Developing Software for Entrepreneurs

Microsoft is Stupid part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 21:33:00 +0000

So you've probably heard me rant about Microsoft and their crazy antiquated partner unfriendly systems before. Bear with me for another one. Here's an analogy. Let's say you bought a new car. You spent like $50,000 on this cool new car (real $$ analogy here). But the car arrived and there was a ding in the hubcap. Nothing major just needs a replacement wheel cover. So you take it to the dealer and say - hey if it's not too much trouble could you swap out the wheel cover? This one's defective. What if the dealer's response was - nope. Can't do that. If you like though we can take the car back, refund your money, cancel your loan, issue you a new car which will take 48 to 96 hours, and then you can arrange for payment all over again. Oh and no we can't loan you a car to use in the meantime, you'll have to wait here at the dealership.

So here's where the analogy fits in. I order Microsoft Open licenses all the time - it's a royal pain in the ass because there are two emails on them that MUST be right. If they're not right things get messed up. One is the client's email - which MUST be a client account with a Microsoft Account attached to it. The other is the PARTNER email (my email) which must be correct so I can administer it, download ISOs, etc. If either are wrong you know the only way to fix it. See above. You have to cancel the order, refund the money, reissue the order with the right info on it, and re-pay for the order. If the order was originally done on a credit card you must refund the credit card and then re-bill the credit card. AND they ding you at the distributor for returns - over a certain number and they start giving you penalties every time you do one. This last time I said - screw it, I'm going to let the dude who is the Microsoft rep at my distributer place the order so it doesn't get screwed up. Because it's a big, important order that is time critical. He places 2 orders, both with my email as the partner contact. They have EXACTLY the same contact info on them. One is attached to me. The other gets attached to my BOOKKEEPER'S ACCOUNT! WTF. She doesn't even have an account. As usual even though this is just a field in a database no one can actually fix that without reissuing the licenses. I'm not going to do that. So I guess I'll be creating an account under HER credentials so I can transfer rights to MY credentials because Microsoft can't program their way out of a paper bag.

So what's the final lesson for my entrepreneurial readers? Design your systems so that simple errors can be fixed easily. Make it so that a user can fix a mistaken email, or other data point quickly and easily without any trouble, and never even needs to call a rep to have it repaired. Because that way you avoid BOTH the rant above and the inevitable additional bad press and bad customer service reputation that companies like Microsoft have.

Microsoft Is Stupid

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 00:04:00 +0000

Dear Microsoft Office 365. This is a bug in your admin interface in Office365. It prevents administrators from changing to be able to implement preview features. I've reproduced this bug for your India based support engineers using a screen share and using your screenshot scripting tool like 3 times. I am not your QA staff. Go fix your own damn code. This bug is easily reproducible - turn on DEBUG mode in your own browser, browse to the Update Services page and click the link - the button appears to update but there is no way to save the settings, and if you exit and return the settings are back to where they started from. It's NOT MY PROBLEM TO DOCUMENT IT FOR YOU! Fix it and stop trying to make it the customer's fault that you can't QA your own code.

_eReleaseTrackSettings.aspx is the file. The line number is any line wih the code function "showCorrectDialog". The error is that the function is undefined, probably because of something stupid like you didn't syntax check the code before releasing it to production or you forgot to link in a library. In any case that's ALL THE DEBUGGING I AM DOING FOR YOU.

So far I have done the following:

Reproduced the bug for an engineer using screen capture.
Reproduced ALL THE STEPS using PSR.EXE TWICE.
I am not your QA staff. You employ foreign workers at $4/hour for that. Use them.
If you'd like to hire me to do QA I charge $150/hour. Let me know where to send my invoice.
In the meantime you're inconveniencing thousands of users who probably cannot figure out why they can't enable the preview mode which would allow them to download and install Office 2016 which you are spreading far and wide to download EARLY because "bonus" because Office365 user.
Tell me - how many users not already running the preview have you had change over to preview mode lately - I bet it is ZERO BECAUSE IT'S BROKEN

There is nothing that frustrates me more than incompetent IT support engineers who will not admit the problem is in their own code, and keep on trying to blame the end user. They hope that I will just let them close the ticket out of frustration, and then hope the problem goes away. Except it won't go away because they won't escalate the ticket to the level needed to solve it (Development). It's more important for them to CLOSE the ticket than SOLVE the ticket.

This problem affects every one of my customers that wants to use YOUR new product - something YOUR marketing is suggesting they try. You are idiots not to escalate this to the highest level possible, since the first impression they have with your new software is - crap this thing is broken. And you wonder why Windows 8 was a failure.

Are you ready for Office 2016?

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Fri, 08 May 2015 19:23:00 +0000

Office 2016 will come chock full of new features

You can preview the new version of office here. Office365 Business premium and professional users get it free! Here's a few new features to whet your whistle:

Outlook overhaul - Outlook will look more like it's web-based cousin, in addition one-drive will be integrated more fully. When you send a document you can choose to store it in OneDrive and send a link instead.
Real-time editing in Word - like OneNote works now, new content and edits can be applied to a document by multiple people and their changes will show up in real-time - no more locking the document out from editing when you go in. Other documents like Excel to follow.
Data Loss protection features - File level encryption and the ability to support corporate DLP policies allow all Office documents to be less vulnerable to security leaks
Click to run features targeted at the enterprise - Administrators will be able to allow employees to install and click-to-run Office on the fly from a central install point behind their firewall, reducing network traffic.
Better Clutter Control - exercising the ability for Microsoft to apply big data analysis to your inbox and your activities on email, allows Microsoft to intelligently sort out the wheat from the chaff, putting important emails in your inbox, and stuff that isn't spam but isn't important in a separate clutter folder.
Help improvements - They moved the help to the top center of the application and made it easier to access and use.
Groups, Collaboration and Skype for business integration - you can now create - in outlook - groups for collaboration, conversation and status sharing and shared files and OneNotes. this allows you to more logically manage shared storage and better update each other on the status of information in those shared stores. You can even set up group meetings quickly with Skype for business.
Better menu options - some still lament the days when Microsoft removed the menu from the top of our office apps in favor of the ribbon strip. Not everyone finds the ribbon strip intuitive. Well good news! The menu is back. In keeping with the return of the start menu in Windows 10, Office 2016 will feature the return of the menu as a star attraction, with better menu integration, better file browsing to more easily support multiple file sources, and smart menus that adapt as you use the product to present the right context information depending on what you want to do.
Sway your audiences - Powerpoint is so old-school, and Microsoft knows it - so while keeping the old powerhouse in the library they're adding a new presentation app called Sway. Featuring a much more free-form drag and drop presentation authoring process, Sway is like many other "break the borders" presentation platform.

To find out more about Office 2016, or to find out how you can convert your old office licenses into the new cloud based-office licensing model contact me via private message, phone or email at OS-Cubed, Inc.

Don't make the recurring revenue mistake that Microsoft, Symantec and HP are making

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Tue, 05 May 2015 17:26:00 +0000

Every day lately it seems that partner programs that OS-Cubed and other small IT business vendors participate in are moving to partner program models that emphasize new sales over recurring revenue. Recently HP, Symantec and Microsoft have all moved their programs over to this model. In an environment where you have one-time license sales this makes a tremendous amount of sense. In an environment with ongoing recurring revenue it's just stupid.

The big companies are reimbursing partners more for a new sale than ongoing ones, trickle off or eliminate the revenue sharing as a recurring revenue relationship ages, or de-level long-term partners who have high client loyalty over partners who have high initial sales. I will posit here that they are applying the logic that you use for "new packaged license sales" to a recurring revenue model in an inappropriate and in the long term damaging way. As software developers or entrepreneurs designing your new recurring revenue product - don't make the mistake that these big companies with their old-fashioned views are making.

These big vendors are pushing recurring revenue models as their preferred licensing method - that part of the formula they get. I certainly understand the desire to grow your market. But understand that the major incentive that small resellers have for getting a recurring revenue stream is the same one you have for selling them - that is that it's constant, steady cash flow. And cash flow is very important in a reseller environment. It makes both the selling company and the client more stable and allows them to adjust license quantities and capabilities on-the-fly. Because of this new model clients have the ability - at any point, on any given month, to "just say no" and switch to another vendor. Keeping the customer happy, and satisfied at all times is what keeps those customers as customers. They can easily just change providers if they become dissatisfied, with almost zero capital investment on their part.

