ExchangeDefender World Tour

Our world tour kicked off in Chicago in January and I’m about to leave Australia for Dubai. It’s simply amazing to see how well our solutions are received worldwide and how the migration product message resonates with solution providers worldwide.

Australia (Sydney & Melbourne) – February 3-8

Dubai – February 9 – 11

UK (London & nearby) – February 12-16

USA – All day every day

While we are primarily promoting our migrations service, the second most discussed solution concerns Compliance Archiving and helping companies deal with compliance and locating what is becoming a growing problem in businesses small and big: information overflow. I’ve been sitting down with partners and discussing common challenges they face in helping small businesses not only operate better but also manage the mountain of information they have built up. As one partner noted: “Years ago they had one filing cabinet for the whole company and a single person could locate any contract or agreement. Now each employee has dozens of cabinets of their own and discovering who said what and when is turning into a logistical nightmare”; I can personally relate to this a lot and I’m very happy to go over how we can help businesses manage this better and have a private Google of their own for the business intelligence they have collected.

The 365 Elephants In The Room

Technologically, I have nothing against Office 365. Exchange is Exchange no matter where it is. Even business-wise, I think their plan selection effectively separates big business from consumer levels.

My main message to partners and my biggest point of differentiation is that our solution is built for a business. From the ground up everything is designed, supported and documented in a way to facilitate business critical operations where one minor issue immediately becomes an emergency as the whole business runs on it. This is where our differentiation and our people and our process and our LiveArchive make an enormous difference and where we ultimately build our solution.

Unfortunately, many discover this differentiation once the consumer solution fails them. When they have to spend time on the phone waiting for support, or a random outage takes hours or days to resolve. At that point they realized they are running business critical systems on a consumer platform with the customer service and support that explains the low end pricing. Everything is great until you need something and then realize that what you have doesn’t fit your needs.

That said, the entry level Exchange and low pricing is not a compromise we will be pursuing. In all of my discussions with service providers these cloud services are already included in the managed services cost. How do more sophisticated partners handle inquiries about Office 365 or Google Apps?

We have a solution that uses exactly the same technology on the backend but it’s build for business by the partners that we have worked for years and we trust. In addition to what you see with Office 365 you also get 1 year of business continuity so when there is a service interruption you can continue to send and receive email. There is also encryption in the product as well as advanced junk mail management so you never miss important messages. And we should also discuss compliance.

Need a desktop version of Office? We can either get you a subscription for $99/year or buy one outright that you own.

It’s that simple.

Migrations = Revenues

It’s a thrill to hear how my message in the presentations across the globe resonates with partners. Everyone sees a different value in ExchangeDefender handling the mail moving portion of the job. Some see additional revenues. Some see decreased costs. Some see more customers faster.

Everyone sees the opportunity to grow. Which is why we chose to dedicate so much of our effort to it.

As I like to mention in my presentations, the secret to success and profits is two fold: “Either find a way to make your revenues by doing less, or find a way to sell more at a higher cost.” With pricing being the eternal argument, the only way we can make our partners grow consistently and quickly is by helping do more of your work. Migrations are just the start and we are doing remarkably well with it worldwide. With each project we get better and learn to manage expectations better and improve our process – something that our partners hopefully never have to go through again. With us handling Outlook/Exchange and partners managed offerings taking care of the user/desktop, the ability to move to the cloud quickly and grow your client base as fast as you can reach/sell them is simply a recipe to follow in 2014.

We are simply making it impossible for you to turn this down in 2014.

I’m happy to say that I’m hearing that loud and clear on two continents so far Now off to Dubai and Europe.

Sincerely,

Vlad Mazek