Just a few hours before I head off into the clouds again. This time my destination is the November 2^nd D&H Mid-Atlantic Fall Show with over 1,000 attendees!!! Pop on up to Hershey and join me.

This issue continues my Office 365 journey at SMB Nation, an update from channel Eyes, a shout-out to CloudNation and cloud updates from both Intronis and Axcient.

The Google tree! My boyz tossed a hula hoop into a tree on our property years ago and it got stuck. Applying teen logic – they tossed another to free the first one. And another and another – all getting stuck. Turns out this “art” resembles the Google logo!

Gotta fly – until next time!

Chees…harrybbbb

Harry Brelsford | Founder | SMB Nation, Inc. | www.smbnation.com

PS - Save the date for MVP Nation March 2-3, 2012 at Microsoft Redmond! It’s not for wimps!

Also, be sure to check out this week's webinar: Simple Secrets for Selling Business Continuity: Thursday, November 4, 2011 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT with Datto CEO Austin McChord.

Register here:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/339459768

Part IV: My Office 365 Journey Continues

In this installment of my Office 365, I describe our experience with installing Office 365 and its components such as Office 2010 Pro Plus on each client PC. This is based upon my own experience implementing the Office 365 solution for my company. I completely understand your experience might differ.

Because our move to Office 365 was effectively a migration, I first had each user export their existing email store (PST file) to C: drive on their computer. In some cases, the user didn’t have enough room on C: to store the PST file and some “Housecleaning” was necessary to free space. Such is a conversion. The users were instructed to follow these procedures inside the Microsoft Outlook application:

In this installment of my Office 365, I describe our experience with installing Office 365 and its components such as Office 2010 Pro Plus on each client PC. This is based upon my own experience implementing the Office 365 solution for my company. I completely understand your experience might differ.

Because our move to Office 365 was effectively a migration, I first had each user export their existing email store (PST file) to C: drive on their computer. In some cases, the user didn’t have enough room on C: to store the PST file and some “Housecleaning” was necessary to free space. Such is a conversion. The users were instructed to follow these procedures inside the Microsoft Outlook application:

1. Select the File tab
2. Select Options
3. Select Advanced
4. Select Export
5. Select Export to a file in the Import and Export Wizard page. Click Next.
6. Select Outlook Data File (.pst) on the Export to a File page and click Next.
7. On the Export Outlook Data File page, select the highest-level parent object ( harryb@smbnation.com) and check the Include subfolders box. Click Next.
8. Select a location via the Browse button to populate the Save exported file as: box. Click Finish.
9. Click OK at the Create Outlook Data File dialog box asking you to Add optional password.

The PST export process begins and can take a few hours for large data files. I also discovered our “fleet” of computers at SMB Nation had different versions of Outlook. Chris had Outlook 2007 to support the NetSuite ERP connector. An older “telemarketing” machine had Office 2003! So the above procedure had to be modified to accommodate these exceptions. As you know, a conversion will always bring out the gremlins and demons!

Once the above export was complete – it was time to level-set and have everyone install the same version of Office 2010 Pro Plus using this procedure.

1. The user will logon to the Office 365 site at www.office365.com.
2. Click Downloads in the far right column to go to the Downloads page. This is seen in Figure #1.

Figure #1: the Downloads page.

3. On the Downloads page, the first step is to Install Microsoft Office Professional Plus. I highly recommend you do this step. First – Office Pro Plus is a very robust solution. Second – it allows every machine in your organization to be on the “same page” and that standardization is the only way to efficiently grow a small business!

4. The majority of the Office Professional Plus installations went fine. In all but one case, we used the 32-bit version (which is recommended unless you are 64-bit savvy). Chris Bangs used the 64-bit version with his new Lenovo laptop (his situation is another story) and ultimately had to redo the installation as 32-bit.

5. The procedure for installing Office Professional Plus is straightforward. Download an enormous file and run the installation routine (Next, Next, Next, Finish). You will reboot your client machine.