And who keeps them happy and satisfied? Their reseller in general - not the software vendor with their overseas based technical support, and their inadequate and out of date forum which they provide as a substitute for an actual curated and current wiki or knowledgebase. When your product screws up, the small reseller is the one that makes it so the customer never knows. They deal with your tech support from India. They navigate your forums and separate the wheat from the chaff. If a customer had to do that they'd fire you in a second. Small business resellers are your face to the customer. The end customer mostly doesn't care if the product they're using is one brand or another - it's the product that the small business IT provider told them was the best, and if that reseller changes their mind they will change in a heartbeat.

So why - in this scenario - would you not do everything you can to both reward the provider for their ongoing support and reselling of your product AND do everything you can to support the ones that do it best - small, personal companies who emphasize long term loyalty over new sales?

I don't understand this logic, but several companies - Microsoft, Symantec and others have hopped on the bandwagon of "we will reward new sales, but your revenue for the ongoing revenue stream will decline" or worse yet they take benefits away because despite having a large ongoing revenue stream you're not adding new customers at a breakneck pace.

In recurring service sales ongoing revenue is everything. You want to bring customers in and keep them there. If someone does a new sale, the customer stays for a year and then leaves - you have lost! Realistically you should be rewarding partners for the longevity of the relationship, not the new sales. You should increase revenue sharing based on how long term the sale is, rather than punishing partners for not bringing in new clients at a ridiculous rate. It takes a certain amount of time to make back the expenses of a new sale. If on the other hand you bring in a new client and they stay for years - that's an overall win, as well as a potential to leverage that relationship for additional products and services in the future. And in the long term it's what will make your product and recurring revenue sale successful.

I am convinced that these short-sighted vendor partner moves are indicative of how successful these companies will be as long term revenue generators and ultimately as SaaS providers. If you cut out small dealers, and emphasize new sales over overall volume and long term customer satisfaction your recurring revenue stream is destined to go from a flood to a trickle. It's quarterly tactical thinking, not long term strategic thinking. Because customers can easily choose a new provider now with zero capital investment in licensing. And your vendor may be the one recommending it because you didn't have the vision to continue to reimburse them for recommending and supporting your product. Recurring revenue sales are NOT the same as one time license sales. The sooner these big companies realize it the better.

Are you a victim of Google's Mobilegeddon?

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 17:41:00 +0000

Google recently released new algorithms for calculating the search rank of sites, and for those sites without a responsive design that accommodates mobile platforms it's had significant impact. This survey of several top sites indicates that some popular but not very mobile friendly sites have lost as much as 90% of their rank when reevaluated with the new algorithm. Sites listed has having lost more than 30% of their site rank include popular sites like tested.com, boxofficemojo.com, thinkexist.com and walmartstores.com. Sites that went up in rank include tvtropes.org, foreignaffairs.com, knowyourmeme.com and many others. Some sites (like newmexicocriminallaw.com) increased their site ranking by over 4000%!

Note that Google's new algorithm will drop your site ranking even if the person searching for you is on a desktop. It may drop it even more if they're searching for you on a mobile device.

Many web consumers, and particularly the heaviest web consumers, today have smartphones and tablet devices, and research shows they're now doing an average of 40% of their browsing on those tools. It only makes sense to have a site that displays attractively on both desktop and mobile platforms. Fortunately for users of CMSs like DotNetNuke you can simply re-skin your site, and maybe move some content around and get a responsive site up quickly and effectively. Sites that were once flat with non-mobile friendly menus can be converted quickly and usually inexpensively to sites that look like this.

So bring up YOUR site on your phone or tablet. Is it hard to read and navigate? Or try Google's mobile friendly test to see how your site fares. Might be time for an update. If so contact us to get a quote.

5 Key Features of 2015 Best of the Web Winners

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 15:48:00 +0000

How does your site measure up versus the best of the web?

Each year Rochester Business Journal publishes it's Best of the Web awards - for top performing and designed sites in the Rochester area. They publish a summary of all the nominees and give some detail into what went into these sites. In this article I will look at some of the objective results from those statistics.

I hear all the time from customers "I want my website to be the best", or "I want it ranked at the top of the search engines" or "I want tons of hits". But how do you know if your site measures up? What are reasonable results for your efforts? What should you expect to spend to get those results?

One way to look at it is to base your evaluation and investment on what the best in the industry have done. So let's examine some results we can glean from the Best of the Web article in 2015.

Let's start with average age since last overhaul. Best of the web nominees ranged from 6.25 to .17 years age since last overhaul - but here's the kicker - the overall average for all nominees was just 1.15 years. That's right - the very best were overhauling their sites pretty frequently. There are great reasons for this - chief among them is that web technology changes frequently. New browsers and platforms are released yearly or even monthly. Sites have to adapt to different screen sizes and experiences as mobile makes a huge inroad. The most frequently cited overhaul reason was to adapt to a responsive design that would work on either a phone, a tablet or a desktop. That's one example of a changing environment but we can find so many more, from new web technologies to offering more sophisticated interactive experiences. The lesson learned here is that building a website is an ongoing process - not a one time project.

The next statistic we'll look at is number of hits per month. The site with the least number of hits was 150 per month, and the site with the most was over 2.5 million. Obviously this means that the overall number can vary widely, but the average among all the sites (barring the one outlier of 2.5 million) was well over 77,000 hits per month. If we put the outlier back in it's over 150k. In any case it means that sites that performed well were achieving numbers well over 50,000 hits per month.

So what about initial development cost? How much should you invest if you want to build a best of the web nominated site. Again, there was a wide range of costs from $2,500 to $80,000. Many of the larger sites didn't publish cost to produce - frequently because their site was developed internally and they didn't track it. For those site though they frequently listed staffing levels of well over 10 people to build the site and maintain it. The average cost for those reporting for initial development was $25,128. The way websites are developed, and the way companies think about their costs, this may be less than accurate. The reason is they frequently think of their own resources as "free", where in fact they do have a cost, and more importantly they're probably thinking only of the last overhaul, rather than the total cost of ownership (TCO) of all website development to date. But let's say that this is representative of major website project costs - even if not TCO. How's your budget for web development? Close to that? If not you may not be getting what you want.

Next comes ongoing maintenance costs. Good websites are constantly updated and maintained, the minimum cost was zero (I find that hard to believe - they probably have internal staff maintaining the site and aren't counting those costs) and $50,000. That's right - some of the large sites pay as much as $50,000 per year to maintain their site! The average expenditure per year for those reporting was around $7800. What is your annual maintenance budget? Do you have that price range in mind when determining what your website spend will be?

Let's finally look at staffing. The number of people working on the sites ranged from 1 to over 20 in the case of the site with 2.5M hits per month. The average staff that oversaw site maintenance and development was 4. Now they may not all be full time - but most sites listed out who did what and there was significant work being put in. I'd hazard a guess and say that these labor costs weren't factored into the site costs, based on comments in the website descriptions. So in addition to the above paid maintenance costs, many of the best of the web sites had additional internal labor costs to maintain. And if they're employing that many people to maintain the site, you can bet that they're constantly updating and keeping the site relevant.

Some keyword analysis from the judges comments show these words trickling to the top, indicating their importance in the overall rankings of the sites. I'll exclude words like "site" that don't really indicate anything about the value they were looking for:

Design (50 times), usually associated with the word "clean". They are looking for uncluttered, easy to navigate and pleasing page design.
Content (40 times), in the end a website's value is determined not by how pretty it is - but by the relevancy, usefulness and indexing of the content itself. Content is king.
Social (34 times), How well the sites were integrated with and reflected their social media use and branding was highly important to sites.
Easy (32 times), Usually associated with the word "Navigation". How easy is it to get around the site, find the content you're looking for.
Home (30 times) - referring to an attractive and inviting home page design
Mobile (30 times), Responsive design and a nice look and feel on all platforms was an important consideration. With over 30% of traffic now generated by mobile devices this is key.
Other important keywords included Link (31 times), Media (27 times), Responsive (22 times), Slideshow (17 times), Scroll (17 times). These all indicate key features the judges thought were important enough to mention in the comments.

Some info on the statistics themselves. There were 37 sites reporting, only 35 gave counts on hits per month, 24 gave initial development cost numbers, 28 gave maintenance cost numbers. The rest of the statistics were completely filled in by the 37 respondents.

So let's develop a quick checklist:

When was the last time you overhauled your site? If it was over 2 years score a -1 if under two years score a 1
How many hits per month are you getting? If over 50,000 score a 1 if under score -1
What did you spend to develop your site initially (or in the last overhaul)? If your budget was over $25,000 give yourself a 1, otherwise -1
What is your budget for maintenance costs per year? If over $7500 give yourself a 1 otherwise a -1.
How many people within your company help maintain the site? If over 3 give yourself a 1 otherwise a -1.
Is your site responsive - does it operate well on a phone? If yes, give yourself a 1, otherwise a -1.
Do you have a well executed and integrated social media plan that is reflected in your site design? Give yourself a 1 if you do, -1 if you do not.

