Kicking and Screaming I am Bloggin

This morning I read Mark’s diatribe on why you have to be a major msp player or you don’t deserve to exist, OK maybe I paraphrased it a bit. While I was trying to come up with a catching comeback to defend myself and the downtrodden SPF’s of the world, as Vlad likes to refer to us, I got the shock of my life, Vlad wants to be one of us, here is proof in writing. He wants the “lifestyle”.

Just so I don’t have to read about massive suicides of SPF’s in CRN tomorrow, let me once again assure you, you can be happy and make a fine living without a hundred empyoyees and a system so automated you never get to touch a computer again.

No I am not saying you don’t need to have a good business background/understanding to be a consultant in this industry, you really do. The days of being able to get by with just some nuts and bolts tech knowledge are numbered for sure. But there is no reason to jump off a bridge if you enjoy doing things yourself and have the business smarts and the tech smarts to go with it. If you don’t and you only know the tech side, I would really advise you try and find a businessman/woman to partner up with, because if you can’t see and understand how the business runs and how the technology interacts with it, you are no longer going to be able to be the trusted advisor you have been in the past. The world is surely changing, I just do not believe it MSP or nothing.

Turns out that my IT Pro Groups first meeting in 2008 falls on 1/1/2008 and not only do we have a great dual presentation lined up by Chuck Traywick on Virtualization and Sharepoint 3.0, the one and only Eric Ligman is going to be breaking some important news for us to discuss as well.

Let me share the invitation with you in case you find yourself in North Carolina on the first needing an SMB Fix.

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Kathy & I would like to wish all of you a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year! I hope to see you at our meeting tomorrow to kick off the New Year right, with Geek Speak & Business Tips :>) The date for our next meeting is January 1, 2008
Regular Time 6:00pm
Let’s start the year off right with a good turnout!
Last meeting was December 4, 2007Tomorrow week we have Chuck Traywick driving up to talk to us and he will be presenting on 2 topics, first WSS 3.0 for Small Business and then Virtualization. He just did this presentation in SC and a similar one for the Charlotte SBS group and was very well received by both of them. I just peeked through the slide deck and the reason I think he was so well received was there aren’t many slides, it is mostly demo :>). Chuck is the owner of Infotronics.  They do networking, consulting, and development. They are focused on the SMB segment. Plenty of good reason to take a couple of aspirin and head over to the meeting, ya I know it is the first day of the new year and all that, but hey I didn’t create the calendar, I am just trying to follow it. Fire Mountain Family Steakhouse 1180 S. Main Street, Kernersville, 27284, 336-996-0456 Keep an eye on our website for last minute changes http://www.tsbsg.orgHarry has asked me to ask you to please take his Year End Survey And I have to get in plugs for Jeff, Harry and SMBTN they all have conferences coming up in the next 6 months or so.
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Jeff http://www.conference.sbsmigration.com/
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Harry http://www.smbnation.com/workshops.htm
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SMBTN http://www.smbsummit.com/
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Have a Happy New Years,  but remember to show up tomorrow for our meeting :>)HA 

A while ago I wrote an article for my how to site about creating the ISA Report. I got a number of request for instructions on how to publish them and everyone I asked said it could not be done.

Well recently I got an e-mail from David Houston of Dame Computers with a link to his article explaining how to do it. I just love when folks figure out how to do the impossible.

I have also updated my original article with this link so you can flow right from creating the report to publishing it.

So let me take this opportunity to welcome in the new year on this positive note.

Have a Healthy and Happy New Year and let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes from WWII,

 ”The difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a little longer.”

This morning I saw a post from Vlad that there was a SIMPLE Security Update to WordPress(the engine under this blog), so I figured why not. I read the simple instructions which said make sure to backup both the content and the database before proceeding. So of course I went to do that, well the content was no problem, I just ftp’d the entire blog to my local hard drive. However then the moron in me kicked in and I could not for the life of me figure out how to backup the database. After an hour or so of clicking links and reading articles, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just do the update.

The update went fine and only took a few minutes, but now I will be up all night realizing I am not smart enough to backup a database that would most likely fit on a floppy disk.

If you would like to see me sleep again some day and you know how to backup a mySQL database from a wordpress blog admin page, I would love to hear.

Happy New Year,

HA

YES, I’M YELLING BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE MUCH LONGER TO ORDER THE MEDIA FOR YOUR PREMIUM CUSTOMERS THAT NEED ISA 2004 MEDIA STILL.  THIS IS YOUR FINAL AND LAST CALL FOR THIS. 

