Defending Your Turf
There is no question that in today’s market no client is safe. Whether you have had long time partnerships with your clients, or if they are new to your service, there is bound to be someone right behind you that would love to woo them away with promises of lower prices. Though loyalty and commitment are important to many, the state of the economy has some looking to save every dollar they can, and this can sometimes mean that friendships or long-term relationships may be overlooked for a reduction in the bottom line.
There are a number of things that can be done to protect your turf.
1. Know your Competition
In this gathering as much information about competitor offerings, service, and pricing will allow you to be prepared for their imminent assault provide you the knowledge you need to defend your territory.
2. Visit Clients Frequently
We hear this often but it is the thing most MSP and IT solution providers do not do enough. These do not always have to be formal appointments, drop by with donuts in the morning or a pizza at lunch. The little things make all of the difference.
3. Keep Your Clients Informed
Newsletters, emails, and postcards are good ways to keep your company top of mind with your clients. It’s also a good way to keep clients informed about trends in technology and what’s going on with your business. Be sure that anything that is sent to clients is relevant and stripped of geek speak.
4. Pass On Savings
Many vendor solutions provide breaks or discounts when certain milestones or thresholds are reached. Most MSP’s and IT Solution companies pocket these savings and add them to the revenue. This may however be an opportunity to gain more loyalty with your clients by passing on a discount or savings when these savings occur.
5. Add Value Regularly
It is important to continuously evaluate your solution stack. When new features or benefits come out make sure to inform and add these for your clients. Providing new value is always a good way to keep a client happy.
Providing clients with information, value, and face time will surely help you combat the looming competition ready to take your client. By following some of these simple steps you will not only save a client but you will also be prepared for any potential threat. If you’re a kid of the 80’s you will remember the tagline “now you know, and knowing is half the battle.”
Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com
Linux Web Hosting Updated to PHP 5.3
Over the weekend our Linux web hosting infrastructure was upgraded to PHP 5.3. The previous release of PHP 5.1.6 was getting out of date for a lot of social applications that dominate todays deployment base. You will now be able to run the latest WordPress, Joomla and other CMS and shopping cart sites without a problem.
If you have any legacy PHP applications that were written in PHP4 and early PHP5 days, you may notice that some functionality does not work. Consult your software vendor for an update that functions with PHP 5.3 and above. If your application is not supported on the new platform of PHP and you do not have the resources to make an immediate switch to an alternative, we do have a www2legacy web infrastructure in place that will support older applications. We will make the accommodations and the switch to the legacy platform for a small one-time fee but do keep in mind that the legacy platform will be discontinued in March of 2013. We have provided more than a 1 year announcement of our intention to upgrade our network infrastructure to the latest PHP so if this caught you by surprise we will still do what we can to make sure you have a smooth transition.
For a list of features in PHP 5.3.x and old deprecated functions:
Enjoy the new web apps and upgrade as fast as you can. If we can accommodate your legacy applications just let us know.
Thank you for your business.
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
vlad@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x500
Inbound Mail Bounces
I see a lot of support requests where folks do not understand where the problem is when mail is not delivered. So this little short primer will hopefully shed a lot of light on how to resolve these.
The first thing to do is, search the rejection notice for the following text “exchangedefender.com”
If that does not provide any results, then the problem is that the email is not coming to ExchangeDefender. This can be a DNS record has not expired OR you have a different MX record in addition to inbound30.exchangedefender.com receiving the email.
If that finds a match then it’s likely making it to use but then it’s being rejected. From that point we only have 3 rejection types.
1. Rejected due to being a SPAM Botnet, this means the sending server is a KNOWN spam bot net (willingly or not) and needs to address that issue. We provide the details in the rejection
2. Rejected with a rejection “Relaying Denied”. This means the domain does NOT exist in admin.exchangedefender.com OR it does exist and it has not propagated yet. All you have to do is either add them if you don’t see it listed OR wait if it’s already listed.
3. Rejected with “ExchangeDefender does NOT protect this address.” This means the domain exists BUT the particular address in question does not. Again, as above, if it doesn’t exist in admin.exchangedefender.com add it, if it does then wait for propagation.
I hope these tips help you in resolving situations for your clients in a faster manner.
Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737
Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer
When it comes to testing a user’s claim that their mailbox is magically not working again there are a ton of different tests you can do to troubleshoot. But if your Exchange or support staff’s Exchange skillset is limited, Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer is your friend. In fact, it’s your best friend.
We get a lot of assumptions when someone is reporting an issue with a mailbox, the usually consists of random connectivity that all conclude with “I don’t know, so it’s you”. Well the first thing we do when we such a report is attempt to load the mailbox in OWA/Outlook. If it loads, we get into the support cycle of “it’s broken, it’s you” , “no, it works, it’s you and/or your user”. This tool allows you to test everything remotely and spits out verbose error messages that can help you skip a test and if something is wrong, it helps you provide us with actually useful information. Of course, the garbage in/garbage out of software applies, if you’re putting in incorrect info then the error information becomes useless.
You can click on that link and see a list of tests, the one to emulate the Mailbox Access through Outlook is the “Outlook Anywhere” test.
The next page will ask for your log in information, make sure to observer the authentication practices for the server your client is on. They’re different on 2007 and 2010. You also get the option to use Autodiscover or manual server information. Remember, if you don’t have Autodiscover set up, don’t test using Autodiscover.
Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737
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)
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
CompTIA Breakaway 2012 an Event for Education and Networking
With the CompTIA Breakway 2012 event now in the books; I wanted to reflect on the event and what the major takeaways were. This event has always been presented with the utmost of thought, and the experience for the attendee from registration through to the final day is one of the best in the industry!