How did you score? Positive or negative? If you scored negative and you are dissatisfied with your site's results and performance, you can identify where you may have gaps based on the negative scores you achieved. If you want a full evaluation of your site and a more complete analysis of performance vs benchmarks, contact www.os-cubed.com for more information.

Microsoft Multi-Authentication Has Improved

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 00:28:00 +0000

And you should be activating it

As more of our life goes online, we expose ourselves to more and more risk of compromised accounts. More people are placing their eggs in a basket in the cloud in hopes of better disaster recovery and better accessibility. As a result information that we once would have kept only on our own PC is now becoming accessible to anyone if they get the "keys to the kingdom" - our password.

Microsoft's multi-authentication (hereafter referred to as Multi-Auth) is designed to make this a less likely occurrence. The idea is that you set your account up so that in order to access the account via the web, or an application - the sign-on has to be approved by you on a separate device. Once you sign on once - the approval can be remembered - or you can tell it to forget that approval and once you sign off a new approval needs to be generated to let someone back in. This allows you to more safely access your account from a variety of places.

In order to do this you need one of the following secondary authentication methods:

A smartphone with a multi-auth application on it
A phone of any kind that can accept text messages

By far the easiest is the Multi-Auth app. Microsoft has a different solution for multi-auth on private live accounts (like for Hotmail and Xbox) and for business accounts (like Office365 and Azure). While there are two different apps - they work the same. You can set them up in 2 modes - in one mode you simply need to approve access by hitting Verify. When you go to login a code will display on the screen that should match the code in the verification. The other mode displays a constantly changing number (every minute or so a new number is generated). You type the multi-auth code into the browser when logging in. I prefer the "verify" method because it actually messages my phone if someone tries to login to my account. I like getting this notification and I like not having to type extra characters. The other method is marginally more secure.

If you don't have a smartphone or you don't want to install the app, you can instead have Microsoft text you a message with a code you'll need to type into the browser to log in.
In order to use Multi-Auth, my recommendation is that you take a further step - make sure your phone is loaded with activated software that lets you wipe it remotely. That way if someone gets ahold of your phone and figures out your lock screen password you can still wipe the phone and prevent access to your account. Be sure that you also have a "back door" to allow you into your account if your phone is lost. In most cases when you turn on multi-auth the system will provide you with a secondary password to access your account. Make sure to save that in a safe place.
Now multi-auth does have it's drawbacks. Some apps won't support it. In the "Live" version of multi-auth (the one used with OneDrive, Xbox, and Hotmail) xbox365, Microsoft's online account settings, and other capabilities don't support multi-auth (though that number is shrinking as things are re-factored). So you have to create a one-time password to be used just with that app. Generally this will be a long string of characters which you type in instead of your normal password. You can deactivate one-time passwords individually, thus if somehow one of your accounts is compromised, the device is stolen, or you just don't need it any more you can deactivate that one time password. This involves extra steps - you need to go to your account on a web page, generate the (usually long) one time password, then type it into the add-on app or device. The question is though - would you rather go through a little extra work on initial setup? Or would you rather deal with the potentially bad consequences of someone compromising your password?

It's also not perfect. In recent months it's gotten better, but in some cases on some apps I've had to re-generate and re-enter one-time passwords (you can't look them up again once you've generated them, unless you keep them in a document offline - which I do not recommend). When moving from one phone to another you have to re-connect to a new version of the multi-auth app (a pain but only takes a few minutes of setup time).
Many other mail and authentication systems are going to multi-auth including gmail and even the
king of being compromised - yahoo. My recommendation is to investigate multi-auth and if you feel comfortable with the steps involved consider activating it on all critical accounts that are linked to cloud mail or files.

More changes in features and licensing for Office365 - November Update

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 16:00:00 +0000

Microsoft has been aggressively pushing along new updated to Office365 features - all free - to help it compete against Google and other offerings. In addition to the license changes in my last article, here are some of the recently announced or released changes:

Unlimited storage (Currently 1TB) planned for OneDrive personal and OneDrive for business - soon you will have no limits on how much you can store in your OneDrive in the cloud. This is interesting and potentially useful and valuable.
Video Channels - To go with unlimited cloud storage, Microsoft has also announced a platform for creating video channels in the cloud to share with your organization (and one assumes eventually with the public). Again interesting because it means that organizations can create video channels for training, information sharing etc.
Groups - Microsoft is aggressively integrating their YAMMER social communications platform into Office365. Users can now create "Groups" of employees that can share a communications platform including persistent chat, files specific to the group, and a calendar. This will I think gradually replace the existing cumbersome SharePoint Sites for most casual group interaction. Think of a group as a shared mailbox, a chat log, a shared calendar and a shared SharePoint document repository - all under a single banner and available from the web.
Clutter - Microsoft has rolled out a new mail management tool called "Clutter". It's available now for early adopters and for everyone soon. Clutter can be turned on or off for a particular user. It creates a clutter folder that learns from your activities. Marking an email as "clutter" in the inbox or dragging and dropping it to the clutter folder in outlook will "train" the clutter algorithm what stuff you still want to see (haven't marked as junk) but "clutters" up your inbox. This is similar to tools from Google that try to categorize incoming mail and from Inbox that tries to hide "junky" looking mail in favor of actual communications. The tool will learn from your behaviors and what things you consider clutter and apply those algorithms as it goes along.
Delve - Delve allows you to search across documents and emails - organization wide - for information (dependent on permissions). Delve is in it's early stages but eventually could be key to sorting through tremendous amounts of information that are generated in a typical oneDrive/Yammer/Exchange/SharePoint environment.
Skype/Lync integration - announced but not yet active Microsoft is going to merge the popular Skype program (and it's ability to make VOIP calls to other Skype users and even to normal cell and POTS telephones) with Lync (a free messaging app included in office365) to provide a more integrated universal messaging platform. Hopefully they will take the best of both worlds and improve them - merging Skype's ubiquitous and easy to use client with Lync's excellent web conferencing and presentation capabilities and integrate them all into the new Skype for Business.

All of these improvements are FREE and added automatically to your system - they are either there already and just need to be activated or - if you turn on "early adopter" mode will be there. OS-Cubed is a Silver Cloud Partner in the Microsoft Cloud partner program with several hundred mailboxes under management and dozens of implementations and migrations under their belt. If you're interested in what it would take to migrate to office365, contact us!

Microsoft significantly changes Office365 licensing

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 15:07:00 +0000

Microsoft, as Microsoft is want to do, has again changed the rules for Office365 licensing

This has ramifications for both existing and new clients

In a move that has both advantages and disadvantages for consumers of Office365 products, Microsoft has shuffled the licensing for Office365 significantly, introducing a new product mix, and changing the way existing product mixes work. This has ramifications for both new and existing customers so best to be sure you understand it.

First the good

Increased max count

In the old office365 world there were small business licenses up to 25 users, and midsize business up to 150. These numbers have fluctuated and changed over time and the result has been very confusing. They have done away with this distinction now. All businesses up to 300 licenses can purchase the small business line of products. This makes it much easier for a company to carefully craft a set of licenses that meets their needs, and opens up the market for the less expensive licenses for many midsize businesses who could not utilize them in the past due to cost constraints of the more expensive midsize and enterprise business license.

Mixing and matching

In the old Office365 world you could not mix and match small business, midsize business and enterprise licenses. This caused untold consternation when you exceeded the max licensing, or needed a product for one or two clients out of your install with more advanced features. This is no longer the case - you can now mix and match both small/midsize business and enterprise licenses. They have removed the Small/Midsize division and made ONE product line called "Small Business" and ONE product line called "Enterprise". Companies cannot own more than 300 instances of a Small Business license, Enterprise licenses are unlimited in the number you can buy. So you can now mix and match and choose products from any of the business lines as needed, as long as you don't exceed the max license limit in any one line. This is a real bonus as they have also changed the way offline office works so that in some cases you may be required to purchase enterprise licenses now.

License office without email

Some businesses wanted the ability to license MS office on an ongoing basis without paying for an email box. They might already have an internal email server, or are using a different product for email. You can now - through office365 acquire an office license without online storage or email accounts. This allows companies doing mass deployments of office upgrades, or those that don't need email to take advantage of licensing office through the cloud. Remember that each of these licenses allows 5 installs!

