ExchangeDefender 7 Followup
As we mentioned previously in the ExchangeDefender 7 Bugfix update, the move to ExchangeDefender 7 has gone remarkably well. This is in no small part a tribute to our partners who have helped us beta test the solution. So thank you for making ExchangeDefender 7 a success for everyone.
Over the next two months we will be holding series of webinars to cover the new solutions that are part of ExchangeDefender 7. Past year has seen ExchangeDefender grow in both features as well as pricing points so we want to help explain how ExchangeDefender can help boost profits when it’s positioned, sold and implemented the right way.
This is where you can help us out. Email webinar@ownwebnow.com with questions or suggestions for content that would help you and your staff get more out of ExchangeDefender. We are currently planning webinars covering all aspects of the product sales, positioning, marketing and ongoing support. This is your opportunity to have us design educational material around the topics you have problems with.
July
ExchangeDefender will be at the Microsoft WPC 2011 in Los Angeles and CompTIA Breakaway in Washington DC. We look forward to meeting you in person.
Our new site, projecting the ExchangeDefender brand, will be launching later this month.
We are moving our headquarters to a brand new space in a beautiful building in Downtown Orlando.
The redesigned archiving product will be made available this month as well, we look forward to sharing it with you.
All in all, our July will be insane!
Documentation, Webinars & More
We’ve received a few inquiries about the ExchangeDefender guides for ExchangeDefender 7. Here they are. You can download the PDF and forward it along but if you wish to customize it and use your own logo, download the PPT.
ExchangeDefender Domain Admin Guide (pdf)
ExchangeDefender Domain Admin Guide (ppt – brandable)
ExchangeDefender Service Provider Guide (pdf)
Note: You probably do not want to distribute the Service Provider Guide but we’ve made it available just in case.
Training videos will be available today as well at www.exchangedefender.com
ExchangeDefender 7 Bugfix Update
It’s been nearly four days since the launch of ExchangeDefender 7 and we wanted to offer you an update on how things were going. In a word: astonishing! This is the best launch we’ve ever had by a country mile and for the first time ever we’re not receiving complaints about the UI, mostly thanks to the marketing and client facing documentation being delivered well in advance. We’ve been receiving glowing compliments on the new UI and we’ve worked extremely hard on the QA process.
Gabriel Gonzales has been in charge of the QA followup process for ExchangeDefender so if you’ve found an issue with it, you’ve spoken to Gabriel or Frankie. We wanted to make sure that all management levels were available to you with a clear development schedule so we can fix problems right away. The average turnaround time on bugs to fixes has been under an hour.
Good news: Great feedback, lots of excitement about the new product and happy clients.
Bad news: It’s not perfect. Lot’s of performance enhancements in the works, new marketing in the plans and the ExchangeDefender Gold program coming soon.. but in the meantime, here is the list of fixed bugs just in case you’re asked about them by your clients – the bugs have been fixed.
Encrypted Email New Account Enrollment Not Working
After properly inputting all the required information into the New Account Enrollment form the end user would click on the “Enroll” button but it would not create the account or move on to the next screen. Status: Fixed
ED7 Branding locked up
When trying to set up the Branding for the through the ED7 configuration portal the “Default Footer” text box is greyed out and does not allow any changes. Status: Fixed
ED7 Cannot delete Domain account through SP portal
When trying to delete a domain account through the SP level ED admin portal client receives the following error:
“ Account Not Deleted
Could not delete [domain] because it does not belong to you.” Status: Fixed
ED7 Change Configuration drop down at the SP level coming up blank
After selecting the change configuration from the drop down menu next to a domain at the SP level the resulting page comes up blank and any changes cannot be submitted unless everything is filled in. Status: Fixed
Encrypted Email attachments not opening
End user cannot open an attachment from an encrypted email that has spaces or any special characters in them.
For example: P60 Year End Certificate.pdf Status: Fixed
ED7 Compliance Archive
When the end user tries to click on a message stored in the ComplianceArchive they are unable to view the message. Status: Fixed
ED7 WebShare e-mail link Not Working
Recipients receive an “Error – Page Not Found” when clicking the link in the email from Web Share. Status: Fixed
ED7 WebShare unable to Upload and Download documents
End User receives a “File cannot be Downloaded” error from the WebShare portal. Status: Fixed
ED7 Mail Logs not Displaying correctly
Trying to search the mail logs for an Outbound message and instead of displaying the result as “from” their client “to” the outside recipients the “Search Result” comes back as if it was an Inbound message. Status: Fixed
ED7 Empty Blacklist After Migrating from ED5
During the transition from ED5 to ED7 the contents of the blacklist from ED5 do not show up on ED7. Status: Fixed
On behalf of my entire team, thank you! Thank you so much for working with us and being amazing partners in development and launch of our flagship product. We couldn’t ask for more. Thank you!
