aug 2007

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SMB Partner Community - August/September 2007 www.smbnation.com Page 1

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AUG/SEPT 2007 | Vol. 2 � Issue 2

PUBLISHED BYSMB Nation, Inc.

Bainbridge Island, Washington

Harry Brelsford, PublisherEditorial Staff

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Beatrice MulzerEDITOR Barbara Wallace

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSRobin Robins, USAJeff Wuorio, USA

LAYOUT Al AlarakhiaCOVER ART DIRECTOR Michael Young

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSMark Mulvany, Ireland

Diego Salato, ItalyNick Pieters, Belgium

Leen Kleijwegt, NetherlandsAndy Wendel, GermanyDean Calvert, Australia

Steven Teiger, IsraelSuresh Ramani, IndiaStuart Raj, Indonesia

Mikael Nystroem, SwedenShelagh Harrop, South Africa

Dana Epp, CanadaKen Thoreson, USAAnne Stanton, USA

BUSINESS STAFFHarry Brelsford, CEO

Beatrice Mulzer, Vice PresidentCyndi Moody, Director,

WW OperationsKristal Sagdahl, Office Manager

Lindsay Serbous, Database AnalystJennifer Hall, Event Coordinator

Jackie Oreiro, Distribution

SMB Nation, Inc.PO Box 10179

Bainbridge Island, WA 98110 USA

Telephone: 360-779-1140Fax: 360-779-1140

E-mail: [email protected]

© Copyright 2007 SMB Nation Inc.All Rights Reserved

Please contact us for reprints andreproduction of content.

ISSN 1933-8899

SMBPartnerCommunity

Achieving ResultsThe Tour de France just reached its peak with Rasmussen’s spectacular ascent

to the Col d’Aubisque in the Pyrenees, a breathtaking race in the last twokilometers before the finish line. Rasmussen has just pulled away, leaving hiscrushed opponents behind, when a bleep flashes across the tele, and we learn hegot kicked of the tour for lying to his team members. There are dopingaccusations. Here we go again. I find sports to be much like business. Takingshortcuts may work for a little while, but in the end only real endurance, expertiseand commitment prove a truly stellar performance.

It was a great day at the Small Business Symposium in Denver, Colorado, andall the superstars were there. Small Business Specialists were looking to grow theirpractice, networking and exchanging information with peers, attending sessions.All in the effort to expand their business acumen. Growing your business andbecoming successful (whatever success means to you) is not an easy task. Whenyou read Arlin Sorensen’s story on managing people (page 16), you will find thatit took many years and many mistakes to get to where his company is today.Patricia and Dennis Schumaker (this month’s covershot) share an abbreviated version of theirchallenges and decisions made over theyears in order to move their companyforward. Their story reflects thechanging times. Schumaker &Company recently gave up thetraditional office space tobecome virtualized. Has thishurt their profits? I think not.See how Schumaker & Companydoes business with employees livingin other states and partnering locally onpage 33. SMB Partner Community isbringing you these articles in the effort to helpyou grow and be successful, and let you knowabout the initiatives and resources that areavailable to you through Microsoft. One of these isthe PAL initiative featured on page 38 where youwill meet the community leaders who volunteer their time to facilitate the project.Learn what Canada did to “accelerate” their Small Business Specialists (page 49)and what becoming a Small Business Specialist has done for some of your peers.If you didn’t make it to the Symposium this year, take a look at our Symposiumcoverage (page 6). You may just want to consider mingling with this crowd nextyear. Last but not least, we have a great article on deploying Vista on SmallBusiness Server using WDS (Windows Deployment Services) (page 11) and asecurity compliance article (page 41) by one of our favorite MVPs!

We hope you consider reading SMB Partner Community magazine as part ofyour business training exercise, and hope to see you at the top of the mountain soon!

EDITORIALBy Beatrice Mulzer, Executive Editor

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Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM

Your SpaceHello Beatrice,

It was nice attending your fast-paced seminar in Mumbai.I have one query…The customer is having SBS 2003 Premium editionwhich he bought last year from us (Microsoft OEM copy) and now hewants to upgrade his Database size to 75 GB.

Can we do that by applying Exchange 2003SP2 and what is theregistry edit required or How is it possible?

Regards Jaswinder SinghSmall Business Specialist THUKRAL SYSTEMS & SOLUTIONS, MUMBAI

Hello JaswinderDownload and apply Exchange SP2 to the SBS server and

then follow these steps from the Microsoft Exchange Team Blogat http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2005/09/14/410821.aspx

Good luck!Beatrice

Dear HarryIs there a way to use Outlook & Exchange to specify a delivery

folder in the workstation’s Outlook for email addressed to a particularemail account such as [email protected]? They are starting to usea fax service and want the faxes sent to this account to be delivered toall Users and put in an Inbox folder marked Fax so everyone will see allincoming faxes and delete those that do not belong to them.

Sincerely,Robert H. Springer, BusinessTechTeam, LLC, New Jersey

Our resident techxpert Handy-Andy answers:

Hello Bob. Set the fax option to forward to an email address,use the SBS global address [email protected] (fill inthe correct info). Create an Outlook folder called Fax in eachuser’s inbox. Create a rule in Outlook that says if subject contains“fax” move to folder “fax,” stop processing rules.

Community Spirit!This month’s community spirit (corporate citizen)

mention goes out to Team Microsoft Partners Calgary. Anumber of Microsoft Partners in Calgary participated in theevent, including Small Business Specialists, ISV Partnersand Dynamics partners. They gathered at Prince’s IslandPark for the annual MS Super Cities walk to raise fundstoward finding a cure for Multiple Sclerosis. The Calgaryteam raised $2,060.00 with donations coming from acrossthe globe.

Who Will be Shown Here Next?Send us your planned corporate citizenship activity

and SMB Partner Community magazine will donateUS$100 towards your cause and highlight you in an upcoming editorial. SMBPC is limited to onedonation per issue. Please send inquiries [email protected]

(L to R) Brad Fenniak, Splice Software; Tara Kelly,Splice Software; Stuart Crawford, IT Matters;

Brad Pawlak; Open Door Technologies; and team mascot Maggie the Scottish terrier completed the 10 km walk.

Page 4 www.smbnation.com SMB Partner Community - August/September 2007

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www.smbnation.com SMB Partner Community - August/September 2007

COVER STORY

PUTTING BUSINESS FIRST:

Microsoft Small Business Symposium 2007

by Beatrice Mulzer

n the ancient Greek days, a Greek symposia was a keyHellenic social institution, held in the men’s quarters ofthe household. Men would recline on couches and hold

a forum to debate, plot, boast or simply celebrate.Fast forward to MMVII (year 2007) and see how things

have changed since the days of Socratic dialogues. Swapthe men’s quarters with a conference floor of the Hyatt inDenver, CO, (also accessible to females), replace coucheswith chairs, turn plotting into planning and voilá, you havea modern day Symposia!

Some of the things that haven’t changed with timewere debate, community spirit and celebration at the one-year anniversary of the Small Business Symposium. Thisyear the Symposium drew close to 600 attendees composedof Small Business Specialists, Microsoft Partners andMicrosoft employees.

KeynoteMichael Risse, vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide

Small and Midmarket Business Group kicked of theSymposium with his keynote on Microsoft’s vision andsmall business market roadmap. Risse emphasized howimportant Small Business Partners are to Microsoft’ssuccess in the small and medium business (SMB) space,highlighting upcoming campaigns and accompanyingpromotions and offers. The message was clear thatMicrosoft will continue to grow the Small BusinessSpecialist designation. With the program still young,Microsoft is already putting a lot of effort behindsupporting Small Business Specialists with branding (logo

I rights), online referrals through the Partner Finder Tool andSolution Finder, exclusive Small Business Specialist-specifictraining, exclusive private managed newsgroups and a fourhour SLA (Service Level Agreement) for technical issues, toname a few. Following the keynote, several MicrosoftExecutives were available for a panel-style Q&A,answering attendees’ inquiries about future plans byMicrosoft in the SMB space.

SMB Market and PartnersAnticipated growth in the SMB technology market

looks healthy over the next couple of years. It is notsurprising that many Certified and Gold Partners are also

Wikipedia: Symposium originally referred to a drinking party (the Greek verb sympotein means "to drink together,") but has since come to referto any academic conference, whether or not drinking takes place.

Microsoft Executive Panel Q&A following the keynote: (L to R)Moderated by Stuart Crawford, IT Matters; Gregg Picard,

Worldwide Marketing Manager Licensing; Bill Reid, WorldwideDirector Technology Strategy; Glauco Ferrari, Worldwide DirectorSmall Business Marketing; Judy Kolde, Worldwide Director Broad

Partner Program Strategy.

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becoming Small Business Specialist certified, wanting totake part in this opportunity.

Some Registered Partners feel that Certified andGold Partners should not become Small BusinessSpecialist certified. Even though there are plenty ofopportunities out there, 98% of all employers worldwideare small businesses. Depending on your definition ofwhat number of seats constitutes an SMB, an SMB can befive seats or 500 seats. The overall SMB market has beenexperiencing an upswing, and even the smallest of SMBsare becoming more growth-minded. They arediscovering a need for business intelligence beyond abasic client/server network and wanting to optimizevalue from their existing processes and people. This isthe sweet spot for Small Business Specialists. Most of thetime you will find that a Certified or Gold Partnerprefers a customer who requires more complex solutionsthat go beyond personal productivity, email andcollaboration. Their preferred customer is in a nichemarket, requiring multifaceted business solutionsincluding application platform databases, businessintelligence or enterprise resource platforms, and theintegration of such. I have observed that althoughCertified and Gold Partners are pursuing the SmallBusiness Specialist credential, Small Business Specialistsare rising to the occasion, becoming Certified and Gold,and still servicing the smaller SMB market while startingto extend into larger markets. And based on the datashown at the Symposium, there is no need to worryabout a customer shortage anytime soon.

TransformationPartners should not fear competition from their

peers, but should fear being stuck in a mindset and notbeing able to transition their business model. The shiftto a service-based business model may not come easy tosome, but is necessary for business health. Through thetraining, tools and resources available, Microsoft SmallBusiness Specialist Partners can re-engineer theirbusiness approach. From talking price, giving quotes,handling orders, delivery, and performing service calls(which are all equated to cost by the customer) to a moresophisticated business level where customers becomeclients, you discuss solutions, provide a scope of work,terms and conditions, and do project planning,testing/deployment and confidently up-sell additional

solutions. While undergoing transformation, Partnersmay run into snags, like not having a truly efficient salesprocess. Ideally, a process should qualify a prospect upfront or reveal when to walk away before too much timeand effort are spent trying to close the sale. How aboutknowing to ask the right question and probing foropportunities as well as being able to think ofinnovative new ways to apply technology? (There is aMicrosoft tool that can help here – do you know whichone I am referring too? Answer at the end of this article.)The Symposium reinforced that Microsoft will be thereto help ease transformation pains by offering thetraining, support tools and programs that will helpevolve the Small Business Specialist as the SMB channelis evolving.

Rock GuitarsTo shake it up some, the second keynote started out

with great guitar solo strung by Robin Crow, a strugglingmusician gone successful entrepreneur and CEO. Crow setthe “gold standard” for customer service and excellence inthe recording industry and has overseen steady growth inhis business for the last 13 years. He shared his inspirationand wisdom from leaps of faith to fear of failure,motivating and entertaining the crowd at the same time.

Business Inertia

John Warrillow, President & CEO of Warrillow & Co.,presented “Disrupting Inertia.” He gave great examplesand made excellent points about SMB owners and thetriggers that change the way they run their business.Warrillow created a model separating “Intractables” (SMBowners who are obstinate) from “Convertibles” (SMBowners who are open to new business processes), includingthe various reasons for their current business outlook. Hegave sample psychographic profiles of “Convertibles,” anddescribed how to find them and overcome resistance to

You can download all Small BusinessSymposium presentations here:

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/sbsymposium

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adopting your solutions. Many insights were given in thissession, including recommendations and examples thatdemonstrated applying technology in innovative newways to business challenges – outlining opportunities inthe SMB market.

Breakout SessionsAfter the three high-energy keynotes in the morning, it

was time for Symposium attendees to choose from BusinessGrowth Breakout Sessions, with topics ranging from“Talent Wars: How to Hire and Retain Qualified People,” to“Software-as-a-Service Transformation,” and BusinessOpportunity Breakout Sessions covering topics like “Voice-over-IP: The Next Big Thing for Small BusinessSpecialists?” and “Take Your Web Productivity to the NextLevel.” Sessions were hosted by Microsoft Partners whohave excelled at their game and were willing to share theirknowledge.

There was no fear of getting stuck in a one-trackmindset. The content of the Breakout Sessions was high-value and all about growing your business. Consideringthat this Symposium had been made available for free toSmall Business Specialists and only cost non-SmallBusiness Specialists US$99 was a drop in the bucket, orshould I say a huge ROI (Return on Investment)?

Sessions were repeated at different intervals so attendeeswere able to catch their favorites and not have to choose oneover the other. During the evening Cocktail Reception,Lynnette Spanola Eastlake, the Worldwide Breadth ChannelDevelopment Manager, gave away door prizes to the non-stop networking crowd and introduced the new SmallBusiness Specialist Partner Area Leads (PAL) that had flownin from worldwide. (More about PAL on page 38).

Business 2.0All sessions were geared toward revving your business

engine high and Small Business Specialists were ready toshift it up a notch. They definitely do not suffer frombusiness inertia and heartily embrace the new opportunitiescoming down the road. With all the talk about transformingyour business, the available solution stack now expandingto hosted solutions is opening up a whole new revenueavenue for Small Business Specialists. Consider doing amash-up of your service offerings without having to hostyour own solutions. Office Live Marketplace will allow youto up-sell pre-built business applications hosted byMicrosoft and customize these platforms for your clients.You have an SMB prospect not interested in a server? Start

A Business Growth Breakout Session,“Beyond the Assessment:Turning Data into Profit”– panel (L to R) facilitated by ArlinSorensen, Heartland Technologies (US); Stuart Crawford, IT

Matters (CA); Andy Trish, NCI Technologies (UK); Dean Calvert,Calvert Technologies (Australia); and Dan Hay, ISOutsource (US).

Introduction of the new Small Business Specialist Partner Area Leads.

Most favorite session at the Symposium:The VoIP seminar that focused on Response Point.

All the Symposium sessions were outstanding(including the structured networking tables at lunch)but being one of the lucky 100 to win a three-phone(plus base unit) Response Point PBX for our office paidfor the trip!

