We are always looking for ways to improve our customer support. It will help us help you if you would fill out this short survey.

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Webinar dates will be announced soon. Each will start with a presentation, and end with a question and answer period.

Join us online and learn how to sell more, faster!

Space is limited, so please [register in advance here.]

Some topics include:

Don’t say This say That

• How to better answer new client questions
• Answering customer questions

Have You Asked This Lately?

• Can you share with me your growth expectations for 2012?
• Are we currently protected all your data?
• What changes can we make in 2012?
• Do you find us to be informative?

Telemarketing and how we can help

• Telemarketing is the first step.
• When to get us involved.
• Explaining the price point.

Subscription Importance

• Everyone’s future
• Keep your customers with the best technology

Forecasting vs Budget vs Incoming Revenues

Space is limited, so please [register in advance here.]

 At first glance, it would seem that most online backup services are pretty-much the same. They provide software you load on your computer to identify files for backup. They establish an Internet connection to a cloud-based storage server. Finally, they transmit an encrypted version of your data to offsite storage for safe-keeping.

So, all things seemingly equal, it’s not surprising that some businesses go “price shopping” for service. But can (or should) the vendor who has the cheapest price, or the largest storage package, be the one to trust with your most valuable asset…your critical business data?

Perhaps not.

Generally speaking, there are two classes of online backup offerings available in the marketplace: self-managed and provider-managed – and they are significantly different.

Self-managed offerings tend to be very inexpensive and are directly marketed to home users or owners of very small businesses. They are simplistic in nature, easy to install and require a very low level of user sophistication. You’ve probably seen them advertised on television.

When operating properly, a self-managed online backup seems to do a reasonable job of backing up simple data files such as word documents, music downloads and digital pictures.

Home users don’t typically own Windows servers, don’t care about backing up SQL databases or Exchange message stores, don’t use complex financial software and don’t have regulatory concerns.

For these folks a very simplistic backup service, at a very low price, seems reasonable. It’s certainly better than no backups!

A self-managed online backup service is often referred to as an “unmanaged” service.

It’s unfortunate that users of unmanaged backup services naively assume that a charge on their credit card equates to a properly functioning backup. (Yikes!)  Little do they realize that if a data disaster occurs, there’s a very real possibility that “supposedly” protected data could actually be lost.

Any business that uses an unmanaged service risks permanent loss of critical customer or financial information that could devastate their organization. (Ouch!) Businesses should strongly consider opting for the safety-net offered by a provider- managed online backup service.

Managed online backup services are marketed to small-to-medium businesses that have critical data – but may not have the time or in-house expertise to implement and manage a business-class backup service.

A “S.M.A.R.T” managed backup service helps ensure critical data is safe by augmenting fully-featured software with these five essential service components delivered by specially trained technicians:

Setup Service – Proper setup of the initial backup is critical. Not only must software be installed, but critical data including: files, folders, email stores, databases, vertical application data and more must be identified. Then backup jobs can then be defined, schedules set, and appropriate data retention policies established. No two computers are identical so it’s important that the service provider and customer work closely together during the setup phase.

Note: Rather than taking days or weeks to perform an initial data upload, managed service providers often choose to use portable media to physically transport encrypted data to offsite storage servers. This is referred to as a “seed” backup.

Monitoring Service – Managed service providers understand that there is no such thing as “set it and forget it” in the computer world. Servers, PCs and laptops are in a constant state of change. What works today, may fail tomorrow. Log files must be regularly examined for errors, storage usage must be tracked and PC health problems (such as low disk space) must be reported.

Alerting Service – Proactive notification of problems is the cornerstone of any managed backup service. When backups run with errors, run “empty” or do not run at all, the managed service provider must alert the user, and in many cases, directly assist in issue resolution.

Recovery Service – The full benefit of a managed online backup service is often not realized until disaster strikes. It’s at this time that users are most vulnerable and often unable to think clearly. A managed service provider will calmly walk the user through the recovery process and actively assist in data restoration.

Testing Service – Periodic “end-to-end” testing of online backups is one of the best ways to assure you are prepared for a disaster. A managed service provider can help perform a “fire drill” restore of critical data files. This can help establish a realistic Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for the organization. Known recovery procedures and timelines generally lead to a smoother and more predictable restoration service.

In summary, the combination of fully-featured backup software plus the value-add of a S.M.A.R.T managed backup service provider helps ensure that important data is backed up properly – and can be restored when the business needs it!

These days, a top-notch managed online backup service with a healthy allocation of online storage can be purchased for about $1-$2 per day.

Isn’t your business data worth the cost of a good cup of coffee?

Mitch Romm is the Managing Partner of Dr.Backup (www.drbackup.net) a privately held, owner-operated online backup service located inLaurel,Maryland. Each month, Dr.Backup clients successfully complete over 75,000 fully-managed online backups.

Joining the Referral Network is free, but there are some qualifications. You have to own at least a 200-Credit version of RBackup, sign the Referral Network Agreement, have active Priority Support, have been in business for at least 90 days, and agree to RBS’ Privacy Policy.

All the specifics are at this link. Maybe you would like to join!

-Rob Cosgrove

To start the year we brought aboard Dave Branch as Sales Manager.

We made some big changes in Tech Support, including promoting Stephanie Wallace to Support Coordination Manager and adding more Tech Support engineers to our staff.

We replaced our phone system with a new unified communications system that better links our two offices with voice, data, and audio/video conferencing, and added more bandwidth at both offices. This will result in quicker, more efficient Tech Support. It also provides “work from anywhere” capabilities for critical employees as part of our continuity plan.

There’s a lot more going on here that I will talk about later, like moving some critical services into the Cloud, improving our back office integration, and adding some exciting new products. Stay tuned for more updates.

I am looking forward to a GREAT year, and I wish you the same.

-Rob Cosgrove, President

David has a substantial career in software sales and support, having represented Ansys, PDA and AutoTrol. David has been involved with reseller networks and channel partners, and understands the distribution side of sales. We expect our customers to benefit from his experience and technical aptitude.

Bare Metal Backup (sometimes called Imaging, sometimes called P2V)  is a feature that backs up an entire hard drive – programs, data and all, and then can restore it to a different drive (or a virtual machine) complete, ready to run, bootable, an exact copy of the original drive. There’s no file selection because it backs up everything.

BMR is good for quick disaster recovery. It’s easy and fast – the fastest way to restore from a drive crash. It is good for restoring an entire drive. With just a few exceptions it is not good for restoring individual files or folders, so you still need standard file-based online backup.

BMR backups are HUGE. If a customer has 500GB of stuff on the drive, the size of the first backup is 500GB before compression and maybe 350GB after compression. Subsequent backups are smaller, but still bigger than file-based backups.

