My partner, Alex Muse, had a great article in the Dallas Morning News today, check it out if you haven’t read it (also check out Alex’s post about the story here). Alex and I met in YEO back in the late 90s. I can vividly remember him walking into Forum training wearing a t-shirt, ripped jeans and flip flops. At the time, he had just raised more than ten million dollars from venture capitalists. My company at the time, Network Services Now had just raised half that from Hall Financial and spun out a software company called Skywire Software. We were both in our late twenties (okay maybe I was 30) and we thought we knew it all, yet we had much to learn. Over the next few years I watched the technology staffing space steadily decline and Alex felt the pains of the post dot. com era as he went from the top to the bottom – his company ultimately filing Chapter 11 after the dot.com bubble burst.
After re-doubling efforts and re-building my staffing and recruiting firm, and Alex bringing his company out of bankruptcy, we began talking about building a company together. We talked about all of the mistakes we both had made in the past.\
Growing too fast.
Focusing on revenue instead of profit.
Giving shareholders more attention than customers.
In 2001 we were both still focused on our day jobs, but along with two other partners we started Architel. The idea was simple – flat-fee IT support for small businesses. We had lots of ideas on how to deliver ‘aligned’ services. By 2003 I noticed that both of us were spending more time talking about Architel than our day jobs and that is when I suggested we become full-time partners.
We put two desks in a room and wrote a business plan focused on building a sustainable, customer focused IT business. Our first objective was to avoid all of the mistakes we had made in the past. Our second objective was to build a company that was both fun and rewarding. After almost a decade of working together I think we have succeeded. Besides our primary business, Architel, we have been involved with a few really exciting projects including MotorSport Ranch, ShopSavvy, Fancast and WhiteBox. Anyway, I just wanted to congratulate Alex on the recognition!
One of our biggest competitors sends an article from the Dallas Morning News that quotes me (Alexander Muse, co-founder of Architel) to our clients suggesting that it means that Architel is somehow failing as a business. Here is the quote from the newspaper:
Among the few that are hiring is Big in Japan, a 4-year-old Dallas company that creates applications for mobile devices. Big in Japan has added 50 developers and designers since May – half in the U.S. and half overseas – and is hiring more, said co-founder Alexander Muse.
“Mobile applications markets are exploding,” he said. “If the economy were doing better, we might not be hiring as many people because we might have more competitors. The irony is, the economy is actually helping us.”
However, three other Dallas businesses that Muse is involved with are not hiring. He said one – Architel, an information technology outsourcing company – would have to start gaining more clients than it has been losing to justify more hiring.
The competitor suggests that this is ‘proof’ that Architel is ‘blowing up’. This is NOT true. Ironically, if you have ever been quoted in the press you might know that what is printed is not always exactly what was said. For example, in this case I was asked if Architel was hiring and I indicated that we are ALWAYS hiring, but that we were not increasing headcount. I explained that the Architel business was flat – i.e. that we were gaining new clients at a rate that equaled our loses. Several of our clients have been sold, some have filed bankruptcy while others have downsized considerably. Scott and his sales team have been doing an amazing job of replacing troubled customers with new customers – Architel’s monthly recurring revenue is actually at an all time high (i.e. albeit only slightly more than it was last year). Flat is the new up, right?
What the article fails to mention is the fact that we have been buying IT services companies that haven’t been able to weather the current financial difficulties. Ironically, the Dallas Morning News wrote about our growth via acquisition in an article titled, “Dallas entrepreneur buying struggling tech startups“. We have not been expanding our headcount, but we have been acquiring our competitors, their clients and some of their more talented employees. Architel has more than 100 employees today – much of this is through our acquisitions and not organic hiring.
So if you receive an email from one of our competitors suggested we are not doing well – ask them why they aren’t talking about their own success. This specific competitor claims they have 99%+ rate of client retention – I know for a fact (unless than have 5,000 clients) that their retention rate is lower. How do I know? Their clients are now our clients. Why? Hopefully because we offer a great service.