I attended all the sessions at the Symposium, andall the sessions were good. I found that WWPC wasexcellent too – getting to meet decision-makers withvendors and befriend key contacts in person reallygave a lot of value. I plan to attend next year as well.(I got so much value out of the Symposium, that Ithought WWPC was going to be a letdown). Ipresented at my PSSBS group last week on the valueof the Symposium and WWPC. Finally, the YellowSBSC Lounge was fantastic. It made a great place tomeet up with friends, as well as meet new ones.

Aaron Booker, Hardlines IT Solutions, Bellingham, WA(Small Business Specialist since March 2006).

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thinking about offering a low-cost, low-commitmentsolution via Web services. There you can still generate setupfees, training and customization and support revenue. Haveyou tried to sell a customer a customer relationshipmanagement (CRM) solution but the upfront cost was toohigh? With the next release of CRM (Titan) the code basewill be the same for on-premise CRM, Partner-hosted CRMand CRM Live, so it will be easy to move all the settings,customizations and configurations (stored in the metadataarchitecture) between these environments. What a greatway to seed a product with the customer.

Take-awayEvery session at the Symposium contained an

immediate value-add. And you couldn’t help feeling goodbeing a Small Business Specialist that day. Attending aconference in general is always a breath of fresh air, becauseusually you are cubed-up with your head in the laptop, aclient’s server or some dark, hot cabling closet. ThisSymposium was top-notch and right on target for SmallBusiness Specialists and I can’t wait to see what next year’sSymposium will bring. �

Most favorite session at the Symposium:Solving Customers' Accounting Challenges with

Financial Management Software from Microsoft. Theoverview itself was informative but, more importantly,it got me the opportunity to hook up with Bob Lewis,Sr. Marketing Manager, Microsoft Business Division.Having the opportunity to chat with him regardingsome initiatives alone was worth the price ofadmission.

Alan Shrater, President Windows Small Business SeverUser Group Rocky Mountain Region (www.winsbsug.com)

(L to R) Lynnette Spanola Eastlake and Kate Chan makingannouncements and giving away door prizes to lucky winners.

Even lunch was networking time! Tables were grouped intodiscussion topics – shown here one of the “Leadership Strategies

for Accelerated Business Growth”table discussions.

Each attendee received a cool soft leather portfolio - an addedbonus for just showing up!

More Stuff! A t-shirt proclaiming the Small Business Specialistlogo in 14 languages.

Answer: Microsoft Business and Technology Assessment Toolkit

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Efficiency2Efficiency2

by Matthew Clapham

’m a security engineer by day and gamer / SBS enthusiastby night. Always wanting to use some of the sametechnologies that make IT run smoothly at work, I try to do

the same or similar things at home. Here I’ll describe theprocess I used to deploy clean Windows Vista clients in myWindows Small Business Server 2003 R2 environment at home.

Like most multi-computer households, my home has amix of desktops and laptops. Systems range from a relativelynew dual-core 32-bit notebook to a few 64-bit capable desktopsthat, prior to our Vista migration, were running a mix ofWindows XP SP2 and Windows XP x64 Edition. I ran a smoothhome computing environment when Windows XP SP2 was thenorm, but I like to be an early adopter of new technologies. Myoldest systems are running two- to three-year old hardwarebut nothing so ancient as not to be well within Vista’sminimum requirements. When Vista shipped last fall, I startedplanning my migration. I looked over the Windows VistaRecommended System Requirements. You can never have toomuch RAM, so I configured all my systems so that Vista’s 512MB minimum was met. Being cognizant of the differentdevices we have, I watched the manufacturer’s sites for Vistadrivers (especially 64-bit support). Once most of the hardwarehad 32- and 64-bit Vista drivers available, I only had to wait forthe SBS update to arrive that would provide full support. As Iwaited, I ran the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor on all myclients just to double-check things. Software upgrade issues Ididn’t worry about, because I planned to re-deploy all clientswith a clean OS. But I did make note of any potential hardwareissues the advisor highlighted. My home network is run like asmall enterprise; only one server and less than half a dozenclients. I could have walked around to each system and bootedfrom the Vista installation disk to perform a clean setup, but Iwas in the final stages of planning my upcoming weekendwhen Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 was released!Normally I wouldn’t be that excited about a service pack, butthis particular one included an important feature that wouldsimplify my task – Windows Deployment Services (WDS). Forthose readers not familiar, WDS is the replacement of RemoteInstallation Services (RIS). It allows PXE-boot (ie, networkboot) capable clients to launch an OS installation at boot time.WDS is the recommended method for a network deploymentof Vista clients. Suddenly, my Vista migration was both easierand more complicated. Here’s how I did it…

First I needed to cover some prerequisites. Thecornerstone of my home network is Windows Small Business

I Server 2003 R2. In order for SBS to properly support Vistaclients, I had to install the “Ripcurl” update (see KB 926505).WDS and the application distribution system use storageefficiently, but I still made sure there was about 20 GBavailable on the server’s data volume just in case. Also, I hadto upgrade my server to Windows Server 2003 SP2, and I hitsome of the same snags others had seen in previous servicepacks. After a short delay to fix the issues, everything wasrunning and I was able to perform the initial WDS setup viathis method:

1. Launch Control Panel on the Server2. Open the Add or Remove Programs panel3. Open the Add/Remove Windows Components

section4. Check off the Windows Deployment Services at the

bottom of the list (see Figure below)5. Click Next > to complete the wizard6. Reboot if/when prompted

The start of the server configuration was done, but I had asmidge more to finish later.

Users on my network (ie, the wife and me) know that anyimportant data needs to be saved in one of several server-backed locations:

1. The “My Documents” folder (which is re-directed toa folder on the SBS via GPO)

2. E-mail inboxes3. Media-specific shared folders (e.g. for music, video,

Using WDS on SBS 2003 R2 SP2 for Vista Client Deployments

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photos, etc.)4. http://companyweb/, which is a tweaked version of

the SBS SharePoint site we use for family calendar,events, help desk requests, etc.

The applications we use (primarily productivity,browsing, games, and communications) are all standard usercapable, so I was confident a “nuke & pave” of each clientwouldn’t cause any undue data loss (other than minor user-specific application settings like desktop backgrounds). Theone exception is the Internet Explorer Favorites folder, whichprior to Vista couldn’t be automatically re-directed. Since I’dpreviously worked around that by redirecting “Favorites” to afolder under My Documents, web links wouldn’t be lost.

For each client to be converted, I needed a copy ofWindows Vista Business or Ultimate Edition. Only onephysical copy of the media is necessary for importing intoWDS, but product activation requires a product key for each.It was possible to have one copy of the media but purchaseextra keys (and keep careful track of which computer currentlyuses each key). There is a similar requirement for anyadditional software planned for distribution (depending onthe licensing agreements). In my case, I also planned toinclude Office 2007 Standard Edition. I know the Business andUltimate editions are toward the top end of Vista’s SKU costscale, but I needed to have versions that are capable of joininga domain. I had to double-check that each client I planned toconvert was capable of PXE-booting (booting from a ROM onthe LAN device) and set the LAN first in the boot order. Oneolder system wasn’t capable of PXE, but that was easily andaffordably fixed with a LAN card upgrade. To simplify theapplication re-deployment after OS setup (and to make sure Ididn’t forget anything), I also needed to add applications tothe SBS’ Server Management console. Initially, I wasn’t fond ofthe way SBS distributes applications to client systems, but I’vefound it works reasonably well even in a locked-downenvironment like mine, provided a desktop administrator isthe first to logon after the initial OS setup. Configuringprograms for deployment entailed making a new folder for theapplication under the “ClientApps” share, copying theinstallation media there, and then running through the ClientApplication wizard to configure the distribution of the setuplinks. The SBS’ client application distribution mechanism evenworks for drivers and auxiliary software installers (thoseincluded with scanners or web cams). I added client appdeployments for the 32- and 64-bit versions of each application(when possible). When completed, I had application entriesfor antivirus, Office 2007, keyboard, and mouse drivers. Nextup was getting down to the business at hand: Vista migrations!

All the basics were in place, but I’d yet to configure WDS.At first launch of the Windows Deployment Services console(available from Start>Administrative Tools>WindowsDeployment Services), it asked where to store the remoteinstallation files. I pointed it to my server’s data volume (I tryto keep as many operational data stores as possible off the OSdrive). I configured WDS not to use the default DHCP ports

and to respond to all clients (my environment is big enough toworry about selectively responding to requests). Since SBSalready has a fully capable DHCP server, all WDS needs to dois to set option 60 (which indicates a PXE boot server isavailable). After the initial configuration, I opened theproperties for my server in the WDS console and set twothings on the “Directory Services” tab:

1. Set the computer naming format to “%71Last%03#”2. Set the Client Account location to: <domain

FQDN>/MyBusiness/Computers/SBSComputers

WDS isn’t very useful without images to deploy. I addedat least one boot and one install image. Boot images get theclient up and running, and install images are used for theactual OS deployment. Since I planned to use both x86 and x64hardware running Vista, I added one of each image type perbinary platform as well. Adding a boot image is simple – rightclick the “boot image” node in the WDS console and point thewizard at the “BOOT.WIM” file in the Sources folder on theWindows Vista installation disk. Install images are bit morecomplex, since not only is there the multi-platform issue,there’s also a SKU selection to contend with. First, I created aninstall image group by right-clicking the install image node ofthe WDS console. I selected “Add Image Group” on thecontext menu, then gave it a name (“Windows Vista,”obviously). Once at least one image group has been created,install images can be added. I selected the, “Add InstallImage,” and followed the steps in the wizard. This time, Ipointed to the “INSTALL.WIM” file. I then saw firsthand whatthe Vista folks have been describing: a Vista installation diskcontains all SKUs at once.

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WDS offered to create options for everything from Starter Edition to Ultimate.

Since I was deploying Ultimate across my client base, Ijust chose that. I could have selected all SKU types, becausethe differentiation between SKUs doesn’t require anyadditional storage space (only different product keys arenecessary). I needed versions that can connect to a domain,which makes anything less than Business Edition pointless.For either image type, WDS took a few minutes to copy therelated files.

PXE boot installs are fairly straightforward. The LANhardware ROM detects a DHCP server at boot time and offersto redirect to the installation environment when the userpresses F12. For Windows Vista installations PXE booted viaWDS, there’s a short to moderate delay while the setupchooser loads.

Windows Windows Boot Manager on the client machine

If the hardware is capable of different binary versions, orthere are multiple boot images available, more than one optionmay be presented. Be sure to select the installation image thatmatches the binary type of the OS to be installed. For example,to install x64 versions of Windows Vista on capable hardware,

select the x64 installer. After the initial choice, a language-selection screen will be shown, then setup asks for usercredentials to complete the installation. (WDS uses thecredentials to generate the default host name and connect to ashare on the server for install files.)

WDS language selection screen

The OS selector will be shown, even if there’s only oneoption available.

A multi-OS list offers the available selections

When the client setup asks for a product key, I uncheck the,“Automatically activate when online,” option. I’d rathermanually control when a system is activated. Although thisrequires a return trip for an administrator, it allows for somewiggle room to work out kinks, up to and including re-deployment on the same hardware. Since I wanted to call themachines the same thing they were called before, I renamedeach from the default after the WDS installation completed.Careful preparation allows a smooth operation, and my hardwork paid off, with one minor hitch: machine identities.Depending on which user account joined the computer to thedomain, re-using the original machine name can be a tricky.Deleting the original machine account is a pretty foolproof way

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


to clear up the conflict, as is re-using the machine name andimmediately logging on with an account that has privilege toalter the machine information (ie, the domain administrator orthe original account used to domain join).

To get the desired application set back on the clientsystem, I assigned them to the new built (and renamed)systems via the Client Computers node in the SBS ServerManagement Console. In this case, there was a twist. Since ourregular user accounts are administrators, I logged on with theaforementioned domain-wide client local administratoraccount to finish the configuration details and applicationinstallations. The SBS logon script may invoke a User AccountControl prompt if there are applications to distribute. Double-click the shortcuts dropped onto the desktop that launcheseach setup program, then walk through each installation. Onceeach configuration completes, the desktop shortcut handilyremoves itself. When the shortcuts are all gone, the clientsystem is ready to go! With the Windows Software UpdateService (WSUS) engine in SBS 2003 R2, any necessary updatesare delivered in short order. However, to speed things up, Isometimes kick off a manual Windows Update session. Toclean up, I then remove the local account Vista setup has theuser create even though the computer is domain joined. (Isuspect there’s a way to work around that problem withunattended setup answer files, but I haven’t done so yet.)Once the clients are working properly and the user isconfident that things are working well, I logon with thedomain-wide local administrator account and activate theoperating system (which ties the hardware footprint to theparticular product key).

This method of building a new computer directly via thenetwork in an SBS environment does require some monitoringto keep things going. But I can rebuild a client system withWindows Vista in about one or two hours, including installingstandard applications. The process can be tested andprototyped in a Virtual PC 2007 guest system to dry run andiron out any kinks. Many of the setup stages are “fire andforget,” so once started they can be ignored until further inputis required or the next process needs to be launched. In myhome environment, there’s still one class of applications thatdon’t lend themselves to server distribution – games. Gamestend to have disk checks at install and/or runtime, so setupfrom anything but original media is problematic. In a typicaloffice environment there’s bound to be a niche application ortwo with similar issues. The switchover to 64-bit Vista hasbeen smooth. Out of all the different devices, only one failed towork (an aging flatbed scanner that needed to be replacedanyway). After all client systems were up and running Vista, Iturned on every folder redirection possible (via GPO) inaddition to roaming user profiles. Now even applicationsettings tag along wherever a user logs on! The Vista migrationis easy to do with the above method, as is re-building new orbroken systems, since the infrastructure is already in place.We’ve been running Vista clients exclusively for about threemonths now. Try it out sometime! �

Matthew Clapham is an active participantin the Puget Sound IT Securitycommunity. He’s published several articleson security, gaming, Small BusinessServer, and combinations of the three. Hecan be seen speaking at securityconferences in the region and is alwayshappy to chat about IT or security

conundrums. When not working on either of the above, he enjoysworking on his fixer-upper home or relaxing with his wife, his cat,and a well-aged single malt.

You can reach Matthew at [email protected]

Matthew’s Tips

Tip #1Create some “ALT” accounts. Least privilegedaccounts are the way to go in my security world.I recommend three separate accounts. The first is an e-mail enabled normal user. The second is a localadministrator on all client computers. The third is adomain administrator and is primarily used forlogging onto the Small Business Server.