With BMR, Service Providers have to provide storage space for entire drives, including temporary files, junk files, swap files, duplicate files, EVERYTHING on the drive. This uses up far more storage space than just backing up carefully selected file sets, which by the way, compress much tighter than whole drives.

After the first BMR backup (the full backup) even the incremental backups are much bigger than incremental file backups. Just think about it – your operating system changes a lot of stuff on a drive besides the files you work with. Just booting Windows changes things in the registry, gigantic swap files, and temp files – hardly any of which are critical for backups, yet all of which will get backed up in incremental BMR backups.

So here are my basic questions –

Are your customers really willing to pay for storage space for those huge backups?

An average computer doing BMR backups might need 700GB of storage space after six months – the full backup and lots of incrementals. This is FAR more space than might be required for file-based backups.

How much do you charge for storage? If you charge $.50 per GB per month, that’s $350/month. Most of my Service Providers charge more than a dollar per GB. Will your customers pay that much money in addition to your other charges for standard file-based backups, which they still need even if they are doing BMR backups?

How long will your customers wait for a first full backup, or for a restore?

Uploading it for the first time is nearly impossible. So, the first backup will have to be done on-site in a labor and travel-intensive procedure using a portable drive, which is then transported back to your Server and imported manually.

Restores would have to be done the same way in reverse, because downloading 700GB will take too long. Your customers probably won’t be able to do it themselves. You will have to do it, and do it fast, because… (and here’s the kicker.)

Every BMR restore job is an emergency by definition. An entire computer is down. Are you able to drop whatever you’re doing at a moment’s notice to do an on-site restore that might take a few hours?

If that restore is to a new computer (which is the case much of the time) you will have to replace drivers, perhaps set up peripherals again, reset software licenses, and maybe tweak network settings. This could run into many hours of work, which must be done with very high priority.

Will your customers pay for your time and materials to assist them with a lengthy on-site restore?

Will they pay you enough to make it worthwhile for you to drop other customers, leave your shop for a half day, whatever it takes? Will the customers you postponed because of this restore job lose faith in you?

As an alternative to online BMR, my idea to make BMR backups easier to sell is to sell end users a big USB drive to leave on site, and to do BMR backups only to the onsite drive while doing standard file-based backups online like normal. Then you have an easy and very quick way to restore an entire system (from the on-site drive,) and then you can restore all newer files from the Online Backup server through standard file-based online restore.

The BMR backup is not stored on the Service Provider’s server, so storage costs for the end user would be very low. This idea, of course, assumes that the onsite drive isn’t destroyed in a disaster.

Now, lately I’ve had about even numbers of people calling about doing online BMR backups for personal users and for business users. I think many (but not all) businesses will pay an adequate premium for online BMR backups. I do not think personal users will. What do you think?

What pricing structure will you use? Will you charge separately for your time and materials to do the first full backup, and then again if a restore is needed?

Let’s look at some possible costs for providing a BMR backup service.

• You’ll need a few big, fast USB drives. I don’t know, maybe $300 each?
• You’ll need the BMR software. That might cost $299 per end user.
• There’s normal overhead like phones, gasoline, millage, etc.
• There’s the hourly cost of your time.
• Don’t forget possible loss of business because you had to delay work for other customers with very little notice.
• If you’re providing an online BMR backup service, you have the cost of your storage space. You can calculate that here:

http://blog.remote-backup.com/how-to-set-prices-storage-plans-calculate-profits-and-double-your-storage-space/

OK, so what have I missed? Half my sales calls these days ask about Bare Metal Backup. So, you must know something that I don’t. There must be an adequate business case out there somewhere. Please comment with your thoughts.

Trusting you, I have spent thousands upon thousands of dollars to develop a BMR solution – two of them, in fact. You will probably see one of them within a few weeks. But will you be able to sell it at a profit, and will you buy it from me in quantities that will allow me an adequate return on my investment, and enough to pay for its support costs?

Most of the callers I have spoken with assume I will include this as a standard feature of the RBackup software without raising the price. But I am sure I cannot. It has been far too expensive to develop, and it will be far too expensive to support.

I expect one out of every two restores to generate a call to RBS Tech Support, not because restores are hard to do, but because they are so important, and each is an emergency. No time to read the documentation, and you will want to check with an engineer to make sure you do it right. I don’t blame you at all.

But, tech support calls are expensive, and I have to cover their costs with the price I charge for software and maintenance subscriptions. That’s just proper business, and I think you want me to stay in business and continue to support you. So I have to cover my expenses.

We have not yet set a price for RBS’ BMR solution. My best guess is that there might be three versions with different capabilities selling for $199, $299, and $499 per end user. You would need to buy one copy for each of your users.

These prices are FAR cheaper than software with similar features that sells for $800 – $1200 per copy. So while the price might sound high, it’s actually a really good deal.

How will you use a BMR solution? How much will you charge for it? Will you charge a monthly fee? Will you charge separately for the first backup, and again for a restore?

After you work out how much you will have to charge for a BMR service, how many of your customers will pay that much?

Rob Cosgrove is the President of Remote Backup Systems, founder of the Online Backup Industry, and a vocal advocate for maintaining the highest standards in Online Backup software. His latest book, the Online Backup Guide for Service Providers: How to Start and Operate an Online Backup Service, is available online now, on Amazon.com, and at bookstores.

Remote Backup Systems provides brandable, scalable software and solutions to MSPs and VARs enabling them to offer Online Backup Services.

“Our technical team needed a new kind of manager to better coordinate activities and successes,” Rob Cosgrove, CEO noted, “Stephanie is a breath of fresh air for our providers. Her multitasking skills are the best I have ever seen. With her ability to juggle emailing, instant messaging, while talking on the phone is quite a sight. Stephanie has been with RBS for over a year now and has mastered each position with professionalism.”

RBS has also installed a new unified communications system that better links the two offices and will provide higher quality voice communications for customers and staff. Two additional engineers have been added to the support staff to significantly reduce the amount of time required to handle support cases.

Remote Backup Systems develops software and services for Online Backup Services who provide internet-based online backups to end users. Headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee with an engineering and technical office in Chennai, India, RBS has more than 8,500 Service Providers in more than 63 countries. RBackup Remote Backup is the most widely used subscription-based online backup software on the planet.

Back Up Files With “Back In Time” DeLorean USB Flash Drive
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They're all available on Flash Rod's online store. Join the AutoGuide.com Weekly Newsletter to get the latest automotive news, reviews and alerts. Clant.: Please a V8 would be very nice, I have the 3.8 now and love it!! My wife loves the car, …

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]]> http://blog.remote-backup.com/back-up-files-with-%e2%80%9cback-in-time%e2%80%9d-delorean-usb-flash-drive-autoguide-com/feed/ 0 http://blog.remote-backup.com/beta-test-client-released-support-for-exchange-2010-mailboxes/ http://blog.remote-backup.com/beta-test-client-released-support-for-exchange-2010-mailboxes/#comments Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:04:20 +0000 Rob Cosgrove http://blog.remote-backup.com/?p=41360 RBS is happy to announce the release of the public Beta Test Client version 11.4.0 for RBackup. This version has support for Exchange 2010 mailbox-level backups, among other new features.

