Posted by Steve Schwartz on Tue, Jun 22, 2010
Here are a few recent updates on implement.com and our work as a partner with Microsoft.
implement.com attends 2010 EMEA Hosting Club
We recently attended a gathering of executives from the top hosting companies in Europe called the EMEA Hosting Club. It was held in Vienna and focused on sharing best practices amongst the various companies in attendance in a roundtable format. We also took the opportunity to meet with some of our key European clients and work out plans for deploying Exchange 2010 SP1.
implement.com profiled in 2010 EMEA Partner Guide
We have been profiled in a Microsoft publication that highlights sgnificant partners in Microsoft's EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, and Africa). This is a great opportunity for us to relay our value proposition to a wide audience. Here is a link to the guide:
Microsoft Communications Sector Partner Guide EMEA 2010
implement.com guest blogs on Microsoft Communications Sector Hosting Insights Blog
We were invited to provide a guest blog on the Microsoft Communications Sector Hosting Insights Blog about the work we are doing with Microsoft on how to migrate to their forthcoming Exchange 2010 SP1 release. This is the first version of Exchange that will be officially supported by the product group for multi-tenant hosting. You can read the details on the blog, but I will say that this was a great opportunity to showcase our thought leader ship in the Hosted Exchange ecosystem and our role over the last 11 years as a partner of Microsoft and its customers for deploying the Microsoft hosting platform.
Guest Blog by implement.com: Native Multi-Tenancy Provisioning in Hosted Exchange 2010 SP1
Posted by Steve Schwartz on Mon, Apr 26, 2010
We are pleased to announce that implement.com has been invited to present at the 2010 Microsoft Hosting Summit. Our presentation is on Hosted Unified Communications and Unified Messaging, and how to go to market with Hosted Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS) and Microsoft Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging. Our presentation is part of the invite only portion of the conference for Microsoft's most successful hosting partners.
This is a nice acknowledgment of our thought leadership in the Hosted Unified Communications industry in general, and of our deep expertise with Hosted OCS 2007 specifically.
We are uniquely qualified to deliver this presentation for a couple of reasons:
First, we have been focused on how to deliver hosted Microsoft Exchange and Office Communications Server for as long as these products and markets have existed, Exchange since about 1999, and OCS (with it's first iteration as Live Communications Server) since 2006. In the nascent world of cloud computing, that makes us pioneers.
Second, we actually deliver the service! When we started our hosting operation in 2006, Chinook Hosting, we intentionally started it to deliver Hosted Unified Communications, including Hosted Unified Messaging. We were a little early. However, that early entry allowed us to amass key experience on how to deliver Hosted Unified Communications. It wasn't easy, but it paid off for us when we launched at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 the very first Hosted Unified Messaging offering based on Microsoft Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging.
This was truly ahead of it's time, but as cloud computing emerges in 2010, hosted communications services will be one of the key areas of focus for the successful service provider.
implement.com is already acknowledged and continuing to move forward as one of the thought leaders for the Microsoft hosted solutions ecosystem and this presentation is a validation point that makes us think we are on the right track in Hosted Unified Communications.
Posted by Jarmo Paukkunen on Mon, Apr 12, 2010
Now that cloud based solutions are gaining awareness in both the SMB space as well as medium and larger sized enterprises an additional requirement of service providers is continuing to surface - Directory Synchronization.
Companies with 200+ employees looking for hosted solutions commonly have an active directory deployment as part of their internal infrastructure. This on-premise AD is typically required to support and manage existing line of business applications that will remain a part of the customer's internal infrastructure. The IT and HR groups of mid-sized companies have existing processes they use to manage accounts for new employees, enable/disable applications, etc. Today most cloud based services would require IT groups to manage accounts and services in two separate processes for the on-premise and hosted environments. User accounts may or may not have the same naming conventions between on-premise and hosted, typically passwords are not synchronized and it can lead to an overall confusing process for end users and be error prone and tedious for IT admin teams.
With the recent release of Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) which includes licensing options for service providers via SPLA (Service Provider License Agreement) there is at least some movement toward a solution to this challenge.