Tip #2Create a “Definitive Software Library.” I collect thevarious driver packages, updates, applications andwhatnot commonly used on clients and servers andstore them in a server share for easy reference.

Tip #3Use 32- and 64-bit versions when appropriate. Whenan application needs two versions (one for x86 andone for x64) I typically create two similarly-namedentries in the Client Applications list for distribution.Then each can be assigned to a system as necessaryand appropriate for the hardware type.

Tip #4Package as many applications as possible. Once allthe applications are packaged and any kinks ironedout, re-deploying or updating applications is a cinch.

Tip #5Advanced (light / zero touch) installations. Forcreating Vista deployments with minimal humanintervention, use the Solution Accelerator forBusiness Desktop Deployment 2007 Edition to createan image that WDS can distribute to client systems.

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM

Recommended Resources

• Deploying Windows Vista: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905061.aspx

• Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment 2007:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=13F05BE2-FD0E-4620-8CA6-1AAD6FC54741&displaylang=en

• 10 Things You Need to Know about Deploying Windows Vista: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/11/deployment/

• Desktop Deployment TechCenter: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/desktopdeployment/default.aspx

• Preboot Execution Environment (PXE): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment

• Preparing the Windows DS Server:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490128.aspx

• Windows Deployment Services Update Step-by-Step Guide for Windows Server 2003:http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/9e197135-6711-4c20-bfad-fc80fc2151301033.mspx?mfr=true

• Windows Vista Migration Step-by-Step Guide: http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/1a3fbe72-9de8-4b94-b254-586a61843a041033.mspx?mfr=true

• Windows Vista Deployment Step-by-Step Guide:http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/88f80cb7-d44f-47f7-a10d-e23dd53bc3fa1033.mspx?mfr=true

• Update for Windows Small Business Server 2003: Windows Vista and Outlook 2007 compatibility: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9BF2F1E4-1B2C-471B-A284-E0C8C169FAC3&displaylang=en

• Windows Vista Hardware Assessment: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/hardwareassessment/wv/default.mspx

• Windows Vista: Recommended System Requirements: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx

• The Desktop Files: Revisiting Windows Deployment Services: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/05/DesktopFiles/default.aspx

• Official SBS Blog regarding the Windows Vista (Ripcurl) update: http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2007/02/09/sbs-vista-client-update-ripcurl-now-available.aspx

• Microsoft Virtual PC 2007: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

• The Administrator Accounts Security Planning Guide: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance/serversecurity/administratoraccounts/default.mspx

• Master Your Domain: Build a Corporate Network at Home: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/10/SBS/default.aspx

• Gaming in a Secure Environment: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/02/Gaming/

• 4 Security Technologies Every IT Organization Must Have: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/06/SecurityTech/default.aspx

• Top 10 Reasons to Install Windows Server 2003 SP2:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/bb229702.aspx

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ne of the greatest challenges I have dealt with over theyears has been employees. They can provide the mostfantastic joy and also cause one to lose sleep for days on

end. And the reality is it never ends. Hiring your first employeewill change your life forever. No longer are you able to makedecisions on a whim. Now all of a sudden they affect anotherperson and his/her life. It is a responsibility that one must nottake lightly. It isn’t for everyone…that is for sure.

My first employee was added after five years of running mytechnology business myself (which was more of a hobby at thisstage). It rocked my world. I really did not have a plan for howI would utilize or manage this person. It was apparent to me thatI needed help and if I wanted to grow the business, some of thework would need to be done by someone else. Brenda came towork for me and just showed up wondering what she wassupposed to do. I hadn’t really considered that until she showedup. I just figured she would know what to do. After all, she wasthe employee, right? I was paying her to do work. Unfortunatelythat is how a lot of people hire staff. They interview, they createa compensation package, they give the person a desk; but theynever consider what this new person will actually do. How willshe get direction every day? How will I communicate with herall that is in my head? We still wrestle with that daily but havemade some significant strides. Realize that when you hire yourfirst employee, you won’t get it all right. Managing employees isa continual learning process.

Today Heartland Technology Solutions has 80 professionalsacross five states working out of eight different offices. Ourcurrent status is quite different from that initial situation some17 years ago. As we drive toward our goal of doing $17.5 million(USD) in revenue this year, managing employees is a majorfocus for the HTS management team. We will not get therealone. We absolutely know that our only road to successinvolves each member of our team being on the same page andfocused on the work at hand every day. It doesn’t just happen,even when you grow your organization significantly. Managingemployees is hard work that never ends (did I say that already?).

So what are the key things you need to do in order tomanage people? There are some steps you can take no matterwhat stage you are in, be it at that frightening place of hiringyour first person, or ready to hire your 251st. People are people,and they have some basic needs that just need to be met whenyou become their employer. Consider these key areas as youbegin your employee management:

O1. Purpose/Vision/Mission – As the leader of your company, theseareas need to be clearly defined and written down. You cannotexpect people to follow if they don’t know where you are takingthem. I see this over and over in the peer groups that we lead calledthe Heartland Tech Groups (HTG). So many owners/managers donot have clearly defined direction for their company. It needs to bedefined so people can “get on board the bus.”

2. Job descriptions – Often I see people get hired without clarityin their roles. When you are hiring your first few employees,they have to be “utility” players for you. But even then, youneed to develop job descriptions so they understand what thebasic responsibilities of their jobs will be. This is vital toemployee satisfaction – they have to know what is expected.Almost all employees want to please their boss. The problem isthey often don’t understand what that looks like because we doa poor job defining it for them.

3. Compensation – If you want to have issues with an employee,this is one area you can almost be assured of conflict if not doneright. People are pretty focused on how they get paid. Make sureit is written down in detail, that you review it with them on aregular basis, and that everyone is on the same page. If youdon’t, I guarantee that this will be a continual source of irritationfor everyone involved.

Managing

By Arlin Sorensen

Employees

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


4. Commitments – As you grow your organization, it becomesmore important to have employees define, with your help, themeasures that will be used to evaluate their performance. Weuse a system of personal commitments that are developedbetween the employee and his or her manager. It is a simplelist of items they are agreeing to accomplish this year and beheld accountable to. I have to confess that this is the first yearwe have done this step, but it has really been a good one.Every employee at HTS has a personal set of commitmentsthat we are reviewing quarterly to help keep people on track.These line up with the company goals and if everyoneachieves – we will not only hit our goals as an organization,we will blow them away. So far we are on track, and thesepersonal employee commitments look like a great addition toour employee management style. I wish I had acted on thisone a lot sooner.

5. Employee handbook – Policies and procedures need to bewritten down. One of the biggest pain points in my history wasaround this area. When we hired our 13th employee in 1995, westill had no written handbook. I was still expecting people to“just figure out what I thought,” and it didn’t work any longer.We had a meltdown. People were confused and frustrated. Thatis when I finally bit the bullet and hired someone to write ahandbook for us. I should have done it long before this point, somy example is certainly not a best practice. Define how youwant your employees to act and work very early in the process.Don’t wait until you need a handbook – begin putting it in placebefore employee number one even comes on staff. If you alreadyhave employees but no handbook – get it done ASAP. And makesure you get it reviewed regularly. Laws change and so does themarket environment. This is not a one-time project. It has to bekept current and up to date continually.

6. Culture – This is probably one of the hardest areas to control,yet it has the most to do with employee satisfaction. Culturedefines your business, internally and in many ways to yourcustomers as well. If you don’t take control of that culture as theleader/owner/manager – it will develop in ways that do notline up with your purpose and mission. This requires a lot moreattention and focus than many people realize. A positive culturedoes not just happen. It takes work. At HTS we do a weeklyinternal newsletter with updates from each of our eightlocations, a profile on one of our teammates, some fitness andnutrition guidance and other points of interest from the partners

leading the company. This area is particularly critical if yougrow by mergers or acquisitions, but in every case, it is vital toget your arms around building the culture you want in yourorganization.

7. Business planning – Too many companies today are runwithout a plan. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Anothercommon plague I see in the industry in the HTG peer groups(www.htgmembers.com) is a lack of any kind of business ormarketing plan. Employees with any sort of business savvyknow that without a plan, success is based on luck. Goodemployees don’t want to bet their future on luck – they wanta solid plan that they can be part of and help bring tofruition. The size and length of the plan is not nearly ascritical as just having one. Know what you intend to do andhow you will do it.

8. Reporting – It is important that your employees know howthe company is doing. At HTS we use the open bookaccounting style of management. Our team is privy to oursuccess every month. We review it at our monthly staffmeetings. All location managers are provided a P&L (Profit &Loss statement) on their monthly and YTD (Year-to-date)results to review with their local team. People need to knowhow things are going so they feel part of the process. Oursales and engineering folks get monthly reports on theirperformance (which also determines their compensation) sothey know exactly how they are doing each month, but theyalso see how every other person is doing as well. That peerpressure really helps motivate the team. No one wants to beon the bottom of the list more than once.

There are many other areas we could dive into, and each ofthese could be an article of its own. But my goal in this article isto help you think through the foundational areas that have to bein place if you are going to effectively manage your people. Ifthe foundation is not in place, you will wrestle and struggle ona daily basis. If it is, there will still be problems to address, butyou will have a firm and consistent method of dealing with themost important asset you have – your people. �

Arlin Sorensen is CEO/partner atHeartland Technology Solutions based inHarlan, Iowa. HTS has eight offices acrossfive Midwestern states today and focuseson the SMB marketplace. HTS is on trackto do 17.5 million (USD) in revenue in2007 and employs 80 people today. Arlinserves on a number of channel advisorycouncils and is founder and facilitator of

the Heartland Tech Groups, a growing number of independent peergroups with members from all across North America. Currentlythere are 84 companies in HTG and more peer groups are beingformed each month. Go to www.htgmembers.com to get details andto apply for membership.

You can contact Arlin at [email protected]

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


Keeping it Real:Get Real! What is real and what is make believe? The

intersection of media, life and Hollywood has crossed alllines of our culture. Reality TV provides a graphic exampleof this intersection. With all these external influencesintruding on our mind space, how do you keep it real inyour personal life? Reality. It also permeates and intersectsthe technical market space in many different ways.Consider Cisco’s TelePrescence product, displayedrelentlessly on the Fox TV show “24.” Not to mention theGartner Group’s “Magic Quadrant” rating for vendors andproducts. What is the magic quadrant? Is it smoke andmirrors? How do you continue baking in reality to yourbusiness? What magic or voodoo can you whip up with ahint of Hollywood in it for your clients?

Academia:On the other hand, The Project Management Institute

(PMI) and other professional bodies of knowledge createanother view of the world. These organizations andinstitutions have moved progress and development of theirrespective disciplines miles forward. Great leaps andbounds of knowledge coupled with dedicated service havepushed the progress of their professional verticals into themainstream. The problem is that the view from “Academia”is two-dimensional. Variation is not encouraged. Academiacreates voluminous documents, processes and informationon how you should do ….well, everything! We are told thateach of the steps documented is imperative, and in thestated order. Without such rigor and controls weightingdown your project, you cannot possibly expect to deliver aproject on time, on schedule and on budget. Your successwill be limited. Your client will not be served well. How canyou possibly be a technology professional without baking inthese strict disciplines?

Finding Balance:Balance reality with academia by taking concise action

steps. Take the following Project Management framework togain an immediate upgrade in your project managementprofessionalism. This will allow you to approach yourtechnology implementations while balancing “Reality andAcademia.” At times, the decisions on how and when to useProject Management disciplines becomes a “religious war.”Some people love it, some people hate it. Love it or hate it,Project Management is a key part of growing a successful

business. Project management balances the competingfactors of Time, Quality and Cost. Your ability to create yourown sustainable and repeatable implementation strategywill help you grow your business, your customer base andyour profitability. To find that ultimate balance between“Reality and Academia,” use this step-by-step process. Thekey high-level core steps are identified under each step. (Formore detail, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll send you moredepth and steps to consider within each Stage.)

Step 1: The Start-Up Stage • Establish the project Start-Up Team. Determine what

skills, experience, resources and/or partners you needfor your project to succeed. Establish relationships thatwill enable success of your project. Officiallycommunicate the project and hold a formal kick-offmeeting.

• Get organized. Create a project work space - the one-stop location for all your project-related documentsand details. This is your working space and willultimately become your archive of successes andlessons learned. This is the key to your continuousimprovement.

• Plan. Develop a Start-Up Project Plan. Create an initialtask list and develop the timeline for your planningactivities.

• Resources. Determine your resource requirements.Estimate resources and expenses. Review andcommunicate the start-up plan with your project team(customers, suppliers, staff).

• Solidify relationships with key customers. Create acustomer profile and know your customer’s sponsors.Use team-building techniques where required.

• Outline the project’s scope. Develop the scopedocument and include the solution criteria. Documentthe requirements and get approval.

by Greg Johnson 101 Series

Finding Project Management Balance: “Reality vs. Academia”

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


• Project Management (PM). Establish your PMenvironment. Identify measurements, scheduletraining, complete purchase orders, update budget andplanning schedules.

• Change. Establish change-control procedures.Determine how changes in scope, solution sets anddelivery will be handled. Think ahead!

• Financials. Determine financial procedures for howand when you will get paid. Consider expense andbilling requirements.

• Risk. Think about what the risks are with this project.Is the solution a new release of software? Are youworking with new partners? Is the customer trulycommitted to this project? Determine how you willmitigate or transfer these risks. What is your “Plan B”contingency?

• Check Point. Establish a review gate for project start-up activities. Have you done your pre-planningproperly? Does the project team agree to the task listsand initial schedule commitments? Are they inagreement with the committed timeline?

Step 2: The Planning Stage• Your approach. Document your alternative approaches

to completing the project. Evaluate, consider andrecommend your solution(s).

• Divide and conquer. Divide your project into smaller,more manageable tasks. Create tasks that can bemanaged more effectively (for example, less than 80 hours in effort). This is your WBS (WorkBreakdown Structure).

• Estimating. Estimate the amount of resourcesavailable, risks involved and your assumptions.

• Scheduling. Develop Preliminary Schedules by addingin dependencies, durations and constraints.

• The Resource plan. Create a staffing plan that clarifiesroles and responsibilities. Determine whether there are staffing resource risks and how to mitigate them.Decide whether you need a recognition plan for thisproject.

• Communicate. Create a communication plan.Communicate risks, status reporting schedules andperiodic project reviews. Identify the differentaudiences to communicate to and target themappropriately.

• Standards and procedures. Determine technicalstandards, quality assurance reviews, key projectmetrics and risk procedures.

