LocalCloud Share Launch

When we originally launched LocalCloud (we called it “CloudShare” back then) it was meant to be a simple addon to the ExchangeDefender portfolio that was already stretching far beyond email. The amount of feedback and outright demand for the product caused perhaps the biggest shift in development resources we’ve ever had – to take this addon file sharing feature and turn it into a full blown client/server storage application fit for workgroups.

It is with great pleasure that I invite you to see what we’ve built:

Wednesday, October 10th

Noon, EST

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/685535777

The webinar will be recorded and posted here shortly following the event.

We built LocalCloud differently from all the file sync products on the market today because we know that small businesses work differently from consumers that those solutions are built for: small businesses demand speed, security, audit logs, file control and plenty of assurances that their data will stay safe. We’ve gone a step beyond that:

In LocalCloud 2.0 we now have shared folders, access to which can be granted and removed directly from the ExchangeDefender user interface that the users are already familiar with and deal with daily for SPAM reports and business continuity. Same application – same management.

Due to a ton of demand we’ve also built in a process to lock files. For example, let’s say you’re editing an important document that you don’t want another user on the network to modify. You can check the file out, preventing anyone else write access until you’ve completed your work.

Lot’s of other surprises, business model implementations and feedback from our partner community will also be shared.

P.S. We might even say a thing or two about the Unicorn, but you have to tune in for that one.

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
vlad@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x500

CloudShare Q&A Webinar

Today I had a great pleasure to talk to a bunch of our partners on a live webinar about our new ExchangeDefender CloudShare product. With over 2,000 partners that have rolled it out, questions and feature ideas have been more than we ever anticipated and we really look forward to building it out. I think we’ve really come out with something that far too many business IT solution providers are looking for and I hope it makes as many of you as much profits as possible. Without further delay, feel free to download the webinar below and enjoy at your convenience.

ExchangeDefender CloudShare Q&A Webinar

Download Video (47 minutes, 60Mb)

GoToMeeting Codec

Now I understand that many of you do not have the time to listen to it all so I will try to hit the highlights in this blog.

Introduction

In short, thank you. The success of ExchangeDefender is far beyond what we ever anticipated and to have this level of adoption and this level of connection between our users our partners and our teams is absolutely amazing. As a developer, you never quite know how your idea is going to resonate with the marketplace – and when it plays out this well you just count your lucky stars and continue to work hard.

ExchangeDefender CloudShare is a part of ExchangeDefender. The only way you can get it (and yes, it’s free for the moment and will be grandfathered for everyone that rolls it out) is with ExchangeDefender. We may eventually open it up to anyone but as far as 2012 goes, you can only go through an ExchangeDefender partner and get it with your solution powered by one of our partners. I know that may not be too appealing to everyone but we owe this company and these products to our partners who stuck with us through the thick and thin. I know that some of you reading this had to make a business decision to go with one of our competitors – and I understand and respect that as a business man – yet without our loyal partners we never would have been able to build this. We are a living proof of what happens when you take care of business, when you take care of your partners and continue to build a solution around everyone’s interest not just your own. So we owe it to our partners, loyalty is a pretty big thing among decent people and I cannot thank you enough.

What I can do is keep on guiding my teams and building the kids of solutions that will stand unmatched in the marketplace. Thank you for supporting me, for supporting ExchangeDefender, for promoting us to your clients, recommending to your peers and for helping us become more than an antispam provider. Lot’s of people would love to be able to say that and I am thankful that due to you choosing ExchangeDefender we can continue to build this company together.

Currently Available

CloudShare 1.0. CloudShare 2.0 is coming this Fall and will be rolled out gradually.

What is it? Client-side application with cloud-based file storage, continuously sync’d back and forth. In this pretty common digital locker concept the user can map a folder to a drive letter and every file dragged to the drive, saved on the drive, etc is uploaded to our cloud servers and then replicated to another data center for backups.

Everything is encrypted in transit and in storage. Storage is object based, it is not a raw file system with traditional folder/file structure that our employees can simply browse to. The level of access control auditing we have in place and our process assure that your files are for your eyes only.

What is next?

CloudShare for the Mac as well as iOS/Android is in development stages and we expect to have it out this fall/winter.