More office options

In the old world you either got offline office, or you didn't and if you did get it you got the whole shebang - the full office professional with all the bells and whistles. This was different from their normal process of selling office in that they had tiered the product - with a lower end offering that didn't include Access and InfoPath, and a higher end offering that included these products. The good news is that they now offer an office small business and an office enterprise - distinguishing these products from each other. The bad news I will cover in the next section.

1TB of storage in the cloud

Microsoft now offers ALL office365 email users 1TB of offline storage. That's 1000GB of storage in the cloud PER MAILBOX. That's an unprecedented amount of space, which any user uses. At the $5/month $60/year level you can't even buy that much storage from Amazon Web Services or Azure for a year - without the mailbox. It's a bold move and one that may spell (for professional use) the end of products like Dropbox.

Buy Office365 from a reseller and use a PO rather than a credit card

You can now buy all but the Kiosk licenses (see below) from a reseller as an open office license. These licenses get applied to your online account, and must be re-purchased each year from your reseller - unlike the credit card accounts they will not renew automatically. Resellers must be Microsoft Cloud Authorized resellers (Like OS-Cubed, Inc.).

The Bad News

Microsoft has made full office more expensive

If you need all office has to offer (including Microsoft Access) you have no choice now but to buy the full enterprise office at $20/month. They have replace the $12.50/month slot with the small business office which does not include MS Access. Now a lot of clients don't need Access so their price won't change they will just lose the ability to run Access on their machines. But for small business or midsize business clients who do need MS Access on their workstations they are looking at a rather hefty $7.50/month additional charge per set of 5 licenses to use this ability. This amounts to an additional $90/year to get ONE new office app. For many clients this is no big deal, but for those that use Access it could get quite expensive. If you had the full 25 Office365 pro plus licenses and need them all to have Access you're talking an extra $2250/year. That's not chump change for a small business. Note however that even at $240/year it's still an incredible deal. You are getting full blown Microsoft Office with 5 licenses to install for the price of less than one over-the-counter license. You are in addition getting the full-blown all access Microsoft sharepoint, 1TB of storage, yammer, lync, etc. This is still an awesome deal. It's just too bad that they decided to screw the high end of existing small business subscribers to set it up this way.

Microsoft is not honoring their initial commitment to clients

Once your current subscription runs out - you won't be able to just renew it and continue to enjoy it's benefits. You will have to purchase one of the new licenses and either suffer a downgrade of office without Access or pay more to get an enterprise pro license. This sucks. I think Microsoft should have continued to honor their initial sales of office365 pro to small and midsize businesses as long as they continued to use them. If they want to buy NEW licenses - sure put them in the new pricing scheme. Why does this suck (beyond the obvious additional expense)? Office365 was sold with the express idea that it would give you a predictable monthly outlay for your needs. And then they went and removed that benefit by changing the pricing. If they can just change (upwards) the pricing any time they want - how is that predictable? How are companies to trust them that they won't increase prices again? I think this was a very bad move on Microsoft's part. We'll see if outcry from customers as their contracts come up for renewal pushes them to modify this policy. The bad taste left in people's mouths from having to pay more feels a lot like a bait and switch technique. One even wonders if attorney generals might end up getting involved.

The breakdown:

Here is the new (simplified) table of options available from Microsoft

Office small business (limited to up to 300 users):

Business essentials (no offline office, 50GB mailbox, 1TB storage, online office): $5/month
Office365 business (No mailbox, 1TB of offline storage, Office small business (no Access), no lync): $8.25/month
Business premium (50GB mailbox, 1TB offline storage, Office small business (no Access): $12.50/month

Office Enterprise (unlimited users):

Office Kiosk K1: 2GB mailbox, no offline storage, no access to sharepoint: $2/month
Office Kiosk K2: 2GB mailbox, No offline storage, Access to sharepoint, access to office online: $4/month
Office Enterprise E1: (No offline office, 1TB Storage, sharepoint, Lync, etc): $8/month
Office Enterprise ProPlus: (No mailbox, Office pro subscription with access, no offline storage, no access to sharepoint, no lync) $12/month
Office Enterprise E3: (Full office pro, 50GB mailbox, 1tb storage, access to sharepoint, lync,
yammer): $20/month

When will this affect me?

If you are a current subscriber and your yearly renewal is after October 1, 2015 you will be forced to renew under the new licensing. Any renewals in this next year will include your old licensing. If you renew after that date you will be forced into the new licensing. If you are a small business expiring just after that date and Microsoft Access is important to your business you may wish to look into renewing early so you get another year out of the license.

If you are a new subscriber you can no longer get the old licensing plans. You must choose one of these options.

Summary

As you can see if you need offline Access expect to pay $20/month after your current subscription expires. I haven't explored it yet, but it's possible if you're a small business you could buy a $5 business essentials account (for up to 300 users) and a $12 Office pro plus account (remember you get 5 installs per account) and get similar functionality for $17/month. The only downside would be missing some esoteric and infrequently used functions such as voicemail integration, forensics and other high end exchange functions.

Why is Hewlett Packard already lying to partners?

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:14:00 +0000

Hewlett Packard has announced it is splitting it's enterprise/server division off from it's consumer products division. In this statement from Meg Whitman she claims that it will be business as usual for partners, and that nothing changes. Unfortunately this is totally a lie. Within days of announcing the split they also announced the fact that they were creating a set of new requirements to sell ANY HP Printer toner or ink supplies. Partners now have to sell at least $100,000 a year in HP product to qualify to sell ink or toner supplies. Small partners like OS-Cubed, Inc. don't do that kind of volume. So despite a 3 company, 30 year relationship with HP and Compaq for all their products we will no longer be selling or recommending HP printers to our clients. We won't even be able to buy supplies for the printer we own through our distributor.

Why are they doing this? The only answer can be to drive up the cost of printer and toner to consumers. By narrowing the competitive field for supply resale they can more closely control margins and sale prices. By driving people to big-box stores they can push deeper discounts on the printers (many large stores sell them at a loss) because they know that their customers won't go buy the supplies at another location.

I of course can still sell the printers themselves. But the margin on those is miniscule because, as I said big box stores sell them at a loss and make up the loss in supply sales.

I cannot fathom why HP is doing this, but it really makes me worried. I like HP, and always have. We EXCLUSIVELY sell their PCs, Laptops and Servers and . And yet... will they now squeeze me out of sales of those products too because I'm not a high volume purchaser? Will I be forced to find other vendors? This first move is not promising. It's not promising for consumers either because let's face it - big box stores just don't offer the service and expertise that a small reseller can provide.

In the next 12 months we will see. HP absorbed Compaq and there were some pretty serious disruptions when this occurred. I almost cancelled my 15 year relationship with them then, and had to escalate some issues to the vice-presidential level at HP to get them resolved. I will be watching closely and evaluating competing products, vendors and providers over the next few months. If I see more restrictions or volume requirements on HPs part I will be (sadly) looking to change vendors. This can only hurt HP because small dealers with a lot of expertise like ours are what keep them in front of SMB clients. These clients trust us to recommend a product they can depend on - and to depend on the product we need to be able to depend on our provider - depend on them not to jerk the rug out from under us after we've been selling their product for them for 30 years.

What would you say to $2000 worth of software for $150/year?

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 20:18:00 +0000

Microsoft Office365 will give you $2000 worth of Office licenses for $150/year.

With their Small business Microsoft Office 365 premium plan you pay no upfront licensing costs, $150/year and get 5 copies of Office 2013 pro (or whatever the current version of Office is). You also get 1TB of storage for files, and a 50GB mailbox with full calendaring, web mail, mobile mail and outlook support. You get the equivalent of GoToMeeting in a professional web meeting format, with audio, video, screen sharing and session recordings (Lync). You get secure instant messaging. You get online web versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote. It works in IE, in Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox. It works with your full Outlook, or with third party email clients. For $150. You get your OWN email domain with your own domain name. You get sharepoint online for internal communications. You get a website in the cloud if you don't already have one. All bundled into ONE product at a ridiculously low price. To put this in perspective for the full retail cost of 5 copies of office professional 2013 you could instead get all of this for the next 13 years and 4 months. And that's not even counting the mailbox and mail, the web enabled versions, the 1TB of storage or the 50GB mailbox. Did I mention all your mail will be virus and spam filtered? No? Well it will be.

Seriously if you use Office AT ALL this is a no brainer deployment. Don't need more than the 5 copies of office? You can mix and match with $60/year mailbox and web only accounts. Over 25 mailboxes - the same thing is $15/month/mailbox for midsize businesses (though midsize business doesn't have a mix and match option)..