Based on testing we have completed in our labs, FIM is a viable option to enable hosted service providers with a solution to this issue. A base deployment of FIM helps to resolve a couple of key functional items that will help make cloud services more manageable for both service providers and IT admin teams of hosted organizations.
At a basic level FIM can be used to ensure account password synchronization between hosted & on-premise locations. - In this scenario, the solution validates that user1@companya.com is using the same credentials for both their on-premise AD as well as the hosted AD. Then the solution will synchronize the passwords between the two environments such that when the user launches their email, OCS, SharePoint or other hosted service they will have the same credentials and password they use to login to their on-premise AD.
The next level of functionality would provide Password and account synchronization - this provides for the same functionality as listed above but will also allow for accounts to be synchronized when add, delete, changes are made within the on-premise AD. As an example, when newuser1@companya.com is created in the on-premise AD at the customer site, that account is also created in the customer OU of the Hosted AD with the same password/credentials.
The remaining piece off the puzzle to provide for full automation would be a FIM management agent developed for the hosted provisioning system. In developing the management agent, this would also enable the new hosted account to be provisioned for a set of hosted services. Without the management agent, the customer admin team would need to go to the hosted service portal and then enable hosted services (exchange, SharePoint, OCS, etc.) for the newly created account. If there was a provisioning management agent (listening) for new accounts to be created in a given OU, it would then provision that user with a default set of functionality or could potentially receive a set of parameters to provision a given new user with the appropriate set of hosted services as defined by the customer business arrangement. The same scenario would hold true for account deletions and changes.
At implement.com we are working with a number of our service provider customers as they work through this scenario and determine the appropriate solution and architecture for their environment. I am very optimistic that this will continue to gain momentum over the course of the next couple of quarters with production deployments in place by the end of 2010.
Posted by Steve Schwartz on Tue, Mar 30, 2010
I have seen numerous times businesses try to compare hosted services to on premise based on a price or cost standpoint. In my viewpoint, the comparison must be done not on a dollar amount in a spreadsheet, but on the value of the service to the business. Whether it is on premise or hosted or in a cloud is more a business model discussion, though with lots of considerations such as security, service levels, and recoverability.
But how do you start to get a handle on the value of the service? I have attempted here to at least outline some of the items you might consider:
- Focus IT Staff on Mission Critical Line of Business Apps
- I have heard repeatedly from customers that their IT staff is overworked and understaffed and they wish they could focus on more mission critical line of business apps instead of things like managing Exchange.
- By outsourcing commodity technology like messaging and collaboration, unified communications, and business applications like CRM, you free up your IT staff, and further, future proof yourself from having to maintain current technology and keep your staff up to speed
- Get access to technology without roadblocks
- It is increasingly common to have a discussion with potential customers about them wanting to deploy a new technology like Unified Communications utilizing Microsoft Office Communications Server, but their IT staff is blocked by too many other projects and don't have the requisite expertise to deploy it quickly and start getting value. In some cases, this is from folks that have already bought the software and cannot leverage the investment.
- Physical Security
- This one is easy, how many small businesses have their Exchange or SharePoint server sitting under a desk, or in a non secure storage closet? Physically securing your server and storage is every bit as important as the standard security from user ids and passwords.
- Datacenter Features
- "The Cage"
- Having a highly efficient and secure "cage" in a data center is the first step in physical security and reliability
- Highly Available and Redundant Power and Network
- UPS and diesel generator backup power with multiple redundant communication links - how many small businesses have that?
- Security
- Multiple levels of physical access security and video surveillance, common in a Data Center, not so much in a typical office building
- Yeah, but I can get all of that by doing co-location myself can't I?...for 100 people?
- Sure you could, and for around $2-3,000 per month you get your cage, power, and broadband, but....
- You would underutilize the cage by an incredible margin - how many servers would you put in the cage? With blade technology you can place many servers in one cage but a typical small business probably only has a dozen servers at most
- For all of that expense for your servers, you are still woefully under utilizing them - to have minimally redundant Exchange platform, even with virtualization, you will need a few physical servers - but probably no Storage Are Network and related benefits - and for how many users? Maybe a 100 or 200? You will have a platform that could easily run 2000 users or more - hey, that's not green!