Two weeks ago our team headed to San Francisco to attend Google IO, their annual developers conference. The most exciting thing we saw was Wave. I am fairly confident that Wave and the new email protocol it is based on will be very important over the coming years.
You might be surprised if you realize that the current email protocol is 40 years old – older than the modern internet. If you had to start over today and wanted to build ‘email’ what would it look like. I can guarantee it wouldn’t be anywhere close to the current protocol and implementation. Google has spent the last four years developing Wave, but instead of trying to sell it to us they decided to give it to the world for free. This is ground shaking. The most advanced communication platform delivered to the world for free.
I was in the audience as the Wave team demonstrated Wave and it was amazing. They received a standing ovation – guys were holding their laptops over their heads – it was as if Bono had just given a free concert and explained you could come stay at his house anytime. Literally amazing. I can’t really explain why Wave is so important – maybe you should just check it out for yourself (it will take 80 minutes):
Rafe Needleman explains it very well in a post titled, “Hands-on with Wave”
Google just opened up to a limited audience its very interesting communications experiment called Wave (news stories). Our hands-on evaluation: there’s a lot to like. It really is a more contemporary take on communications. But it will knock many e-mail users off-balance.
Even Wave’s own Software Engineering Manager Lars Rasmussen told me, “It takes a little getting used to,” and, “We’re still learning how to use it.” Imagine how everyone else will feel.
If you want to try Wave, you’ll have to wait. Google is making access to the service available to some developers and press, but full availability will not be until “later this year,” Google says. The version we tested was very raw, still in development. Many features were not implemented and the system threw us a few errors. But the framework and philosophy is clear to see, and that’s what this evaluation is based on.
Getting started in Wave: It looks a lot like e-mail…
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
What’s Wave?
Wave is real-time e-mail. What that means is that when you’re writing a reply to a message (or “wave”) that you receive in the system, the recipient can see what you are typing as you type it. It will come as a relief to most that the real-time feature can be disabled if you click on the “draft” button (not working in my trial) while writing. But real-time visibility is the default.
You can put your replies anywhere in the message. You can also do this in regular e-mail, but in Wave, your comments are easy to pick out since the app bounds reply text in colored boxes with authors’ pictures embedded in them. Those of us who prefer to reply to e-mail messages at the end (or the beginning) and not piecemeal can just reply as usual. But when you want to write a surgical point-by-point reply to a message, Wave makes it easy.
You can drop pictures straight into Wave messages (a neat trick in a browser-based app, made possible by Google Gears), and smart assistants will let you convert addresses to maps, automatically fix spelling errors, and expand contact names.
But Wave is not e-mail. In this image, I am watching co-developers Lars and Jens Rasmussen type replies to my query. The teal tag shows that Jen is typing right now; Lars, who just finished typing above Jens, had his own, separate color.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
But it’s the reply-anywhere feature combined with the real-time function that’s most interesting. It makes Wave the first useful blend of e-mail and instant messaging that I’ve seen. Unlike Google’s previous attempt to meld the two communications modes into one app (Gmail has Google Talk in its sidebar), this one really works. An asynchronous e-mail conversation between two people can can stay that way, or it become real-time when both parties are online, and the dialog stays in place in the e-mail for later viewing. Switching between the e-mail and IM mode is seamless. In fact, the concept of the two different modes vanishes in Wave.
Wave’s message handling really shines when a conversation is between more than two people. Using Wave and its specific, color-coded replies, a group of people can have an actual discussion in e-mail, in real-time if wanted, without getting bogged down in long multi-message discussions–or worse, in threads that end up forking so that different people are discussing different things.
The Wave in-box pane shows you when there are new messages in your threads by bolding the subject lines, and when somebody is actively typing in a wave, you can see the text come in live, in the two-line preview every message gets. That’s really cool, although it can be overwhelming.
Speaking of being overwhelmed, the first time I had two people replying to me in an individual message at the same time, in different places in it, my head almost exploded. It’s a lot of raw information coming it at once, and it’s very different from the old e-mail or the instant message experience.