I couple of gotchas to share at this point. I don’t know how to say this but basically the ladies at SMB Nation who READ and follow the rules did just fine. The gentlemen at SMB Nation, who are closeted rogue computer cowboys, experienced numerous Office 2010 Pro Plus failures. The resolution ranged from multiple support calls to force the Office 2010 installation to running “Mr. FixIt” from Microsoft to remove registry entries for a previously deleted Office 2003 installation. I won’t go into the detail of each exception here but hopefully you get the point. Corner me at the next SMB Nation event if you want all of the details. :)

Next – I declined to install the Lync client on the users computers for now. Why? When I performed our migration and conversion to Office 365 it was over Labor Day weekend and just a few weeks before the 9^th annual SMB Nation Fall conference. Quite frankly, Lync was not an urgent installation and I want to learn it better before I install it. I will write this up later as part of my journey. The Lync installation option is shown in figure #2.

Figure #2: On the Downloads page, there is an option for the Lync client installation.

Next up is the third selection to “Set up and configure your Office desktop apps.” This will update your system with patches and then configure the Outlook client for immediate use. This is shown in Figure #3.

Figure #3: Select the “set up and configure your Office desktop apps selection.

In several cases, I was unable to complete this step and received error message 17029. I filed a trouble ticket with Microsoft support and received the following response: Installing your web apps in the Office 365 portal. You were receiving an error message: 17029. Most of the errors having to do with these are due to lack of updates and patches or the wrong updates. I would check these to be sure. Please update the Service Request in the Microsoft Online Portal if you have any questions. If the issue persists please call in and use the reference number on the Service request.

In several cases, typically the ladies' machines, this option worked just fine. But with myself (ouch) and a couple of the guys, I had to do the manual configuration for Microsoft Outlook using the autodiscover process. This is documented in Office 365 online document titled “Manually update and configure desktops for Office 365” shown in Figure #4.

Figure #4: This help information will allow you to manually configure Outlook 2010 if you hit a snag. It is akin to how you configured the Outlook client on an Exchange-based network in the past.

Finally – I had the users import their legacy e-mails back into the Outlook 2010 client to make their data corpus whole. The steps for this are:

Import e-mails

1. You will see in Outlook your new mailbox on the left-side.
2. Pick the new e-mail box with a single click.
3. Select File, Open.
4. Select Import
5. Select Import from another program or file. Next.
6. Select Outlook Data File (.pst). Next.
7. Complete the file to import field. Browse to the backup.pst file you created in Step #1 earlier.
8. Select Replace duplicates with items imported. Next.
9. Confirm the file to import from (e.g. Backup).
10. Confirm that Include subfolders is selected.
11. Select Import items into the same folder in [and make sure your NEW MAILBOX is selected)
12. Click Finish.

This process may take a long time, depending on the size of your backup.pst file. It took my computer about two hours to do this.

In my next blog, I will discuss configuring the mobile client and using Outlook Web Access in Office 365!!!

Stop Leaving Money on the Table!

By Tim Brien, Director of Managed Print Services for OKI Data Americas

According to a recent article in MSP Mentor, only 20 percent of the top 100 managed service providers currently offer managed print services (MPS). That fact reveals two things: 1) There is limited awareness among MSPs about the unique advantages and revenue-generating opportunities inherent in including managed print as part of their suite of services, and 2) there is plenty of room – and tremendous opportunity – for MSPs to establish themselves and stake their claim within the MPS arena.

Many MSPs hesitate to employ MPS because they believe that managing printers, copiers and document output seems like a lot of work and expense with minimal associated profit. In actuality, managed print solutions provide partners with the means to increase margins and revenue streams quickly while generating real and quantifiable savings for their customers. It’s truly a win-win situation!

There are a number of MPS solutions featuring a broad range of offerings from which to choose. A cloud-based solution provides a cost-effective, complete MPS business model that can also be utilized at the individual component level to augment the MSP portfolio of IT offerings. This type of flexible, modular solution gives MSPs a unique and competitive edge by providing a wave of new opportunities for developing both immediate and long-term, recurring revenue streams while maximizing workflow efficiencies for their customers.