- End User and Customer Experience
- Easier, Web Based Administration and it can be delegated (IT staff establishes the rules, policies, and plans - then it's automated)
- More effective tools with tasks completed in a more timely manner
- Anywhere access without having to become an expert on firewalls and security
- In this article the Whir does a nice job of analyzing the benefits for SMB's utilizing hosted services:
Finally, this is all summed up by saying it is difficult to quantify costs of on premise vs. hosted, and there are numerous tangents of value that have to be evaluated and how the outcomes of one choice impact the bottom line for the business.
Posted by Steve Schwartz on Thu, Mar 18, 2010
A short note to telecommunications companies about "Cloud" computing services, but first some pertinent questions:
How do you define what services are delivered when you offer "Cloud" computing? Is it limited to hosted servers/OS/Database/Web Services billed by complex metering? Hosted Desktops? Virtual Servers? Cloud is a tough term to use and even define, and I eagerly await its being phased out.
This blog comes from my long and arduous experiences helping telcos deliver cheap and cheerful free PoP3 email... I have been in the ASP/Hosting/SaaS/Cloud business since 1999, and in the process worked with many telcos globally. During that time I have seen only one application service ever garner some success outside of the traditional offerings of broadband and voice services. In this context I gauge "success" as a service that actually generates revenue because customers want to buy it from the telco (i.e. the right target market), in the way the telco sells it (very cheap, or free bundled with broadband), and the way they want to buy it (online and anonymous).
Guess which application? PoP3 email! Mostly delivered to very small businesses or consumers. Transitioning to selling more advanced email and calendaring, let alone "Cloud", to real live SMB's with high expectations for support and customer service is a massive transition. This is not a technology problem.
The latest logical extension to email is Unified Communications and to me, the successful telco that wants to drive towards success in the "Cloud" will focus very narrowly on hosted Unified Communications, especially Hosted OCS (Microsoft Office Communications Server), for the smaller end of the SMB market. The accompanying diagram shows how Microsoft views the future of Unified Communications.
Posted by Jarmo Paukkunen on Fri, Mar 05, 2010
If you work remotely as much as I do, one of your areas of frustration is probably the situation where you are at a customer's location and need Internet access. Many companies provide guest WiFi but most do not. Wired networks may have firewall settings that stymie connection attempts. Thus, demonstrating software solutions is often reduced to PowerPoint slides rather than demonstrating the live system. In my case, a live demonstration of our hosted business applications platform is the most powerful way to show real-life performance and user experience.
Smartphones like the iPhone are great for consuming content but not really suitable for creating content or doing demonstrations. While I use my iPhone to show integration with our unified communications solution it does not work for software demos. Also, the existing 3G networks are too slow for showing any meaningful near real-time applications.
So I was delighted to find that Comcast is providing a 4G networks across the greater Seattle area, based on the WiMax standard. While Comcast sells the service, it is provided by ClearWire Communications in which Comcast has a significant capital investment. Coverage is limited in much of the country, however network rollouts are continuing. Visit http://www.comcast.com/highspeed2go/#/coverage for the current coverage map.
So how does it work? You subscribe to a plan for a minimum of 12 months. As I work principally in Seattle I chose the Metro2Go plan which costs $30/month plus $49 activation fee. National roaming is available at additional cost. The system falls back to 3G when 4G coverage is unavailable while roaming.
Comcast shipped me a USB device which is about the size of a USB thumb drive. Install the communications software, plug in the USB device and you are live. I have run connection speed tests and the typical speed recorded is 10Mb download, 1Mb upload. This is comparable to DSL speeds.
To determine coverage I placed my laptop on the passenger seat of my car and established an audio connection to one of my colleagues using Office Communicator running on our OCS platform. With a wireless headset I was able to maintain a constant phone conversation at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. I found 2 dead spots on my 9 mile commute, similar to dead spots you find with cell phones.
So far I am absolutely delighted. I have attended several customer sales meetings on their site and so far found only one office where I could not get signal. Phone calls made over the connection are free saving me cell phone minutes. The speed of my laptop is the same or better when compared to being on a WiFi network at the office or at home.