Among the most popular features coming in CloudShare 2.0:

– Shared folders, so multiple employees can work on files
– Version control
– File-locking and open-file alerts for user groups
– Web based logging and access tracking
– iOS/Android as well as Mac OS X native clients

– ExchangeDefender LocalCloud

What is the ExchangeDefender LocalCloud

With all of your email, social footprint, Exchange, SharePoint and now CloudShare in the cloud, how do you assure your business continuity if we were to go out of business?

ExchangeDefender LocalCloud is a physical appliance or virtual machine that you can host on your own network or in your clients office. Each appliance/vm will mirror all the data in the cloud and create a local cache of all the cloud data. We will build user interfaces and API to interact with this information and create your own backup procedures.

This is exactly the opposite of how every on-premise network is built. Typically on premise networks consist of extremely expensive overpowered servers with multiple redundant drives or storage controllers. Add on expensive backup software with a BDR appliance. On top of it you have an expensive cloud backup solution. By the time you make it to the cloud you have replicated every piece of data at least six times and those costs pile up fast to make on premise networks unappealing. Cloud makes a much more scalable and more cost effective solution a reality – so long as you accept no control over that data whatsoever: CloudShare allows you not to have to make that compromise. You can have your cloud and keep your data on your network, through a much more economical common sense approach. Let the cloud provider worry about compliance, audits, backups, maintenance, server purchase and warranties – but keep your own safety net.

LocalCloud is simply the best of both worlds. Just far more affordable.

How do I order it?

You have to first enable ExchangeDefender CloudShare at https://admin.exchangedefender.com

Once you enable it all your users will have their free 1GB allocation ready. You cannot pool it.

If you need more storage you can order it at any time. Go through the standard order process at ExchangeDefender by going to https://support.ownwebnow.com and select Service Manager > CloudShare. These features are also built into your own Shockey Monkey portal. Select the domain and the user you wish to give more storage to and then select the amount of data they should be able to upload. Done.

What about EU/UK and ICO’s Safe Harbor regulations?

In a nutshell, Safe Harbor is not something that affects CloudShare. I described this at length during the webinar and the behavior and functionality of ExchangeDefender CloudShare do not in any way access your files or documents in a way that would cause concern. Since we do not process the information to present advertising content nor do we make your data available in any way, you are not transfering data contents to a third party, you are simply storing it in a way that complies with Transborder Data Flows requirements (see ICO.gov.uk for details).

I’m still not convinced.. are you sure nobody is going to look at my files?

In CloudShare 2.0 we will enforce IP restrictions so you will have an additional layer of protection.

Everything is encrypted so there is not a lot of chance of someone sniffing your data in transit.

Storage on our network is not on a Windows 2003 server with your conventional folders and files laying around in a structured way. Objects are stored in databases and in chunks – there is no way for direct access to be able to reassemble the file or know what they are looking at.

As for our employees.. trust me, they are so beaten and overworked that the only site they likely want to see is monster.com. And we even block that on the company firewalls so no worries. There is no hope.

Conclusion

Thank you. Thank you so very much. We are happy to have so many enthusiastic partners with so many great ideas, suggestions and eagerness to deploy our latest solution. You make ExchangeDefender possible and you make us innovate at a faster rate than I ever expected. We look forward to this journey together and please tell your friends and peers about us because our partner program will be shut down in it’s current form at the end of the year so if you want to work with us now is the time to get aboard.

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
vlad@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x500

CloudShare Q&A

We have been absolutely overwhelmed with the CloudShare interest and popularity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This product is the result of partner feedback spanning nearly a year and it’s taken a lot of effort to get us to this point – so we wanted to thank you and offer it for free to the people that jump in and enable their users to revolutionize how they store and manage their files. As a matter of fact, everyone who rolls out CloudShare now and starts using it will be grandfathered into free storage once CloudShare v2 ships this fall. It’s a single click on your ExchangeDefender portal and a single download to get it going.

