Automation Nation 2017 was Awesome!

Automation Nation was June 21-23rd this year and it was another great event. Got to meet up with some really great people and had some good discussions about the future of ConnectWise Automate.

David Miller from Piriform, the makers of CCLeaner was there supporting the CCleaner product and promoting the CCleaner for LabTech plugin.

It was nice get a chance to meet personally to discuss collaborative ideas and methods of problem solving. It was not easy getting the 3 most influential people in the LabTech / Connectwise Automate community together for a photo op, but we were able to get a quick shot between break sessions.

Read more about the trip to Orlando and Automation Nation here…

P4L wants the Good, Bad or Indifferent opinions you have about their LabTech Plugins

Plugins4LabTech is having a contest and they are giving away a subscription to Surflog to 1 lucky participant. All they want is your honest opinions on the plugins you use. If you think your MSP will benefit from a free year of Surflog then go visit www.plugins4labtech.com and post your reviews.

Application Delivery – The challenges a MSP faces as they expand service offerings to keep up with changing markets

Challenges With Application Delivery

The MSP marketplace has exploded over the last 15 years and with that growth comes a more diverse marketplace and greater offerings to help attract clients. The need to provide even more services that have a real impact to the client has been at the forefront of this boom and drives the market for improving themselves over the simple “Geek Squad” mentality of let me fix your PC. The rapid pace of technological developments in the MSP space has introduced wrinkles to this paradigm that has left many businesses shackled to old methods of application delivery even as new means of application delivery offer a path forward.

shannon2

Shannon Anderson, Sr. Systems Engineer and Application Developer with MainSpring Inc. has over 20 years of experience working with and managing MSPs. Shannon is an advocate for automation. His vast knowledge of services provided by the MSP market makes him uniquely qualified to discuss the Pros and Cons of Application Delivery; what is evolved; whom the players are and how to come out on top with proven methods.

Application Delivery, What’s That?

Application Delivery is the ability to provide and push any software title to any end system using automation. When you start asking questions about Application Delivery, you will get a lot of different answers on what that entails. Many people tend to associate it with Application Maintenance which is not accurate. The key differences are being able to provide software to your clients when and where they need it. Maintenance presumes that you have some key software that needs to be maintained. Application Delivery is being able to provide software that can be pushed out to the MSP’s clients through automation and policies.

There are several services available to MSPs that allow them to provide application maintenance to their end customers. These product provide access to a limited number of common software titles and are geared towards providing updates automatically for those software titles as a service. They are not really designed to deploy applications, but, to maintain a select set of them after deployments. Application Delivery is designed to deliver and maintain unlimited software titles to the end system through automation and policy. This process allows MSPs a more granular approach to how they expose their clients to deployment of technology and how to maintain consistency across a client and the MSP as a whole.

What’s Involved?

Application Delivery is a bit more involved than Application Maintenance and is one factor that separates the inexperienced MSP from the veteran MSP. Application Delivery requires a lot more involvement from the engineering side of the MSP but in return adds diversity and manageability to the MSP’s offerings. Unlike application maintenance where a vendor pre-qualifies a few updates, Application Delivery needs to account for thousands of applications and their updates which is a much larger responsibility to own.

What are the Pro’s and Con’s

This is arguably the most queried subject with Application Delivery in a MSP environment. What does it do for me? What is the catch? Application Delivery should not be taken lightly. There is a lot of work to do to make sure things run smoothly and that your clients get the best use of the services you offer. To deliver application efficiently today you need a deployment framework that allows for the hosting; security; versioning and deployment of a large amount of applications. There are several frameworks being developed or used to provide this functionality to end systems. In the Unix world you have frameworks like Yum or Apt-get. Likewise, in the Windows world you have NuGet and Chocolatey.

Lets talk about some of the Con’s

Unlike with Application Maintenance where the vendor provides a vetted set of software application to update like Java, Flash and Adobe Reader, Application Delivery can provide any software you want to create packages for. This at first, would look like it should be part of the Pro’s list ,and it is, but it is also a Con for a lot of MSPs. By being able to provide unlimited software titles and unlimited version updates means there is less likely that a package has been vetted. This can bring up security concerns when delivering 3rd party software to your end client. If you use the public software repositories as your main distribution point then vetting the software and the providers is key in maintaining security over the software you install. Not doing so would invite elements into you managed networks that are undesirable. This means that you must do your homework; identify the resources that provide valid products; pre stage deployments and verify integrity.

The Pro’s on Application Delivery

When done right, the Pro’s are many indeed. The one that stands out most to me is being able to control the deployment of approved applications consistently across our MSP. The selections of software titles can be vast depending on the repositories you use. Chocolatey boasts that over 2500 applications and updates are hosted on the public repositories which dwarfs and maintenance vendors repositories. The delivery of applications are not just limited to freeware software. Repositories often offer 3rd party paid software deployments and updates making the deployment of new hardware very easy and consistent with deployment policies. Another really great Pro in my opinion is the ability to host your own repositories providing another layer of security to your delivery processes. When building and creating your own deployment packages you have ultimate control over the software and the options enabled inside the package. Another Pro is that you are not limited by the software vendors available. Install software from Microsoft;Adobe; Apple; Google; Piriform; Kaspersky and Oracle to name just a few.

Who are the players?

When it comes to Application Delivery there are just a few names out there. More are available for the Application Maintenance market place. We named a few of the frameworks available to use for Application delivery as doing a search on Google may not produce much to help the average MSP. Both Kaseya and LabTech are offering to the MSPs that use their platforms a set of functions to maintain some applications. You have 3rd party products like Ninite. Then there is Squidwork’s Chocolatey For LabTech which harnesses the Chocolatey framework to provide true Application Delivery.