• Walk it out. Conduct a project plan walk through withthe team, customers and suppliers. Ensure that allparties understand their roles, requirements andexpectations. Deliver the plan and agenda to the

participants before the meeting. • Assess risks. Define critical success factors, prioritize

key risks to manage. Continue refining mitigationplans and contingencies.

• Money. Create preliminary budgets for the project.Obtain budget and funding approval.

• SOW. Develop the Statement of Work. Get team inputand ensure the business benefits of the project arearticulated clearly. Review SOW and get approvals.

• The baseline. Set and archive the baseline project plan.Capture and communicate the baseline plan.

Step 3: The Execution Stage (This phase is iterative. This is where project executionoccurs. Project monitoring, follow-up and check-ups occur here.)

• Execute. Run the baseline project plan. Hold theproject kick-off meeting. Set the stage for yourexpectations of the team throughout the project. Do thesteps identified in the baseline project. This includesacquiring resources, materials and systems. It involvesgaining or training team skill sets required for projectsuccess. Delegate assignments to the team.

• Monitor. Keep an eye on progress relative to costs,work completed, quality assurance and keyperformance metrics. Continuously evaluate theproject.

• Manage. Alter the project plan from the baseline planas required to ensure project success. Identify changes,make changes and communicate changes.Continuously re-evaluate risks and negotiate changeswith the customer and team. It is important to trackthese changes and their effects.

• Update. Maintain your project workspace and theproject workbook documentation. Updatesystematically, periodically and consistently! This willbe your projects “chronology.”

• Communicate. Continue to communicate project status

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


updates according to your communicationplan/strategy.

Step 4: Close Down Stage• Complete the resource plan. Assess the team and each

individual’s performance. Communicate theirperformance to them. Document the performance ofthe team. Reassign assets including team members,materials and systems.

• Conduct post-project reviews. This is Key! Gain teaminput on the project. Determine successes and lessonslearned. Use a questionnaire and a review meetingwhere it makes sense. Review your key project metrics(performance to time, quality, cost, customersatisfaction). Review the project workbook, data anddocumentation created. Look for insight to improveyour processes. Think continuous improvement.

• Close the contract. Document any open contractualissues. Close down subcontracting agreements.Identify and document new add-on business ideas!Get formal project completion signed off. Archive yourproject documentation.

• Close the communication plan. Communicate theofficial close of the project to all parties. Give theproject finality.

• Complete the financial procedures. Request final

payments. Complete any other required financialprocedures.

Right-sizing project management concepts to yourprojects can give your business a competitive edge. It helpsyour clients develop confidence in you. It allows you tomanage scope and cost elements more realistically. Projectmanagement can identify scope-creep and lead toadditional revenue discussions. It allows for continuousimprovement in your delivery process. It quantifiesprofitability in your projects. Balance these four steps with adose of reality to become more successful and ……“may theforce be with you!” �

Greg Johnson has over 15 years of experience in the InformationTechnology business and has been a certified Project Manager(PMP) for 8 years. His background consists of working for: EDS(a global consulting and outsourcing firm) specializing inmanufacturing; being an E-commerce director for a leadingnational direct marketing company; playing the role of CIO fora pioneer in the customer service outsourcing market andleading Pearl Technology as the Senior Vice President andManaging Director. Pearl Technology is a Microsoft Goldpartner specializing in the SMB space with additional areas ofexpertise in .Net Application Development, Security and CiscoIP Telephony.You can reach Greg at [email protected]

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS)Enforces Compliance

Starting November 30,2007, Microsoft Action PackSubscription (MAPS) willrequire subscribers who are

new or renewing to: • Take an online course from the Partner Learning

Center• Pass an assessment with a score of 70% or higher• Pass the assessment every two years

These changes will be welcomed by Partners whohave lost sales opportunities in the past becausecustomers have been ordering MAPS for themselvesdespite the “internal-use” policy for MicrosoftPartners only.

Get more information on the upcoming assessmentrequirements at https://partner.microsoft.com/40044196

New Special Edition ToolkitsAnd while we are on

the subject of MicrosoftAction PackSubscription (MAPS),

Microsoft offers three Special Edition toolkits,specifically tailored for:

• Microsoft Small Business Specialists • Web solutions providers • Public accountants

The special edition toolkit for Small BusinessSpecialists is delivered twice a year. It containsinternal-use software benefits, training opportunitiesand special offers. Small Business Specialists willreceive an email notification on how to order thespecial toolkit.

Trend Micro Worry-Free Remote ManagerManage multiple Worry-

Free Security customersfrom anywhere using Trend

Micro Worry-Free™ Remote Manager. This secure,hosted Web console helps small business resellersincrease profitability by reducing the costs of servicingcustomers as business grows. Check it out athttp://us.trendmicro.com/us/products/sb/ worry-free-remote-manager/index.html

Earn a TechNet Plus Direct Subscription(US$349 value)

Have you downloadedand used the TechnologyAssessment Toolkit yet?Use the Toolkit to conduct

business assessments with customers, submit them toMicrosoft, and complete a quick survey. For the first twoassessments you’ll earn a TechNet Plus Directsubscription (US$349 value). Submit an additional threeassessments to earn a for-resale copy of Small BusinessServer 2003 R2 (US$599 value) and receive one MicrosoftPartner Point. Toolkit offer extended through June 2008!

https://partner.microsoft.com/40025740

The toolkit is now available in English, BrazilianPortuguese, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, TraditionalChinese and Turkish.

ASCII Tech Boot CampEast Brunswick, July 26,

2007 and Atlanta, September 13,2007. Topics covered includesales and marketing toimproving profits, avoiding

security assessment pitfalls, managing desktopoperating environments, IT managed services, emergingsecurity and business continuity trends, SPAM andending the VoIP confusion. A full and informative day –find out more details and register atwww.asciievents.com

Technology Watch

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


SMBFocus - Australia’s First SMB IT Reseller Conference

Have you been waitingfor an excuse for a trip toDown Under? Here it is –Australia’s first ever SMB

IT Reseller Conference held in Sydney, Australia at theMenzies Hotel, November 23-24, 2007. Wayne Small, aSmall Business Server MVP (Most Valuable Professional)from Australia, will be hosting this conference. What away to get your technical fix and make new friends infaraway lands – and best of all, it’s a business expense!Find out more at www.smbfocus.com

Eliminate Passwords - DigitalPersona ProServer SBS Edition

DigitalPersona Pro Server SBS Edition isthe latest offering from DigitalPersona,the leading provider of fingerprintauthentication solutions. Businesses

using Microsoft’s Small Business Server have a need, asany other enterprise does, to secure their network’sbusiness-critical applications and data. Pro Server SBSEdition delivers secure sign-on control and passwordmanagement for networks with up to 75 users.DigitalPersona brings the power of its solution to theMicrosoft Small Business Server community, packagedand priced to meet the needs of that market.

Visit http://www.digitalpersona.com/sbs for moreinformation.

Business Without Interruption MessageLabs provides a

fully managed servicestopping all email, weband IM based threats long

before they reach your network, leaving you free tofocus on your business.

More information at http://www.messagelabs.com/small_business

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


Customer Focusby Jeff Wuorio

f you build a business budget, make sure you put it to thebest possible use.

Let’s look at that in another light. If you’ve expended thetime and effort to map out a budget for your business, you’rewell on the way to enjoying a host of benefits—but only if youstay the course, work with your budget as thoughtfully aspossible and, along the way, learn as much as you can from it.

Granted, that’s often easier said than done. Short of rootcanal sans anesthesia or Pauly Shore film festivals, there arefew things that can be as uncomfortable or downright painfulas the financial constraints that a budget can often impose.We’ve all been there, in one way or another.

But never lose sight of a solid budget’s value. Here arenine strategies that can help you stick with your plan.

1. It’s not a 500-pound gorilla. Get started by remindingyourself that your business budget is not a monster. It’snothing more than a set of guidelines for the financialmanagement of your business which, over time, are geared tofostering financial prosperity, not distress. Bear potential inmind, rather than limitations, and a budget can be easier tostay with.

2. Know that there will be a learning curve. A budget is anongoing education. Cutting costs, knowing what sort of salariesare realistic and how much cash it’s best to have on hand all taketime to understand. That said, treat your budget as a learningexperience—one that you’ll tinker with and get a better handleon as you go along.

3. Remember, it’s not necessarily an exacting science. On thesurface, working with numbers may seem as straightforwardand concrete as your business can get. But that’s not necessarilythe case. Expect that you’re going to miss on your budgetprojections on occasion, particularly when you’re just startingout and the numbers may be little more than educated guesses.But don’t take that as a sign of failure or incompetence; rather,take it as a lesson. Try to identify where you went wrong andlearn from the misstep.

4. Be as flexible as you can be. The occasional “best shot” natureof crafting budget projections and estimates naturally leads to theimportance of keeping things as responsive to change as possible.Don’t cast your numbers in stone and stick with them, come-what-may. If your revenue doesn’t come up to what you initiallyanticipated—and there’s always the possibility that that mayhappen on occasion— cut your expenses to accommodate thelower income level. Do the same if things turn out better than youexpected. For instance, if your revenue exceeds projections, givesome thought to reinvesting some of the proceeds in improvedequipment, staff training or some other worthy target.

5. If you have to err, err with conservative numbers. Naturally,every business owner hopes for and works toward prosperity.That’s perfectly understandable and justified, but it never hurts

to hedge your bets. When setting up your budget, give somethought to overstating your expected expenses while cuttingback on your revenue projections. For one thing, it’s a solidstrategy that may give you some breathing room if, in fact, yourincome doesn’t jibe with your forecasts. Moreover, it’s a goodhabit to develop which, over time, will leave more cash in yourpocket, no matter whether your revenue soars or youoccasionally struggle.

6. Cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. Nothing means a faster deathfor a budget than more money flowing out of your business thanyou have coming in. Watch your cash flow like the proverbialhawk. Monitor your income closely to make certain that you’llhave adequate funds to pay your bills, particularly if yourbusiness is prone to long lapses between paychecks. Foradditional cash flow muscle, look into budget savers such astelephone calling plans, less expensive office furniture and otherways to lessen the burden on your income.

7. Build a cash reserve. This is cash flow’s kissing cousin.While trimming expenses to the absolute minimum is alwayswise, it’s also prudent to set aside income whenever possible.When funds become available, store them in an accessiblespot, such as a money market account. Not only can thatmoney come in handy for predictable expenses such as year-end taxes, it also can prove an absolute lifesaver should anunexpectedly high bill suddenly crop up—not to mentionhelping you through some rough spots where income mayprove spotty

8. Review your budget regularly. A budget can’t exist in avacuum, no matter how thoughtfully it may be crafted. Checkyour budget every month and examine your cash flow tomake certain your available funds are sufficient to meet yourliabilities. Watch for issues such as unexpectedly highexpenses or revenue shortfalls. Be sure to adjust your budgetwhen necessary and keep a constant eye out for available cashthat can go into your reserve.

9. See your budget as a friendly teacher—one you can evenignore on rare occasions. Setting up and sticking to a solidbudget is the most effective teacher of fiscal discipline there is.Pay attention to it, and you’re likely to learn things about yourbusiness that may otherwise have gone unnoticed, such asopportunities for increased revenue or needless expenses. But,don’t be shy about busting your budget on occasion shouldsomething truly warrant it. It’s often impossible to budget fora valuable last-minute seminar or a trip to a trade show tomake valuable contacts. If you’re too rigid with your budget,you’ll refuse to spend when you really should. And that, in thelong run, can only hinder your business’ ultimate growth andpotential.. �

Jeff Wuorio is a business author and columnist. He can be reachedat [email protected]

I

The Nuts and Boltsof Business Budgeting

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eet one of the guys responsible for the businessgrowth of Microsoft. He helps Partners sell tocustomers in the small business segment –

companies with between one to two-hundred desktops,including open licensing - for the South Central Area whichcovers Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Charliehas been with Microsoft for five years and has been aPartner Community Manager (PCM) for the last two years.Before he became a PCM, Charlie was a medium businessMarketing Manager for Microsoft’s South Region.

Charlie’s career has always revolved around sales andmarketing. He has worked for companies such as Dell andIBM. He’s a naturally outgoing and gregarious person, sowhen the opening for a Partner Community Manager (PCM)became available in the Small and Midmarket Solutions andPartner Group (SMS&P), he couldn’t resist. Now he gets tomarket everything in the Microsoft solution stack (WindowsOS, Office, Exchange, SQL etc) and solutions such asMicrosoft Dynamics directly to Partners. Currently Charlie is responsible for the recruitment, nourishment and growth of

Small Business Specialists in his Area. For the last two years,Charlie has hosted a webcast every Wednesday morning at8:00 a.m. Central Time. “We have had close to 2000participants in the webcasts,” says Charlie. “The intention ofthe webcasts is helping Partners break through the monotonyof ‘file/print.’ A lot of Partners selling SBS mostly enablefile/print for customers and perform very basic installations.In the past this had been very commoditized and it becamehard for many Partners to sell beyond file/print. In order tohelp small Partners step up their game and introduce newvalue in customer conversations, we started a webcast in ourlocal area with the intent to go beyond file/print and helpespecially ‘one-man shops’ grow up, showing how to sellSharePoint, mobility or a remote worker setup. We wanted toalso make a local connection with the Partners and help themlearn other sides of SBS like security and documentmanagement or show them how they can train theircustomers to improve their own marketing using SBS. We laybare how Partners can grow their practice, how can they bebetter business people…and now we are startingour third year of the SmallBusiness Practice Builderwebcasts, after a hiatus in July.”

“In the second year ofwebcasts we expandedregionally and are nowincluding Partners fromthe central U.S. There arealso Partners joining fromFlorida, New York and

M

Microsoft Insiderby Beatrice Mulzer

Meet Charlie RamirezTitle: Partner Community Manager

Location: Austin, TX

Responsibilities: Help Microsoft Partners succeed byhelping them make their customers reach their fullpotential.

Education: Institute of Chemical TechnologyBachelorof Science in Commerce. Marketing Major, RiderUniversity.

Age: 41

Currently reading: Reading my way down a stack ofInc and Selling Power magazines.

What Do You Do In Your Free Time? Play Xbox 360(especially Guitar Hero II!) with my kids and alsocycling with my family.

What Motivates You? Helping others succeed.

Life Philosopy? Be nice. It’s a small world. To quotethe Beatles: “…in the end, the love you take is thelove you give.”

Favorite ice cream flavor: Moolenium Crunch fromBlue Bell (a Texas brand) and Vanilla Swiss Almondfrom Haagen Dazs.