The amount of questions (most of which have been answered in the webinars and web pages and help) has been off the charts and we are doing our best to get to everyone as fast as possible. There is also a matter of strategy: how do I roll this out in a profitable way for me and a meaningful way for my clients to solve the challenges they face? That is not a “oneliner” type of an answer. I am planning two webinars next week (hopefully one is convenient) to answer these questions and more:

Tue, Aug 7th at Noon EST Time (5 PM GMT)

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/779052369

Wed, Aug 8 at Noon Sydney Time

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/537711504

In the meantime, here are some resources:

CloudShare Quickstart Guide

http://www.exchangedefender.com/cloudshare.php

CloudShare Feature Overview

http://www.exchangedefender.com/cloud_share.php

CloudShare Deployment & Installation Guide

http://www.exchangedefender.com/doc_cloud_share.php

CloudShare Storage Upgrade (“Can I get more than 1GB?”)

http://www.exchangedefender.com/doc_storage_upgrades.php

CloudShare Software Download

http://www.exchangedefender.com/downloads/CloudShare.msi

CloudShare Comparison Flyer

http://www.exchangedefender.com/media/CloudShareComparison.jpg

Introducing CloudShare: ExchangeDefender CloudShare Webinar (30mb)

^ You might need a GoToWebinar Codec

Most of the questions have already been answered but we know you’re busy and don’t have to read or watch everything we put out – so hopefully the Q&A webinar will give you, your marketing, your sales and tech guys a chance to pick our brain live. In the meantime, just give us a call – or do nothing, we’ll be calling our top partners over the next few weeks to discuss this service and we look forward to getting you aboard.

Here are the most popular questions so far:

Have you got the Safe Harbor stuff figured out for EU and UK customers?
Will there be a local server for Australia?
How can I brand the MSI with our logo/colors/name?
Will there be a versioning feature?
Will there be a notification when one user opens a file that is already open by another user?
Will there be a way to share files with other users?
Will there be a way to share it with people not in the company (integration with ExchangeDefender Web Sharing?)
Will there be a mobile/iOS app for this soon?
How do I buy extra storage? Can I get 3GB or 5GB?
How does this compare to _____?
What is free? Is it really free? For how long?
I have a client that has 50TB, can we get a pricing break?
Can Vlad stop buying Ducati’s and Ferrari’s and fix my bugs?

So answers to all that and more… in a week! In the meantime – enjoy CloudShare and keep on sending us your feature requests, ideas and feedback! Our success is 100% tied to your success so we’re building a service that you know you can make a profit off, not licensing some third party tool to play me-too games. This is business and we look forward to helping you do more of it!

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
vlad@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x500

How You Can Prepare Your Business For Disaster

For most people, when we hear a phrase like, “disaster preparedness,” we think of drills or evacuation strategies. We might also make a mental note to review emergency exit locations with employees or have a plan of action if something were to take place, but that is all.

Disaster preparedness in business actually involves much much more than just understanding where to go in the event of an emergency, especially since disasters are not always physical. Many of you know that disasters can also be, and most likely are, virtual too! They can come in the form of an online attack or outage or even network failures. Businesses that fail to fully prepare themselves for potential disasters could face negative consequences when it comes to the day-to-day operations of their business.

To alleviate your business’s risks of consequences from a disaster it is essential to take steps now to develop a preparedness plan for your business that will help your organization withstand the unexpected. When creating your preparedness plan, you should consider the following points:

Financial Management – Evaluate all of your organization’s financial responsibilities, such as payroll and regular bills, because these obligations won’t vanish even if you’re consumed in a disaster. Having all account and billing information in a safe, accessible place will help you stay on top of your finances even if a disaster were to occur.

Communication Strategies – Your business contains external parties such as partners, clients, customers, etc., and also internal parties like your employees. All parties will likely need to be knowledgeable on all information regarding the plan of action if a disaster were to have an effect on your business. Whether it is via company website, email, blog, phone, etc., a point person should be chosen to be responsible to communicate what to do in the effect of a disaster to all parties involved.

Data Backup – Your business’s data is one of its most valuable assets! You should backup your data every day! You can do so through a number of ways, for more information visit our ExchangeDefender CloudShare page. CloudShare allows you to pick folders to sync between your systems with documents always securely stored in the cloud and available to you whenever you need them, where ever you want them.

Cloud-Based Software – Moving some or all of your software to cloud-based versions of the same programs is another alternative to data backup, since these solutions automatically store data in secure, offsite locations and make it accessible to you from virtually anywhere.

Technology updates – Maintaining updated technology will inevitably help your business avoid virtual disaster, since updates generally include security patches that guard your network from the latest digital threats.

Take advantage of LiveArchive!

ExchangeDefender protects businesses and organizations of all sizes, everyday – no matter what! This is what made has made ExchangeDefender’s LiveArchive an unquestionable leader in business continuity for all companies with redundant Internet connections, large maintenance windows and an all-Microsoft network infrastructure.