The remaining 80 percent of top MSPs should understand that if they’re not offering MPS as part of their overall service offerings, they’re leaving money on the table – money that their competitors will gladly pick up. Consider these statistics:

• MPS revenue globally was nearly $31.6 billion in 2010 and is projected to exceed $68 billion by 2014.
• For MSPs, inclusion of managed print solutions will help boost revenues by 20 percent or more while driving markups of 50 percent – all with minimal effort and no added costs or infrastructure.

One final statistic: MSPs will miss out on 100 percent of the benefits of MPS if they continue to hesitate in committing to this cost-effective, revenue-generating, easy-to-use solution. Why wait? Act now and quit leaving money on the table! For more information visit http://www.okidata.com/tmp or email me at tim.brien@okidata.com.

ChannelEyes Social Media Platform Reveals Key Alliances, Trending

Just one month after launching at SMB Nation’s Fall Conference in Las Vegas, ChannelEyes LLC announced yesterday new Industry Trending data from its early access website. The newly developed company announced at the event last month that its aim is to create the first free and secure social network to aggregate Channel Program information, transforming communication between suppliers and Channel Partners.

Since that time, thousands of industry members have signed up, thus revealing market trends and insight. “It was interesting to see the sharp demand from the vendor side,” said Bob Godgart, Founder of ChannelEyes, as 35% of initial signups come from the supplier community.

Proving how broad the supplier community is, a significant number of sign-ups have come from manufacturers, distributors, associations, consultants, franchises and master MSPs.

“The response to our early access website has surpassed expectations” said Godgart. “It has truly gone viral in only a few weeks.” With such a large sample size of Channel Partners, almost three quarters of which are Owner/CEO level, it was interesting to see the different vertical and technology specialties represented. In addition to traditional IT vendors, a strong showing of Managed Service Providers, ISVs, Telco, Vertical Systems, Print and Audio/Video professionals are also looking for better collaboration with their suppliers as well as a simplified way to follow Channel Programs.

The response has also been strong globally, with sign-ups from individuals in more than 30 countries represented in the first few weeks. Beyond North America, a significant amount of signups came from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Western Europe.

The platform’s channel partner members selected their key suppliers they wanted to follow on the early access website. The average partner indicated they work closely with 7 suppliers.

According to ChannelEyes, the average mix included:
· 2 major hardware/software vendors.
· 1-2 major distributors.
· 1-2 associations, peer groups or coaches.
· 2-3 cloud tools.
· 50% of Channel Partners wanted to follow a PSA.
· The top 3 most requested: Microsoft, HP and Ingram Micro.


With a space of over 3,000 suppliers, around 600 were consistently chosen. In fact, 54 were selected more than 10% of the time. Of these top 54 suppliers, more than 90% have reached out to ChannelEyes for early access – including all of the top 10.

“Today, program information is sent to Channel Partners by email, newsletters, webinars, telesales, social media tools and usually stored in web portals” Godgart said. “Tremendous amounts of time and energy go into creating these materials but they receive little traffic.”
ChannelEyes.com will be the single place for Channel Partners to get a snapshot of new program highlights every day on a Social Wall. They will follow feeds from suppliers, control the programs they need to follow, filter the information they want to share and easily build social conversations around it.”

Channel Partners and suppliers can still sign up for early access today at http://www.channeleyes.com.

Harbor Computer Services Roll Cloud Business Continuity into IT Solutions

In business since 1999, Harbor Computer Services provides proactive IT support and complete technology solutions to small businesses throughout southeastern Michigan. Part of fulfilling that mission is helping every client implement a solid business continuity strategy. But until recently, that was easier said than done.

What their customers needed was an automated, offsite storage solution. Finding one suitable for small businesses, though, proved to be difficult. Some products utilized per-gigabyte pricing that saddled clients with constantly rising backup costs. Others were consumer-oriented services that lacked the encryption functionality many of her customers desperately needed.

Cloud Nation Answers – Give it a Shot!