Need even more flexibility for licensing and email options for $20/month/mailbox you can mix and match enterprise plans that range from $2/month for limited email only to the full $20/month for Office365 Premium.

Contact OS-Cubed today to learn about how to get Office365. I seriously want to save you tons of money, and we are experts at deployment/conversion.

Microsoft License Compliance....

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 17:37:00 +0000

If you are like many small business customers you probably have wondered - am I in license compliance with Microsoft? Do I legally own all the software I am using? If you are NOT wondering these things - you should. One of my clients got an audit notice the other day from Microsoft requesting that they update them on Microsoft licensing status. Fortunately this client was good to go - they'd been aggressively being sure that all their machines were compliant, and all we had to do was document some OEM licenses and send a report on to Microsoft for the rest. But not everyone is in that boat. One company came to me after they'd received that audit notice in the mail - they had 6 licenses for Microsoft office - and 26 installs. Not good. Turned out 5 of them were OEM, so that was ok - but the other 16 licenses were illegal. Bringing them into compliance represented a one time purchase of 16 licenses for Office Professional. Not an inexpensive day for them at nearly $8000. The problem with post-install compliance is that you have to retroactively buy the licenses for the most current version of the software (Because you typically can't buy say office 2010 once office 2013 has been released) and you must buy the downgradeable Software Assurance licenses - the most expensive way of upgrading Microsoft has. There are lots of options but it's almost always better to assess and upgrade or become compliant BEFORE Microsoft Audits you.

So how do you assess your risk? Fortunately Microsoft has a standalone tool (That's right it does NOT phone home and tattle on you about your licenses) that will assess your Windows Active Directory network and tell you exactly what licenses you have, and which machines or operating systems can be upgraded. It also helps you plan out several scenarios for virtualizing or moving to a private or public cloud install for your existing infrastructure. The product is called MAPS - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit and you can download it here.

We use MAPS when planning out office365 migrations to assess the number of office licenses a client might need, versions we're migrating from, etc.

MAPS is self installing and self contained - you can run it on any server or workstation in your network. If you need help planning a migration, assistance with becoming compliant, or help in assessing your systems for upgrades or licensing, please give us a call.

It's that time of year again - FIRST Robotics in St. Louis - Penfield Robotics

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 17:28:00 +0000

FIRST Robotics Team 1511 is again competing in St. Louis. This year the local news caught one of our drive team members as they were entering the field:

(Look for the Red Camo).

You can watch the team compete on the the NASA TV channel on the Newton field.

OS-Cubed, Inc. Announces Microsoft Silver Partner and Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Status

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 21:00:00 +0000

Rochester, NY, USA— February 24, 2014 — OS-Cubed, Inc., today announced it has qualified as a member of the Microsoft Cloud Accelerate program by demonstrating its ability to meet Microsoft’s customers evolving needs in today’s dynamic cloud marketplace. To qualify for the Cloud Accelerate program, partners must successfully demonstrate their cloud services expertise through rigorous sales and technical assessments; and ensure the highest quality of services, Microsoft requires customer references to demonstrate successful customer implementations and satisfaction. OS-Cubed, Inc. is also a Microsoft Silver Competency qualified partner.

OS-Cubed, Inc. formed in 2006, is a development and managed support services company specializing in Microsoft technology based software and infrastructure. The company provides services to a wide variety of clients across the region and the country. With dozens of company’s email and cloud services under management – Microsoft has recognized OS-Cubed’s expertise as one of a select few who provide services at the highest level. Approximately 1000 resellers in the entire world qualify as Cloud Accelerate partners.

“Joining the Cloud Accelerate Program showcases our expertise in today’s cloud technology market and demonstrates our knowledge of Microsoft’s Cloud solutions,” said Lee Drake, CEO. “Our clients expect the best support, and the smoothest migration when they move their email infrastructure to the cloud, and OS-Cubed, Inc. has provided that from the very inception of the program – even participating in the beta release of Microsoft Cloud Technologies”.

“Converting to Office365 and cloud technology from our old e-mail platform was one of the smartest decisions we’ve made as a medical practice.” said Laurie Amico, office manager for AAIR, PC. - an OS-Cubed customer. “We rely heavily on e-mail communication for our growing practice of 5 offices, 10 providers and 70 staff members. We have close to 100 e-mail accounts and I needed a more efficient, cost effective way to be able to manage that and add new accounts quickly. The transition went smoothly and the platform is everything OS-Cubed said and more!”
Microsoft Silver Competency partner OS-Cubed, Inc, located at 274 N. Goodman St, Suite A401 in Rochester, NY provides development and technical support services for clients across the US. In addition, they are experts at development for DotNetNuke, an open source, Microsoft technology based web content management platform. Among the hundreds of sites under development by OS-Cubed are www.thompsonhealth.com, www.lasermax.com, www.spectracomcorp.com and www.frameofchoice.com. OS-Cubed recently completed major migrations of email and files for companies such as Allergy, Asthma, Immunology of Rochester (AAIR), and ATD Precision.

Why estimates aren't free - A Prezi presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 16:24:00 +0000

Access Apps in Office365 - this is huge!

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 16:24:00 +0000

For years migrating applications from desktop databases like Microsoft Access to the web has been an expensive and time consuming process. Typically these apps need to be ported to SQL Server, custom forms and reports developed, and tons of translating between "stuff you can do on a desktop database" and "stuff you can do on the web".

Microsoft has now released, free to all Microsoft Office365 users, the ability to port an Access application, complete with forms, database tables, reports, etc. directly to the web. This lets them begin using a shared web-based database almost instantly, without coding. It lowers the threshhold for office-accessible secure web based databases.

This series of videos shows how simple it is to create tables, add reports, and port the entire thing to the web in a matter of minutes. You can create Access apps directly on the web, or in Access offline and move them to the web.

There are limitations to the online version of Access, especially when it comes to imports. This chart from the Microsoft Learning center shows what you can do with online and offline access:

External data operations available in apps and desktop databases

This table gives you a quick reference of which kinds of files you can import or link to Access apps or desktop databases.

	ACCESS APPS CAN LINK TO…	DESKTOP DATABASES CAN LINK TO…
Microsoft Excel		(read-only)
Microsoft Access
ODBC Databases
Text or comma-separated value (CSV) files		(add new records only)
SharePoint List	(read-only)
XML
Data Services		(read-only)
HTML Document
Outlook folder

These databases aren't suitable for everyone - you need to figure out the best solution for your needs. But this is a new, surprising development, offered free to Office365 pro users, that will push your database requirements online faster.

OS-Cubed is a Microsoft Cloud Accelerate partner, and are experts at Office 365 database development and design. Contact us to chat about your requirements.

One easy test to see if the website development company you are hiring is a professional

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 18:04:00 +0000

Would you believe there is one easy test to tell if a website development company you are working with is a professional or not? And it takes just a couple minutes of your time. I'm assuming if you're reading this that you might be shopping for a website developer - someone to take your site to the next level. I'm also assuming you want to hire someone professional - someone who has your company's best interests at heart and wants to create for you the very best website to accomplish your goals.

A website development company should be all about YOU - the customer. Not about them, or their aggrandizement - and thus we come to the one thing you can easily check about a website development company to determine if they are the kind of company you want to work with:

Do they insist on, or automatically, put their own link on your website?

You've probably seen it before. Embedded somewhere at the bottom of someone's site in tiny print "Website designed by XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX", with a link back to the website company. I guarantee you that a website development or design company that insists on their own branding on a site that they developed for YOU for YOUR branding does not have your best interests at heart. They are thinking of themselves - not you - when they add that tagline. They should be confident enough in the results of their development effort that they KNOW you will talk about your positive experience with them and tell others. They should be confident enough in their own website, and marketing efforts that they don't have to resort to virally spreading their reputation by embedding it in their customer's sites - frequently without their permission or knowledge.

The only exception I can think of to this rule would be if the website development company is specifically offering a trade, which frequently happens on not-for-profit sites. We will do a development effort for you at a significant discount, if we can advertise our effort on the site. But other than that - there is really no good reason to have someone else's name and branding on your site.

So go look at your own site - does it have your web developer's link on it? Might be time to shop for a new developer. Looking for a developer? Check other sites they've done and/or do a google search for their site name - if other companies have their signature at the bottom, move on. Look more until you find a company confident enough to develop sites without putting their own stamp on them.

Why Wearable Tech is Here to Stay

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 15:27:00 +0000

Lately the news has been buzzing with the latest in wearable devices. Devices such as Google Glass, integrated watches by Samsung, Apple and other vendors, Vuzix Goggles (a Rochester, NY company) and Oculus Rift are starting to enter mainstream vocabulary. Prototypes and beta software are starting to roll out and consumers and developers are getting to start to play with these devices hands on. Some companies are even looking at creating heads up contact lenses!