A big passion of Charlie – cooking – and being fashionablydressed in his Microsoft apron ☺

Charlie in his office gettingready for yet another Partner

webcast

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM

even other countries.” Charlie continues. “The best part ofmy job is to see the transformation of my Partners’ businessesand see them grow, see them hire their first employee andgrowing their organizations from $200,000 to $500,000 to amillion dollars. I love seeing Partners attend their first year atthe World Partner Conference and next year coming back,bringing an employee and so on. This is the most rewardingbenefit of my job; I get to watch this from the front row.”

Charlie observed that the tipping point, when businessesstart changing for the better, happens when Partners make abreak in the daily grind. “No matter the size of the Partner,the trigger I have seen is when they genuinely try somethingnew and stick with it for a while. When Partners make adecision to try something different and really start believingin it. A good example is partnering; few practice realpartnering, it appears that many Partners are shy. Once theygo and make an effort to connect with other Partners in townand for example go to the IAMCP (International Associationof Microsoft Certified Professionals (www.iamcp.com)meeting and exchange business cards, they start to break outof their eggshell. Those are the Partners I see start bearingfruit and start moving forward.” Charlie marks this as a factof getting educated and making a conscious decision to do so.“Partners who get educated in how to grow their businesslearn to make the decision to delegate. Sometimes the biggestbottlenecks to growth in the Partner community are thebusiness owners themselves! Not being ready to delegatepart of the business to someone else inhibits decision makingand growth. I know Partners who make a good living butwho also tell me they don’t like to sell. They have neverwritten a proposal, but they have customers coming throughreferrals, etc. Think about it, there are techies out there thatare shy and they have to learn to break out of the eggshell.They have to learn to act as business men and not as techies.So once they learn that, the next hard step is to grow thebusiness practice from one to two men. There has never beena better time to become a Partner growing your practice sincethe dot com boom. Its amazing, three years ago all ourPartners wanted to talk about was how to get more leads andnow they want to talk about how to get more people, hiremore employees.”

Biggest challenge: “Pay my college loan,” says Charlie andadds, “Just kidding. The biggest challenge in my life was in2006, turning around the small business performance in myarea. Engaging Partners with the Small Business Specialistsprogram in FY06, mobilizing the Partner community andhelping Partners succeed. I went out and shook hands,presented at TS2 events, etc, but a lot had to do withpartnering with the IAMCP and also in creating anddelivering Small Business Practice Builder seminars. Thesewere three hour tracks done throughout the south centralarea and complemented with the weekly one-hourwebcasts. Turning around the performance and specificallythe sales of Small Business Server was a big challenge.”

Lessons learned: “Not to underestimate small Partners. Bynature you gravitate towards the bigger practices but Ilearned not to underestimate the power of small Partners atMicrosoft. They ended up growing their businessessignificantly, helping grow ours as well.”

Next Steps: “The fact of the matter is that Microsoft spendsan insane amount of money on technical readiness. If you goto www.msreadiness.com there is more online training thanyou can handle. So what I am going to focus on this year isbusiness acumen. Helping Partners with the basics.Helping them get better at doing presentations, get better atnegotiations, become better business people. That will beone of my big bets this fiscal year. Partners already knowhow to install SBS. What I want to teach them is how to lookfor the sales opportunity, how to grow business within theirexisting customer install base, how they can partner withcomplementary practices. It’s all about business acumen,business skills and becoming better business people.”

Conclusion: If you are reading this and are still stuck intechie-shoes that could use a little polish, make sure toventure over to Charlie’s weekly webcasts(www.southcentralpartners.com) – no matter where inthe world you are – and start working on your businessacumen. Charlie will be there to assist you with hisoutstanding (now third year running!) Business PracticeBuilder webcast. �

Whatever it takes, always ready to help Partners get to the next level!


Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


admit it. I own an MP3 player (and I love it) and I’verecently loaded it up with songs. How did I do it? My11-year old son, far more technically advanced than

myself, dragged me kicking and screaming into the future byshowing up the old man. Along the journey, we subscribedto Real’s Rhapsody service. (Real is another “other” Seattletechnology company, formerly known as Real Networks.)Building up my play list, I bumped into Don Henley’s Boysof Summer song (1985, note Henley played for the Eagles).There is a famous line about hippies driving Cadillacs withGreatful Dead stickers in the rear windows. Thesignificance? It reflects the current state of affinity groups inthe SMB community: cooperation and capitalism. Bothgrassroots and bottom line beliefs. Seems that folks want tomake a living as Small Business Specialists BUT engage in aliving theology that promotes greater goodness.

Our poll findings from the last magazine issue are:

Question 1: Are you a member of an SBS or SMB (1) usergroup, (2) affinity group or (3) peer group that meets in-person or live?Response Percent ResponseYes 50.0%No 50.0%

Harry’s take: Split down the middle like the 2000 USA electionteetering on a Florida recount! The results clearly speak forthemselves. Half in/half out. Beatrice’s take: Wow! Well there were people after the electionwho wanted to physically separate Florida from the rest of theUnited States by digging a trench – but they didn’t. Now back tothe response to this question. Makes me think that some people maystill live like eremites, or they are so busy they don’t have time tomake these meetings. Which group do you belong to?

Question 2: How many times per year do you attend youraffinity group meetings? Response Percent ResponseMonthly (12x) 70.0%Quarterly (4x) 10.0%Semi-annually (2x) 10.0%Annually (1x) 10.0%

Harry’s take: This reflects excellent excitement and enthusiasmfor folks who are current affinity group members. Over 70 percentattend monthly meetings. Like they say in the recovery movementto encourage attendance at meetings: “It works if you work it!”Beatrice’s take: Being a consultant on your own island as it iswith many SBSers, this may be the only time you can reallyconnect with your tribe (people who speak and understand yourlingo). This could also be considered a therapeutic benefit on top ofbeing able to exchange business and technical know-how.

Question 3: How effective are the groups in assisting yourprofessional development? Response Percent ResponseVery effective 27.3%Somewhat effective 45.5%Average 9.1%Somewhat ineffective 9.1%Ineffective 9.1%

Harry’s take: Personally I find this result to be encouraging. Ifyou add up “Very effective,” and “Somewhat effective,” you haveover 72.8 percent of the responses reflecting a favorablecontribution to career development. Rock on!Beatrice’s take: Interesting – 9.1% find it ineffective, whichmakes me want to ask the question: Why do you still go? (You cansend your answers to [email protected].)

Question 4: Discuss the affinity group concept with us. Howcould affinity groups be improved (e.g. meet at Microsoft'slocal office, etc.)? Some selected responses include: • Foster professional cooperation. I keep telling folks, work

with me on my projects, cross-cover. Everyone has beenburned so many times that many of us would rather go italone. Honestly, I find it easier to sub to IBM, AT&T andEDS than a fellow SMB or SBS specialist.

• I would like to get information on joining an affinitygroup.

• Groups should have an agenda that featuresknowledgeable guest speakers from various vendors andother SBS technical experts. Representation fromMicrosoft (PAM) is also important.

• I love the affinity concept. My only issue is that I have todrive two hours each way to get there.

• More online stuff.

IGroup Hug

Perceptions by Harry Brelsford

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


Harry’s take: Good stuff and has traction. As always – contentis king!Beatrice’s take: Look at the variety of answers. Maybetechnologies like Office Communication Server and Groove willhelp in the future?

Question 5: What affinity group(s) do you belong to? The most popular response was the Chicago user groupfollowed by entries for PartnerPoint, IAMCP, Sydney, Dallas,Triangle (North Carolina) and WINSBSUG.org.

Harry’s take: Man – Chicago is ALWAYS rock solid. Good mid-west values!Beatrice’s take: Sydney? That may be a bit far for some, but if youare reading this down under or at least on the other half of theglobe, make sure you don’t miss the first ever SMB IT ResellerConference, November 23-24, 2007 in Sydney, Australia. Detailsare at www.smbfocus.com.

Heard On the StreetThe ever-popular “heard on the street” component went toWPC Denver (July 9-12, 2007) to get the straight scoop!

David Lees, Cape Town, South AfricaCurrently there are no ITaffinity groups in CapeTown, South Africa. “My role is to develop thecommunity when I returnback there [after the WorldPartner Conference]. There isclearly a major benefit inpartnering with otherPartners, in my opinion.”

Cynthia Slade,Chicago, IL“I belong to the ChicagoSmall Business Server usergroup (SBS UG). In fact, Iwas one of the co-founders ofit and today I am still one ofthe leaders. We havemeetings once a month andfor the last four years since itstarted I attended all but twomeetings.”Has this helped

with the professional development of your business? “Yes, verymuch so. The Chicago SBS user group is a very unique group,

the fact that we always had the support of the local Microsoftoffice starting with Eric [Ligman] and currently with Wade, ithas enabled us to have great presenters from Microsoft andalso third-party presenters. And if we have a topic where wehave trouble finding a presenter, they will help us find one.”

Dave Sobel,Washington, DC “I am actually one of the twoleads for the DC SmallBusiness Server users groupand I am also a member of twodifferent peer groups.The usergroup meets monthly, one ofmy peer groups meets quarterlyin a different city and the otherone meets monthly on a virtualbasis.There is a huge benefit in

working with peer groups. I think that the idea exchange allowsme to have a board of directors of 20 people that give mecomments on what’s going on in my business; they give me betterfeedback than I would get on my own. It’s what I do for businesstraining as opposed to technical training.”

Chee Anne,Malaysia “No, I am not a member ofan IT affinity group. Wedidn’t know that there is sucha community that we cansign on to.”

Next up – SBSer of the Year!We’re taking nominations for the SBSer of the Year, to beawarded at SMB Nation 2007 (September 29-October 1,2007, Microsoft Redmond). We’re looking to uncoversomeone, somewhere in the world who has somehow goneunrecognized but is making money (first) and doing rightby man- and woman-kind as an SBSer! Click over towww.smbnation.com to identify this person for us!

ConclusionBack to the MP3 player. Read my on-going blog atwww.smbnation.com and I’ll post my playlist soon. I’llwarn ya’ – it’ll have heaps of Punjabi music! �

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


eet the Schumakers. Patricia and DennisSchumaker have been in business since 1986 andoffer business and technology consulting to

private and public sector organizations. They providemostly operational and assessment implementationassistance and planning.

Growing OrganicallyThe company grew organically. Dennis started the

business while Pat kept her day job and within the first sixmonths of the startup, Schumaker & Company (SCHUCO)hired its first non-owner employee. Being a true consultingfirm, SCHUCO delivered management and operationalreviews with the final product being a report or a presentationto the client. “When we started, we had to use our ten fingerscompared to our competition that had word processingdepartments,” remembers Dennis. “We did it all ourselvesand became very proficient in Word and Excel.” Initially theyran on a Novell network and SCHUCO had grown fairly wellto the point that they had an IT department. Then WindowsNT came to market and the switch was made, with good andbad results. Part of the IT department culture resisted movingover to Windows NT and, “There weren’t many people insoutheastern Michigan that could convert you to NT,” saysDennis, who learned Windows NT out of necessity. “Might aswell get certified,” He recalls. “So I did some classes and somelearning to put our first server in.” Everything was switched

over to Microsoft. After the first year the NT Server was up,the Schumakers started thinking that there may be otherbusinesses encountering the same hurdles. “We helped otherpeople so I went ahead and got my MCSE (Microsoft CertifiedSystems Engineer) and we started to do a little IT consultingwork, but it was still not the core of our business.”

The IT consulting side started to grow and SCHUCOstarted to pick up various clients locally. Besides putting innetworks, the Schumakers also found that their experience inunderstanding the software as power users was valuable evenon some of their bigger consulting assignments. “We’d oftenget paid for one hour software consulting on our projects aday. Teaching people how to do something in Word,PowerPoint or Excel,” says Dennis. “We’d already been thereand we decided to pursue this as another business area and itwould become another credential. We have been a Partnernow for eight or nine years and we are currently a CertifiedPartner and have the Small Business Specialist credential. Wecould get to Gold fairly easy if we take another test or two.”

Growing organically meant that SCHUCO had startedfirst as a home-based business. But soon it occupied spacein an office building close to the main strip in Ann Arbor,Michigan. The single-unit office was quickly outgrown andexpanded into space next door for two additional offices.SCHUCO bought its first rack server with five servers andexpanded to another office down the hall. Network cablewas run down the hallway to the office at the other end ofthe building. Eventually space next door became availableand they took that over, too. At this time SCHUCOemployed 16 full-time people.

The DecisionSCHUCO soon added development work for the State

of Michigan using Microsoft technologies. But eventuallythe point came where the Schumakers decided that oncethe bigger projects got done, to go back down to tenemployees again. “At one point we thought before we goup 20 employees we realized we were not sure we reallywanted to get above ten,” says Pat. Dennis interjects, “Thequestion is, do you want to grow revenue or grow profit? Ithink we did some growing of revenue and sometimes youbeat yourself up to grow revenue and you don’t have muchprofit. You can change your structure a little bit and justmake it more comfortable growing profit and not worryabout how much the revenue is growing or not growing.That became more of the decision we made.”

M

Managing ChangeGrow Profit or Revenue?

by Beatrice Mulzer

Front door: Pat and Dennis Schumaker in front of the entrance of their “new”office.

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


The Schumakers travel quite a bit and going virtualwith the office has always been pursued, ever since therewas only a 56k connection available. “Besides theemployees, we always had six or seven outside consultantson any typical project,” shares Pat. “And they all workremotely as well. There may be potentially two or threeprojects going on at the same time.”

Lo and behold, the Schumakers made their move. Theymoved into a bigger house on the outskirts of town andgave up the office space in downtown Ann Arbor. One ofthe realizations the Schumakers had was that more andmore people work remotely now than ever before. Theyalso feel that they figured out the technical issues involvedin making a virtual office work.

Currently, SCHUCO has four employees that work from

the Schumaker’s house, including Pat and Dennis. Oneperson lives in Toldeo, Ohio, so he only comes up Mondays,Wednesdays and Fridays. Everyone else works from remote.

Going Virtual“We always tried to go virtual with the business. One

employee moved to Texas and there was already anotheremployee in North Carolina. The plan was not to have manyemployees in Ann Arbor so the plan to virtualize was done.”

The servers were moved to a data center with a DS3(44.7Mbit/s) connection (having this amount of bandwidthcouldn’t be justified from their home) and the workstationsmoved to the Schumakers’ home. First they tried to VPN intothe data center but ended up setting up two ISA servers witha permanent VPN connection between the data center and

A SCHUCO Project: Wayne County Airport Technology Services Division, Detroit, MI.