A new communications architecture
A lot of what Wave does is made possible by the fact that Wave messages don’t live primarily in the desktop Wave client (which is actually a rich browser-based app), as the traditional design of e-mail dictates, but rather on the Wave server. Messages aren’t just dropped off at your Wave client; persistent links to messages on the servers come with them. When you edit a wave with the Wave application on your computer, it’s immediately reflected back to the Wave server, and from then out to other users who are viewing that Wave in their apps, immediately.
Wave servers synchronize with each other as needed. In fairness, this is not radically different from how Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange work, but Wave has no legacy support for old e-mail architectures whatsoever, and isn’t bogged down by the old methods–like the practice of delivering messages to users and then severing the links to those messages.
Other benefits you get from this include the capability to add new recipients to a wave at any time, and for Wave to know, when that happens, what each user has read and what they haven’t. Users’ views into Wave will highlight what’s new to them when they open a message.
And, taking a page from Twitter Search, Wave’s search function will be real-time (it wasn’t when I tried it). If you are searching for a word or phrase in your inbox of waves, and someone updates a message thread with your search target, that message will pop up in your results the moment they type in the change. (You can save searches in the navigation bar, a nice feature.)
All together? Not yet
At the moment, the only people Wave users can communicate with are other Wave users. Wave addresses look like e-mail addresses, but there’s no gateway between Internet e-mail and Wave, so messages send from standard e-mail clients to Wave will bounce. This is a serious limitation, and one Google hopes developers will rectify by writing gateways between Wave and standard e-mail servers, not to mention IM services and other social and workflow systems like Facebook, Bugzilla, and so on. A Twitter interface is already being shown.
However, as Rasmussen told me, Wave is currently spam-free since it’s not linked into the global e-mail system. He doesn’t want to open up Wave to standard e-mail until he can ensure that this system won’t be overrun, too.
In fact, the reason Wave is being released in the way it is right now–as an early developer-only experience–is to encourage programmers to write extensions to it. The e-mail gateway is particularly critical, and Google may develop it itself. Without it, Wave is yet another new communications medium that will have a hard time getting off the ground since it duplicates many capabilities people are already accustomed to. Wave is technically a radical departure from e-mail, but for the end users it will still be used for a lot of the same things e-mail is.
Google’s Wave team hasn’t yet done much integration with other Google developers’ projects, although Wave was introduced to the company through a detailed video demo. As Rasmussen told me, “To say we’re ‘working with’ other Google groups would be a stretch.” Obvious integrations we’re waiting for include Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Voice.
It’s about time
The merger of e-mail, instant messaging, and collaborative editing is overdue. Aside from the inertia of technology, there’s no reason we should we need different applications–an e-mail client (or site), an instant messenger, and a collaborative editor–for variations on the theme of textual communication. I give Google a lot of credit for kicking off this experiment.
When Wave comes out, try it immediately. It really is an eye-opener.
Just because someone or something tells you to do something doesn’t mean you should do it. For example, your computer has no idea why you are still using IE6/7.
Starting on or about the third week of April, users still running IE6 or IE7 on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Server 2008 will get will get a notification through Automatic Update about IE8. This rollout will start with a narrow audience and expand over time to the entire user base. On Windows XP and Server 2003, the update will be High-Priority. On Windows Vista and Server 2008 it will be Important.
Here is the deal, lots of our clients still use IE6 due to compatibility issues. Please don’t upgrade because you get an alert. Let Architel update/upgrade your computer. We are going to exclude the ‘alert’ from as many clients as possible, but if we miss you – please take note.
Are you coming to the startup happy hour tonight? The Dallas Startup Happy Hour is the talk of the startup community in Dallas. Check out the coverage in the Dallas Morning News: http://tinyurl.com/sshhdfw As a result of the events, several startups have found a) employees, b) co-founders, c) angel investors and d) had a few free drinks.
Are you interested in connecting with the local startup community? We are working to build a vibrant startup community here in Dallas every bit as interesting and dynamic as San Francisco, Boulder, Boston or Austin. The first step is engagement.
Sponsored by SpringStage – you are invited to attend. Please RSVP.
Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) system builder partners who’ve been feeling queasy about the impending Jan. 31, 2009, deadline for selling PCs with Windows XP pre-installed can now breathe a bit easier, as Microsoft is giving them a way to obtain XP licenses through distribution after the deadline.In an e-mail to ChannelWeb, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the existence of a flexible inventory program that will allow distributors to place their final orders for Windows XP OEM licenses by Jan. 31, 2009, and take delivery against those orders through May 30.
Previously, distributors had planned to purchase as many XP licenses as they could afford before Jan. 31, 2009, and sell them after the deadline. But once that inventory was gone, they’d have no choice but to turn away XP-seeking customers.
Distributors have until Dec. 31 to submit their XP license demand forecasts to Microsoft, and system builders are reportedly being asked to provide their own forecasts to distributors.
It’s yet another sign of the market’s resistance to Windows Vista, and of the growing realization within the channel that many customers have decided to simply skip Vista and wait for the arrival of Windows 7. Microsoft says that’s slated for late 2009 or early 2010, but some reports have suggested it could come as early as mid-2009.
Distributors say the best part of the new arrangement is that they won’t have to take title to the reserved XP licenses until they’re sold to an end user, which helps them avoid having to sit on inventory for several months, which is a major concern in a low-margin business.LINK
Reports have surfaced that there is a serious security flaw in IE. The flaw allows infected websites to steal your passwords. The good news, it ONLY affects IE7 (most of you still use IE6) and it only affects little known websites. If you are an IE7 user you can be 100% safe by only visiting websites you know and trust. A patch should be available soon – in the meantime stop browsing the internet. Microsoft offers these tips:
Change IE security settings to high (Look under Tools/Internet Options)
Switch to a Windows user account with limited rights to change a PC’s settings
With IE7 or 8 on Vista turn on Protected Mode
Ensure your PC is updated
Keep anti-virus and anti-spyware software up to date
On Friday we completed the purchase of SevenLayer™, an enterprise application support business based in Seattle, Washington. The company’s primary assets are a) its Onboarding Team – highly skilled software/infrastructure engineers who specialize in ‘onboarding’ software and b) its proACT and reACT software platform.
The Need: More and more companies are able to secure the services of highly skilled software developers at more and more reasonable prices. Agile development techniques have brought the cost of onshore development to very low levels with offshore development costs being even less. Development outsourcing to India, Philippines, China and Eastern Europe have been a boon to productivity here in the United States and in the West in general. Business owners can use software to solve complex business problems that ‘off-the-shelf’ software can’t handle. More and more companies are using these custom applications to create a competitive advantage. The problem, these applications are orphans.
These orphan applications have lots of parents (developers, internal IT, third-party integrators, external IT and business users). The original developers may be onshore or offshore, but if they are worth their salt they have moved on to new projects. Keeping a developer around for a custom application is very expensive and very frustrating to the developer. However, most are willing to keep their toe in the water, but it is usually very difficult to engage them. Specifically, the internal IT department is filled with highly skilled engineers and technicians who have no idea how and why software functions the way it does. They understand servers, operating systems and off-the-shelf applications like Exchange and SQL, but they don’t necessarily understand HOW they work. They install complex and sophisticated monitoring tools, but rarely do these tools have visibility into whether or not the application is actually functioning correctly. The server may be up, but the transactions it is generating may be getting lost. Third-party integration specialists may understand how the application works, but only at a very highly hourly cost. Business users often become very frustrated because no single party will take responsibility – internal IT suggests, “We didn’t write this thing.” – the developers suggest, “It is a problem with your SQL cluster.” – the third-party resource suggests, “This is going to be great!”
In the past most companies hired their own ‘onboarding’ person ($100K+) who was responsible for purchasing an application monitoring system – usually costing more than $100,000 and $25,000 per year in licensing and support costs. This ‘onboarding’ resource would then ‘onboard’ the application and recruit two or three ‘help desk’ people ($30K+ each) to answer alerts related to the software. Typically these alerts are generated more by the infrastructure than by the application itself and the resulting ‘application’ support is still a frustrating and expensive proposition for the company. Costs approaching $300K year one and more than $200K each year after that.