This is a Public Beta test. Anyone can download and test it. This is the Client only. There has not been a release of a new Server.

The BETA version 11.4 Client can back up and restore Exchange 2010 mailboxes. It has a new scanning and preparation engine that supports Unicode filenames, file paths greater than 255 characters, and it makes use of multiple processors, automatically increasing the number of threads. This results in faster preparation.

We have also added Swedish language support.

You are welcome to download and try this Beta software. We strongly recommend that you use it for testing only, and not with important live clients. Please report any issues you have with it by filing a support ticket on the helpdesk at http://help.remote-backup.com

The Beta software can be downloaded here.

The documentation can be downloaded here.

If your company hasn’t yet established its presence on Facebook, take a look at these statistics from Deluxe Rev:

• Users average 15.5 hours on Facebook each month.
• On average, users visit Facebook 40 times per month.
• 50% of users log on to Facebook on any given day.

With Facebook popularity on the rise, it is time to get started! If you aren’t quite sure what to do first, you’ll find plenty of advice out there for the taking. We just found an excellent resource we recommend you download first, Deluxe Rev’s new ebook, “REV Up Your Facebook Marketing: A Guide for Small Businesses.”

Filled with statistics and how-to advice, this is THE Facebook marketing guide to get you going quickly. It includes practical tips like:

• Don’t worry about your Facebook page being perfect — it is more important to get started. Remember Facebook changes often and so will your page.

• If you have more than one administrator for your company’s Facebook page, create a list of guidelines for posting to ensure that your brand standards are being followed.

• Use “mentions” to help build your fan base. Post some recognition to other companies (think: congratulations and thank-you’s) that also share your target market. When you tag them correctly, these mentions will display in their fans’ news feeds, which will point new users to your company’s page.

Besides real-world tips, Deluxe Rev also has fascinating statistics to share (these are from a 2011 Buddy Media Study):

• The best length for a post is 80 characters or less.
• The best times to post are early in the morning or late at night.
• Thursday and Friday seem to be the best days of the week to post, although there are specific days that are better for specific industries (those are included in the ebook).
• Simple call-to-actions in your posts are most effective at encouraging participation (Like this…, Post this…, Comment here, and Tell Us).

However the biggest revelation is the importance of Facebook’s feature the News Feed. Social Media Strategist Ekaterina Walter of Intel says, “News Feed Optimization (NFO) is the new Search Engine Optimization (SEO).”

Those are powerful words, and they could not be truer. Facebook’s algorithm for determining what posts end up on News Feeds takes into account page popularity. Simply stated: If you have more fans interacting with you (Likes and Comments on posts) the higher your chances are to be included on your fans’ News Feeds. This is all the more powerful when coupled with this statistic: 70% of fans will not see Status Updates due to this algorithm. Yes, landing on the News Feed should be the number one goal of your Facebook strategy.

But to get on the News Feed, you first need a Facebook page. And to get started, we recommend Deluxe Rev’s “REV Up Your Facebook Marketing: A Guide for Small Businesses.” This ebook will give you the tips and techniques necessary to optimize your Facebook presence (and get on that News Feed), plus it includes some great case studies, too.

Rather than invest critical time and money in new hardware, 8×8 says in its press release, it’s far more efficient to go with Windows Cloud Server and instantly gain access to more storage, memory and bandwidth that’s all manageable from a single web-based dashboard.

“While other providers are head down building solutions for software developers, 8×8 is focused on bringing user-friendly cloud server technologies such as snapshots, cloning, availability zones and hourly billing to conventional IT groups,” said General Manager of Hosting Solutions at 8×8 Andy Schwabecher in a prepared statement.

Of course, 8×8 is promoting the usual cloud benefits as unique selling points of its Windows Cloud Server solution, too: it’s paid by the hour (starting at $0.12/hour) or the month (starting at $49/month), requires no contracts, is scalable and each virtual server is upgradable, it’s fast and secure, and even uses IPv6.

While 8×8 never says so in as many words, it seems likely that this technology came out of its acquisition of Zerigo earlier in 2011. Zerigo specialized in — wait for it — virtual private cloud servers. And at that point, 8×8 was heavily hyping how Zerigo expanded its cloud play in the SMB space.

Now, Zerigo also added DNS and maintenance technology for cloud servers to 8×8′s portfolio, among other things. We’ll be watching closely for more clues as to how this all comes together.

On a final note: That offhand remark from 8×8′s Schwabecher about “other providers” leads me to believe that his company has no interest in getting into the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) marketplace. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who thinks it may be getting overcrowded.

Read More About This Topic

• Cloud M&A: 8×8 Acquires Zerigo for Cloud Management

Sales Manager – Experienced sales manager with proven channel experience in technical software sales. Help us develop our new channel strategy, hire and train sales people, manage our telesales department, be willing to travel.

Telephone Sales – We need three new experienced telesales professionals with at least 2 years’ experience in technical consultative sales. In-house, B2B only. We provide warm and cold leads.

Senior Software Developer – Join our development team near the top. Experience in design and development of business and web applications. Minimum of 4 years experience with .NET, C#, VB.NET. Proven experience with MS Access, SQL Server, and Oracle 11g.

Network Administrator – 4+ years’ experience with corporate network design and maintenance. Dell, Cisco, Sonic Wall, Bomgar, Linux, Windows Servers, large storage arrays.

All positions are in our Memphis office, and require impeccable references. Please, we are not accepting referrals from headhunters at this time.

If you would like to work with us, please send Rob your resume: rob@remote-backup.com.

This has nothing at all to do with Remote Backup.

I have raised pet chickens for many years. Sometimes they need shots. You can do it yourself if you aren’t squeemish about needles. Do try this at home, but only on the advice of a veterinarian who can recommend the correct treatment and dosage.

-Rob

]]> http://blog.remote-backup.com/rob-demonstrates-how-to-give-a-chicken-an-injection/feed/ 0 http://blog.remote-backup.com/deduplication-redux/ http://blog.remote-backup.com/deduplication-redux/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:45:01 +0000 rob http://blog.remote-backup.com/?p=40586 I don’t know for sure, but I think I have lost a big account because my potential customer has been seduced and blinded by Deduplication. My competitor for this account promised the customer that he would save huge amounts of storage space as a result of his “amazing deduplication technology.”  This customer had already been burned by another company promising the same thing, and was unable to deliver. Now it looks like it’s going to happen again.

