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
ExchangeDefender Bugfix Galore
Happy Monday! Over the weekend a ton of ExchangeDefender 4 bugfix requests went online and so far the support requests for the issues have all but disappeared. Here they are, in order of magnitude:
ExchangeDefender Email SPAM Reports
Late last week new ExchangeDefender SQL cluster for email report management went online to compensate for the growth in network capacity. Because it usually takes six to eight hours for replication to complete some reports over the weekend were generated with 0’s for SPAM totals, an error that has since been fixed.
Going forward, SPAM reports will be remain to be available but we are moving the feature to the “legacy” mode meaning we do not recommend them as the primary point of access to SPAM. By default, new accounts will have their email reports turned off unless they explicitly request the email reporting to be turned on. There will be no change to the current users and as noted above there will be far more capacity to provide current users with the reports and those that choose them forward.
Email reports have been a dark eye on the face of ExchangeDefender. Over 83% of ExchangeDefender clients have never even opened an ExchangeDefender SPAM report, and nearly 99% have never released a single piece of SPAM from them. We track these releases and have even noted that majority of the releases are forged SPAM itself.
This is why we have developed better tools to surround ExchangeDefender with – the new ExchangeDefender Outlook 2007 Addin for Microsoft Outlook 2007, the ExchangeDefender Desktop Alerts for XP and Vista as well as the realtime web portal which is scheduled for 4.0 release this fall.
ExchangeDefender Password Resends
ExchangeDefender password resend request used to lead you to a blank screen and no email. This has been fixed, passwords are being sent now without issue.
ExchangeDefender Activation Optimizations
ExchangeDefender activations now take mere seconds (it used to take about 1 second to provision a single account) which globally meant it could take approximately an hour for the address to be fully provisioned. That has been throttled down to allowing over 5,000 user activations per minute.
ExchangeDefender LiveArchive Sync
Problems with ExchangeDefender LiveArchive settings sync have been addressed and syncronization is now up-to-the minute. If you’re ever stuck waiting more than 60 seconds for a password change or a setting change you might want to close your browser and retry.
More exciting changes are on their way, to be announced tomorrow.
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!
Network Availability & Hurricane Ike
As many of you are well aware Own Web Now Corp global network operation center (NOC) is based in Dallas, TX. Today will be the most significant test of our network infrastructure impact due to inclement weather. Hurricane Ike is posed to hit Dallas, TX with the eye going directly overhead:
Our network operations center is staffed 24/7/365 and today is no exception. We are staffed better than usual for the Saturday’s 2nd and 3rd shift to monitor and manage any unusual events that may come as a result of Hurricane Ike. We do not expect significant network or wind damage as the data centers we operate from are standalone structures with poured cement and among the most element-proof buildings available.
What we are curious to find out is the state of flooding and power. Below is the map of our neighborhood.
The areas in blue represent our data centers and the big blue block in the center is our global network operations center at 1950 N Stemmons Frwy, also known as Infomart. All our data centers are well above the ground and can easily sustain several feet of water without impacting network operations.
Our primary concern is with the proximity of the Trinity River which is one of the largest public works in the history of Dallas and also the main flood protection solution for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. All the green “rivers” you see on the picture above are part of the Trinity River Corridor Project designed to take excess rainwater and guide it away from the sensitive downtown Dallas area. This system has never been tested by as large of a hurricane as Ike and we anxiously await to see how everything plays out. None of the diesel generators or operations are even close to the ground, and the lowest point of entry is some 8′ feet off the ground.
We are also anxious to see the performance of the new electrical grid monitoring service recently deployed in Dallas. You can read more about this system at The Dallas Morning News:
In February, an Oncor engineer, using the new technology, noticed unusual grid activity.
A worker went to the problem spot, noticed a loose bolt at a power line connection and tightened it.
Without the new technology, Oncor wouldn’t have known about the loose bolt until it fell off, power went out, and a customer called to complain.
We look forward to the test of Managed Power As A Service. 🙂
Given the fears and uncertainties we are very confident in our choice of Dallas as the headquarters for Own Web Now Corp. Every geographic location has its geopolitical uncertainties and tradeoffs and we feel that Dallas offers the best mix of corporate friendliness, network availability and redundancy, skilled workforce and reliable utilities. We are confident with our choice and our thoughts and prayers are with our fellow Texans this weekend as we weather this storm. After all, god blessed Texas 🙂
Sincerely,
Samantha Ellison
Chief of Operations, Own Web Now Corp
New Backup Features Available
It gives me great pleasure to announce that we have completed the upgrades to our global offsite backup network this weekend and that all the new features are now online. Make sure to take a moment and download the latest agents to take advantage of all the new awesome things our systems are able to do for you.
Continuous Data Protection
The absolutely coolest, most profitable and most desired feature available in the new release is the continuous data protection. This feature allows the backup software to make snapshots of data as it is being changed on the users PC or on the server. Backup jobs can now be executed in 1 minute increments if necessary.