As I mentioned above, preparedness and business continuity are all about planning how to keep the business up and running in the face of any of those things that can put a road block up or stop operations altogether. When LiveArchive is needed it can be enabled and the client is back in business! 

LiveArchive uses ExchangeDefender’s secure standby servers, up to a year’s worth of inbound and outbound email is available and accessible through Outlook Web Access at all times. Neither you nor your client has to actively manage this service in any way – the LiveArchive service is always enabled to ensure that no matter what, whether the power goes out in the office or anything else happens, users will always be able to access critical email and stay productive and continue working. It’s always on, powered by Exchange 2010 across two data centers, archives sent and received mail, and there is no need for software installation. LiveArchive and the ability for users to resume work right where they left off no matter what happens – is included with every ExchangeDefender account. LiveArchive goes to work when an outage or disaster happens – you can depend on LiveArchive!

For more guidance on readying your business for disaster, visit www.exchangedefender.com/livearchive.php, where you can access more information on what your options are during an outage or disaster.  And as always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us!

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com

Join us for CloudShare launch

If you have a few minutes this Friday I hope you take them to watch us launch ExchangeDefender CloudShare. It’s a brand new product that is being introduced to all ExchangeDefender users free of charge to help them store and move files through the cloud. It’s another critical expansion of the ExchangeDefender platform as we continue to provide a layer of business security on communication that goes beyond just email.

Please register for the event today:

Friday, July 13th at noon EST

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/635677224

While many ExchangeDefender partners have already seen the product under the NDA, the real content of this webinar is the business model behind the solution. We have carefully tested and designed the product to address the key concerns clients have with their file storage, document management and security. Truth is, you can get tons of different cloud storage products – yet none of them are designed with the reporting, management and audit controls that the business needs. When IT people have debates about “the cloud” the conversation about security is first and foremost and the uncomfortable truth that comes out of it is that you’re not any more “secure” storing files locally on an Internet connected server/PC/appliance than you are on a remote network. In both scenarios it’s not the ambiguity of security that is the question – it’s the fact that nothing out there provides simple and easy to read reporting about who is accessing your files, when and where.

In that regard, ExchangeDefender CloudShare is different. And we’re going to teach you how to sell your solution better by addressing the real problem businesses have with “trust” – namely that without proof it’s not really trust but blind faith.

Join us and see how we’re helping our partners move ahead of the cloud.

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
vlad@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x500

ExchangeDefender Triple Launch

Next Wednesday, May 30th, ExchangeDefender will be hosting a huge launch of three new features being added to the core of our ExchangeDefender offering. The details of the new features are private at this moment which is why we are requesting more than usual discretion about the feature set, implementation, pricing and availability.

Please take a moment to register:

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/483060168

Two of the new features will be available in United States only (you can purchase, license and implement them worldwide but you might not want to). These features are new to ExchangeDefender and take us in a new direction so it is important to have our partners attend and understand how these offerings will impact the bottom line and expand market opportunities available with ExchangeDefender.

Important:

1) Unlike all of our other webinars, this one will not be recorded.

2) Unlike all of our other webinars, general attendance is not permitted, you must be a partner that is currently reselling our services.

3) Unlike all of our other webinars, information discussed will be provided under an NDA only.

If you register, Chelsea Richards will be contacting you tomorrow with the NDA paperwork that is required for the attendance to this webinar. You can sign it and fax it or take a picture and email it to us or even mail it in.

I look forward to meeting with you all and I hope you’re excited about this next step in the ExchangeDefender evolution. All the new stuff has been in heavy demand by our partners and I believe it will fuel a huge growth cycle for our partners. We’re extending all areas of our business – from the previously announced Managed Messaging that covers support to the better security with encryption, file storage, voice and management we hope that this is the best year you’ve ever had with us and we’re committed to keep moving it in the right direction. On a personal note: I want to extend a huge thank you to all of you that have brought us more business through ExchangeDefender Essentials, the $0.50/mbox price has been extremely popular and has unfortunately upset a lot of our competitors because it clearly beats them. As a result we have received several notices of unethical behavior or highly questionable sales practices so this webinar – while extremely positive – will be executed in private so we do not have to deal with the backlash. Frankly, all we do and everything we do here is for our partners and it is my responsibility to get you the best and most effective product possible – so you can choose and apply the right one as the business dictates. I hope you pardon us and accept the minor inconvenience of privacy while we get you off the ground and give you a huge market advantage as our partners!