Rob Cosgrove, CEO Remote Backup Systems

It’s not that our software can’t do global deduplication, it’s that NO online backup software can do it at a reasonable price while staying secure and compliant. I’ve written on the subject a few times. Here’s another article: http://blog.remote-backup.com/deduplication-the-latest-buzzword-in-online-backup-and-why-it-is-impossible/

Global deduplication is essentially forced File Sharing that you don’t want your end users to find out about, because if they did, they would not be happy with it.

Here it is in a nutshell: The Server stores only one copy of any file. Subsequent copies of identical files are not stored on the Server, rather, only small pointers are stored which say, “Hey, I’m not your file, but THERE is one that is identical to it!” Pointers are much smaller than files, so theoretically you can save disk space.

When an end user requests a restore, instead of restoring HIS files, he might be sent copies of somebody else’s files. Likewise, other end users might be sent copies of your files, as long as they were identical at the time of backup.

Disk space is saved by forcing end users to share files (behind the scenes, of course, they don’t know this is going on.)

Here are some problems with Deduplication.

Problem 1 – You can’t have it both ways.

Any online backup software worth its salt compresses and encrypts backup files with a strong encryption method and a key known only to the end user. It removes filenames and folder names, and stores files that way on the server, completely safe from anyone who doesn’t know the key.

This procedure is required by data privacy regulations like HIPAA, SOX, and GLB which determine how many businesses must back up their data.

Obviously, if the Server contains only encrypted data protected with different keys, it cannot (for security reasons) be shared among users because users don’t share their keys. Doing so would break the privacy regulations.

Encrypting files changes their “signature” or “hash” value, which is used by deduplication technology to find duplicate files. So, encrypted files with different unknown keys, even if they contain the same information, will have different hash values and will not deduplicate.

Regardless, some Online Backup software companies claim their software does it. Well, you can’t have it both ways. Either your software is insecure and noncompliant, or it does global deduplication. You get only one of those features – not both.

Problem 2 – It doesn’t do any good.

Deduplication saves space on an unencrypted file system, like a standard hard drive containing a set of files that you can open and edit. You know, regular files. However, good online backup software like RBackup uses a different sort of file system which is far more secure and reliable, custom designed for efficiently storing and retrieving secure backups.

Enforcing deduplication on such a file system encrypted with different encryption keys does not gain enough disk space to make it worthwhile. I tested this myself. I ran a test against a set of 50,000 backup files on an RBackup Server, looking for duplicate files using an SHA-256 hash.

I found exactly 10 duplicate files. The files I found were all either 0-byte files or unencrypted configuration files of 8 bytes, used by the RBackup Server itself. I found no identical backup files. Deduplicating this file set would have saved a total of maybe 64 BYTES of drive space (out of 120GB tested,) while using up 30% of CPU time, 23% of RAM, and 20 hours to calculate file hashes.

My conclusion is this: The space-saving technology already built into the RBackup file system is more than sufficient to save more disk space than deduplication, at ¼ the cost in dollars, and even more than that in computer resources and time, while maintaining 100% compliance and security.

UPDATE: 17 November 2011 – I ran this same test with a much larger file set – 631,275 backup files from many different end users, taking up 810GB on the drive array. As with the first test, there were no duplicate backup files - just a small handful of config files used by the RBS Server, and a few zero byte files.

Problem 3 – Customers won’t like it, if they know this is what’s going on.

There are many ways to do deduplication as long as your end users agree that some of their personal data might be disclosed at the Server, and might be shared with other users as a result of the deduplication process (after all, deduplication is a form of file sharing.)

They would also have to agree that it’s OK that a file they store in their space (and are being charged for) might not really be there, rather, they might be sharing a copy of someone else’s file.

They would also have to be OK with sharing a single copy of a file with other end users, and if that only copy became corrupted on the Server’s hard drive somehow, or accidentally erased, they would have to be OK with not being able to restore it, and so would everyone else who shares the recently corrupted or erased file.

In many cases customers really do want to store duplicate copies of files, for the safety of redundancy. After all, that’s what backup is all about – having several copies of critical files stored offsite. Some are even required by procedure to have multiple copies.

The “standard” file rotation protocol used by many companies (because it’s a good idea) requires no fewer than 5 copies of files, even if they are exact duplicates.

Deduplication technology lies to customers. In their file restore interface they see what looks like their files, but what might really be just pointers to someone else’s files.

So, customers would have to be OK with having only the appearance of redundancy and safety. They have to be happy to be lied to.

Problem 4 – It is expensive.

At the top of this article I said “reasonable price” and “global.” There is software that can do local deduplication (not global) within a single account. It is done by installing an appliance at each customer’s site.

The appliance stages backup data within the secure environment of the customer’s network, performs deduplication, and then sends it up to the online backup server. This is secure and compliant, but it is expensive, and it still does not do “global” deduplication, which is deduplication across multiple accounts.

So, while it saves the customer some storage space, it doesn’t really save very much space on the online backup server. And there are the additional problems caused by the maintenance and energy usage of yet another on-site appliance.

Conclusion

Deduplication saves drive space only in a trusted environment within a single organization. Global deduplication does not save a reasonable amount of space on a proper online backup server like RBackup, which already has adequate space-saving technology built into its file system. Anyone who says otherwise needs to be deduplicated himself.

Rob Cosgrove is the President of Remote Backup Systems, founder of the Online Backup Industry, and a vocal advocate for maintaining the highest standards in Online Backup software. His latest book, the Online Backup Guide for Service Providers: How to Start and Operate an Online Backup Service, is available online now, on Amazon.com, and at bookstores.

Remote Backup Systems provides brandable, scalable software and solutions to MSPs and VARs enabling them to offer Online Backup Services.

MSPs use RBackup to provide online backup services to their end users. White labeled and brandable, the software allows them to set up their own online backup services, hosting data backups in their own data centers.

The Web Manager and E-Commerce PlugIns provide a web interface so end users can sign up for service online, pay with a credit card or PayPal, download the software, and begin backing up immediately.

“Having the source code for the Web PlugIns allows our customers to have complete control over the look and feel,” explains Rob Cosgrove, President of RBS, “They can also change the functionality and reports, just about anything.”

For more information on this limited source code license, see this link:

http://www.remote-backup.com/online-backup-source-code.htm

About Remote Backup Systems Inc.

Remote Backup Systems, Inc. is the global leader in turnkey Online Backup solutions to MSPs, VARs, ISPs and Managed Hosting Providers, providing leading edge functionality, best-in-class customer support, and an unwavering commitment to product quality and customer satisfaction. With a twenty-five year history in Remote Backup technologies, RBS is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Rob Cosgrove’s latest book, The Online Backup Guide for Service Providers is available at Amazon.com and bookstores.

We have had a number of requests for this service, and while we have offered it to a few customers, we have never formalized the process and made it available to everyone, until now.