The biggest thing to note about Breakaway is that it is an educational event first, and for some this may not be understood, especially for vendor participants. Vendors are not provided opportunities to have breakout sessions about products or solutions and are only provided booth time at the end of the days to show off their products to participants.
Having been to Breakaway for the past few years, I have understood this and have been able to set my expectations based on this fact. The educational breakout sessions are relevant; though course material is good, basic courses should have more advanced counterparts to give attendees options when they are comfortable with the basics of subject matter. According to CompTIA, this is something they are working on for future events based on feedback that they have received.
The real advantage for vendors and solution providers alike comes from the networking opportunity. Most of the who’s who in the industry including vendors, solution providers, and media attends the event. This provides a unique environment to schedule meetings, get insight, and discuss trends within the community.
For ExchangeDefender this was the key to the event! A great number of our current partners attended the event, giving us the opportunity to meet with long-term partners that we had never met, and talk about new products and services such as the new CloudShare solution and Managed Messaging solution. The feedback and excitement around these new solutions was amazing and even Vince Tinnirello from Anchor Network Solutions gave ExchangeDefender a shout out at the MSP Partners Meeting at Breakaway.
This year CompTIA provided a mobile app for navigating the event. This was a welcome approach to years past with paper agendas. The new “green” mobile approach really made the experience of finding breakouts, keeping track of the event, and creating meetings a fun experience. The app approach also speaks to the dominance and adoption of mobility in the channel and public sector, and was a huge part of the talk at Breakaway. Mobility is big buzz right now, and it is in the phase of emerging solutions for Solution Providers that we have seen from managed services and cloud solutions at previous events.
CompTIA Breakaway 2012 was definitely a success! CompTIA did a great job of soliciting feedback from vendors and Solution Providers to make future events even better through several breakouts. This speaks volume to a forward thinking organization willing to not only accept the good, but to ask for criticism as well. It was great seeing Exchangedefender partners and meeting with soon to be new ones as well and we look forward to future events with CompTIA.
Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com
ExchangeDefender NOC & Android App
Many partners have expressed over and over again that we needed to provide an intuitive method to deliver outage notifications and reports to partners. A majority of partners requested email alerts for outage notifications, which sadly will never happen for two reasons:
1. If your server is down, there is no point in emailing you to tell you that your server is down
2. Email message delivery isn’t guaranteed and is extremely taxing compared to more efficient methods.
With the above points in mind, we created our NOC page with an overview glance of any service issues for the week and an RSS feed along with it. Next, we integrated our NOC with our Twitter account. Now, we introduce the native android app for push-based notifications from our NOC.
Using you support.ownwebnow.com credentials, you would authenticate to the service and then select the categories / services that you would like to receive alerts for.
Once you update your alert preferences, they’ll be saved remotely for use by any device that signs in with your credentials.
The application is in it’s final testing stages and UI design. It’s expected to be published in the android play market place by next week.
Travis Sheldon
VP, Network Operations, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x757
travis@ownwebnow.com
Delivery Has Failed to a Known Good Address
We have been asked the question of “Why has delivery failed to a known good address?” many times and there is a pattern of techs not understanding the technology, so we get the “fix this now”, “can’t you fix this on the server side?”. The answer is no! It is not because we do not want to answer it, but because it is impossible. There is a very easy way to spot a rejection at client side (meaning the mail client). The address that it is trying to reach is NOT the address you are sending to but something along the lines of IMCEAEX…
Here’s What the Rejection Will Look Like:
Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:
‘John Doe’
The e-mail address you entered couldn’t be found. Please check the recipient’s e-mail address and try to resend the message. If the problem continues, please contact your helpdesk.Diagnostic information for administrators:
Generating server: XDHUB1.exchange.exchangedefender.com
IMCEAEX-E@exchange.exchangedefender.com
#550 5.1.1 RESOLVER.ADR.ExRecipNotFound; not found ##Original message headers:
Received: from XDMBOX2.exchange.exchangedefender.com
([fe80::a8e2:9126:dd6e:8bf8]) by XDHUB1.exchange.exchangedefender.com ([::1])
with mapi id 14.02.0247.003; Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:59:14 -0400
Content-Type: application/ms-tnef; name=”winmail.dat”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
From: Pete Doe <pdoe@test.com>
To: ‘John Doe’ <jdoe@test.com>
Subject: Test
Thread-Topic: Test
Thread-Index: Ac1pDVsDxEcqf72fRmijT1S+CcvrRA==
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:59:25 -0400
Message-ID: <ABB95AC4A084EB4E81BD7F9CC6900BAD717BF0@XDMBOX2.exchange.exchangedefender.com>
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Language: en-US
X-MS-Has-Attach: yes
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: <ABB95AC4A084EB4E81BD7F9CC6900BAD717BF0@XDMBOX2.exchange.exchangedefender.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Originating-IP: [123.123.123.123]
Here’s the Background on the Issue:
Outlook maintains a nickname list that is used by both the automatic name checking feature and the automatic completion feature. The nickname list is generated automatically as you use Outlook. If the nickname cache is corrupted, Outlook may be unable to identify recipients, may offer incorrect recipients when automatically completing the email address, or may send the message to the wrong person.
Here’s How You Fix It:
Outlook 2010
1. Open a new email message.
2. Type the first few characters of the nickname cache entry that you want to remove from the cache.
3. When the entry appears in the list of suggested names, move your mouse pointer over the name until it becomes highlighted, but do not click the name.
4. When the “X” icon appears next to the highlighted name, click X to remove the name from the list.
Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003
1. Open a new email message.
2. Type the first few characters of the nickname cache entry that you want to remove from the cache.
3. When the entry appears in the list of suggested names, use the UP and DOWN arrow keys on your keyboard to select the entry, and then press DELETE on your keyboard.
Outlook Knowledge Base Article
“Fix it” Download
Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737
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
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