The Solution: SevenLayer has developed a two-stage model for supporting custom applications. The first stage is called Onboarding. SevenLayer’s onboarding team works with the developers, business users and internal IT to understand how the application works. Once it has a firm grip on the application’s function and purpose the next step is to determine how and where hooks can be made within the software. These hooks are used to connect to SevenLayer’s proACT system. The onboarding team then writes knowledge articles for each ‘hook’ explaining a) what has happened if the ‘hook’ is triggered and b) what to do about it once it as been triggered. The initial target is to have complete knowledge articles for 20% of all possible alerts. The remaining 60% are written over the first few months of engagement. Finally, we build SLAs for various aspects of the application.
SevenLayer’s reACT system becomes key for determining who is responsible for which alerts as well as how quickly (per the SLAs) issues need to be resolved. The onboarding team determines which alerts and tickets are the responsibility of the developer, in house IT and Architel’s support team. reACT allows multiple parties to have varied levels of responsibility over a certain application and avoids much of the finger pointing and blame associated with traditional support. reACT organizes and distributes inbound alerts and user generated tickets based on rules created during the onboarding process. Once an alert or ticket is sent to the appropriate team the agent is then presented with live access to the proACT monitoring system so they can see in real-time how the application is functioning. They are also presented with the knowledge article related to the issue they are dealing with. In many cases the agent can simply confirm the issue and follow the instructions in the knowledge base to resolve the ticket or alert. In the event an issue isn’t covered in the knowledge base, the agent is requested to create a knowledge article related to the resolution or to escalate the issue to our tier three team who will then resolve and document the solution.
Conclusion: More and more companies are building custom applications and these applications are becoming more and more integral to the competitive advantage of these businesses. Architel’s new SevenLayer business can help enterprise clients safeguard these ‘application’ assets at a significantly lower cost. Typical cost for onboarding is $10-20K per application and $5-10K per month for proACT/reACT plus tier 1&2 support – total first year cost between $70K and $140K, with future costs between $60-120K.
We will be talking more about BLive in the near future, but we wanted to share the basic details of the service now. Small to mid-size businesses compete in a world that demands rapid, spontaneous response and ongoing communications with customers, prospects and employees. BLive’s revolutionary Message to Meeting (M2M) service allows you to instantly ‘get on the same page ‘ with the people most important to your business.
BLive provides four services within one affordable package:
Desktop Sharing
Remote Desktop View/Control
Two-Way File Transfer
Instant Chat
Be More Profitable – Use BLive to increase sales
Expand your sales territory – train and support remotely
Bill more support calls in one day – reduce travel ‘downtime’
Get a competitive advantage by providing “click to chat” access
Be accessible and interact with your prospects at the moment they want to buy
Be More Efficient – Phone discussions or email isn’t always enough
Share your desktop online so that you are all “on the same page”
Fix problems directly by controlling remote desktops
Control the web experience by easily directing the participant’s web browser
Transfer files to and from a remote desktop without the hassle of email limitations
With BLive, you get the following features:
Desktop Sharing (max:10 participants)
Remote Desktop Viewing
Remote Desktop Control
Instant Chat with BLiveLinks
2-way File Transfer
Archived History
Contact management
Customizable BLiveLinks for marketing/sales
Be More Available – Encourage prospects/customers to connect with you
Make your website interactive with a BliveLink “instant chat” button
Add a personal BLiveLink to your email signature to provide instant connectivity
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Are you coming to the startup happy hour tonight? The Dallas Startup Happy Hour is the talk of the startup community in Dallas. Check out the coverage in the Dallas Morning News: 
On Friday we completed the purchase of 
We will be talking more about BLive in the near future, but we wanted to share the basic details of the service now. Small to mid-size businesses compete in a world that demands rapid, spontaneous response and ongoing communications with customers, prospects and employees. BLive’s revolutionary Message to Meeting (M2M) service allows you to instantly ‘get on the same page ‘ with the people most important to your business.