This program is available for all software purchases from $1,000 to more than $10,000. Payment plans are determined by the purchase amount, with most monthly payments at about $800.

Here’s an example. The monthly payments for a 200-Credit Starter Pack ($3,350) are $837.50 for four monthly payments.

Financed purchases must be at the full retail price, with no special offers, upgrades, or coupons.

For more information and to apply, click this link.

Our PlugIns put your Online Backup Service on the Web, with features like credit card processing, recurring billing, instant account provisioning, customer and administrator portals, enhanced reporting and email notifications, and much more.

Now we have updated the PlugIns with these great new features:

Support for multiple RBS Servers – Now one Web Manager PlugIn can manage multiple RBS Servers.

Multi Tenancy (available at additional price) – The Multi Tenancy feature allows you to attract Partners and Resellers by giving them all the features to Customize, Brand and Build their own Client installers. Customizable features include – Customization of graphics, Customizing backup and client options, Customizing Help Files and Client Installer settings, Customization of Email Settings/Notifications & Templates, and Payment Gateway. [more info here]

Source Code Availability (available at additional price) – A Limited Source Code License gives you access to the ASP .NET source code for the Web Manager and E-Commerce PlugIns. [more info here]

For a complete list of updates click here.

Licensed users with current support subscriptions can download the new updates from the Downloads section of the Remote Backup Systems website, http://www.remote-backup.com. For information about Multi Tenancy and Source Code, use the links above or phone RBS at 901-405-1234.

This is an interesting idea.

We agree that lead qualification is the true intersection of sales and marketing. But in these challenging economic times, how likely is it that organizations will be willing to invest the necessary resources to create a separate Sales Development Team? Not likely. But we think there is no better time.

Don’t take our word for it. Here are the key takeaways from Marketo’s guide:

• A 5 minute response time is optimum on follow-up of leads received through a company website. Yes, you read that correctly. Depending on how much traffic your website receives, to provide a 5-minute lead response, you may need dedicated resources such as a Sales Development team. Still not convinced? The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. And from 5 minutes to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds decrease 4 times. (Source: Lead Response Management Study)
• Marketo recommends you focus your experienced (and best-paid) salespeople exclusively on closing. Don’t pay them their high-end salaries to waste time with leads that are early in the buying cycle. This is where your Sales Development reps should focus their time and energy.
• Don’t ask salespeople to enter and/or track their own data. They don’t want to do it and they make mistakes. This is something the Sales Development reps should do to ensure data accuracy and better information for optimization.
• Remove the guesswork from determining when marketing passes a lead to the Sales Development team. Implement a lead scoring system. Not only does this ensure a high quality of leads are passed along, it builds credibility that the process is working.

If creating a separate group dedicated to lead qualification isn’t in your company’s immediate future (or budget), there are a few steps you can take right now to help point your resources in that direction.

• Make marketing responsible for lead qualification. Determine the transition point from marketing to sales and make it a meaningful one that both teams agree upon. The goal is to only hand over qualified leads and not throw everything over the fence. Check out Go-To-Market Strategies’ Promotions/Lead Generation Pack of templates for some helpful tools to get you started.
• Capture your sales and marketing data and report on metrics. Create a Sales & Marketing Scorecard to track performance of sales and marketing activities at each stage of the sales process to show monthly and annual results. Not only will a combined reporting tool help hold both groups accountable to each other, it will raise awareness about actual results. Our Marketing Audit Template Pack can help.
• Train your lead qualification resources like you train your salespeople. Personal attention and effective conversation is the key for turning prospects into customers, make sure your lead qualification reps are comfortably well-versed in your offering, customer pain points you solve, and common objections and responses. Our Sales Training Pack and Sales Management Pack of templates will guide you through this process.

In today’s economy, every lead counts. We need to orient our sales and marketing teams towards effective and efficient lead qualification. Make sure to download Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development for more terrific insights.

We recently took another look at Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development. In this guide, Marketo is advocating the creation of a Sales Development Group: a collection of reps whose singular focus is on lead qualification and data capture.

This is an interesting idea.

We agree that lead qualification is the true intersection of sales and marketing. But in these challenging economic times, how likely is it that organizations will be willing to invest the necessary resources to create a separate Sales Development Team? Not likely. But we think there is no better time.

Don’t take our word for it. Here are the key takeaways from Marketo’s guide:

• A 5 minute response time is optimum on follow-up of leads received through a company website. Yes, you read that correctly. Depending on how much traffic your website receives, to provide a 5-minute lead response, you may need dedicated resources such as a Sales Development team. Still not convinced? The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. And from 5 minutes to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds decrease 4 times. (Source: Lead Response Management Study)

• Marketo recommends you focus your experienced (and best-paid) salespeople exclusively on closing. Don’t pay them their high-end salaries to waste time with leads that are early in the buying cycle. This is where your Sales Development reps should focus their time and energy.

• Don’t ask salespeople to enter and/or track their own data. They don’t want to do it and they make mistakes. This is something the Sales Development reps should do to ensure data accuracy and better information for optimization.

• Remove the guesswork from determining when marketing passes a lead to the Sales Development team. Implement a lead scoring system. Not only does this ensure a high quality of leads are passed along, it builds credibility that the process is working.

If creating a separate group dedicated to lead qualification isn’t in your company’s immediate future (or budget), there are a few steps you can take right now to help point your resources in that direction.

• Make marketing responsible for lead qualification. Determine the transition point from marketing to sales and make it a meaningful one that both teams agree upon. The goal is to only hand over qualified leads and not throw everything over the fence. Check out Go-To-Market Strategies’ Promotions/Lead Generation Pack of templates for some helpful tools to get you started.

• Capture your sales and marketing data and report on metrics. Create a Sales & Marketing Scorecard to track performance of sales and marketing activities at each stage of the sales process to show monthly and annual results. Not only will a combined reporting tool help hold both groups accountable to each other, it will raise awareness about actual results. Our Marketing Audit Template Pack can help.

• Train your lead qualification resources like you train your salespeople. Personal attention and effective conversation is the key for turning prospects into customers, make sure your lead qualification reps are comfortably well-versed in your offering, customer pain points you solve, and common objections and responses. Our Sales Training Pack and Sales Management Pack of templates will guide you through this process.

In today’s economy, every lead counts. We need to orient our sales and marketing teams towards effective and efficient lead qualification. Make sure to download Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development for more terrific insights.

Read the article here.

Remote Backup Systems has offered this business-saving service to their clients dating back to hurricane Hugo in 1989. This resource is available to online backup service providers affected by natural disasters such as hurricanes, winter storms, widespread power outages, earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, and floods affecting their data center.

If an RBS Server goes offline because of a natural disaster, RBS can temporarily take backups from provider’s clients at the Hot Site near Memphis, Tennessee, so the Service Provider doesn’t suffer further. When the disaster is over and the providers’ servers go back online, they can download the backups and resume normal business.

