Show Level 3 (Baltimore, MD) Traceroute to cas.louie.exchangedefender.com (65.99.255.113)
1 ge-6-15-24.car2.Philadelphia1.Level3.net (4.69.135.121) 28 msec 28 msec 32 msec
2 ae-6-6.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.133.170) 28 msec 32 msec 28 msec
3 ae-81-81.csw3.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.134.74) 40 msec 36 msec
ae-71-71.csw2.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.134.70) 44 msec
4 ae-14-69.car4.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.68.16.6) 32 msec
ae-34-89.car4.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.68.16.134) 28 msec
ae-14-69.car4.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.68.16.6) 32 msec
5 gblx-level3-te.newyork1.level3.com (4.68.111.242) 20 msec 20 msec 20 msec
6 customer.TenGigabitEthernet2-3.ar2.DAL2.gblx.net (64.215.28.206) [AS3549 {GBLX}] 56 msec 56 msec 56 msec
7 204.26.60.114 [AS46786 {IPTRANSIT}] 52 msec 52 msec
204.26.60.118 [AS46786 {IPTRANSIT}] 56 msec
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We anticipate having regular office hours here on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9-5. Though we may be here more, these are going to be there hours when you can expect us to be here. Please make sure to drop us a line beforehand if you plan to come visit as we may still be out visiting clients. Sizeable Spaces facility is located here:

1541 Light Street
Second Floor
Baltimore, MD 21230

View Larger Map

Make sure to come around and up to the deck on the Randall Street side to get to the entrance. See you soon.

Foundations Technologies, Inc. has been helping George with his efforts by setting up and running the social media campaign through the Twitter account, Posterous Blog and Facebook page. Please visit www.pigkisser.com and join him at one of the many fundraising events between now and August 18th!

Some examples of what you could earn yourself through referrals:

New Total Network Care Client

• OLD: 1 Month Service Fee (up to $1000)
• NEW: 1.5 Months Service Fee (up to $1500)

New Hosted Exchange Client

• OLD: $5 per Mailbox
• NEW: $7.50 per Mailbox

New Remote Server Backup Client

• OLD: $50 per Server
• NEW: $75 per Server

New Business Disaster Recovery Client

• OLD: $200 to $600 (Depending on Model)
• NEW: $300 to $900 (Depending on Model)

New SIP Trunking Client

• OLD: $10 per Trunk
• NEW: $15 per Trunk

These are only some of the increased referral payments that we are offering only during the month of September. Program extends to all services offered by Foundations Technologies. Give us a call at 443.921.3001 if you want more information on the updates to our Referral Program for this month, or have a referral.

This will allow us to serve you even better, as you should never have to worry about being asked to restart your server manually again. Obviously the goal is to have to use this device as little as possible, but when it is needed it will be invaluable. Give us a call at 443.921.3001 should you have any questions or are interested in signing up for a Managed Care contract today.

Hope this makes someone else’s life easier as well. The script is available for download here.

“Bring together young entrepreneurs and the necessary tools for running a lean and successful technology business. We want to see Maryland, DC, and Virginia flourish with innovation.”

Foundations Technologies, Inc. is actually a sponsor of the event and I will be in attendance. I’m really excited at this opportunity to meet a great group of entrepreneurs in the area, and have a great day of information and networking.

Wanting to really get into the spirit of the community that is going to be developed here and wanting to offer something beyond just my presence, I have come up with an offer for all of the attendees of Bootstrap Maryland.

Foundations Technologies, Inc. will offer all attendees of the Boot Strap event any non-labor service that we provide AT COST. Yes, you heard me, at cost. What offerings does that include?

• Networking Monitoring and Patch Management and Antivirus Licensing
• Remote Backups
• BDR Units and Storage
• Calyptix AccessEnforcer Firewalls
• Napera N24 NACs
• ExchangeDefender E-mail Security with LiveArchive
• Hosted Exchange (Exchange Accounts include ExchangeDefender) and Sharepoint
• Colocation at Hostmysite.com in Delaware (We have half a rack, so per U is cheap)

There are specific conditions and terms for certain services, such as the BDRs require either an outright purchase or three year contract, but most of our services can be had for a month-to-month basis. Right now this offer should be running until the end of the year, but depending on the response this could be extended. If you are interested in any of our services provided 100% at cost give me a call at 443.921.3001 x101 to discuss your options.