“Five years ago they created the Wayne County Airport Authority (WCAA). The airport used to be part of WayneCounty so it broke off as a separate unit that manages both - Detroit, Wayne airport (DTW), and Willow Run airport,” saysSchumaker. “They literally put this organization together overnight.” There was a 90-day window for the individualdivisions to get all their technology systems in place.

WCAA is funded by the airlines, the concessionaires and other airport tenants, totaling 30+ divisions. “An airport islike a large community having unique requirements. The local Wendy’s or McDonald’s pays a percentage of their grossrevenue just like in a shopping center situation; so they have unique revenue management needs because that has to betied into the [ERP] system. The concessionaires, people that run the parking garages, the airlines that pay the landing fees,they have a fire department, a police department, a security department that runs the security for the whole airport andthe financial information has to feed into the ERP system somewhere,” says Dennis.

Each [division] has its own computer systems, its own network and various applications running. Pat says, “Weidentify the priorities and what the return on the investment will be for the cost that they have to spend to undertake thevarious projects. One of our recommendations was to move to a Windows platform which they were already considering,moving away from Novell and GroupWise, which had difficulty interfacing with other applications that were installed.There is also an ERP system, which is accounts payable, general ledger, accounts receivable and purchasing that needsreviewing. So they [WCAA] will have to go through a decision process where they will have to look at, for instance,Dynamics products and other vendors too. There are a lot of other disparate systems that are currently not necessarilylinked to the ERP system and this will help identify which ones are the most important, what the priority should be.”

“The real key is when you look at buying a product you know you will have to be able to hook into it. An examplewould be the vehicle fleet that needs to be maintained: keeping vehicle records, mileage records, tracking gasoline…ordering a spare part that has to feed into the accounting system to get the purchase order. If you draw the diagram, thisis this system, and this is that system and draw the linkage in between them, you can hardly choose one system withoutconsidering the impact it is going to have on other things.”

“Then take into consideration that WCAA wants to look at a graphic information system (GIS). There are maps of theairport and the maintenance division wants to keep track of every slab of concrete and the maintenance that has to be doneto it. For instance, Las Vegas airport tracks the runway slabs, each one has a number on it. The most expensive thing toreplace in an airport is the runway. It can cost up to US$180 million to replace a runway. You want to manage and predictmaintenance by knowing how many landings have been on this runway and by what size aircraft. Then, the firedepartment and vehicle department would like to be able to know where their vehicles are in real time relative to theairport. This is very significant, especially in low visibility conditions,” says Pat.

This project involves assessing WCAA’s technology and service needs for all 30+ divisions, plus identifying the impactof airport and/or business trends on operations, as a means to identify WCAA’s technology initiatives planned for the nextfive years.

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM

their house. There were still some issues and the decision wasmade to convert a workstation at home into a server runningActive Directory. It also serves as a file and print server.Documents are kept locally and backed up to the data centerovernight.

Employees and outside consultants now use TerminalServices (TS) to remotely access the data center. SCHUCOis also set up for TS to the server at their home and files areassessable through a web share. Over the years, SCHUCOwrote its own internal time and billing system, documenttracking system and webified that, being hosted at the datacenter. “All the applications that rely on SQL server arelocated at the data center so if you want to run Access youdo that from terminal services remotely,” says Dennis, andPat continues, “As we got the technology under control wewere able to grow the business financially because we areworking smarter than we were before and takingadvantage of the technology.”

“Outside employees helped us increase profitability andstill be able to do large projects,” shares Pat, but there is acaveat. Dennis points out, “It does say something about whenyou go virtual; it means that you need to have employees orcontract people you work with who know how to workvirtually. I think the problem a traditional business structurehas is you hire new people out of college who don’t have anybusiness skills yet per se, and traditionally they would go intothe office and people would show them how to use theirbusiness systems. That is the one thing [about] not having anoffice, a structure. You have to figure a way around [it] whenyou bring new people in. You have to ask yourself, is yourbusiness one that relies on bringing brand new people in andhow important is that to you? Because there is a costassociated with that. Or do you hire more senior people thatare experienced and have the technical skill to work virtually,that you can entrust to work this way. And then there arepeople, that is what they want to do now. Since we started

doing this we findmore and more people,like sales people thathave worked out oftheir homes for a longtime. A person atMicrosoft works inColumbus, Ohio andlives in Kentucky –how does that work?And there is a lot ofthat going on.”

Pat continues,“Our business nowrelies a lot more onsenior people; wedon’t typically hire

new graduates anymore. We still do IT consulting but nolonger do development.” A decision was made to let go ofa less-profitable business unit. “We now focus ontechnology assessments, implementation assistance andtechnology planning. That needs more experience andhigher skilled people to do it. So if we need to augment ouremployees to do that kind of work we can bring in senioroutside consultants to help us.”

Dennis explains, “We have gotten more active withinMicrosoft in the IAMCP, we know more Partners in the area.If we had some development done I’d find somebody else todo that. We may hire another developer because we haveneeds for that internally. A quandary I have is development issomething you really need to have four to six people to be ableto do it. A one-person development shop is really limited towhat they can do. We had that at one time and it worked outfairly well but in the end we had six developers and a networkadministrator with all the projects we were undertaking.”

Home Sweet HomeIf you travel a lot, you know when you are home you’re

home and you don’t want to leave for the office. Workingfrom home has saved the Schumakers an hour compared totraveling to the downtown office. “You are able to worklonger straight hours than before, split the day up betterand actually have dinner and go back to work if you needto,” says Pat. “It is much easier to do than having officehours.” Dennis adds, “We always had a home office; notsure if we work more hours now, but certainly we workmore effective hours, getting more done.”

The company tagline reads ‘Managing change, definingsolution’ and the Schumakers definitively live by their motto.Being able to work with the right talent from remote andpartnering locally is a vital part of SCHUCO’s business model.Next time you wonder where you want to take your business,ask yourself: Do you want to grow revenue or grow profit? �


Pat in her “corner office.”“Home and businesslives have designated areas. We take our laptops

up to the home area but we don’t have anyworkstations up there; they are all in our office at

garden level,”shares Pat.

Moving in: The home office at “garden level”will soon be finished to resemble a regular

9-to-5 office!

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:44 AM


WPC Denver SMBEcosystem

Seen supporting the SMB space at WPC in Denver in July

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


Partnering

atch out, PALs (Partner Area Leads) will beshowing up worldwide! The PAL initiative wasbrought to life by Microsoft to facilitate the

growth of the Small Business Specialist community. It isapparent that there are already many community pocketsout there (from user groups to chat boards) and your newPALs are actively involved in your community, or haveshown that they have the passion to cater to the small andmedium business (SMB) space and are Small BusinessSpecialists. Currently there are 18 PALs in 13 differentcountries: Australia (1); Canada (2); Denmark (1); Germany(2); India (1); Italy (1); Netherlands (1); New Zealand (1);South Africa (1); Russia (1); United Kingdom (2) and theUnited States (4). If you don’t see your country listed here,don’t despair. There are plans to expand the initiativemoving forward!

MissionThe main objective of each PAL will be to foster

community in his or her geographic area by alertingPartners to special offers or opportunities available tomembers of the “value-added” Small Business Specialistdesignation and to solicit Partner feedback on howMicrosoft can better support this community. Microsoft isaware that communication to Partners can get lost, locallyand globally. Partners are busy in their day-to-dayactivities. Further, Microsoft Small Business Specialistshave requested a way to provide more detailed feedback onthe program benefits to Microsoft.

For example, beginning in October there will be fourspecific Microsoft customer campaigns in the SMB andmid-market space that call for the customer to seek out andfind a local Small Business Specialist for help onimplementing their first Small Business Server ormanaging their customers with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.These campaigns come with customer and Partnerincentives. Small Business Specialists usually receive aspecial offer above and beyond what Microsoft RegisteredPartners receive, because they have committed to the SmallBusiness Specialist designation and are advocates forMicrosoft’s SMB product stack.

“PALs will want to make sure that their Partnercommunity knows about these campaigns, becausecontacting a Small Business Specialist is the customer call-to-action.” Says Lynnette Spanola Eastlake, “Thesecampaigns are worldwide but will be localized to fit the

local markets. It will be important for Small BusinessSpecialists to be familiar with the sales materials and thecustomer and Partner offers. We also want feedback fromour Small Business Specialists on whether these salesmaterials resonate with them and their customers.”

FeedbackPALs were selected based on their community

engagement. They will receive Microsoft support based ontheir needs, whether it’s funding, training or promotionalitems. PALs enjoy direct access to Microsoft and havequarterly face-to-face meetings and quarterly conferencecalls with Microsoft corporate, where they act as the “voiceof the community,” and bring feedback from thecommunity to Microsoft. There are hundreds of thousandsof Microsoft Partners, and over 12,500 Small BusinessSpecialists worldwide, “Our PALS are dialed-in to theirlocal communities and are sometimes able to foster adialogue with local Partners better than what we canaccomplish from a corporate perspective,” says Eastlake.We want to support these key Partner area leads, as muchas we can”.

What you should contact your PAL about is thecommunity aspect - ideas that you think would help growthe community in your area, making it richer and stronger;an environment where Partners can partner with each otherand learn from each other.

“PALs are not meant to be a one-on-one supportcontact; they are there to facilitate the communityinfrastructure,” says Eastlake. If Small Business Specialistshave a technical problem or another challenge, for instancewith the Partner site or your profile, there are other ways tocommunicate with Microsoft. For example, Small BusinessSpecialists have a managed newsgroup, with a four-hour

WWho’s your PAL?

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM

Service Level Agreement (SLA). Partners can get help withtheir profiles and program account information throughthe “Contact Us” link on the Partner Portal.”

Growing CommunityThe PAL’s focus will be on generating community

through regular activities such as hosting a blog, forum oruser group. Most of the PALs are already involved incommunity-building and Microsoft doesn’t necessarilywant them to take on new initiatives, but rather leveragewhat they are already using (for example their blogs anduser groups). At times a Partner may have a hard timefinding a Partner with a different proficiency. PALs alreadyknow their respective communities and if your core isnetworking infrastructure and you want to meet an ISV ora Dynamics Partner you should go to your PAL and see ifshe or he has a contact you can utilize. By partnering withothers in your community, you can go to the customer with

a solution that is not your core specialization, but not haveto develop it all in-house.

Keep in mind, these PALs are the class of 2008. Sincethey are the first of their kind, in addition to helping buildcommunity in their areas, they will also help shape the PALinitiative. They are your voice, the community voice.

Being a Small Business Specialist has its perks - deepertraining, better support options and a twice-a-year add-onkit to the Action Pack. Your PAL will be informed and helpyou take advantage of the Small Business Specialistprogram. �

Insights for non-US readers: PAL is also American “Slang” for a friend or closeacquaintance. (A person may be a pal or have a pal,either being a personal relationship.)

GermanyOliver Kiel, PingUsSolutions [email protected]

IndiaSuresh Ramani,[email protected]

Oliver Sommer, [email protected]

U.S.Martin Elmer, NewburyPartners, [email protected]

Kim Walker, FranklinComputer [email protected]

Mark Crall, CharlotteTech Care [email protected]

Neil Pearlstein, PCProfessionalwww.pcprofessional.com

Elisabeth Vanderveldt,[email protected]

CanadaStuart Crawford, ITMatters, [email protected]

AustraliaDean Calvert, [email protected]

ItalyFabio Cazzaniga,Braindata [email protected]

South AfricaDavid Lees, End 2 EndBusiness [email protected]

SloveniaJose Antonio Morales,[email protected]

Gareth Brown, [email protected]

U.K. Vijay Riyait, iQubed http://www.iqubed.biz

New ZealandBen [email protected]

DenmarkKlaus Juhl, PC [email protected]


Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


Tech Corner

o you have to worry about a compliant server? Areyour clients in an industry that needs to complywith a security regulation? Almost every week I get

asked a question about security compliance in a smallbusiness network.

From the financial industry in the United States (whichneeds to be concerned about Graham-Leach-Blileyregulations), to the Health Care industry (which) needs tofollow HIPAA regulations), to international privacy laws,one thing a small business consultant should be concernedabout is something I’m going to call “Regulation creep.”You’ve probably heard of the concept of “Feature creep,” ininformation technology - projects where the client keepsadding requests to your budget. The same thing can happenwith security regulations. While these regulations areusually vague and not specific to technology, manyconsultants build or generate their own interpretation of thestandards.

So that security reviews can be financially viable forconsultants, most of them are designed as standardchecklists of yes and no answers. Most don’t address therisks specific to the firm involved, or the efforts that havebeen taken to mitigate the risks. For example, HIPAAregulations do not state a specific technology that needs to beused, such as a specific brand of a firewall. Yet some vendorsand consultants will lead clients to believe that they do.

For a small firm that uses Small Business Server 2003 andwhose website is included on the domain controller, many aso-called security expert will question the Small BusinessConsultant’s decision in how the server is set up. Yet there aresome easy ways to make your network more secure.

1. Don’t focus only on the server. Too many security checklists that I’ve seen focus

exclusively on the server. These days the server is just onepart of the network and may not be the entry point forrootkits, viruses and other malware. To secure a SmallBusiness Server network, try as much as possible not to runyour workstations with local administrator rights. TheSmall Business Server ConnectComputer wizardautomatically places the computer user as an administratoron his own workstation. At the time this wizard wasdesigned, many business applications demandedadministrator rights on workstations. This is changing asmore vendors, in preparing for Vista, are now coding their

applications more securely.Aaron Margosis’ LUAbiglightis a tool you can run on anoffending application todetermine what registrykeys and changes you needto make to the network. Itcan be found online at http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2006/08/07/LuaBuglight.aspx.For example, the needed settings to allow Quickbooks 2006(and prior) to run without administrator rights can befound at http://www.threatcode.com/group_policy.htm.

Another requirement of the PCI standards is theregular use of antivirus and antispyware. A word ofcaution, though - the reliance on mere antivirus andantispyware tools is always reactionary, not proactive. It’sonly after new malware is received and submitted to siteslike http://virusscan.jotti.org/, that vendors can begin tobuild definition files for your clients. The best protection isto allow only those rights that are minimally required.

