Blogging Hiatus
If you've been wondering why you haven't seen any new posts from me in a couple months, well, its not because of a lack of topics that's for sure. It's the fact that I've been busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest!
Ever since we went to the World Wide Partner Conference in Boston back in July, we've been running at 110% around here.
The conference was great, but the Small Business Symposium was the biggest hit for me. Then I blinked my eyes and it was time for the SMBNation conference.
After attending both conferences, it was apparent about the changes taking place in the partner world. If you are not offering managed services, you better reevaluate your business model because you are going to be left behind by the partners that are making the jump.
There are several books out there on the topic to help you start a managed services practice. from Karl's book "Service Agreements for the IT Consultant",on creating contracts to Chris' book, "The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice – What Every SMB IT Service Provider Should Know…"! which is a Managed Services 101 book, but it has a hefty price tag associated with it. After reading it, I'd say its worth the investment especially for those of you just starting out.
I'm still waiting for Matt Makovicz to get his rear in gear and write his book on building the managed service practice. After all, he's the one that got a lot of this started back in 2004, when his company got the illustrious Certified Partner of the Year award at WWPC for his Managed Services Practice.
He delivered one of the best sessions on managed services I've had the opportunity to attend a year ago at SMBNation 2005 and teased everyone with the idea of a book, now we need him to follow through on that offer. (Yes, Matt I'm calling you out. Its time for you to pay up for those Red Sox tickets we used this summer).
I've talked him into starting a blog site off of the TS2community.com site and its up and running, now its time for blogging 101 for Matt to help him get in the writing mindset so keep your eye out for some posts from him in the near future. If you got as much out of his presentation either in Seattle or on the webcast he delivered with me last December, send me an email so I can pass it along to him to help get him movitated.
Well, I gotta get back to working on the Vista and Office Launch content. Its approaching quickly so I hope everyone is as excited about the new products and the opportunities the present for us in the years ahead.
If you need a copy of Vista RC1, I still have a few disks left so email me and I will try to get them in the mail this week. I've got about 15 of them going out today and there are still about 20 left in my stash.