Several months ago we launched Cloud Nation at www.cloudnation.co. For those of you that have visited our new online community – Thank you! For those that haven’t, we are just getting ready to ramp it up, and would like to hear your thoughts. You may be asking yourself – who needs another Cloud related site? Frankly, that’s a good question. This may help:

Cloud related products and services are growing at a clipping pace. Recent surveys show that 6 out of 10 SMB’s will always look at Cloud alternatives and that 4 out of 10 actually prefer them. When 60% of your client base is looking at Cloud alternatives and 40% actually prefer them – it is definitely worth a closer look.

So what are we doing that others aren’t? Growing a community is the simple answer. The Cloud is so wide and so deep that the more people learn about, it the more confused they get. Think of it like the internet in its early days. People were asking questions like “who owns the Internet”? Today, with the Cloud people are asking a lot of questions. In fact, so many questions that no one person or company can answer them all. For that reason you will find a section of our site devoted to answering Cloud questions. Ironically, it is called Cloud Nation Answers. Again, we are just “cranking up” the community portion of the site, but I would encourage you to go to http://www.cloudnation.co/answers and ask a question. We will be monitoring it and making sure that the questions that are asked actually get answered. If you visit Cloud Nation Answers and see a question you can respond to – please do.

Communities are designed to be interactive – and Cloud Nation was really built from the ground up to provide that interactivity. Every member gets his or her own blog. We have an App Reviews section and will soon have Service Reviews. We’ll let you know when the Service Reviews are launched, as it may be a good opportunity for new business for you. Bottom-line, growing a community starts with providing value and inviting people to join. We are working very hard to provide good Cloud resources and would simply like to ask you to stop on by and “sit a spell”!

Thanks for your interest. I will be writing more about Cloud Nation on a weekly basis.

Sincerely,

Tom Poole

CEO

Friday Afternoon Club with Intronis

You just never know where you’ll find fun. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Intronis HQ in Boston. I wanted to delve deeper into what makes this award- winning company tick. For those of you not aware, Intronis’ Ted Roller, Vice President of Channel Development, won the ASCII Cup (see below) at the recent SMB Nation Fall conference in Las Vegas.

So upon entering the Intronis offices, which are high-tech “open” hip and cool, I was struck by the energy!!! In general, I feel the East Coast has a more electric feeling then the West Coast, with folks used to taking steps two at a time instead of going to yoga. Intronis fit that perception with many worker bees scurrying around with blue-tooth headsets affixed to their ears, working hard.

Theresa Roy enjoying another day at the Intronis HQ in Boston.

So off to late lunch we went on a stunning fall afternoon. I anticipated a proper business lunch and I’d move along, exiting stage left. Instead I was engaged in a multi-hour patio lunch like one might have in Spain, where CEO Kent Plunkett and his staff (Melissa Abreu, Theresa Roy, Rob Merklinger) talked about the past, present and future of Intronis. The net-net of it all was this: Intronis is in a growth phase, having improved its code base, the quality of its product support and overall operations. Merklinger shared his sales optimization strategy, that includes the efficient use of SaleForce with integrations into the phone system. The Intronis team further emphasized a few additional points including its commitment to the channel plus renewed vigor to innovation. Plunkett, who has a long resume in the technology industry, is game on for the cloud where is sees the glass half-full, not half empty. The final takeaway? Intronis leadership position is not based on a lowest cost, race to the bottom strategy. Instead, Intronis provides a competitively priced service with an emphasis on quality, support and innovation. For example, Intronis is committed to aggressive quarter updates.

For 2011, the ASCII Cup was awarded to Ted Roller at Intronis!

Intronis is a provider of cloud backup and disaster recovery services for the IT channel. Intronis utilizes 256-bit AES security and multiple data centers located on opposite coasts to ensure data protection and availability. Intronis offers IT service providers a secure data solution combined with a robust partner program, the efficiencies of full web-based account management, and an industry leading technical support team. www.intronis.com.