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
ExchangeDefender 7 Upgrade
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.
ExchangeDefender 7 User Collateral
ExchangeDefender 7 is officially less than two weeks from going live and you need to prepare your clients for it. While the new user interface is more intuitive than ever before, faster and simpler, people hate and resist change. Take a moment to download the user guides and send them along to your clients. We have ExchangeDefender branded PDFs that are ready to go:
Download ExchangeDefender Branded PDF Guides:
ExchangeDefender Outlook 2007/2010 Agent Guide
ExchangeDefender Email Reports
ExchangeDefender Web File Sharing Guide
If you have some time we recommend that you customize these guides for your client base. Below are PowerPoint 2007/2010 versions of the documents listed above. Make sure you replace “ExchangeDefender” with your product name and “your IT Solution Provider” with your company name.
Download Brandable PowerPoint Guides:
ExchangeDefender Outlook 2007/2010 Agent Guide
ExchangeDefender Email Reports
ExchangeDefender Web File Sharing Guide
Please make sure your clients are aware of the changes and familiarize them with the new look and feel of the site. This is the largest UI change we’ve had in the past 8 years and from prior experience, giving your users a heads up will make all the difference in the world when it comes to product and service satisfaction.
Thank you for all your support and your business, we’re counting down the days till May 30/31 when the new product officially goes live!
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
ExchangeDefender 7, Kaseya & Shockey Monkey, Looks Cloudy
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
ExchangeDefender 7 Beta Launch
On Wednesday we held our largest webcast ever and the amount of praise we have gotten from you is astonishing – not surprising though, considering that all but 3 features you requested made it into the product. We want to make sure we meet the expectations and make the product as perfect as possible – so we’d like to invite you to test drive it and tell us what needs to be fixed.
We are less than a month away from the launch of ExchangeDefender 7, the largest product and the largest upgrade in the company history. With ExchangeDefender 5 we changed the way you think about communications security and we made it affordable for everyone. With ExchangeDefender 6 we upgraded the entire backend of the network to sustain your growth and the emerging threats and market demands. With ExchangeDefender 7 we are introducing a brand new, unified, user experience.
So, are you ready? Here you go, URLs and instructions are in the document:
http://www.ownwebnow.com/blog/media/ExchangeDefender7Beta.pdf
Sincerely,
Vladimir Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
ExchangeDefender Chief Software Architect
ExchangeDefender 7 Beta Launch Webinar
This Wednesday we will be holding a webinar to introduce you to the ExchangeDefender 7 beta launch. The one hour show will be recorded but you really should attend the live event as we’ll be answering questions after the show:
Please click below to register:
Wednesday, April 6th, 1PM – 2PM EST
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/120736520
The first part of the event should be attended by the business decision makers, sales and marketing personnel. We will be discussing the new business model behind ExchangeDefender 7 and the key changes that will make the new product a lot more profitable for your existing sales. We are making a lot of changes based on feedback and market demands.
The second part of the event should be attended by the technical employees that will be a part of the product deployment.
Important: The only way to gain access to the beta sites is to attend the live webinar or watch the recording. Future sales of ExchangeDefender will only be supported through companies that go through the free product training and going through the beta process will allow you to skip some of the required training.
ExchangeDefender MSP Alerts
Thanks to so many of you that participated in our ExchangeDefender 7 preview last week. The beta is a week or two away and we are still putting some finishing touches on the features that will ship down the road after the initial core launch of Security, Continuity and Compliance. Today we have an open ended question regarding one of the features and we hope you take a moment to let us know what you think.
If there was a single value proposition we are making in ExchangeDefender 7 it’s the managed aspect. You are no longer subscribing to a tool, you are getting a service that protects the most important tool businesses have on the Internet. Without email, the company may as well take a day off.
We are building in a MSP interface to ExchangeDefender that will monitor all servers protected by us. Every 15 minutes we will poll your email server from all of our data centers and if nothing can connect to it, we will issue an alert.
Question: When should we notify you?
We are aiming to create a configurable alert system on top of the service so it can notify you if 4 consecutive tests have failed (in this scenario, we couldn’t reach your server for an hour) or we can issue an alert every time we cannot connect to your mail server. We don’t know what’s right – if too many alerts are sent, will the alerts be ignored. Likewise, if too few alerts are sent will you be finding out about an issue from your client?
