The ABCs of MSPs

Continuing the raging popularity of the TLA, Ipswitch attended CMP’s MSP (Managed Service Provider) seminar in Phoenix recently, and then we doubled down on channel education at Baptie’s Channel Focus North America. What we learned was that it’s fun and easy for VARs to make money by offering managed services. How easy? Check out this diagram from Cisco’s whitepaper, Managed Services – Proof of Profitability: Business Case for Managed Services

But seriously, folks — is this MSP thing the wave of the future or a flash in the pan?

The email week in review

Sometimes it’s hard to blog about business and technology when the news is full of weightier issues, and this week’s news was overfull, to be sure. But there were two interesting technology stories embedded in this week’s national news, both revolving around email.

First, a minor scandal bubbled up around the alleged misuse of government email accounts to do political business, and the subsequent stir about the deletion of the messages in question – was it accidental or intentional, and more importantly, was it permanent or are they recoverable?

Second, beneath the torrent of grief and shock in Virginia there was a stark question, when there’s violent murder in progress on campus, is a mass email sufficient to alert the community?

I’m not qualified – nor am I interested – to discuss political fundraising, gun control, mental health or public safety, but I am qualified to talk about email and how people use it.

IBM to SMB: TCO, don’t you know?

So I was reading CRN this morning, as I often do and I came across this bit about IBM’s introduction of a new server. I was immediately drawn in by this lede:

Acknowledging that it’s still not reaching all potential customers in the small and midsize business market, IBM has unveiled two additions to the low end of its System i Express line of servers Tuesday that will be priced on a per-user basis.

IBM acklowledges that it’s not reaching the SMB market – newsflash! I wonder why that could be? Let’s read more…

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots

Welcome to Business Book Club. Today’s selection is Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky. Being a professional marketer and amateur contrarian, I was immediately attracted to the title, which is subtitled, “a bullfighter’s guide.” I was not disappointed, the book delivers a thorough trashing of the stilted gunk that passes for business writing, but I noticed something interesting early on, something that I wasn’t expecting and something that made me re-think the popularly quoted George Orwell piece, Politics and The English Language.

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots (WBPSLI) gets right to the point in the introduction, which comes after the dedication to Lawrence Tureaud.

No jargon, no excuses, no bull. Just a lot of zeal and a lot of personality at the office.
Entire careers can be built on straight talk – precisely because it is so rare.
This goes well beyond grammatical rules or fashionable expressions. It requires honesty, humility, and confidence from business people.
…

Sergey, Eric, meet George

From the virtual pages of CRN and Reuters comes this item, to be filed under True Tales of Executive Pay.

Google Inc. … paid its top three executives a token 2006 salary of $1 each for the third year running, and bonuses of $1,723 a piece, according to the company’s annual proxy filed on Wednesday.

What was the road to heck paved with again?

Looks like a tanker truck of Beaujolais Nouveau jackknifed on route 495, but it was actually several barrels of much more valuable red dye concentrate, and not another sign of the apocalypse.
But the road ahead for users of Microsoft’s Hotmail might be less rose and more bumpy, as reported by the good people at Network World.