The reasons a setup fee is necessary for our contracts consist of:

• We offer flat-rate based support. We have to know your network is setup properly, up to our standard, and operational before we take over the IT responsibilities for your organization.
• We need to document the configuration of your network, machine serial numbers, and enter all the information into our management system and wiki.
• We can never assume that just because you used an IT company in the past that anything was done correctly. We’ve walked into too many networks with massive issues that were ignored or caused by previous IT firms. There are times that it has been so bad that we’ve had to do a pre-onboarding project to bring the client even close to our standard.
• Setting up our management agents, configuring the patch management and monitoring takes a fair amount of time.
• Configuring and setting up the appropriate group policies and scripts to make sure that all machines are on the same settings and shares and printers automatically map. Our goal is to make sure any new system brought on requires as little manual configuration as possible.
• Setup and configure the antivirus software for your network, including policies, monitoring, report generation.
• Setup and configuration of your backups, making sure they are automated, monitored, and functional. We have yet to have a customer data loss event and intend to keep it that way.
• Setup and configure Postini for your domain.
• Setup and configure your network security with the AccessEnforcer firewall.

We are here to partner with our customers, and to make sure that their IT needs are taken care of 100% once they bring us in to manage their network. Once we get them up and running they are often surprised at how much we can automated and monitor to make sure things stay at their peak efficiency.
We want to be your company’s IT partner as well, and would relish the chance to come in and discuss how our support packages can give you more time to focus on your business, by focusing less on your IT issues.

This is a very exciting improvement to our current monitoring offering and believe we have chosen a more powerful and flexible solution than we were using in the past. We anticipate the roll-out to be completed by the end of next week. We currently have most of the basic monitoring installations installed and will be finalizing the transition of the current full monitoring customers over the course of this week. Upon completion of your transition you should find an e-mail being sent to you with the URL to view your dashboard.

I wish I had more time to have stayed in Seattle and be all tourist-like, but duty called, so I had to come home on Monday. I did want to make sure I threw shout-outs to Autotask, Bandwidth.com, and Jeff Middleton for throwing some excellent parties. These guys really made the weekend a blast, and would have been reason enough to travel to Seattle.

As far as evidence of our fun goes, check out the following picture sets:

• Jeremiah Ilges – Official SMB Nation Photoset
• Calyptix Blog – Day One Pictures
• Calyptix Blog – 20 Things Lawrence Learned

I also have to recommend any that makes it to Seattle to try out the Spitfire restaurant in Seattle. Great food, some pretty good West Coast Microbrews, and really nice atmosphere. Just make sure to try the Tortilla Soup.

Now, please take a cupcake!

I’m not the only one excited by the news as Andy over at Downhome Computer and Mark from TechCare Team have both expressed their excitement over this announcement. I’ personally will be looking forward to welcoming the new partners into the Calyptix Partner fold as one of the grizzled old time partners that has been here since the pre-2.0 release days.

Calyptix powers our Managed Firewall platform, and it’ll be good to see even more people out there knowledgeable on the product, as we are competing on a daily basis with people selling solutions from some of the other vendors like SonicWALL, FortiNet, et al. I feel with our solid product and this new marketing effort being put forth, we will have a well known brand that people will know and respect, and will make our efforts of selling our clients on this product even easier.

I’m sure there will be even more news on this and other topics to share after the SMB Nation show next week. Look forward to a lot of blogging next week as I post and dissect all the information that will be flowing from the conference.

In the mean time, feel free to keep up with me at Twitter.

Do you use the Product?
If you aren’t using the product yourself in your own network, you absolutely cannot be considered an advocate of the product. Personally, I hold the belief that you shouldn’t even sell anything that you don’t use in your own network (or at least would use if you needed to solve that solution), but advocacy moves even one step farther and absolutely requires that you are a dedicated user of a product. At the same time it should preferably be the only solution of its kind that you offer, but this is not a complete requirement as exceptions to the rule are always out there.

Are you a true believer?
In order to be an advocate you must be a true believer in the product that you are advocating. Ask yourself if you’ve drank the Kool-aid. You should believe in the product as much as anyone who is employed by the company that manufactures the product. Are you willing to defend the company’s honor on forums and blogs should you see an attack on their product? Will you blog about your experiences with the product and why you think it is the solution for the problem it is designed to solve?