This has all happened before of course - we've seen everything from surround vision helmets to heads up displays. But never before has the actual technology really met the expectations of potential users - whether it's limited use scenarios, bulky or cumbersome form factors, or poor integration and adoption by other platforms - many such ventures have started and fizzled.

So why is this time different? Well there are a few reasons:

Between advances in optics, small screen and flat panel displays, and miniaturization of essential components the visual aspect of the interfaces have gotten smaller, more useable, and more convenient.
The ubiquity of extremely powerful cell phone devices means that processing and communications can be offloaded to that device, rather than needing to be integrated into the wearable platform.
The improvement in wireless communications reduces the size, and increases the range of components.
People's addiction to ever-present ever-accessible media, through the use of always on and always connected internet devices has increased to the point where people crave the convenience of making that as quickly accessible as possible.
Current interface methods through products like phones require hands-on interaction and attention distracting form factors.
Voice recognition - by uploading to the cloud and analyzing in real time - has improved dramatically.
Battery technology is improving dramatically making use of such devices more convenient.
Movie media has started to prepare people for this reality. We see fanciful interfaces in movies that mimic the interfaces that these devices give us - and we want them.

So are the new wearable devices perfect yet? Not by any means. While the hardware is starting to catch up there are software and social aspects that must be overcome. How will having an always on and available camera change the way people interact? If anything you say might be recorded and uploaded to the internet in real time - how will that change society? There is significant social resistance to people using products like Glass and those issues will need to be addressed if it's to succeed. And there are still plenty of technological issues to overcome.

I say to you though - these advances are inevitable. Rather than railing against them your time might be better spent determining how to make best of use of them. Outside the personal use of such devices - the business uses are outstanding. Imagine a tech having all his manuals and instructions available at will, and having both their hands free. Imagine being able to shop or price compare by just looking at the bar code on a product. Record a meeting for playback later rather than taking notes. Video your professor in class. Imagine your UPS or FEDEX person abandoning their scanner and just snapping a photo of the package barcode, and recording the GPS coordinates of the delivery. These are all very real and very doable scenarios without any significant improvement in existing technology.

The advent of prescription wearable tech from Rochester Optical (another Rochester Company) for heads up display is particularly exciting - since the wearers of that tech are already used to having glasses, adding a heads up display is no leap for them - they are used to the idea. Fashion designers have been pushing glasses as fashion accessories rather than for vision correction - paving the way for the addition of Google Glass and other displays into the world of non-prescription glass wearers.

So with wearable tech being inevitable - how are you planning to leverage that with your new products? Is there a way you can enhance the use of your product with wearable tech? Provide an alternate interface or display screen? Integrate heads up vision? Are you ready for this revolution and tapping it's potential fully? OS-Cubed is - ask us how!

How I learned to love the ACA!

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 20:30:00 +0000

Much has been said recently about the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare as some like to refer to it). At it's root ACA was designed to spread the benefits of health insurance to more people. From that point of view it's a boon to those who are not employed, uninsured, and/or have pre-existing conditions. It's also a fantastic new way for CEOs of startups and individual owners to get health insurance without the 15% penalty that organizations like the RBA and the insurance companies liked to charge for "owner policies" or "individual policies". But it doesn't stop there. ACA can also be a fantastic way for small businesses to create a dynamic, customized marketplace for their employees to shop for health benefits, and still offer to cover some or all of the cost!

At OS-Cubed, Inc. prior to Jan 1, 2014 we've offered a generous health insurance package that included an Excellus BC/BS plan that covered most health needs with a co-pay. It was not quite the "Cadillac" plan that has been tossed around but it's way better than the industry average high deductible plan. In addition, the company paid for a significant portion of the plan, leaving only a small amount per month for employees to pay. But the problem is that with such a small company we could only do one plan - and as owner I got the unenviable job of trying to decide what one plan might fit all my employees. It's an impossible task. When you have employees of all ages, health statuses, family situations etc - someone's health care is bound to not be met by a single plan.
All that changed with the ACA. The new law includes an option for small businesses called "SHOP" where as a company I can register on the website, create a roster of my employees and then offer them all or some of the available individual plans on the market. The market rate for these plans is about $10/month more than what I pay now for the EXACT SAME PLAN off-market for a family of 3 or more - in other words realistically the same price.

NYS then bills me for all the premiums for the plans my employees select - I determine a single set percentage or fixed rate or a percentage up to a specific rate per plan that I will pay - and deduct the rest pre-tax from their paycheck. They can select anything from a high end Platinum plan to a much less expensive high deductible account. If they select a high deductible plan they have the option of setting up their own HSA. Through our current broker they can also deposit money into an FSA to offset copays, deductibles or non-covered costs.

You cannot understand unless you've been there yourself how much of a relief it is to only have to shop for a plan for myself - and not for every person in my company. I also will save money down the road. This year - as a one-time thing - I raised everyone's salary by the difference between what we're paying now, and the rate for a single insured platinum plan on the market (About $500/month/salaried employee). They can use these dollars to pay for plans, or they can buy a cheaper plan and pocket the difference. If they buy the same plan as they had last year they'll even make money since that plan went DOWN in price by 4% (and all the doomsayers said rates would go up). Meanwhile if I hire a new employee I'm saving significant dollars because after years of ramping up what we reimburse I have ratcheted it back down significantly - with zero impact on my employees take-home pay. So my employees are kept whole, and continue to get great coverage. I save money. My employees can pick the plan that best fits their circumstance. Their benefits are transportable if they leave the company (sans my contribution of course) and if they decide each year to try a different insurance company they can, without fear of rejection because of pre-existing conditions.

In addition, my transition to the state system (so far) has been flawless - none of the reputed sign up issues, or performance issues. Everything works well and was easy to set up. By next week my employees will be able to login and shop for coverage, and sign up for coverage themselves - quickly, easily and without any problems.

All in all I call this a win. For me, for my employees and for health care in general. Criticize away if you like, but this small business owner is quite happy with how this is panning out.

For more info on SHOP in NYS: https://nystateofhealth.ny.gov/employer
For more info on OS-Cubed, Inc.: http://www.os-cubed.com

What does a Best of the Web website cost?

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:42:00 +0000

The Rochester Business Journal holds a Best of the Web competition each year. OS-Cubed is proud to have developed sites that have qualified in the past as a finalist - though this year none of our clients submitted an entry. The RBJ's competition looks at websites in a variety of categories including Not for Profit cultural, Not for profit human services, Banking and Finance, Education, Business and professional services, Government and Community, Health care, Legal Services, Manufacturing, Real Estate, Retail and Tourism. In short, a vast cross section of the web services industry.

One of the more interesting questions they ask (and not everyone answers this) is the cost to build the site and the annual cost to maintain it. Note that the interpretation of these amounts is left up to the submitter of the site and (for instance) may not include internal development costs, volunteer costs (on the part of Not for Profit companies) and other non-accounted for expenses. Nonetheless, the study offers a nice cross section of the community and what it costs to build and maintain an award winning quality website.

If we look at the data gathered from the information provided, the initial cost of development of an award winning site is roughly $40,000 on average with a range of $325,000 to $2500. The cost of yearly improvements, upkeep and maintenance arrives at around $6700/year or around 17% of the total cost of the initial site and varies between a few hundred and tens of thousands.

Award winning sites are typically redesigned every 3 years or so, the cost of which isn't surveyed, but we can expect the cost to be somewhere around 1/4 to 1/2 the initial design cost for a content managed site, and as much as the total design cost for a "built from scratch" site.

So what does this mean for the average company looking to build a site? Budgets in the over $10,000 range should not be surprising to you. Depending on features and functions (retail, real estate and banking sites probably cost much more than not for profit or information only sites) you could be anywhere along a continuum of a few thousand dollars all the way to hundreds of thousands. You also should be expecting to expend somewhere in the 15-20% range to maintain, update and improve your site each year. As new browsers come out (is your site compatible with IE10 for instance?) sites may well need tweaks and updates to function properly. Security updates need to be applied, and content needs to be changed and updated frequently.

None of these budgets included demand generation activities including SEO, direct marketing, social media, pay for click or other marketing costs.

Of course you could also opt to build a site for much less than that and not go for a "best of the web" site. Why you would want to do that when there are competing sites that are better than yours is an exercise I'll leave up to your Marketing manager. Good luck with that discussion :)

With budgets in that range though, you will want to carefully pick a developer and designer for the long haul - one that has your best interests at heart, and will help save you from costly mistakes - as well as recognize when an investment is worth it.