Recent News Articles

Awards:

http://www.intronis.com/about/awards.php

More Information about Intronis

Axcient Cloud Continuity Solution Aims to Make Downtime a Thing of the Past for SMBs

By Regina Ciardiello, Editor, SMB Nation

Axcient announced this morning that it has launched its newly branded cloud solution known as Axcient Cloud Continuity. The Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of data backup/disaster recovery and business continuity services said the new product will allow SMBs to launch all of their services in Axcient’s cloud with “just a couple of clicks.

According to the company, its Cloud Continuity solution will provide SMBs with total business continuity for the first time. When local servers fail, users can easily run a virtual office on Axcient’s cloud platform enabling employees to continue working on their data and applications, and from any Internet-enabled device at any location -- no matter what happens.

(At right): Justin Moore, CEO, Axcient

The Cloud Continuity product can be set up in minutes and doesn’t require users to make any changes to their network environment, install any software, or make any up-front investments –it is offered as a simple monthly service.

“Cloud Continuity represents something that has never been available to the SMB market before; total business uptime. By leveraging the scalability and cost savings of the cloud, we are able to provide SMBs with enterprise-class service and technology at SMB price-points and SMB ease of use,” Justin Moore, Axcient’s CEO, said in a media statement. “The majority of vendors that are focused on the data protection market have built partial solutions that require an SMB to work with multiple vendors, and most of those solutions only protect the data. With Cloud Continuity, we can ensure that businesses continuously have access to both their data and their applications no matter what happens. We’re going to make downtime a thing of the past for SMBs.”

SMB Nation had the chance to catch up with Moore late last week while he was en route to an event in Boston. He shared with us why the company decided to add Cloud Continuity as part of its line card, as well as how it was able to offer the solution at a low cost to partners.

“The ability to offer Cloud Continuity at a low price point is because we are investing in the future and wanted to innovate and build out our services to reflect this,” Moore said. “We also just raised $15.5 million in funding, which allows us to further invest in our customers and long-term commitments. Our partnership with HP also provides us with the resources we need on the hardware side so that we can offer Cloud Continuity through the SMB market.”

Axcient Cloud Continuity eradicates the often-costly periods of downtime that result from hardware failure, a cyber-attack, fire, flood, or other natural disaster, which can wipe out a business’ servers. With complete failover to Axcient’s cloud, businesses can continue to service their customers, patients, and clients without any interruption in a matter of minutes.

“By offering our Cloud Continuity product, that means we can now make sure SMBs stay up and running all the time, no matter what happens,” Moore said. “I can’t express enough how game-changing this is. We can basically run a virtual version of a user’s business in Axcient’s cloud, and this can be done with 2 mouse clicks in less than 5 minutes – it will now make downtime thing of the past, and SMBs will be up and running in minutes.”

Moore also noted that the Cloud Continuity product was being tested in Beta by several of the company’s partners, who all expressed their praise and satisfaction with the platform during testing. “The appeal of Axcient is that, with one device and one vendor, we provide customers with ultimate continuity. For financial, legal, and healthcare practices with strict recovery time objectives and compliance requirements, or any business that can’t afford a day of downtime, the additional protection of having data and applications live and accessible in the cloud gives them a backup plan for their backup plans,” said Shane Linde, network engineer, The Computer Center.

“I have been using Axcient for some time now and have participated in the Beta of Cloud Continuity, I have to say this company has knack for building effective and easy to use technology. What makes Axcient Cloud Continuity unique is that it’s extremely simple. I can launch a secure virtual office with web and VPN access with a few clicks and very little setup or configuration. I haven’t seen a solution this powerful and elegant in any aspect of managing IT services,” said Zachary Boewer, IT Director, Scale Venture Partners.

Built on HP hardware, Cloud Continuity will be available exclusively through resellers in early November 2011 as a pay-as-you-grow service with no up-front costs. These benefits will allow SMBs to enjoy significant cost savings over traditional solutions, while gaining exponentially better functionality.

Sep/Oct 2011 SMB PC Magazine is HERE! Download NOW!

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