these improvements as positive. We not only believe in the future of our business model, but that the numbers are showing that it is the hottest thing available right now. As you trust us with your and your clients’ network operations, I want to assure you that we are committed to remaining the leader in this space and helping you grow through these hard times.

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, Own Web Now Corp

Customer Support Notice: Phone Availability

We will be conducting a phone system upgrade tonight at 10 PM EST – 2 AM EST. During this time frame we will not be available for contact over the phone and all urgent requests should be handled through the support portal at http://www.ownwebnow.com as usual.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and hope that you will find the new features coming with the new system worth the wait.

Centralized Service Control Panels

Many of you have been looking forward to this day, and I am glad to announce the launch of OWN Service Manager dashboard for centralized management of all our services:

You can access this service in our Support Portal right now by clicking on Service Manager tab at the top. If you don’t see this tab, you are not a Client Admin (someone on your staff can give you access)

The entire system is centralized and linked in our process: billing, invoicing, support, documentation, fulfillment and projects are all tied to this service panel. This means that we can integrate all of these services with third party PSAs, offer our support direct to your clients under your own brand/label… I hope this gives you an idea what we are going to work on for the rest of 2009 🙂

Welcome to 2009!

Dear Friends, Clients, Partners, Happy New Year!

Thank you for a fantastic 2008. Not only have we seen our service deployments and contracts grow at a tremendous rate but we have also undertaken a record expansion in our Global Network Services platform offering Exchange, SharePoint, Enteprise Offsite Backups, Virtual Hosting and more from the European Union (United Kingdom, Nethrelands, France and Germany), Canada as well as Australia. Our flagship product, ExchangeDefender, grew from a pure security service to one that also plays a key part in the business continuity and disaster recovery.

We look forward to an incredible 2009. With key hires and services delivery platform built for speed and value we believe that our solutions will be a great answer to what may be a tough economic cycle.

We will be introducing several new products in 2009.

We will also be making some interesting changes to the support of the existing offerings.

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2009!

Once you go black…

It’s no secret that we’ve had a phenomenal year at Own Web Now, thanks to the thousands of our partners that support, guide and deploy our products worldwide. Today is the day after Thanksgiving in United States, also known as Black Friday where frugal shoppers wake up early to get the best deals and save a lot of money.

As a small business, we know a lot about saving money.

And as a small business that was built on top of really hard work and dedication to the mission, we want to do something special for the people that work as hard as we do – while most are taking a day off. We want to do something we’ve never done before.

We’re going to hold our own Black Friday special sale today and today only. If you are currently an active partner (meaning you have some paid services with us) you can buy the following to run your own business:

Up to 5 Hosted Exchange 2007 mailboxes

20 GB Mailbox limit

20 GB SharePoint v3 DB limit

ExchangeDefender MSP Branding

$1 / month / mailbox (each)

Optional: $99 BES (setup), $0/month.

Valid from right now till midnight, Friday, November 28th, 2008. No rainchecks, not for resale (your own company only), not crippled/limited (full OWA, Outlook/MAPI) not a promotional offer.

Please place the request through the Services > Buy Services and mention this offer in the notes. Due to the expected demand there may be a 48 hour delay in activating your service. Offer valid only for partners with active/paying services on record prior to this posting.

SE

Wow, you are open today!

This subject has been heard and seen all over our support portal today as our global customers pause in wonder that we are working during Thanksgiving.

Yes, yes, yes, we are always open. No, we never close. As a global company doing business with partners in over 150 countries over 5 continents, we never take a break from working for you.

24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and every fourth we put in one more.

To all our partners around the world showing the same level of dedication you show to your clients, we wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and thank you for your business!

Better Support!

Dear Partners, Clients and friends of Own Web Now,

Thank you for your loyalty.

Due to the unprecedented growth in our product portfolio that was built on the feedback and testing of our awesome partner base, the success of the new wave of OWN products from ExchangeDefender to Shockey Monkey, from Offsite Backups to SharePoint + Exchange and ongoing growth in the cloud services…. we’ve grown, again!

Starting yesterday we have added three new support teams already trained in everything we do across all platforms. This means better support for our products, ability to launch the new products and extend more commercial support for upcoming announcements (stay tuned)

You read that right. In this down economy we have invested in our future and doubled our support staff to keep you ahead of the curve. I hope this makes up for the recent support issues some have experienced, nearly all of my available support staff has been in training and training the new folks to make sure the support is perfect from day one.

This is our mission, this is our promise: As we grow, we will improve our service and deliver more value. Thank you for making this possible and for your continued business. To thank you for bringing your business and helping OWN grow I want you to keep an eye on the new pricing to be announced on this blog tomorrow. Pricing will go up (across product lines, some significantly) but current clients and providers will be paying even less in certain cases and will have the pricing tiers grandfathered for all future orders.

How is that for the true partnership? Again, thank you all!

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

Just Released: ExchangeDefender Outlook 2007 Addin

ExchangeDefender Outlook 2007 Addin has been released and is available for immediate download at www.exchangedefender.com. We have designed this new software to help you interact with the ExchangeDefender security service without leaving the comfort of your Microsoft Outlook 2007 interface. No more waiting for reports, no more trying to guess the ExchangeDefender portal password, no more hunting for statistics or forwarding SPAM – we have simplified the whole process of interacting with the service that keeps your mailbox clean.

• What can you do with ExchangeDefender Outlook 2007 Addin? Just about everything you can do from the web portal!
• You can view the realtime SPAM and SureSPAM quarantines right in your Outlook at a click of a button.
• Manage your trusted senders list.
• Quickly locate messages by searching for subject or sender.
• Report SPAM to improve filtering or send email to our team for troubleshooting.
• View domain statistics and see what ExchangeDefender is doing.

Of course, every aspect of the software is brandable to reflect your corporate image, we’ve even included documentation templates that you can use to inform your users of this new solution that is provided at no additional cost!