I can imagine that 4G services will be a boon to mobile workers in sales, construction, real estate and many other professions and industries.
True location transparency is here.
Posted by Jarmo Paukkunen on Wed, Feb 17, 2010
This is, word for word, what a customer recently shared with our team.
Stripping away industry hype, what most end-customers are looking for are business solutions.
Most likely that solution is business hosting of applications, communications and other services, and the smaller the company, that solution becomes increasingly more appealing. It is difficult for a small business to invest resources-in terms of headcount and capital-into technology, which paradoxically is essential for the business to prosper.
Often the idea of "outsourcing" is thought of as solely the province of large companies. However, businesses in the US with fewer than 100 employees actually employ almost 40 million people in the United States. These enterprises today have access to business hosted applications and services that are equivalent to the tools the largest companies are using: email, customer relationship management, accounting, project management, collaboration and many others.
Save on Capital Costs
Business hosted solutions are based on a subscription business model that does away with up-front capital outlays, the need for internal IT expertise, and continual upgrades. Customers pay for exactly what they consume each month, particularly useful for businesses having significant seasonal fluctuations in employee or contractor numbers.
Collaborate
Sharing of information between employees as well as external parties is critical. Business-hosted applications like Exchange email, SharePoint and Office Communicator provide the means to share documents, calendars and other collateral. They allow you to hold an impromptu meeting with voice and video while avoiding the cost of conference calls or travel. It's possible, today, to add a complete unified communications (UC) solution that fully integrates business applications and telephone and includes a very competitive calling plan.
Work From Anywhere
Business hosted applications allow for true location transparency, since you can work from anywhere with an Internet connection. Similarly, you can connect with your cell phone or other device. With workforces moving to telecommuting and an increasing number of professionals rarely coming to the office, hosted applications provide the same user experience-regardless of where you are. No need to establish virtual private network (VPN) connections, since all data is encrypted by default.
The bottom line
Finally, small and mid-sized businesses can avail themselves of technology that reduces costs and increases productivity, at less than the cost of the average cell phone bill.
Tell us what you think
How will Unified Communications drive your business? What are your expectations?
Posted by Irene Barnett on Mon, Feb 15, 2010
Recycling is for more than plastic and cans. Not using the documentation that is hiding somewhere in your organization is wasteful, and conservation is really trendy right now.
The raw material is already there
You have training you need to develop and you know, somewhere in the recesses of your organization, there has to be material you can leverage for it. But, you have no idea where to find it. Many people end up reinventing the wheel for the same result, costing organizations time and money.
There are plenty of content management systems out there that will gather content and organize it. But, how does it know the audience, their location, the right delivery for the right student?
The key is to put a trained eye to the stack of training documentation, product specifications, whitepapers, presentations, graphics and Help files to put all the puzzle pieces together.
The Content Architect Process from implement.com
Here's a process we've used that has helped many training organizations get solid training plans together, keep costs in check and keep the training team from pulling their hair out.
There is a special hybrid of training and technical writer out there that I call "Content Architects". These people have an uncanny talent. They are able to walk into a business they have little specific background in and go through a series of discovery steps.
They know how to glean the information they need in order to organize content and provide direction on any gaps. These are special people who tend to have a lot of interesting facts to share at cocktail parties too.
I've been lucky enough to work quite a bit with these folks over the years and have found they are invaluable to clients in need of a true content partnership. They are that missing piece, the trained eye, that can truly help bring your content library into focus.
What we have done for many of our clients involves a few simple steps:
- Discovery. Depending upon the client, this can be as simple as a series of interviews and access to the storeroom. This is that important "getting to know you and your business" piece that gets us the global view of what is important to you, your students and your boss. It helps guide us to the end goal or objective.
- Viability. Identify if the proposed training addresses a current pain point in your organization or if there are career objectives for the student. Does your existing content meet these needs?
- Definition. Which elements of the proposed training work and which do not? Is an instructor-led, classroom training the best route? Or, is a self-paced environment more in line with what your students need? Are there gaps in your library that need to be filled or are updates necessary?