Remote Backup Systems encourages all of its Online Backup Service Providers in threatened areas to visit the company’s website at http://www.remote-backup.com for more information on the Hot Site service, including guidelines and instructions for activation.

“We’ve been lucky the past few years to have avoided major hurricanes,” said Rob Cosgrove, CEO and founder of Remote Backup Systems, “However, the next few days look a little sketchy for the East coast.”

Built into Remote Backup Systems multi-award winning flagship product, RBackup, is a special feature called the Server Locator.  It enables a service provider to maintain normal business in the event of a disaster by immediately transferring end users to the RBS Hot Site. It also enables them to move their RBS Servers safely to any Internet connection with a dynamic IP address anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.

No other company offers this cutting-edge service.

In an outage of Internet service, Providers can simply move their equipment to an alternate location with Internet service, and the Server Locator will seamlessly redirect their clients within seconds to the new location.

For more information on Remote Backup Systems, visit the company’s website http://www.remote-backup.com.

About Remote Backup Systems

Remote Backup Systems, Inc. is the global leader in turnkey Online Backup solutions to MSPs, VARs, ISPs and Managed Hosting Providers, providing leading edge functionality, best-in-class customer support, and an unwavering commitment to product quality and customer satisfaction. With a twenty-one year history in Remote Backup technologies, RBS is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Rob Cosgrove’s latest book, The Online Backup Guide for Service Providers is available at Amazon.com and bookstores.

First, there’s the psychology of buying. People buy based on emotion rather than logic — even large corporations. Why do we all yearn for BMW 7 Series when a Honda Civic gets us from point A to point B just as well and for a lot less? Spending $90,000 on a car defies all logic and reason when you think about it. Here’s why we do it.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs from psych 101? Well, it applies to sales, too. We want the BMW because it tickles the desires at the top of Maslow’s pyramid. Driving a nice car makes us feel important, like we have achieved greatness. It earns the respect of our clients and friends. These needs trump the basic transportation needs at the bottom of the pyramid.

The BMW Hierarchy of Needs:

• Physiological Needs: We need transportation.
• Safety Needs: A car allows us to work and earn income to support our family.
• Belonging Needs: Having a nice car like the people we aspire to be means we belong.
• Esteem Needs: A luxury car earns respect and adoration.
• Self-Actualization Needs: A luxury car gives us the edge we need to be successful.

The MSP Hierarchy of Needs:

• Physiological Needs: My business needs a computer network to function.
• Safety Needs: My business needs a safe and secure IT infrastructure.
• Belonging Needs: Good businesses use technology effectively and have competent IT departments. So should mine.
• Esteem Needs: Being a successful technology leader in business will make our company the envy of employees, customers, and competitors.
• Self-Actualization Needs: Effectively leveraging technology will allow me to build a more profitable and successful company.

The Seller’s Mistake:

Here is where most people falter. They sell from the bottom of the pyramid up, rather than from the top down. We tend drill in on the technological (“physiological” and “safety”) needs rather than higher level business concepts. We’re going to keep your equipment running, backup your data, patch your servers, and so on. Blah, that’s boring. These are important aspects of what we do, but they don’t inspire CEOs to pay top dollar for managed services.

The Right Way to Sell:

Selling from the top of the pyramid down excites people. No CEO gets hot and bothered by patch management. Instead, focus on high level concepts. Show them how they can better use technology to increase sales, keep their employees productive, and reach their ultimate business goals. Demonstrate how their competitors are using technology more effectively than they are. Making more money and achieving success excites CEOs. Work from the top down. Show them how you can enable their business to be great.

Paul Barnett is VP and COO at Network Depot, the MSP that launched Virtual Administrator. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.

Since RBS started the Online Backup industry in 1987 many other companies have come and gone, most of them attempting to follow in our footsteps. Over the past 24 years many of these “me-too” companies have based their software on the basic protocol that we invented.

The basic process is simple and has few variants. To do a backup, compress changed data, encrypt it, send it over a network to be stored on a remote server, and make sure it got there safely.

To do a restore, present the user with an interface to select data, download the data from the server, decrypt it, then decompress it and put it back on the local computer, and make sure it got there safely.

This sounds simple, but of course if it were, RBS would have more successful competitors. Doing reliable and fully secure online backups and restores is far more complicated than this, and requires far more experience in the real world than many of the “me-too” companies will have even years from now.

It’s not just about “the software,” either. These days any entry level programmer can write a script that stores and retrieves files over the Internet. Any software designer off the street can put a pretty face on it. A good salesman can sell it nine ways to Sunday.

The software can appear adequate for a narrowly defined set of end users, or in a laboratory environment where all the parameters are known and controlled. But it can fail miserably in the real world because the designers simply don’t have enough experience in the marketplace to be able to program for the vast landscape of different needs and changing environments.

Don’t buy “just software.” Buy experience, wisdom in the marketplace, and a pedigree.

Base your business on a company who has seen it all and done it all, not on some “me-too” startup with no pedigree trying to follow RBS around like a puppy. That other guy might be cute, but he can’t run with the big dogs.

Among my top recommendations:

1. Take sides with a winning idea
2. Sell the idea, they’ll come
3. Show the difference in dollars
4. Share your customer stories and learning from the field
5. Use social media to reach out

1. Take sides with a winning idea
Your website is a basic sales requirement that gives details such as “who you are” and “what you do.” It helps prospects understand your portfolio of services. First create a website, it’s so easy. WordPress helps you create your own website. Next, choose a winning idea or product. It could be about cloud computing, virtualization, a good RMM or helpdesk. If you choose virtualization, contact all the vendors and try to provide the best offers that the market has to give.

2. Sell the idea, they will come
Follow the domain closely and try to establish yourself as a strong cloud/virtualization information company. Add flavor by writing informative blogs on the domain and educate your followers how it can help them. As the time goes by, people will recognize you and start asking advice. Gain the advantage of offering advice and selling to them.

When you have built your expertise in the domain, conduct webinars. Invite a keynote speaker to give some valuable information that helps customers improve their IT performance. Educate your customers on how technology helps them save their time and money. Focus on how you can help them with the technology.

3. Show the difference in dollars
Sell them an idea of parallel evaluation or a test run for a few departments. For example, if you are providing help desk service, offer RMM services free for 30 days. At the end of the month, provide a mock bill for the RMM services. Calculate the cost of inhouse IT staff vs. your mock bill (provided you can deliver services that cost less than inhouse IT). Educate the customer on the dollars that he can save by off-shoring IT and the pros and cons of in-house vs. managed services model.

