January 24, 2009

Anybody who’s interested in Essential Business Server from a technical or business perspective should run, not walk, over to YahooGroups.com and sign up for the EBS Virtual UserGroup AKA EBSUserGroup.
Founded by Amy Babinchak, this virtual user group focuses on (surprisingly enough) Essential Business Server and all the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious goodness it includes.
Right now, there’s a live poll for EBSUSerGroup members to indicate which topics they’d most like to hear about in upcoming webcasts. Stuff like:
- EBS Migration
- EBS and Data Protection Manager
- EBS and MOSS/SharePoint
- Selling EBS
- EBS Troubleshooting Tips
- SCE Management in EBS
- EBS and Virtualization
- EBS and Mobility
- EBS and TS Gateway
- EBS Licensing
So if mid-market’s your thing, or you want it to be, this is a darn good place to start getting your feet wet.
|| posted by chris under business, community, freebie, hardware, it pro, mid-market it, migration, mobility, webcast || comments (0) ||
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January 22, 2009
Just a quick heads-up here…

Amy Babinchak and I will be presenting a free webcast to the Fresno SMBTN user group tonight. Amy will be talking about Calyptix and SBS 2008, while I’ll be talking about the technical capabilities of Essential Business Server from a business value perspective.
As usual, if you haven’t updated LiveMeeting in a while, you prolly want to do that well before the meeting is due to start. The shindig kicks off at 6:30p PST.
Here’s the officially official announcement text from Susan Bradley herself, including a link.
When: Thursday, Jan 22, 2009 6:30 PM (PST)
Susan Bradley has invited you to attend an online meeting using Live Meeting.
Join the meeting.
Audio Information
Telephone conferencing
Choose one of the following:
- Start Live Meeting client, and then in Voice & Video pane under Join Audio options, click Call Me. The conferencing service will call you at the number you specify. (Recommended)
- Use the information below to connect:
Toll-free: +1 (866) 553-8146
Toll: +1 (866) 553-8146
Participant code: 5592528585
First Time Users:
To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
Troubleshooting
Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:
- Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/winserver_usergroup/join
- Copy and paste the required information:
Meeting ID: GHN685
Entry Code: 8^-\zqX
Location: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/winserver_usergroup
Hope to see you all there!
|| posted by chris under business, community, freebie, it pro, mid-market it, webcast || comments (0) ||
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January 21, 2009

About a week ago I received notice that I’d been shifted from being an MVP for Small Business Server to one of the first five Essential Business Server MVPs.
So what does that mean in practical terms? For those of you stopping by, there will be a whole heaping lot more focus on mid-market topics here at the ol’ Funcave.
For me personally, this change means a much better fit in a lot of ways. In my career, I’ve done more work for larger clientele, primarily mid-market and up into enterprise deployments.
Which is a whole other ball of wax, quite frankly. Not saying one is better than the other. But nearly every approach you take for a mid-market customer is completely different from the way you approach small business customers. Desn’t matter if you’re talking nuts and bolts to a TDM or bucks and pennies with a BDM.
If you try to use the same approach for mid-market customers that you use for small business customers, and vice versa…you might as well be smacking them in the face with a 3 week old fish. And unless you are selling to trained seals, your customers are never gonna bite.
|| posted by chris under business, it pro, mid-market it || comments (2) ||
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