Copied From Susan’s Blog Because it is that Important for you to see

Order the Service Pack 1 Premium CD3 (which includes ISA 2004 technologies), before December 31, 2007. Existing Premium Edition customers can order the Service Pack 1 Premium CD3 for Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition for a nominal fee, including shipping, handling and applicable taxes. Note: This Service Pack 1 Premium CD3 will only be available until December 30, 2007, after which time it will be discontinued and unavailable.

How to order the Service Pack 1 Premium CD3: During the CD3 ordering process, the Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition Product Key used in your original installation will be required. The Product Key is located on the back of your product CD case or on the side of your server box if your current version was purchased through an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). CDs will be shipped to you within 1-2 weeks in North America. Expect 6-8 weeks for delivery outside of North America.

North America: Order your Premium Edition CD3 online. If you encounter problems during your ordering process, please contact a customer service representative at 1-800-360-7561.

Europe/Middle East/Africa: Order your Premium Edition CD3 online. If you encounter problems during your ordering process, please contact a customer service representative at direct-mar@msdirectservices.com.

Asia Pacific: Order your Premium Edition CD3 online. If you encounter problems during the ordering process, please contact a customer service representative at aporders@microsoft.com.

Latin America: This program is unavailable in Latin America.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/downloads/sp1/default.mspx

My PAL Mark Crall is searching the cosmos for folks who have done sucessful deployments of Vista. Someone must have done one somewhere, if you are that guy or that gal, please respond to his post. The Vista Team would like to speak to your satisified clients about their experience.

Of course I could send you directly to the survey, but wouldn’t you rather our PAL got credit for doing a great job of keeping us in the loop? Follow THIS LINK TO MARK’s Request and hopefully by the time you get there the survey link will be back, otherwise send to a note a-chstee@microsoft.com and request to be included.

In case you should start suffering from withdrawls due to lack of SMB Talk, here is a little fix for you from Henry & Me, compliments of Vlad

Shhhh, don’t tell anyone, Vlad already thinks I am chipping away too much at his bad boy image, but I just heard he gave the SBS Diva and the Community at large  an early present.

I am just wondering who Susan was so mad at when this pic was snapped?

Is there a SQL guru out there that can help her now, where is hubby anyways?

Yesterday I heard about a brand new joining of the minds in the Big Corporate World. A place where I not only don’t live, but try not to drive through too often. But I had to point out that one of my modern day hero’s is one one of the founding fathers of the BLOG COUNCIL.

He is one of the few and probably the very first one of corporate folks to really get what an MVP and Community are all about. Sure it is an honor to be recognised as an MVP for whatever it is you do well, but it puts you on an island where you really feel alone. The very folks you are all about helping are most times jealous of you and think you are some kind of secretly paid agent for whoever gave you the award. The big corporate guys wish you would just go away because they hate anything that they can’t control completely.

Into this mix throw my hero, a guy who really gets MVP and Community from the inside out. And now reading his blog last night, I hear he has jumped into the pool with both feet to try and help shape the the rest of the corporate world to be more community minded, in a way that works for the benefit of both the big guys and the community.

Well I don’t know where to do it, so let me try it here, I would like to nominate Sean O’Driscoll for MVP of Corporate Community Conscience.

Thank You Sean, and let me be the first to welcome you to the Island,
Your Pal, HandyAndy

I may be the only one in the world currently with this Chicken Little view of our industry

but at the risk of incurring the wrath of Mark Crall and Amy Luby, let me point out something that seems blatantly obvious to me.

I have been involved with this industry for a very long time and have seen it go through many changes. But the current stampede to Managed Services has me very concerned that my fellow service providers are helping the big guys push them right out of the market place. Sure right now it sounds great and they are showing you how you can make so much more money by jumping on this bandwagon, but once you have all your business neatly packaged up and automated, it will not take much for the big guys to undercut you dramatically enough for you to lose the majority if not all of your client base.

All I ask is that while you listen to the sales pitches from these companies wanting to sell you the backend services, to enable you to become the MSP raking in all that dough, remember the old adage, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. Just stop and look down the road a few years at the very real possibly that the model will no longer require your participation.

Right now you are in the enviable position of trusted provider, and believe me they are full of envy, and looking for ways to replace you.  The first thing they need is you putting them into the trusted position, something much easier for you to do for them, then it is for them to for themselves. Maybe that’s why they are showing you the big carrot? There is nothing like greed to motivate folks.

I am not telling you to ignore the MSP model altogether, just have your exit strategy planned out ahead of time. Which one of the big guys do you want to end up working for, Dell, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Google or maybe McDonald’s, cause all they are going to need you for, is geeksquad / firedog kind of hands on labor. It will only be these big guys left in a few years after they gobble up the Level Platform’s and Autotask’s of today along with your client base.

The sky may not be falling yet, but I am keeping my hard hat close by!