Here’s a sample calculation: The cost of setting up an operations support team in Florida vs. outsourcing…

Some details about the chart and the calculations…

• Total number of devices to be managed is 500 and the number of operations support personnel required is 5. At an average salary of $55,000 per operations person per year, you would be shelling out $275,000 on salaries for five operations members.
• Workout the price for the managing the 500 devices. If you are charging $30 dollar per device on an average for 500 devices per year, it costs $180,000. A win-win for sides. Moreover, if you have multi-year contracts the difference becomes high when you include salary increments every year.

Also, get a user satisfaction survey. If the user experience improves, it’s great. It’s good even if people say there is no change. You can take the credit of having implemented an efficient system that costs less, without impacting the user experience. Reduced bill and improved services are a win-win for both you and your customer.

4. Share your customer stories and learning from the field
Share your customer stories that help other customers to improve their IT performance. However, be cautious that you never disclose the name of a customer to other customer.

Keep in touch with your customers via newsletters or monthly mailers that help them. Avoid using discounts and buy now links in the newsletter and mailers. Include at least 4 or 5 knowledgeable materials such as whitepapers, videos, analyst’s reports, etc. that benefit the customers. Target them month on month and the buy in will happen eventually. To send bulk mailers you can make use of effective email tools. These tools are available for as low as $15 per month.

5. Use social media to reach out
It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t use twitter or Facebook. Setup fan pages and use Twitter to send out relevant messages to your followers. Follow the analysts’ tweets and feeds, and retweet them. Keep the message stream focused to useful info – absolutely no place for “my cat did this” or “checked in at odd places”. Create a profile in the Facebook for you company, and make it interactive and informative. Post whitepapers and videos, and share useful articles that benefit the customers.

Conclusion
Include the above activities in your day to day process. Make sure you are in constant touch with your prospects and keep providing valuable information and tips to improve IT performance and reduce operational expenses. You will start reaping success in a very short period.

Bharani Kumar is the marketing analyst of MSP Solutions at ManageEngine. Read ManageEngine’s well received book “How to Set Up a Managed Services Business.” Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.

Read More About This Topic

• MSPs: How to Increase Revenues Without Increasing Costs
• If I Was Launching an MSP Today: 10 Steps to Consider
• How to Simplify the Managed Services Sales Process
• Building Sales Collateral that Builds Business: 4 Requirements
• Do You Need Account Managers — Or Salespeople?

We reviewed Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics and found it lived up to its title with 70 pages of detailed advice on how to most effectively gather and measure key marketing metrics.

Within the Guide, a new profile emerged: the Revenue Marketer™. Marketo describes them as marketers who, “begin to operate and sound more like sales.” Trademarked by The Pedowitz Group, The Revenue Marketer™ “…knows how their key metrics stack up against their targets, and what they plan to do to improve their results.”

If you don’t classify yourself as a one of these new breed marketers, you’re not alone. 44% of marketers have no idea what profits a 10% increase in their marketing budget would generate (Lenskold Group’s 2010 B2B Lead Generation Marketing ROI Study)

However, we should.

As the Definitive Guide tells us (and as most of us suspected already), to gain more credibility and respect (translation: budget and resources) within our organizations, marketing needs to measure the things that will guide decisions that improve profitability. We need to start speaking the CEO and CFO’s language.

To do so, we first need to understand and develop goals around:

• How many sales we anticipate our marketing program(s) will generate
• How much revenue each sale produces
• What the gross margin percentage is
  

Next we need to design our programs so that we can effectively measure results. With clearly understood goals and well-defined ROI estimates at the outset, we can then track and connect measurements to our pipelines, revenue, and profits. We also can make adjustments to programs with actionable data to improve results, and therefore improve credibility.

To get started, we recommend you download our Marketing Audit Pack. This group of templates includes our Marketing Plan Audit Template, Marketing ROI Template, Sales & Marketing Scorecard and S.W.O.T. Analysis Template, and will help you:

Make well-informed adjustments to your marketing strategy

Understand the true performance of your marketing plan vs. the estimate

Report your status on a weekly basis to raise awareness about your sales and marketing results

Calculate the ROI on your marketing plan

Think about it. Prospects are taking more time to gather information from the wealth of content online, content that marketers produce. This means we are presiding over a much larger share of the revenue cycle than ever before. If you aren’t yet measuring your ROI, it’s time to start. The Revenue Marketer™ is here to stay.

There are many data privacy regulations in many countries. Here are a few in the USA:

• Payment Card Industry (PCI)
• Sarbanes-Oxley (Section 404 – SOX 404)
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLBA)
• Healthcare Industry Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• California Privacy
• Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)
• USA Patriot Act
• Defense Information Assurance Certification (DIACAP)
• FFIEC, FRB, OCC, FDIC, NCUA, OTS, and more.

Most online backup services offer some form of file encryption as a solution to satisfying these regulations. Some encryption is stronger than others. 

In order to fully satisfy these regulations, data must be encrypted to a certain level (which is different for each regulation) while it is in trasit and at rest on the Online Backup Server, and encryption keys must not be transmitted to the Online Backup Server. The intent is to prevent unauthorized access to the data even if the files are physically compromised.

To accomplish this, Online Backup software must encrypt data before it is transmitted to the Server, and it must not transmit the encryption keys to the server. The data must remain stored in an encrypted state, and never be unencrypted on the Server for any reason – including deduplication, synthesizing full restores, and patching sub-file backups.

Not all Online Backup Services are compliant. Some send data in its raw form over a secure connection, and the data files are stored on the Server in raw form. The files may be secure while in transit, but they are completely open to scrutiny while stored on the Server.

Other Online Backup services do a good job of data encryption but fall short when it comes to the file names, folder names and file dates.

The bulk of the sensitive data might be in the encrypted files. But, if the file names, paths, and dates are stored in native form, they can disclose very sensitive information like this:

G:\\Dr. Brown\Patients\Jack Smith\Procedures\PROC00.24.DOC   08/13/2010

In the above example, the file “PROC00.24.DOC” may be encrypted and secure, but anyone looking at the Server’s directory might easily know that Jack Smith received services associated with procedure code 00.24 from Dr. Brown on August 13, 2010.

In my opinion, storing filenames, paths and dates in raw format breaks compliance with HIPAA and is just simply a bad idea even if it doesn’t.

RBackup from Remote Backup Systems uses strong encryption (user-selectable up to 448 bits) and fully encrypts filenames, paths, and dates. It is compliant with all data privacy regulations to date.

How can you tell if your Online Backup Service might not be fully compliant? Ask these questions and look for these answers.

1. Are files encrypted using at least 256 Bit AES encryption before being sent over the Internet? (Yes)

2. Are files stored in their encrypted state? (Yes)

3. Are filenames, paths, and file dates encrypted, even in databases and indexes used for online restore? (Yes)

4. Does the Server ever have access to the encryption key used to encrypt the files? (No)

5. Does the Server ever decrypt customer files for ANY REASON? (No)

6. Does the Server do global deduplication, sub-file patching, or synthetic full backups? (No)

Rob Cosgrove, CEO Remote Backup Systems

Rob Cosgrove is the President of Remote Backup Systems, founder of the Online Backup Industry, and a vocal advocate for maintaining the highest standards in Online Backup software. His latest book, the Online Backup Guide for Service Providers: How to Start and Operate an Online Backup Service, is available online now, on Amazon.com, and at bookstores.

