Thank You Chicago!

Scott and I just got back from the Windy City where we led the LabTech Workshop on Tuesday.  We spoke to a capacity audience to teach LabTech Scripting, Hotfixing and Probe usage and by all accounts, our trip was a great success.  It was fun to have Scott there as he's the guy who actually wrote the SNMP portion (and lots more) of the new probe and he knows it like no one else.  His considerable knowledge of and passion for this technology really came across during his presentation, which I can only describe as fantastic.  Judging by the feedback, it seems you all agree!  So Thank You Chicago Attendees!!  It was a real pleasure to bring a little LabTech know-how your way and we look forward to the next time.  :)

LabTech 2011 Released!

I'm proud to announce we have just officially launched our next version of LabTech - version 2011!  In it you'll find some fantastic additions including a totally revamped Probe, a new Patch Manager and Alert Templates as well as a slew of bug fixes.  Remember, before you upgrade - make sure you've backed up your LabTech Server!!  Then head on over to http://www.labtechsoftware.com/support-home.html and grab the latest version of your MSP Software.  Enjoy!

Policy Number One

One of the most effective desktop policies available to an admin is to shut off browser access to the Internet.  Where access is required to perform a job function, get a specific list of domain names that the user needs to be able to navigate to and allow access to only those sites.  With this one small move, you will have eliminated the biggest security threat to that desktop and created a much more reliable environment.

"My customers will never go for that!", you say?  Well they may, if you present it in a manner that demonstrates value to their bottom line.  While the advantages of doing so may be obvious to us, very often the business owner doesn't fully understand them and is instead focused on the downside of telling his employees they can no longer browse the Internet from their desktops.

But if your MSP offering is priced based on risk, you can offer a "safe driver" discount to customers that allow you to enable this policy.  With this move, you've given your customers a powerful incentive to help you, help them.  This, in turn makes for a much safer environment and one that will require less management on your part.

There is a 'have your cake and eat it too' option.  Just enable a secured wireless access point (secured being DMZ'd from the production network, firewalled, etc...) that allows guest access to the Internet.  Now your customer can opt for the Internet-less option for their business machines but 802.11 devices like phones and iPad's will have Internet access.  Another option is to enable a secured Terminal Server for browser usage.  While not wholly risk free, this option mitigates many of the risks inherent with open browsing and can be used on policed desktops transparently.

Technical Realization: Build a desktop policy that blocks Internet usage using direct registry writes.  Use LabTech scripting to apply those writes.  Associate with group (as with any other offering) and use Extra Data Fields on the Computer Object and the Client Object to allow for exceptions.

Business Alignment:  As said, this product provides direct incentive to customers to make their desktops more secure.  More secure = more reliable = less costly = Win.  Who knows.. perhaps they'll even like it!

Off Topic

I'm halfway thru the Battle 360 series and it is absolutely fantastic!  10 episodes document the USS Enterprise and her encounters with the Japanese in the Pacific.  While the narration is perhaps a little overboard, it is appropriate considering the tale that ship and her sailors have to tell.  This series truly is a great story, well told and comes highly recommended.

LabTech Workshops

Once again we will be hitting the road to bring LabTech Training goodness to your area.  These workshops will be focused mostly on scripting and hotfixing - two areas that directly impact our service levels.  If you haven't yet signed-up, I highly encourage you to do so:  http://www.labtechsoftware.com/news-and-events/labtech-events.html.  Look forward to seeing you there!

What’s Old is New Again (or, How to Price Your MSP Offering)

There are a lot of theories on how best to structure pricing for an MSP company.  Mine stems from two realities:  pricing for MSP delivery has not yet solidified so existing companies are somewhere between price searching and price taking.  This is good, as it means there is a good amount of flexibility in which you can operate.  The second reality is that insurance companies are always right.  Or at least they always win.  Whatever – let’s borrow a play from their book: pricing based on risk.

If I’ve a few drunken driving arrests on my record with a handful of speeding tickets and a bunch of other various moving violations, can I still purchase automobile insurance?  Sure I can, but it’ll be mighty tough to find a provider and the cost of it will be astronomical.  Why then, are you providing ‘IT Insurance’ (which MSP delivery essentially is, more on this to come…) to companies with equivalent driving records at the same cost you deliver to ‘safe drivers’?

Reward the customers who follow your standards with lower pricing.  Bolt a policy requirement to your Gold Offering so that customers subscribing to that product receive your best efforts at a greatly lowered cost and make zero exceptions.  Create your Silver Offering so that it too delivers your best efforts but doesn’t include the policy requirement.  This will be your most expensive offering.  Now your pricing is based upon a tried and true model – the insurance companies’!

This is not something that can be done overnight – or even over a month – it will take time.  You should also be aware there is a great deal of responsibility that comes with the Gold Offering.  This is nothing like break-fix – you are completely taking ownership of their entire IT chain with this model.  That means you will need to have an application build process for each and every application your customer requires to operate and you’ll be maintaining that software for years to come.  This, in turn, requires you to become application packaging and deploying experts. (Much, much more on this later)  There are other responsibilities here too...

But if you want a scalable, worldwide business offering, this is a both an essential and huge step in that direction.

Technical Realization:  Build a desktop policy that works for you as well as for your customers.  Building this ‘child-safety-proof-cap’ for client workstations will not be easy and will require a lot of field testing for viability.  Have two test groups running when validating your policy collections: one that requires an above-average amount of flexibility within the OS and one of technically capable people who try to circumvent your policies.  This will ensure what you create is both viable and effective.  Once you have this policy collection, create a LabTech script for deployment and assign that script to run on your ‘Service Offerings.Gold’ group.

Business Alignment:  This is an essential part of offering a ‘boring workstation’.  If we cannot control what changes occur on a resource, it makes it much more difficult (if not impossible) to manage that resource.  The value proposition to your customer is threefold: productivity increase due to less downtime and no distractions from ‘other’ software on the company computer.  The third is, of course, considerably reduced monthly management costs.  Gold coverage is very cheap AND very good.

An Easy Way to Provide Immediate Value to Your Customers

Why pay for a text editor when I can download one for free?  Why even pay for an office suite for that matter?  Open Office is F-R double E and can do all (or at least most) of the heavy lifting the current market leader does.  Did I mention it’s free?  And it scales.  This has to be one of the lowest hanging fruits in the basket.  Make sure your service offering pitches Open Office as an alternative office productivity suite.  You will attract more customers as well as demonstrate alignment to your customer’s needs.

Open Office does not come with an e-mail editor so you’ll need to include one.  Build a Microsoft Outlook deployment process as well as one for the complete Office Suite.  That way, no matter which option your customer chooses, you'll have an automated product to supply and maintain that order.

Technical Realization:  Create a deployment script for Open Office and associate with your ‘Software Deployment.Open Office’ group.  Utilize a remote cache and extra data fields (assigned to the Client Object) to personalize deployment.  Conclude with an Extra Data Field for one-click deployment (extra points for an Extra Data Field on the Computer Object for exceptions.)  Do the same for Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office.

Business Alignment:  A dollar a month, per workstation, per title.  Call it software maintenance where you guarantee comprehensive consistency, automatic updating and delivery.  This product is just one of many to build and with each you will lock in a reoccurring billable while stabilizing and homogenizing your customer’s environment.

First Post

And they say the first post is the hardest </chuckle>