- Plan of Action. The final step pulls all these pieces together, creating a useful design document and a solid curriculum plan.
At the end you not only have a clear, organized curriculum plan in place, but an exceptional writer who can deliver the polished product who understands your business from the 400-foot-level...oh, and a great addition to any cocktail party.
Let's hear from you. What content is locked up in your organization, just waiting to be found, designed and built into a Valuable Training Content System?
Add a comment or ask a question using the comments feature below.
Posted by Jarmo Paukkunen on Mon, Feb 15, 2010
At implement.com, we realize that your clients are under pressure to innovate in response to an ever-changing IT landscape. That's why we're excited to announce our acceptance into the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for Microsoft Exchange 2010.
The TAP was created to evaluate the partner and multi-tenant hosting capabilities of Microsoft's new product version so the company can (1) get early product feedback and (2) ensure that its features are fully capable of managing real-world scenarios.
So, why is this important to implement.com clients? It's great news, for several reasons.
- Since deploying Exchange 2010 RTM is not supported in a hosting scenario, we want to be ready to deploy Exchange 2010 in a fully supported scenario-so our clients can be comfortable with our hosting solutions.
- Due to our unwavering customer commitment and our dedication to solidifying an already-productive relationship with Microsoft, we were one of only a few companies chosen for the TAP program.
- Because of our affiliation with Microsoft and our opportunity to be among the first providing Hosted Exchange 2010 in a supported environment, implement.com remains at the forefront of the hosting world. That's good news for us-and great news for our clients.
The TAP program is widely recognized within the IT sector, which is just another reason why the implement.com team is excited about working closely with Microsoft.
Not only will we get a hands-on preview of Hosted Exchange 2010's revolutionary features-but we'll also be able to assist our clients in benefitting from its strategic business implications.
Posted by Jarmo Paukkunen on Thu, Dec 17, 2009
I will confess at the outset that I am a firm believer in life-long learning ... not just formal or professional education for job-related reasons, but also for continual personal growth. Piano lessons or cooking classes are valid ways to pursue that goal.
In the IT industry there are many views about the value of partner certifications like Microsoft or Cisco. Some pundits observe that certificates mean little without practical experience or "street smarts." I tend to agree with this view - it would be a stretch to send someone who takes a 3-week boot camp and earns the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer credential to design a Windows network for a multi-national company with 50,000 users!
Conversely though, highly experienced engineers tend to work on small subsets of product features that are most relevant to architecture and deployment. This is analogous to how the hundreds of millions of people who use Microsoft Office probably know and use only 5% of the capabilities of the software, although in the case of senior engineers this percentage is probably more like 50%. Certification exams push IT professionals out of their comfort zone by forcing them to learn all aspects of the product. So I would argue that the combination of formal learning and practical experience is the ideal scenario. And mind you, training is an ongoing process that typically requires re-certification every three years to match typical product cycles.
It is interesting that many people believe the fallacy that certification tests are easy, and someone who has used the product for years can just walk in and pass the exam. This is simply not true. Typically, an individual with a reasonable product background needs to invest 20-30 hours of time learning the material to pass a 90-minute test. So companies that employ certified professionals are really demonstrating in a very tangible way their willingness to invest in their people.
When I worked at Microsoft, an internal analysis found a strong positive correlation between employee certification status and customer satisfaction scores. This result was not just confined to Microsoft products, but included ITIL certification for operations and security credentials like CISSP.
So, I would conclude that training and certification is a smart investment for good business reasons.
Microsoft's Partner Program requires partners to earn ‘competencies' in particular technology and business areas. Each competency requires a combination of Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCPs) on staff, and relevant customer references. While no system is perfect, partner competencies provide a yardstick that shows a Gold Certified Partner has delivered verifiable business solutions to customers, and has invested in its workforce by attaining required technical certification status.
Here at Implement.com, we hold several Microsoft Partner competencies. We've most recently attained the Microsoft Business Solutions competency focusing on Dynamics CRM 4.0. Our company has a commitment to maintaining engineer certifications by assigning time for study, paying for testing, and programmatically tracking results to plan.