Remote Backup Systems provides brandable, scalable software and solutions to MSPs and VARs enabling them to offer Online Backup Services.

With very recent survey results from MSPs who offer Online Backup Services, this report discusses pricing plans and the competitive landscape.

Takeaways:

• Technology spending is increasing but hiring is not keeping pace among the most lucrative market segment for Online Backup services – SMBs. More new SMBs than average are being started now.
• SMBs will purchase more servers in the near future.
• More technology and fewer in-house resources to manage it creates a vacuum for MSPs to fill with premium outsourced services.
• Online Backup helps MSPs retain customers and attract new ones.
• Cheap commodity backup services cannot compete with full service MSPs, but their advertising is very good for business.
• Pricing for full service Online Backup Services is far higher than $5/month.
• It is inexpensive to start an Online Backup Service, and high profit is possible with very fast ROI.

From flugtags to x-fighters, Red Bull pumps out wacky marketing events around the world like it’s downed way too much of its homebrew.

From July 7-10, it raised the bar with “Red Bull Creation,” a creativity contest held in a Brooklyn park that pitted 16 teams of the country’s most way-out “hackers, tinkerers and fabricators” in a three-day “build-a-thon.”

The teams were given a theme—“energy in motion”—the night before the competition kicked off, and then had 72 hours to build whatever they’d dreamed up—the weirder, the better.

The event’s mindset is perfectly illustrated by the winning entry from a Minneapolis team called 1.21 Jigawatts. Red Bull described it as a “massive hamster wheel, wired into a mobile network, given its own phone number that received up to 60,000 one-word text messages at a time.” Upon receiving a text message, the wheel would begin rolling and print out a perfect copy of the word on the ground.

Practical, schmactical. 1.21 Jigawatts beat out other entries, including a wheelie-popping shopping cart and a mechanical inchworm named Chillerpillar, on the basis of being “unequivocally awesome.”

Red Bull’s promotional campaign was pretty creative itself. Before the event, it posted ads with QR (quick response) codes on bus shelters all around New York City. Passersby who scanned the code with a mobile device were redirected to a video promoting the event. The campaign seemed to work; on the final day of the event the teams finished their projects onstage before a packed house

Red Bull is no stranger to unique mobile promotions. Last year, it targeted Formula 1 fans with a new racing game built for iPhones and iPod Touchs. This year, it participated in a campaign at 1,400 Canadian convenience stores that delivered instant coupons to shoppers carrying Bluetooth-enabled devices.

— Bob Pickard

A case in point: A new survey commissioned by Fonality and conducted by Webtorials shows that on average, customers of SMBs would pay a 20% maximum premium for exceptional service. In contrast, larger companies could only charge a maximum premium of 15%. In addition, 58% of the respondents prefer to do business with an SMB, compared to only 16% who prefer to do business with larger enterprises.

Fonality is a business communications provider, so naturally this survey has a marketing angle, but one that holds promise for MSPs. Unified Communications (UC) and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions were cited by SMB respondents as important tools to help SMBs achieve greater levels of customer service that would allow them to charge a premium rate. Eighty percent of SMB respondents indicated they were already leveraging VoIP to improve contact center capabilities while reducing operating costs or had plans to integrate the solution within the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, UC, which combines voice, email and chat communications, was either being used, or soon will be, by 64% of those surveyed.

UC, VoIP Can Help SMB Productivity

The survey also shows that SMB users of VoIP and UC-based contact centers surveyed achieved significant productivity gains and cost reduction, with 52% saving 20% or more and almost as many (46%) reporting productivity gains in excess of 10%. Webtorials concluded that smaller budgets and limited skill sets associated with SMBs made them primary candidates to benefit from the greater ROI of cloud-based VoIP and UC services, as opposed to installing and maintaining expensive, complex IT solutions.

MSPs should not focus on the exact figures quoted in the Fonality study, but undoubtedly VoIP and UC services can be of great assistance to SMBs looking to improve customer service and increase profitability. Not many SMBs are equipped to host this type of leading edge technology in-house, making MSPs ideal candidates to enable superior customer service.

Sign up for MSPmentor’s Weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Follow us via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com. Read our editorial disclosure here.

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• Alteva Launches Microsoft-Integrated UC for SMBs
• New Buzz: Communications as a Service (CaaS)
• Fonality: Open Source VoIP Meets Managed Services
• Emerging Managed Services Opportunity: TelePresence Sales Doubling Annually

Indeed, the US SMB tech support market will be worth more than $15 billion in three years, according to a Parks Associates study which says the combined SMB/household tech support market will reach $30 billion, with households accounting for well over 40% of the spend. That still leaves more than half of a very lucrative pie in the hands of SMBs, which by default leaves much of it in the hands of MSPs who serve SMBs lacking in-house tech support capabilities.

Market Underutilized

It should be no great surprise to MSPs with SMB experience that Parks Associates terms this slice of the tech support market “underutilized.” Study data indicates 44% of SMBs experience computer problems, but only 28% of those SMBs use professional support services.

A combination of many MSPs ignoring the potential offered by smaller clients and basic ignorance on the availability of managed services on the part of many SMBs leads to this market not living up to its potential. Of course, this is great news for MSPs who serve the SMB vertical and aren’t shy about trumpeting the advantages their services provide.

Stay Up to Date with Platforms, Channels

The study also finds that long-term growth in the SMB tech support market depends on the ability to add support for new platforms and scale services to provide for multiple channels of support. Parks Associates advises that expanding to include on-site, remote, and depot repair, with proactive maintenance services for multiple devices, is key to growing the market.

In plain terms, don’t expect to achieve long-term growth by finding some new customers for your existing services. That will gain you some initial new clients, but they won’t stick around long if you can’t grow along with their needs.

Game-changers any MSP seeking long-term growth in the SMB tech support market needs to stay abreast of include tablets, smartphones, cloud infrastructure, and integrated cross-channel platforms. Even your small clients are moving away from a siloed IT architecture toward a more holistic model, your support services need to follow suit.

Previously, I wrote an entry on how big box retailers like Office Depot are trying to capitalize on the SMB tech support market. Parks Associates specifically cites how big box retailers, as well as telecommunications companies and the OEMs themselves, are “important” in the space. But when it comes to personal SMB relationships, can anybody really compete with effective MSPs?

Sign up for MSPmentor’s Weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Follow us via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com. Read our editorial disclosure here.

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• The Economy vs. MSPs: Is There A Disconnect?
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