Come Out On Top!

MSPs that succeed have one thing in common, that is they continue to push the edge of product service offerings expanding the level of service provided to their clients. Application Delivery is one way a MSP can make its mark on it customers and delivery exceptional services which will help retain and grow their business.

Plugin Innovation can be found in the most absurd places

The Domino’s Pizza Plugin

This last year, Squidwork’s Geek, Shannon Anderson, a Sr. Systems Engineer; software developer and RMM platform Integrator spent several days at the LabTech Synergy boot camp where he was immersed in the operations of the LabTech platform as part of an integration overview. The idea, LabTech wanted Integrators to come away with at this boot camp, was Integration can come in all forms. With Integration we can have a great impact on the business we support.

This was never more apparent then when during day two of the boot camp they had a pizza luncheon with the Sr. Development team from LabTech and the attendees at the Synergy boot camp. The organizers had miscalculated the amount of pizza a room of technical engineers would consume and so they found themselves a little short on substance.

Innovation can come from some of the oddest places and for the most bizarre reasons. Not having enough pizza to go around a room of engineers started discussions about how innovations could solve problems like this. The room of engineers threw out different ideas that reached across the spectrum of possibilities, even for pizza. It then came down to “There should be a Domino’s Pizza Plugin for LabTech” , not just a web page on a tab but a more analytical approach to pizza delivery.

The question arose, how can a RMM platform make a better “mouse trap”, or, in this instance a better pizza delivery service? You could look across the room and see the “gear heads” toiling with the idea as they started spewing out different features this plugin would need. It had to be automated; it had to be simple; it needed to calculate and understand how much pizza would be needed; and it should follow up with management to provide some layers for determining progress of the pizza to be delivered.

The Domino’s Pizza Plugin was born. This plugin would use the RMM platform to calculate how many people at a client’s company were actively logged in to PC’s to determine the gross pizza that was needed to be ordered. It would then send out a notice to each workstation requesting feedback as to the toppings and then take that feedback to determine how to slice up the orders so that everyone got the toppings on the amount of pizza they were to consume. It would then need to order the correct amount and to pay for it via the corporate credit card. It should calculate the distance the driver would drive to cover the tip as well. There would need to be a scheduler that could be used so that if the company opted into a “Pizza Friday” this could be scheduled automatically. There would need to be a manual launcher provided that would allow “one off” orders for these special occasions that prompted for a pizza lunch and the ability to add offline users to the order. We had to take in mind, that a company is not always at the same location. The plugin would need to determine all company locations and the amount of active employees at each location to carve up the order so that each location received the allotted amount pizza. Of course, we would need some metrics sent back to the management team like costs per order; number of orders per month and year; the most popular toppings ordered; and how much each employee consumes regularly. The plugin should show how its ROI is doing and the amount of man hours it has saved the company by automating all the duties of coordinating a mass pizza order for the company. Now we could see the untold hours each year it would save a company who otherwise would have to take on such costly tasks, and of course, all the happy employees with full bellies.

What is seen by this demonstration in engineering prowess is that Innovation can be found in the most absurd places, they can also have the most impact. The next time your company orders pizza ask if there is an APP for that.

Shannon Anderson

a.k.a Cubert

New website development – www.hogtrek.com – Where to go when you want to ride!

Squidworks.net starts development on a National Harley Davidson Riders Community.

Whether it’s a joyride or a long haul, cruising the U.S Highways on a Hog is an activity that only a few get to do in their lifetime. The friends and family you make on the trails are like no other. Hogtrek.com brings groups of biker together to promote the brotherhood that is created when you bring two bikes together.

Hogtrek.com is a free membership based web community that caters to the Harley Davidson Motorcycle Rider. The website provides access to a large database of Harley dealerships, motorcycle riding clubs and parts and paints from across the United States. The Harley Davidson owners one stop shop for fun, maintenance, performance and biker bling. With community and group forums, motorcycle club group hosting and part and paint venders. You have only one place to go to get all you need for the ride ahead. We sponsor motorcycle ride routes in our monthly riders choice cycle routes. See our selection of motorcycle routes and ride maps, members can upload new Google Map routes to be previewed by the community or browse the library of motorcycle routes uploaded from our membership. The next time you need a motorcycle route for you club to ride come to Hogtrek.com.

Come check out the “whats going on’s” at Hogtrek.com

It’s Cubert’s Birthday

Happy Birthday Cubert!!

Florida Beach Shark Buddy

This video was shot in Melbourne Beach Florida and the man in this video is Charlie “The Bisket” McDuffie, a life time local of Brevard County. He is the sharkyest, scruffy beach rodder on the East Coast and known well by many at any bait shop or watering hole Melbourne has to offer. Here he debates whether to keep his new found 7 foot shark or push him back in

This video was shot in Melbourne Beach Florida and the man in this video is Charlie “The Bisket” McDuffie, a life time local of Brevard County. He is the sharkyest, scruffy beach rodder on the East Coast and known well by many at any bait shop or watering hole Melbourne has to offer. Here he debates whether to keep his new found 7 foot shark or push him back in to the surf for another day. It’s worse to regret then to let go.

Charlie has hunted sharks up and down the East Coast of Florida for nearly 40 years. Since a small child he has spent time each spring hunting sharks. Today’s video is Charlie letting his little buddy go.. But wait! Wait! I didn’t get my $20 bucks worth of leader, swivels and hook.. The last thing old Bisket does if you watch for it as in true Florida Cracker style he fires his nose canon.

Florida Beach Shark Buddy – The Full unedited MPEG

As the video nears the end you see a large bolt of lighting strike just off to the south and it starts to rain.

All is well that ends well!

Your other buddy Cubert..

Keep the big ones coming!