2. Don’t overlook the need for good passwords.Good passwords are one of the most overlooked needs

in small businesses. I have seen too many serverscompromised and too much sensitive information placed atrisk because of unsafe administrator and user passwords.The administrator password especially needs attentionbecause once it is obtained, the entire network access isopen. On a Small Business Server, you can rename the built-

by Susan Bradley

D

Your Security Blanket: Tips from your SBS Diva

Verify registry settings and Permissions in the Group Policy Management Console

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


in-administrator account but you should not disable it. Theinstaller for the SBS integrated platform sometimes needs touse the rights of the true built-in administrator account so itcan install properly. However, you can (and should) buildanother account that has domain administrator rights.

For many years adding two-factor authentications toanything other than an Enterprise network was cost-prohibitive and the technology was not mature. Two-factoris literally just that… “two-factor.” That is, you usesomething you know (a password) along with somethingyou have (a token) to have two different types ofauthentication. While RSA at one time indicated they werecoming out with a small business product, it’s been thepartnership of Cryptocard and AuthAnvil from ScorpionSoftware that has really driven two-factor authentication forsmall businesses.

This is a key security offering for your more paranoidclients who realize there are too many alphabet passwordguessing programs.

3. Be aware of permissions and rights.Don’t misunderstand the NTFS rights and permissions

you give to anyone. As noted above, give users theminimum rights they need to do their work. If the literaturefor a piece of software says you need administrator rights inorder to use and/or install it, it is referring to the rights onthe workstation, not the server. If the literature says toassign more than read rights, ask yourself whether youwant to place that application on your domain controller atall. Assign the right of “Domain Administrator” VERYsparingly. Anyone with this right is “God” on your system.Only give it to specific accounts and don’t use that accountfor day-to-day use.

4. Virus and spyware checkers.I challenge you to rethink your dependency on them.

On average, antivirus vendors only “catch” about 20% to30% of the new and late-breaking malware on the Internet.Recent trends in malware attacks have seeminglytrustworthy websites (like forums for major vendors)serving up banner ads whose embedded content deliversmalware. Review your antivirus and antispyware vendorson sites like http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse/report14.pdf to see how quickly they findnewly-discovered viruses. If they are slow to find viruses,perhaps it’s time to find another vendor.

Bundled products that include both antivirus andantispyware include Trend, Symantec, Eset and others.When choosing a vendor, evaluate their response tooutbreaks and the firm’s need for such leading-edgeproducts. If the firm you are buying for is always getting thelatest and greatest malware de jour on its systems, opt for a

vendor that is extremely proactive in its data file updates. There is a balance to achieve between a product with aneasy management console and setup and one that isextremely fast on updates. Sometimes the vendors that arethe quickest on updating also have less wizard-driveninstallation. Ask around at peer groups and Partner groupsfor recommendations.

Relying on antivirus alone may not be wise these days.In the spyware fight, you may not want to have eachworkstation being the “front line” defender of your serverwhile spyware applications do an end-run around yourserver entry-points. Consider some sort of web proxyingproduct like Websense to filter your web browsing activityfirm-wide. Malware can enter from Myspace banner adsand forums whose hosted providers have been hacked.There are lots of other ways that the Web 2.0 world caninject malware onto systems fairly easily (because desktopsare running with full administrator rights). There is no suchthing anymore as a site you “trust.” If you do not control thecontent or know the security policies of that server, you areat risk of “drive-by malware,” if you surf with a machinethat has administrator rights.

5. Patching or mitigation is key.Every second Tuesday of the month is Patch Tuesday.

That is when you need to stop and review the patchesavailable to see when and if you need to install any of them.One resource you can use is the summary of the PatchTuesday impact that is available at www.incidents.org everyPatch Tuesday. On this sample chart from July, you can seethe recommended patches and their criticality ratings. Inmy monthly column for Brian Livingston’sWindowsSecrets.com, PatchWatch, I highlight the patchesthat have issues along with some tips and tricks for

Anti-Virus scan engine scan speed test.[Source av-comparatives.org]

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


ensuring you have a successful patching experience. Youcan also visit the Microsoft Windows Update newsgroupand see the pattern of issues that users there are reporting.

But patching isn’t always easy, is it? The best way topatch is to plan for patching. For best results, never havethe server automatically update. If your workstationshave updates automatically applied, you should look atthe risk of the workstation being adversely affected by apatch as well as the ability to roll back from a patch. Allpatches, with the exception of certain database updates,are uninstallable. Furthermore, while you can pre-test thepatch deployment ahead of time, you can never perfectlyreplicate your clients’ environments in order to do exactpatch testing.

6. Always consider mitigation rather than patching.

You may want to review the mitigations listed in thebulletins as an alternative to patching. One recent DNSsecurity vulnerability required a patch and reboot of thesystem for full protection, but if you merely applied achange to a registry key, then stopped and restarted theDNS service on the server, you were protected.

Many recent security bulletins note that attackers canonly obtain the rights of the user that they attack. Thus, ifthat user is running with limited user rights, drive-bymalware will not be able to install on a system. One couldargue that Firefox is more secure, but the reality is that it’sjust less of a target. In a business network, you must use andrun Internet Explorer to be able to access certain websites, sousing an alternative browser that’s less-frequently attackedmay be a solution for some issues, but not for all.

MS07-029, KB935966 is the classic example in which themitigation was easier than the patch. The instructions inMS07-029 said to stop the DNS service on the SmallBusiness Server 2003 server, go to this registry keyHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Parameters and place a new Dword value of“RpcProtocol,” enter the value of “4” and restart theservice. No rebooting. You can sign up for the advisorieshere (and always review them when they come out):http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/default.mspx.

7. Patching everything else.One problem with only relying on Windows Software

Update Services is that it patches only Microsoft productsautomatically. While in version 3 you can builddeployment packages and install other third partysoftware, it doesn’t solve the problem of knowing whichthird party products you need to keep up-to-date. Thesedays, criminal cartels are bundling “infection” cocktailsthat are dropped onto unprotected shared hosted websitesto infect old Microsoft vulnerabilities and old AdobeAcrobat, Sun Java, Winzip, Quicktime, and Flashvulnerabilities. I would bet you that right now in thenetworks you administer, you have several, if not all,workstations sitting there with vulnerable systems. So howcan you even begin to determine what to patch? One wayis to take an inventory of the systems using wmi scriptingtools, either in standalone tools like Sydihttp://sydiproject.com/download or those tools includedin your Managed Services Tool Kit. Another way todiscover network-wide third party vulnerabilities is to takea sample workstation and use the Secunia SoftwareInspector http://secunia.com/software_inspector/?task=loadto review it.

A recent Sun Java vulnerability points out that there areissues with unpatched software besides Microsoftproducts. Running a Secunia scan on a regular basis on testworkstations is a great way to check for all unpatchedsoftware.

Recommended patches and their criticality ratings areavailable every Patch Tuesday at www.incidents.org

Dword entry in the registry

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


8. The changing economics of the bad guys.At time the “bad guys” were teenagers and college

students out for a fun time and a chance to boast that theydenial-of-service attacked CNN. Nowadays, it’s more oftenthat the leader of your “bot-owned” system is a money-laundering business who sells you in the bulk marketplace of“bot-owned” systems. Attacks are more likely to be targetedat the CEOs of sensitive companies. The goal of attackerstoday is not to cause damage to your system, but rather toweasel their way onto it and borrow the bandwidth, stealsensitive information and leave the system in a position to bea “soldier for bad” on the security battlefield. Thus, themindset of many small businesses that “the bad guys don’twant anything that I have” is dangerous.

9. Making the economic point of securityincidents.

Recently at Microsoft’s TechEd annual event inOrlando, Florida, Senior Security Strategist Steve Rileydiscussed the business issues of security. For every hour ofdowntime a system has, there is a loss of revenue, inaddition to the cost of the cleanup. If you are a consultantfor a law firm and there is a single incident affecting oneworkstation, and it takes two hours to place that attorney’scomputer back into production, and that attorney bills at arate of US$600 per hour, it’s a potential loss of revenue tothat firm of $1,200. Add to that the fees of the consultantperforming the cleanup, and that incident may be morecostly than you would think. When you propose securitysolutions such as firm wide antispyware and antivirussolutions and the business owner balks a bit at the price tag,provide him or her with information about the cost of doing“nothing.” Show how much loss of productivity andrevenue would occur if the highest revenue-generating

person in the office lost his or her machine for a few hours.

The bottom lineThe security threats are changing. It’s our jobs these

days to constantly evaluate risk and judge how to ensurethat our clients can accept, mitigate, or migrate the risk.Making these decisions is a key factor in having a secureand compliant server. Being able to discuss the realistic risksas well as the costs of clean up will help you make thebusiness case for security in small firms. �

Susan is a Small Business Server MVP (Most ValuableProfessional) a.k.a the official SBS Diva. She is a contributingeditor of Brian Livingston’s excellent Windows Secretsnewsletter (www.windowssecrets.com) and has been servingup Small Business Server, patching and security info at herblog (www.sbsdiva.com) since 2003. She will be speaking atSMB Nation 2007 and SMBFocus (www.smbfocus.com).You can reach Susan at [email protected]

Unpatched software report

Cost of doing nothing.

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM

while back I had the opportunity to see Brian Kurtzspeak on the topic of direct marketing. Brian is thebrain behind the direct marketing operation at Board

Room Reports, one of the largest, oldest, and most successfulsubscription newsletters in the world. They are also revered inthe world of marketing as one of the best direct responsemarketers on the planet.

For the uninitiated, direct response marketing is anymarketing that is specifically targeted to a particular group orindividual with a call to action (direct response) element. Thisdiffers from “branding” or other image advertising that isdesigned to “get your name out there.” Direct responsemarketing is, without a doubt, the fastest path to making a saleand the only type of marketing that should be used by smallbusinesses with a limited budget.

While Boardroom uses various means for marketing, directmail is king of their kingdom. To give you an idea of the volumeof direct mail they do, Brian spends over $22 million dollars ayear on postage alone (and that was before the recent postageincrease). Because of the sheer volume of marketing campaignsthey roll out, very few individuals have Brian’s depth ofexperience on how to motivate buyers using direct responsemarketing tactics. During his presentation he shared a numberof “gems” that are 100% applicable to selling professionalservices or any other product or service.

For the sake of space, I’ve taken those tips and strategiesthat are most applicable to selling IT services and included themhere in this month’s article. Keep in mind that all of these tacticswould also apply with any marketing campaigns you are doing,whether they are online or offline:

1. The list is the single most important element to anymarketing campaign; the second most important element isthe offer. This is another way of saying the single mostimportant element of a marketing campaign is matching yourmessage and offer to your target market. Are the people you aremailing to going to care about what you have to say? Are theygoing to see the offer you are making as valuable? The #1 reasonmarketing – direct mail or otherwise – fails is because themessage fails to resonate with the recipient. Most marketingmessages are completely off-target, uninteresting, andcompletely without an irresistible offer.

2. When marketing to a new list of prospects, promote yourstrongest, most in-demand product or service first, then onceyou get them to buy, cross-sell all your other products andservices. For most of you reading this, that will be break-fix

work. To be clear, I’m not suggesting you focus on selling onlybreak-fix, but in most cases, that’s what gets them in the door –the promise to resolve a computer issue fast, right, and withoutsoaking them on the bill. Remember, prospects have to trust youbefore they will give you their business. That is the first sale youhave to make –your credibility. Once you get them to respondand you get a chance to meet with them, then start talkingmanaged services. Once you’ve secured the managed servicescontract, then start talking about VoIP, remote backup, spamfiltering, document imaging, phone systems, and anything elseyou sell.

3. Never try to promote more than one product or service in amailing; it will fail. Focus on a single, “hot” product or serviceand do not try to even mention any of the other products andservices you sell. I’ve seen many computer consultants try topromote everything they do on one flyer. This is a BIG mistake.When prospecting, focus the entire campaign on getting theprospect to respond to a free network audit, seminar, report,teleseminar, or other “thing.” If you try to get them to do twothings or offer more than one option, you’ll kill your response.

4. Successful direct marketing is the process of creating aspecialty from a commodity. Boy is this ever true! I hope that allof you reading this will go back and re-read that sentence --maybe even write it on an index card and carry it around in yourwallet. If what you are selling is a commodity (and most of youare), you have to use your marketing copy, style, andpersonality to make it seem special or unique. This is exactlywhy I write marketing letters and campaigns the way I do; ifyou are selling a commodity and use plain, “professional” copy,offers, and approaches, you will undoubtedly fail in yourefforts. That is also why I urge clients to package and name theirmanaged services program to make it seem “magical” orspecial. Here’s a great tip: If you want to acquire new clientsfrom a particular niche, name your managed services programso that it seems customized for that particular industry.Example: “The Physician’s Computer Freedom Plan,” orsomething similar. You get the idea.

5. Whenever possible, put a personality or character into yourmailings. Brian has found that when you make the marketingcommunication come from a personality, meaning a real, liveperson, the response goes up. He’s also found that “folks-y”editorial-style copy outperforms stiff, corporate copy everytime. Many of my clients are familiar with my squirrel mailingwhich is a version of an “s. mouse” letter written years ago by

A

7 Secrets for Maximizing Your Response When Marketing To NEW Clients: Lessons from One Of The MOST Successful DirectMarketing Companies In The World

by Robin Robins Money Shaker

Page 46 www.smbnation.com SMB Partner Community - August/September 2007

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


an office supply store. But, you don’t need a Mr. Clean or Tonythe Tiger to be successful; just use your staff, clients, kids, andpets in your marketing. It truly will improve the response. Onefriend of mine, Doctor Neilson, sends marketing letters from hisemployees that have a sitcom type situation. His last mailinghad a yellow wristband stapled to the top with a story abouthow the staff traded their old manual typewriter to a mysteriousman on the street for a bunch of “magic” wristbands. The offer?Bring in a “magic” wristband and get a free office visit. Hismailings are HUGELY successful. Which brings me to the nextpoint Brian made…

6. Homemade-looking marketing often outperforms slick,professionally designed marketing communications. I don’tknow why this works, but I can tell you in test after test thatmarketing campaigns that seem a bit “homemade” outperform“professional” almost every time provided all other elementsare the same (list, copy, offer, etc.).