2012-2013 - A banner year for OS-Cubed, Inc.

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:06:00 +0000

The last year has been an amazing one. OS-Cubed has:

Produced a dashboard for sales performance for a major national firm using MS-SQL, office applications, and automation scripts
Assisted with building web based administrative tools for an enterprise print management dashboard using C# and .Net
Implemented a major new ecommerce site using DotNetNuke
Created dozens of brochure sites using DotNetNuke
Created custom product choice wizards for 2 international companies for their DotNetNuke site - one of which has gotten national recognition and will be featured on their distributors and resellers websites.
Hosted over 100 websites for clients - without a single failure or downtime beyond normal maintenance.
Provided hosting services for a web based human resource career application co-developed by us that services tens of thousands of employees world wide for a major international firm
Installed hundreds of new machines at client sites
Implemented virtual servers
Supported users
Created an application to manage bar code inventory items and update their status in a proprietary ERP system
Assisted in implementing a HIPAA compliant EMR system
Protected thousands of users from viruses
Migrated hundreds of users to Office365 and Google Apps in the cloud
Implemented a complete redesign of a major medical information website
Implemented a successful prototype of a fashion website for an entrepreneur who has since leveraged that with major funding
Implemented sophisticated SSL and remote access for multiple clients
Managed technology transitions and expansions for dozens of local clients
Assisted multiple not-for-profit boards with their websites
Helped organize and handle technology for the Eyes on the Future Event
Helped an organization with limited funds continue to support their 60 workers with very old technology

What can we do for you? Let us know what kind of problem you have to solve and we'll help you solve it.

Microsoft Office 2013 OEM licensing - the other shoe drops

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:56:00 +0000

Microsoft releases Office 2013 to OEMs

So the other shoe has dropped on Office 2013 - and this one not only emphasizes the THUD from the last licensing reveal, but reiterates it with a thud of it's own. While a preinstall to hard disk kit is available to shorten download times, Microsoft is pushing (and vendors are hopping on this with abandon) installing Office 2013 OEM entirely from a log-on to Windows Live.

The process works like this - you get only a license key when purchasing an OEM copy of MS Office 2013. You can't just run the software and activate the license - you must go to www.office.com/setup to install, and you must establish a Live ID and your packaged license code to get to the download and install screen - there is no alternate installation method. Once there you can download and install your oem version on one machine. Although it says in the FAQ that you can come back to the site to re-download and install, it's not clear if you can reactivate after say a hard drive wipe and reinstall. We'll just have to see as Microsoft could not give a clear answer.

Also unclear is whether you can do this with more than one license on a single LiveID - IE must I have a unique live id for each OEM license, or can I use one live ID to download and install all my licenses? Enquiring minds want to know but even Microsoft Support and licensing couldn't answer this one definitively. Their recommendation - "try it and let us know how it works - we'll leave this case open". Helpful. Not.

This doesn't of course consider the case of whether the end user has a fast internet connection or not. Over some internet connections the multi hundreds of megabyte office download may well take hours. Additionally, what is the first thing I want to do with a machine - well.... use it. But I can't because I may be sitting around for quite a while before any useful software is loaded on it.
Finally there's the issue of the LiveIDs. How many people will create a one-time throwaway live id and then forget the username and password. With the old system all they needed was their install disks and their keycode. ~~They can't even ORDER install disks any more~~. Update - you can order backup install disks - once you activate using your live ID.

Fortunately you do not need to associate the live ID you used for install with Office for cloud storage etc. I can just imagine managing this for a 50 user install and having them all share the same 7gb skydrive. Fortunately once installed and authenticated you don't need to ever log into that account again from that computer.

All this points to a drive towards subscription based systems. Which begs the question of - are you ready for it? I predict that OEM and OEM pricing will go away. The new subscription based systems are cost effective on a 3 year new version renewal plan - I suspect rather than noodle with all the rest of this stuff this will drive more small to medium businesses and all individuals into subscriptions. And with Microsoft's cash grab on the low end subscriptions - resellers make ZERO dollars on these installs and ZERO recurring revenue. I suspect that Microsoft may have written the death knell for office within the next 5 years unless they fix some of these deficiencies.

What you probably don't know about Microsoft's new direction

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:04:00 +0000

and why it's important for every Microsoft Developer to understand it...

Microsoft has finally let the other shoe drop on how their new Office/Cloud/Windows 8 strategy is going to work by releasing the details of how Office 2013/365 will be licensed and sold - and it's not just a shoe it's a hiking boot - landing with a big THUD.

There are some important new ramifications about how the entire thing will work - and it's important for you as a developer to understand how that changes what is still the predominant IT ecosystem on the planet. Let me apologize now to the Linux, Apple and Android developers - this article is not for you - it's for those of us who have been working on Microsoft Apps for the last 30 years.

Let's start with a little history. Back in the late 70's and early 80's a revolution happened. Until that point computers were large, relatively complex beasts, controlled by a corporate entity (because they were too expensive for mere individuals to buy) and had one processor, one set of ram, and one set of hard drives shared by dozens of users through a terminal. This had advantages and disadvantages. It was easy to control software and access to that software, and easy to manage since everyone shared the same tools. Of course you couldn't easily take your work home with you (you might consider that a good or bad thing) and the applications were very expensive and monolithic since it required the developer to have equivalently expensive tools to create the software. In the late 70's personal computers peeked their way into the American home. Initially crude and difficult to use - but relatively inexpensive compared to their mainframe counterparts - they created a revolution. Suddenly you could purchase a system that would let you perform powerful calculations and perform difficult tasks in your home. More importantly, through the advent of the business PC you could have the same platform at work as you used at home and carry data back and forth on a portable storage device. Also importantly - you could purchase a system to develop for this new platform that didn't cost an arm and a leg - which meant that new software and software improvements increased at an exponential rate.

Since that time we added in the ability to access your computer over the internet - and for computers to have access to shared data on the internet. At the same time - through some serious investment in infrastruture, it became cheaper to get storage, processor time and bandwidth through major services like Windows Azure, Amazon AWS and other huge interconnected networks. So in a sense we're back where we started from. Our current devices are very complex and independent, but we're becoming more and more reliant on apps and storage that run in the cloud - simplifying the requirements for what our personal devices need to have. Suddenly a tablet running a run of the mill low power processor can leverage gigabytes of data, bandwidth and the processing power of thousands of processors. This means that - down the road - assuming we continue to live in a connected society our applications are going to become more and more like the original mainframe apps of the 70's and 80's. Instead of buying machines with gigabytes or terabytes of local storage we're going to be buying a simple inexpensive machine that leverages that cloud power. Our operating systems need to be less complex because the heavy lifting isn't handled at the desktop any more, or even at the local server level.

With Windows 8 and Office 365 subscription services Microsoft has moved from the "software as a license you buy model" (which hasn't been eliminated yet - just deemphasized) to the "software you subscribe to and get as needed" model. An individual can now - for $100/year - buy any kind of device they want - phone, tablet, pc, laptop or something not even invented yet, install office software on up to 5 devices they own, use a simpler version of that software on the web, get 27gb of cloud document storage to use or share with whomever they want (plus each of the other 4 users gets 7 gb of storage for a total of 55GB of available shareable storage for $100/year). They get an hour of free Skype talking and sharing a month. They get the latest version of office, allowing frequent updates to add functionality without the expense of giant new releases. They get streaming of the software to a PC that isn't even licensed for Office to edit a document assuming the target is running Windows 7 or 8. On the corporate side the same thing can be acquired (with slight variations in capability) for $240/year/user for enterprise users or $150/year/user for small businesses - and on the corporate side they add in sophisticated sharepoint capabilities and active directory management (doing away with the need for an active directory server, or minimizing it's need to being just a local extension of the cloud). For $72/month they can have the same thing, without the locally installed office licenses. In addition, with either a corporate or Live account your settings, files, and preferences follow you from machine to machine - even across platforms. By the end of this year Gartner Group estimates that the PREDOMINANT way that websites will be accessed is via a phone or tablet. It will outstrip desktop and laptop access - in 2013. That's this year folks.

So what does that mean for you as a developer? It means that Microsoft means to make cloud storage and apps it's end game - not just an add-on, and the day of the local server - and even the super powerful end user system are slowly - but surely - ending. And if you think - well we'll just move to another platform - think again. The largest competing platforms for end-user computing are moving in the same direction. Apple (of course) saw this coming years ago and has quietly started phasing out desktop and laptop machines in favor of tablets and other simpler less expensive devices. Google's play in the Android market focuses strictly on low powered machines that leverage the cloud. Linux for the desktop? Nice OS but used only by technogeeks so far. In the next 2-4 years you're going to see a huge shift away from expensive powerful, complex to manage servers and systems in your office or home and towards low priced, low powered systems that leverage the cloud. And once they go cloud they won't be going back. Don't believe me? The only way to deploy a standalone Access application in Access 2013 is to deploy it to Azure and Sharepoint.