Are you willing to be used as a reference?
Are you prepared to receive e-mails and phone calls from people asking you about your experiences with the product? Depending on the person and the questions they have you could very well end up spending over an hour of your time on the phone simply talking about how and why you use the product you are advocating. You have to be prepared to answer any questions that come up, while still having the other person be skeptical, as you were referred to them by the company that they are looking to get more information on. Personally, I very much enjoy this part of being an advocate as it gives you a wonderful opportunity to network with other people, and I’ve established more than one good contact through being used as a reference. Besides, helping the vendor sell more of their product (even if it isn’t through you) is a good thing, as it helps keep them around for when you need to sell their product to someone.

Are you considered an expert on the product?
Are you in the beta-testing program for the product? Are you included in some form of partner committee or focus group? Can you setup and troubleshoot the product in your sleep? Do other partners that use or sell the product come to you for advice and tips? Do you know the pricing structure for the product better than your account rep? Do you engage in regular discussions with the product manager regarding the future development of the product? Have you found yourself simply going through the product and the manual to see if anything noticeable has changed with a new release, before reading the Change Log? If you can answer yes to the majority of the items listed above, I think you can classify yourself in the “expert” category.

Do you have a solid relationship with the vendor?
When you are making weekly or bi-weekly phone calls with your vendor to just chat, update each other on current prospects and just generally checking up on how things are going with the other person, you have a good relationship with your vendor. Have you and your vendor met up at a conference or when the other was in town and gone out to grab some drinks? That’s where a great relationship starts. Both sides have to realize that the relationship is symbiotic, and that you are both working towards the same goal. When you call them on the phone do they recognize the number on Caller ID and say “Hi, Scott” when you call in? These last few aren’t requirements, but they sure don’t hurt either.

Is the product an integral part of what you offer?
Let’s face it, unless it is a staple offering that you heavily suggest or require your customers to use, you can’t be an advocate. It can’t be a product that you simply go and offer it here and there. It should be something you think every customer needs or can benefit from. This in part stems back to the idea of truly believing in the product and truly believing everyone needs to have it. That’s actually how I built the core offering that my company requires our customers to have, what were the three things that I truly felt all our clients should be using to make their networks function better?

The product in question does not always have to be a product you sell either. It can be a service or product that you use to get your job done that you truly thing is a best of breed product, and something other people in your industry should be using as well. The services and products you use internally are important, because as the stronger companies become stronger through better offerings and being more efficient it only serves to highlight the deficiencies of the weaker companies, and therefore improves the overall quality of your industry.

The next logical question would be: Am I an advocate of any products? Personally, I feel that I can comfortably say that I can be considered an advocate of three products at this time. Hopefully as I continue to grow and spend more time with other products I can expand that list to some other products I currently use as well. The companies and products I feel I can advocate are:

• Autotask – Professional Service Automation dedicated to the IT Community
• Calyptix Security – Providing their AccessEnforcer Unified Threat Management Firewall to the SMB Market
• Hostmysite.com – Hosting, Dedicated Servers and Co-location Company in Newark, DE.

I am personally making it known that if you ever want to ask questions or look for more information regarding any of these three companies and their products to please contact me. I am proud to say that I am an advocate of all three and will have a great time talking with you about why I think you should use their products as well.

Now ask yourself, am I an advocate?

Currently I have the following UTMs covered:

• Astaro
• Calyptix
• Endian
• Fortigate
• Sonicwall
• Untangle (Open Source)

I would like to add at least the following:

• Barracuda Web Filter
• Checkpoint
• Cisco ASA Series
• eSoft
• GTA
• Juniper
• mxLogic Web Filtering
• Postini Web Filtering
• Smoothwall Commerical
• Untangle (with Kaspersky Add-on)
• Watchguard

If any of the above vendors would like to participate directly, I’d be happy to give bonus points for including yourself in the test. Even if you don’t send a firewall for testing, if you’d be willing to run the script against your system I’d be very much appreciated. This is highly unscientific, but will be completely open for review after the fact.

My goal is to be able to present 250 malware samples to each firewall, and rate their overall effectiveness. All samples will be available along with Virustotal results for the file upon completion. Please send all malware files to scott.cover{at}gmail.com in password protected zip or 7z files. Any offers to support the actual test, please post in the comments, and we’ll work out arrangements to get you information for the actual testing.

If anyone that reads this can pass it down the line I’d be much appreciated.