We initially intend to make alerts available via email and SMS and through professional RMM services tools LPI and Kaseya and PSA from Autotask and Shockey Monkey.
If you have a suggestion please login to https://support.ownwebnow.com and click on Resources > Features and create a new Feature request. ExchangeDefender 7 is 100% based on the feedback from the new feature request category filled out by our partners, keep on using it if you want the product to fit you better!
ExchangeDefender 7 & Managed Messaging
Later this week I will be sending invitations for an exclusive webinar covering ExchangeDefender 7. We will be doing a preview on March 17th, beta the week after that and full ExchangeDefender 7 release roughly 2-4 weeks after that depending on how broken things are. The beta window is very open and we will not ship it until it is perfect.
I, however, wanted to offer you a direct update on how things are going at Own Web Now because we are getting a ton of praise but also some concerns about the changes we are making and how the marketplace in general is developing. In particular, I wanted to address the areas of our service that are not perfect and what we are doing to address them:
1) Phone Support – The good news is that we have a lot of new staff to help you around the clock. We also have more personnel dedicated to the portal operations and one frustration many of you have experienced is our VoIP service. There have been reports of bad call quality, extensions not working, phones ringing dead in Australia and so on. We’ve made adjustments to all of these areas and I hope you’ll start to see significant improvement here.
2) NOC Alerts – We have been asked over and over again to provide an email feed in addition to the NOC blog postings. I want to make it clear that we will never do that. However, we will soon start delivering service alerts via SMS, online service monitor as well as to your RMM and PSA software. We simply have to have a failsafe way of contacting you and email is just not the way to deliver service alerts. This will probably be the biggest improvement that will come from the Managed Messaging part of our product that will be available across our products.
3) Client Software Support – Typically, this has not been an issue but we have gotten some louder requests for help with Outlook troubleshooting, DNS troubleshooting and connection troubleshooting. This part of the service is not something that Own Web Now is responsible for, workstation side of the management is our service providers responsibility. Since we make all our revenues with our partners, I have always encouraged my support staff to go above and beyond when the partners encounter an issue in the field but there is a limit to that as well.
4) Client Training – This is an area that we will dedicate a lot of our resources to going forward. We (all of us) simply must do a better job helping the clients understand all the failovers and redundancies that are built into the system and how to use them. Anyone that honestly expects a Microsoft environment to be foolproof and have a 100% reliability, respectfully, must not have been around Microsoft software for more than a month. Every month we deal with a slew of security and performance patches released by Microsoft along with a ton of other vendor partners that are continuously releasing security and bug fixes. Keeping this entire infrastructure at an optimal level is a job (for a lot of folks) that work around the clock testing, deploying, managing and addressing problems. Outsourcing the email infrastructure does not mean those problems are eliminated, it just means someone else (Own Web Now) is dealing with them around the clock. We all have a vested interest in helping our clients understand the many failsafes and alternatives in the system and I can honestly tell you that we’ve spent and incredible amount of money to make sure that email is always available.
I appreciate the feedback, good or bad, at all times and encourage you to keep it coming.
We’ve been working extremely hard on ExchangeDefender 7 and the Managed Messaging and all the support infrastructure behind it (Exchange 2010, Shockey Monkey… yes, even SharePoint). I hope you like what you see in 10 days, all but 3 feature requests have made it into ExchangeDefender 7 UI and the feature board is blank!!!
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
Rolling out Outbound-JR
On Thursday, February 10th, 5 PM EST we will be discontinuing access to outbound-xd servers as noted in the previous blog posts and emails. While many people have already switched their mail flow to outbound-jr.exchangedefender.com, some may still be using our legacy systems that are being decommissioned. Please take a look at all the servers in your organization and make sure you’re routing your email appropriately:
outbound.exchangedefender.com – used for personal non-automated emails that require absolutely highest IP reputation.
outbound-jr.exchangedefender.com – used for server notifications, NDR, out-of-office responses, automated messages, confirmations, devices (fax machines, etc) and non-groupware servers.
ExchangeDefender outbound network will continue to work as-is. The new JR network is designed to fit the emerging need among our client base as email communication matures and the need to tie in all servers, applications and notifications becomes necessary. By being able to “shape” this traffic, we can better assure your email delivery.
Please note, outbound-jr does not impact your ability to use LiveArchive as the replication of all the mail you receive is not done by the outbound servers. It also does not impact your ability to send out attachments, encrypted messages so on and so forth.
We look forward to announcing the new products and services that are being built around the outbound-jr and we hope that you’ll find them extremely valuable (large file sharing, notification services, on-demand mailing lists, marketing mail services, etc).