So what can you do as a developer? For one - learn a cloud based system and leverage it's power - now. I don't care if it's AWS, Azure, SharePoint or some other platform - but you should start to figure out how they work, how to make your apps operate efficiently and actively over a not-always-reliable internet connection, and how to make them scale so that you don't have to sell additional licenses to get additional power out of them. It also means designing systems - whether they be apps, websites, or whatever - to adapt to a huge variety of interfaces and screen sizes - everything from hand-held phones to 50" 3d High Definition living room monstrosities. They need to adapt to all sorts of interaction interfaces - the old fashioned keyboard, the mouse, the touchpad, the touchscreen, and the "gesture based" interfaces like the Kinect. It means that data becomes a mix of BYOD storage (Bring Your Own Data) and corporate cloud storage - and how will you manage that and protect the privacy and security of data when it's easy to copy things from corporate sources into a user's private data store in the cloud.

It also means you should start to explore web and cloud based development tools. That quad core dev machine on your desk may well go away someday - and you need to be ready to use some of the new and sophisticated web based tools for software development in project management, compilation, version control, etc. The distributed nature of today's collaborations will make that a must.

What happens if you don't? Well how long did terminal based apps last once the PC was out? How long did non-graphical DOS based apps after Windows came out? How long did non-web based apps last after the internet took over? You have some time - this isn't happening overnight. But it IS happening and if you don't adapt there will be a day when you wake up and find your app or skills irrelevant. And that day is approaching.

PS - if you're interested in migrating to the cloud and leveraging Office 365 OS-Cubed is a cloud expert - we can help you with migration, support and leveraging your existing infrastructure while using the cloud efficiently.

Mobile platforms slowing the production of new PCs

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 18:41:00 +0000

In a recent post from the NY Times they featured an article about how portable devices such as phones and pads have cut deeply into the market for processors for PCs and Laptops - except in the area of processors for large server type systems. While I'm excited about the opportunities that mobile and lightweight platforms offer I fear that in the long run this trend could significantly damage the development of bigger and better and more powerful personal computer systems.

For the last 30 years we've enjoyed rapid growth of the power and efficiency of processor systems. This is due in part to the fact that software has consistently outstripped the ability of hardware to deliver the very best experience. Especially in platforms such as gaming, but even in platforms such as office applications, getting a big, new computer every 3-4 years became de riguer. As a result we had a constant sales cycle of new hardware, and the processor companies had a constant incentive to invent and deploy faster and more efficient hardware that could perform more powerful tasks, address more memory, and create richer user experiences. But somewhere in the mid 2000's that growth slowed. Suddenly people realized that the stuff they did every day (access a document, check something on the web, watch a video) didn't actually require these powerful new processors, and - due to the popularity of laptops and smart cell phones in the last decade - the processor manufacturers brought out new chips that - for the first time really - weren't more powerful than the ones they were producing for PCs but were smaller, less powerful, but perhaps more power efficient. Thus was born the transition to portable hand held systems.

Now don't get me wrong - I love my Android tablet and my smart cell phone. But I wouldn't want to do any serious work on them. They're OK for posting on Facebook (which by the way they barely seem able to do with Facebook's complexity) and for watching video on a small screen. But they're not so great for big spreadsheets, or number crunching, or gaming or any of a number of other things I do with my PC. Well that's OK you say - we can do those things in the cloud now and leverage that (which of course drives the sales of processors intended for the server market) and that is true but - it means that the processor manufacturers like Intel and AMD are starting to back away from their commitment to employ and produce more powerful processors on standard desktop and laptop platforms. It seems to me that new processors in this category (And even the processors in the server category) have gotten evolutionarily more powerful, but at a much slower pace and without the revolution that would herald in the next generation of super powerful processors that we can own and control and program ourselves. And in the long run that worries me. Without volume sales there is less incentive to constantly innovate and produce new products.

Part of the personal computer revolution was that we were no longer beholden to the mainframe, or the company's big iron machines. If we wanted to we could contain a 30gb database right on our own system, query it, massage it, do cool things with it, etc. We didn't need to be hooked to a network to do this, we didn't have to ask for the powers that be to install new servers or spin up new instances - it was completely under our control. I see those days retreating with this new trend to lighter weight, low memory, low processor power front ends and heavy duty back ends. I see a future where we as software developers and users are saddled with fighting (again) the limitations of our front ends, and relying on the good nature and knowledge of those building the back end systems to provide us with the performance we need. I don't think this is a good thing.

I love being able to be chatting in a conversation and have someone say "hey do you know if" and be able to whip out my Thunderbolt from HTC and answer it by just running a quick query on the web. I just wonder what the world will be like if all our systems are as stupid as my Thunderbolt (or iPhone or any other mobile platform) - because I really really like my PC and it's capabilities. speed and performance. I don't WANT it to be at thin client. What do you think - how do you think that the portable platforms and cloud computing will effect the next generation of personal computers.

Techstars expanding rapidly....

noreply@blogger.com (Childish Democrat) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 19:51:00 +0000

Wouldn't it be great if Rochester could join the Techstars fold? We can make it happen but here's what we need to do for that to be a reality:

Education Cooperation - Rochester has several powerful and innovative schools in the area. Unless they cooperate though - most of them don't have the resources to pull off making TechStars a reality all by themselves. Realistically if the major area universities got together they could easily make it happen. A key plank of the techstarts platforms is cooperative university support nurturing entrepreneurs and the employees they will eventually hire. RIT, U of R, Nazareth, Brockport, St John Fisher, even Buffalo, Cornell and SU- all have something to offer TechStars but they have to get over themselves and realize that it's going to take regional educationaal cooperation to make this happn. Then they can ALL take credit.
Governmental Cooperation - the constant battle between State, City and County governments needs to end. To make this happen the proper tax incentives, employment opportunities, community redevelopment, facilities planning and regulatory control issues needs to be smoothed over. All three entities need to chip in, and put their marbles behind a single goal - attracting venture and new startups to the Rochester Metropolitan area and beyond. We've seen the glimmer of this in GRE - but they're focused more on attracting businesses both new and old to Rochester. We need a singular effort with a charismatic and forceful leader to make this happen.
Established Startup Mentoring - One of the other key planks in the establishment of a TechStars program is a strong portfolio of established entrepreneur mentors to help the startups along. Rochester is a giving community and has a strong and tight entrepreneurial community, unfortunately those community members are split up among 1/2 dozen groups and there is no one place for them to gather to assist, and no set of venture capitalists to "get behind". Groups like DR, RPCN, GRE, Pariemus, Independent Entrepreneur Council, Rochester Open Coffee Club should merge their efforts and their meetings to create a single organization that pushes the entrepreneurial message in a concerted and coordinated way.
Coordinated Venture effort - The venture community in Rochester HAS grown and you hear more and more about Rochester funded startups being either moved to a new level or selling out to larger companies. In the end though - the local Venture community still invests mostly in traditional business models, not high tech or software startups. We need to attract new venture blood to our region - and not from outside it either - because bringing a venture capitalist in from Boston or California generally only results in an early exit to that community. Syracuse has had some success in this arena and UVNY has also been doing outreach. Let's coordinat them with the above groups.
Recruiting of outside people to move to Rochester - One of the key things that TechStars does is create opportunities for Boulder (which in the end has similar weather and isolation issues to Rochester) to attract young and talented people. While Rochester already has an awesome, hardworking and dedicted workforce - we need to turn into a destination city where a talented rockstar can see that he or she has not one but several cool startups to potentially work for.
More coopetition and less competition - some of the best startups end up being the blend of several great ideas - the more startups collaborate, the lower their costs, the better their ideas, and the more likely they will get implemented and funded. Let's encourage startups to find ways to work together - instead of putting them in the arena to battle it out and see who can come up with the scrap of gold at the end.
A strong emphasis on improving the downtown environment - one thing that Boulder has going for it is a strong, well established zone of downtown development. Rochester has a hole in the ground.
A strong emphasis on K-12 education and STEM subjects - In a city with as many engineers as Rochester there is no excuse for not having FIRST Robotics in every elementary, middle and high school - especially downtown where it matters most.

To read more about TechStars and it's successes - check out Brad Feld's blog article