7. It is a mistake to cheapen a marketing campaign. This willshock many of you, especially when you consider that Brian isspending $22 million on postage a year; you would think he’dfigure out every angle to mail cheaper. Just the opposite is true.In almost every case, Boardroom has increased response to theirmailings by adding more elements – lift letters, lumpy mail items(also called grabbers), testimonial booklets, and additional flyers- rather than taking away or reducing the number of elements

inside the envelope. Postcards are inexpensive and an easy wayto send out a quick reminder or as a follow up to a previousletter, but your response will suffer. If you simply do not have thetime or money to send out a larger, more involved mailingcampaign, a postcard is better than sending nothing; however,you must take into consideration that you will get less of aresponse than the mailing you send with multiple pieces. I havefound this to be true in my own marketing. You may have heardme mention that I increased my conversion 6% by simply addinga “FAQ” sheet in with my mailings to prospects. This is a hugeincrease that will represent hundreds of thousands of dollars insales. I urge you to look for ways to add more to your marketingcommunications rather than take away to save time or money;cheapening your marketing will end up costing you more in lostsales than it will save you in marketing expenses. �

Robin Robins is an independent marketing consultant, sales trainer,and author who specializes in unusual and highly effectivemarketing strategies for small VARs, Solution Providers, MSPs, andIT consulting firms. Robin runs the largest sales and marketingcoaching program in the world for small computer consultants.Under this program, Robin gives her members done-for-themmarketing campaigns, newsletters, web sites, and other campaignsto drive new sales. She also provides ongoing strategy and coachingto help her members significantly increase their income and profitswhile reducing the number of hours they work in their businesses.

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


id you know that the baseball glove wasinvented in Canada back in 1883? Canada alsoclaims to be the home of many other inventions

such as the television, the electron microscope, thezipper, basketball and the Microsoft Small BusinessSpecialist. Okay, just starting rumors on that one.

Fact is, Microsoft Canada showed its “love” to itsSmall Business Specialists not too long ago. The day wasdubbed “Accelerate Your Business” and was a SmallBusiness Specialist-only event. This event was held inMississauga, Ontario and served as a pilot. Partners wereinvited to attend an afternoon of learning and an eveningwith cocktails. What a way to network.

Upon arriving, Partners were presented with a goodiebag containing several items including a Small BusinessSpecialist Golf Shirt, the SMB Partner CommunityMagazine, a PLC candy jar and other giveaways. The“Accelerate Your Business” day was an initiative to helpbuild a stronger community and Microsoft hopes toextend it to other cities throughout Canada.

The afternoon of learning highlighted the PartnerLearning Center (PLC), a free tool available to Partners,which offers online training resources, live trainingevents, virtual labs and online tutorials – hundreds oftraining courses that are available for free – that can be

utilized by Partners to prepare for an exam or get up tospeed with new technology. The PLC can be accessedthrough a special URL (www.microsoft.ca/tellmemore)that combines all the gives and gets a Small BusinessSpecialist needs to know about in one central location.

By creating the “tellmemore” site, Microsoft Canadais making it easier to be a Partner. Having a live eventwhere you can network with Partners brings evengreater value. “We attend as many Microsoft Events aspossible,” says Barry Dowd of Integrated BusinessIntelligence Corp. “These are great opportunities tonetwork with our peers and Microsoft staff. This hasresulted in key business relationships that continue tohelp us grow our business.”

As a small business owner it’s hard to get a life. Youhave to get through your regular working day of servingcustomers, responding to phone calls, managing thedaily grind, running the kids to the baseball game orgetting the kids settled at home before you can sit down(mostly around 9:00 p.m. or 10:00 p.m.) to start workingthrough your emails and other tasks. It’s hard enough toget through your crazy daily schedule and you areexpected to stay not only on top of your business but alsonew technology and all the offers and promotions thatcome along with it. Many Microsoft Partner Engagement

managers have shared with me thatthey are often on the phone orchatting online with Partners at 11:00p.m. and later. Sound familiar? So itwasn’t surprising to find out thatmany Partners were not aware of thedirect mail campaign subsidyavailable to them, which was thesecond session that afternoon.

In about 15 minutes Partnerslearned about this marketing toolthat Microsoft specifically designedfor Partners. Partners can easilycreate direct mail postcards, lettersand emails by selecting the productof their choice. The tool populateseverything. You upload your logoand voilá, you have a marketingpiece. From here you can drop ship

D

Global Perspective

Putting the Pedal to the Metal: Accelerate Your Business

A group of Small Business Specialists came to share the Love at the“Accelerate Your Business”event.

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


or print and ship to yourself. What a way to sell theproduct and look professional without spending endlesshours designing marketing, especially if you don’t havea marketing team. There are campaigns like the“Upgrade your desktop” campaign, which offered aCA$430 direct mail marketing subsidy if you are a SmallBusiness Specialist. These campaigns run frequently, ifnot continuously, so it’s worth it to place the one-stop-shop tellmemore site on your Favorites list.

There are other incentives such as the “Accelerateyour license deal,” which offered a CA$50 incentive.There was a CA$25 “fuel for you” coffee card, a CA$100“fuel for your fridge” and others if you met therequirements of the VAR (Value Added Reseller)program. Selling Small Business Server can pocket youan extra CA$200 and if you are a Small BusinessSpecialist there are additional $$ on top of that.

Becoming a Small Business Specialist and brandingthe logo has helped accelerate Barry Dowd’s business,Integrated Business Intelligence Corp. (www.ibicorp.ca).IBI Corp. was honored as Partner of the Year for SmallBusiness Specialists at the 2007 Microsoft WorldwidePartner Awards.

IBI Corp. has worked very hard to excel and setitself apart from the competition. IBI Corp. presents agreat example of how to use the Small BusinessSpecialist designation to your advantage. Dowd cameto the field with an accounting background, knowingthat he wanted to sell Microsoft solutions. With thebirth of the Small Business Specialist designationDowd ensured IBI Corp. was one of the first to add thelogo. IBI Corp. used the Small Business Specialistdesignation to help grow the business by making sure

customers were aware of what the designation meant,using the Microsoft affiliation to stand out in themarket.

Dowd has also shared his experiences with thecommunity by speaking at Small Business Specialistramp-up events, explaining the value of thedesignation to other Partners. He says, “We started thecompany back in 2005 as a Microsoft registered Partnerwith the goal of achieving the Business SolutionsCompetency and Certified Partner. As a registeredPartner, we could not use Microsoft branding in ourmarketing efforts. We jumped at the chance to becomeSmall Business Specialists as soon as the program wasannounced. We are proud to be one of the first to obtainthis designation in Canada. This gave us theopportunity to use the Small Business Specialist logoand gain instant credibility with our prospects andcustomers. The Partner Points we received for theSmall Business Specialist Designation helped us

(L to R) Mira Perry, Partner Development Manager and KimHarrison, Partner Specialist, SBSC of Microsoft Canada werejust giving Melanie from Maximum IT a high-five. Melanie

and her husband Karl’s business has benefited from the Small Business Specialist designation.

We are honoured to be recognized as Microsoft’sSmall Business Specialist Partner of the Year. This awardis Microsoft’s Stanley Cup and we are proud to bring ithome to Canada.

I encourage all Microsoft Partners to becomeengaged with Microsoft and network with otherMicrosoft Partners. I find our industry to be verycompetitive among Microsoft Partners. Our approach isto find ways to work together as opposed to findingreasons not to work together. The Microsoft Story isstrong and working together we can win more customerdeals and increase profit for all of us.

Barry Dowd

Barry J. Dowd (middle), BBA, CA, President Integrated Business Intelligence Corp.

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


become Gold Certified Partners shortly after achievingthe Business Solutions Competency in Dynamics GP.”

IBI Corp. also takes advantage of Microsoftprograms. “We use the Microsoft Financing Program andDynamics GP and CRM sales offers on almost every newsales call,” says Dowd. “The competitive switching offersfor Sage to Microsoft Dynamics GP helped us closeseveral deals last year.”

Another Partner, Larry Nicholson,(www.nicholsonnet.com) found his excitement for thebusiness going stale after years of the same size projectsand customers. “I wanted to work on projects thatweren’t always about getting it done quickly andcheaply. I had worked with Trump (www.trump.ca) onputting a project quote together for a company thatwanted to replace their pen and paper job managementprocess with something computerized. After a fewmeetings and discussions about the best way to do it, Iwanted to talk to Kevin about some of the bigger fish outthere. When Kevin told me they had just lost their salesand services guy I offered to do work for them and splitthe earnings. We both liked the arrangement and wehave been working together ever since.” Besidespartnering actively, Nicholson uses the benefits of beinga Small Business Specialist. He uses the logo on his website and business card, attends events and networks withother Small Business Specialists and Partners, andbecame a part of the Small Business Specialist AdvisoryPanel for Microsoft Canada.

“There is no way I can be where I am today withoutthe help and support of Microsoft Canada and especiallyKim and Mira. Being able to meet fellow SMB Specialistsand being able to understand that the challenges I washaving, others in my field were having as well. Notfeeling quite so alone with the bills and the neverending

to do lists.” Says Nicholson, “Gross profit has gone up200% since the change. My billable percentage is almost100% these days. One of the Trump customers,Brafasco/CTF Supply (part of Home Depot Supply) hasme working full-time right now. They are working onconsolidating three locations into one and insourcingemail and desktop support over the next year. To say Iam busy is an understatement.”

Nicholson’s reflection sums it up. “Being able toconnect with other SMB consultants really helped me tounderstand the business and what was working andwhat was not. Being able to recognize some of the traitsof a growing business and being busy, but not profitable,was also part of the learning process. I am happy to saythat I am busy but more importantly, very profitable.”

The Canadians have got it going on! Getting activelyengaged in learning about and using Microsoft tools,offers and promotions (especially the Small BusinessSpecialist exclusive stuff). Combined with networkingand meeting other Partners at local events is like puttingthe pedal to the metal to accelerate your business! �

I would say that if you want to succeed in the SMBspace you need three things to be successful.1. A thick skin that can take a lot of heat and still look

good when you show up at a customer’s.2. A smile and a positive attitude. It may be raining

hammers and anvils one day but the next day the skycould clear and the sun will shine again. Be ready foranything.

3. Always look to make yourself the better IT person. It isnot always about technology.

I joined Toastmasters almost four years ago because Ifelt I needed to do an even better job of connecting andcommunicating with customers and people. Lastly, makesure to give back to those around you. I assist andcontribute to the local United Way and the feeling I getwhen they succeed with their campaign goals becausetheir technology works properly is wonderful.

Larry Nicholson,Nicholson Network Services,Georgetown, Ontario, Canada.

John Krikke receives a Small Business Specialist branded Golf shirt.

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM


ell, we just had the WorldWide Partner Conference2007 (WPC 2007) in Denver. Hope you were able toattend. In this edition, I’ll review a few of the

highlights of WPC, give you a quick overview of what’s in theworks for TS2 in the fall, and alert you to a great deal that I justfound out about.

WPC 2007 was a sell-out this year, almost 10,000 folks(over 7,300 partners and 2,500 Microsofties and staff) from thestats I got. The theme of WPC 2007 was “Partnering Togetherfor Profitability and Growth.” In the keynotes and sessions, thePartners attending hopefully got a clearer understanding ofMicrosoft’s strategy and vision around Software+Services.They also got to see a great new technology called “Silverlight,”which is Microsoft’s new cross-browser, cross-platform plug-infor delivering the next generation of media experiences andrich, interactive web applications. Systems Center was frontand center (pardon the pun) as well with lots of great sessions,and, in case you missed it, Kevin Turner, our COO, announcedthe February 2008 launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server2008, and Visual Studio 2008. And, of course, as you wouldexpect, there were many sessions on managed services andother strategies for how Partners can improve their operations.Plan to check out http://members.microsoft.com/partner/digitalwpc for more details on what went on at WPC 2007 andto view the keynotes and demos for yourself.

In the coming months TS2 will be focusing on SystemsCenter Essentials, Forefront Security, and Exchange hostedservices. Also we’ll be discussing building a reoccurringrevenue model around security management. Check outhttp://www.ts2seminars.com for more details, and I hope we’llsee you at an event in your area.

Here’s the great deal I just heard about. You can now get a freeTechNet Plus direct subscription in addition to the SBS 2003 R2Software when you participate in the “Assess & Win” offer. Thisoffer has been ongoing for the last year but has been extended toJune, 2008; and to sweeten the pot (significantly), Microsoft hasadded a great reward for completing just the first twoassessments! Added for this year, a free one-year TechNet PlusDirect subscription (US $349 value) is yours when you use theMicrosoft Business and Technology Assessment Toolkit tocomplete just two assessments and submit them and a survey toMicrosoft. In case you didn’t know, TechNet Plus Direct includestwo free technical support incidents (worth US $490 if purchasedseparately) and provides access to evaluation software that youwon’t get in your Action Pack subscription. When you submitanother three assessments, you still get a full retail copy ofWindows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 R2 (US $599 value) justas before, and you are earning Microsoft Partner points to boot.

Cheers, have a great Fall, see you at SMB Nation 2007!

RRoonn

TS2Nami

W

AL 09/27/2007 Birmingham

CA 08/14/2007 La Jolla (San Diego)08/16/2007 Los Angeles09/11/2007 Pleasanton09/13/2007 Modesto09/25/2007 San Francisco09/27/2007 Irvine11/29/2007 Redding

CO 08/21/2007 Boulder08/23/2007 Denver

DE 09/18/2007 Wilmington

FL 08/21/2007 Jacksonville08/23/2007 Orlando09/18/2007 Sarasota09/20/2007 Boca Raton

IA 09/25/2007 Des Moines

IL 09/13/2007 Woodridge

IN 08/30/2007 Indianapolis

KS 08/28/2007 Overland Park

MD 08/30/2007 Columbia

MI 08/07/2007 Grand Rapids

MN 08/23/2007 St. Paul

MO 08/30/2007 St. Louis

MS 09/25/2007 Jackson

NC 08/14/2007 Asheville08/16/2007 Charlotte

ND 09/18/2007 Fargo

NE 09/27/2007 Omaha

NJ 09/25/2007 Edison

NY 08/28/2007 Rochester08/30/2007 New York09/27/2007 Islandia

OH 08/09/2007 Toledo08/28/2007 Dayton

OK 09/18/2007 Tulsa09/20/2007 Oklahoma City

OR 08/09/2007 Portland

PA 09/20/2007 Scranton

TX 08/07/2007 Corpus Christi08/09/2007 San Antonio

VA 08/28/2007 Alexandria09/11/2007 Roanoke09/13/2007 Norfolk

WA 08/07/2007 Olympia

WI 08/21/2007 Madison09/11/2007 Green Bay

WY 11/07/2007 Cheyenne

Upcoming Live Events:Theme: Increasing your revenue opportunities with Managed Services offerings. Sign up and get more detail at

http://www.ts2seminars.com

by Ron Grattopp

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM

Aug 2007 8/2/07 9:45 AM

aug 2007

Documents

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business acumen

schumaker companydoes

small business symposium

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bainbridge island

distributionsmb nation

dennis schumaker