Why is this absolutely phenomenal for you? Because it ope s up a profitability margin in the solution that nobody else can compete with you. For example, one of our competitors in this space requires you to purchase expensive hardware to do CDP, to pay for it up front and to pay for offsite backup quota as well. Not with Own Web Now – there is just one monthly fee, allowing you to choose your own hardware, even the affordable network-enabled USB hard drives from Western Digital MyBook Series (750GB market price around $200).
Another one of our competitors in the SMB space has a requirement ratio, so you have to buy far more offsite backup space than you actually need. Offsite backups are for critical documents, but what about a competitive advantage of having more robust, local backups? Well, that doesn’t make sense for them because they don’t make money. With Own Web Now there are no offsite/onsite ratios, you can start with our lowest plan (10GB offsite, $16/month) and install the agent software on all the office PCs and create local backups with CDP for every workstation in the company.
We are absolutely thrilled with this new feature!
Seeding
Starting with September 1st, we now offer seeding services for $100. If you have a client that has a ton of data to offsite or you just don’t want to tie up their Internet connection for the weekend we now offer the ability to seed the backup and bring it over. This has been a huge area of discontent for our users with larger backup sets, that it sometimes took forever to get initial backup to Own Web Now and then random failures and expirations didn’t quite line up.
So let’s say goodbye to all those problems. Here is how this works. When you order the offsite backup let us know that you want to send us a backup on a hard drive. We will UPS you a hard drive to plug into your server/workstation and save a backup on the hard drive. Put the USB drive into the included envelope and give it to your UPS guy. It will arrive at Own Web Now Dallas or Los Angeles NOC in a day or two, we’ll restore it and from that point it’s just your daily changes being pushed over the Internet.
Brand New Interface
The interface in the new agent is stunning, on par with the competitive backup solutions. I think you will really enjoy it.
Advertising Support
Never miss an opportunity to market to your own clients. With the new release we will accept ads that can be displayed to your own user base. Since the agents can be installed on multiple PCs this gives you more exposure than just your logo!
I sincerely hope that the new agent gives many of you not just a more remarkable offsite and onsite backup solution, but also provides you with the profitability margin that nobody can compete with you on.
End of competitive promotions for ExchangeDefender
Effective tomorrow, August 14th, 2008, we will no longer offer competitive transfer promotions for service providers who switched their accounts from Postini/Google, MX Logic or Message Labs to ExchangeDefender.
Responding to UPS pattern SPAM
It has been quite an evening at ExchangeDefender as we continue to fight the outbreak of the UPS trojan. You may have seen this:
Warning: This message has had one or more attachments removed
Warning: (UPS_INVOICE_978172.exe, UPS_INVOICE_978172.zip).
Warning: Please read the “ExchangeDefender-Attachment-Warning.txt” attachment(s) for more information.
Subject: UPS Tracking Number 6431834482
Unfortunately we were not able to deliver postal package you sent on July the 1st in time because the recipient’s address is not correct.
Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office
Your UPS
What is interesting about this is that the message does look fraudulent to the casual observers and people that do domestic business with UPS. However, we have encountered this format (with attachments and all) being used by UPS Commercial shipping departments in the past, which is why messages with the specific patterns received lower SPAM scores and were allowed through.
We still stripped the attachments but the attachments inside the ZIP file are passing through AV scanners as the variants change. We are now up to over thirty definitions used to track this specific worm and have taken the following steps:
UPS messages are only processed if they come from UPS.
UPS Tracking numbers are only accepted as valid if they start with 1Z.
UPS messages instigate a callback function against UPS servers.
Dealing with these extended rulesets and checks has made mail move a little slower today as we’ve dealt with onslaught of messages while this worm becomes more prevalent. UPS is also issuing a warning on their behalf:
We currently have this issue under control and it should not pose any further problems. However, expect the UPS messages to be taken with higher scrutiny and always warn users not to open executable attachments.
OWN Partner Call with Dana Epp
Yesterday we announced a new SMB security solution priced at a point that any SMB user can afford it – $20/month. Our solution is powered by AuthAnvil from Scorpion Software and it’s CEO Dana Epp joined us today to talk about it.
Over the course of this nearly 50 minute podcast you will hear many security concerns, sales and business conversations, learn how to position and intelligently discuss the aspect of two factor authentication with an SMB customer. Dana and Vlad talk further about the offering becoming a point of differentiation and trust for managed service providers (MSP) that want to assure their prospects they can trust them with their systems.
We are extremely excited to offer this solution at just $20/user/month because it breaks the pricing barrier that kept this type of an offering from becoming mainstream in SMB. With more mobility, more cloud services, more people involved in IT systems management, two factor authentication is something to discuss with your prospects, clients, staff and bosses. Tune in and listen to us address many security pain points and how we believe this announcement solves them.