#labtechsoftware

[cwright01]

Day 3: Final Automation Nation 2014 #AN14 Recap - An Overview

Today's been the final day of Automation Nation for all attendees and exhibitors here in Orlando, FL. As we all pack up our rooms and get ready for the drive (or flight home), I just wanted to take one more moment and share the day's events.

Douglas Merrill’s Keynote

Day 2 started off with more Breakouts, so partners and exhibitors could compose themselves after last night, before we all headed to the Keynote Theatre for a presentation by Douglas Merrill, the former CIO at Google.

Douglas's story was fairly simple, but highly relevant. From 1990 to now, 2 out of every 3 companies on the S&P 100 have dropped off the list. Was this because they're bad companies? Not at all. Just look at Kodak as an example. Kodak had created and retained ownership of more patents than even Google. Yet, when one of their engineers invented a way for light to flip a bit on a silicon chip, his manager said "We make film here." They were so focused on doing what they've always done, that they missed a huge opportunity for the future. And that tendency isn't unique to Kodak, or to the other 2 in 3 companies no longer around from the S&P 100 in 1990.

Businesses, from the largest enterprises to the 3 man shop IT Service Providers, need the ability to identify not only what will keep the lights on today, but also what will help them grow tomorrow. To learn this ability, we can all start by learning how to ask the right questions. One of the ways to do this is by talking with your customers. Now, that doesn't mean you should start doing a slew of focus groups. As Henry Ford is often misquoted "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."

You... I mean... We need to be pragmatic in our approach. Once we have the right question, we start to gather evidence, and analyze it as thoroughly as possible. This is where topics like "Big Data" and the new job openings for "Data Scientist" come in. According to Douglas's view, "Data Scientist" is a redundant word, as a scientist inherently deals in data. So he proposes a different name: "Data Artist"

Yes, the data itself is important, and being able to analyze it is also important. But what matters most and should likely take up the majority of your time, is properly communicating that analysis to others - which is more art than science. Douglas challenged the entire audience to go home and start finding the right questions, so we can all stay relevant in 10-15-20+ years.

Solutions Pavilion

After the keynote, Automation Nation attendees had a chance to grab some food and talk with all the different exhibitors who helped sponsor this event. This was a record year for LabTech Software due to the sheer number of sponsors helping to show their support for the IT Service Provider industry. Webroot, Automation Nation's first Diamond Sponsor, set up shop in the middle of the Solutions Pavilion and shot pink, stuffed animal, pigs into the air as attendees looked for new potential tools.

But to me, the most interesting thing about the exhibitors this year, is that almost 75% already have or are actively planning an integration with LabTech - so partners can keep adding solutions that will help move them ever closer to the reality of a "Single Pane of Glass."

Breakouts

For the rest of the day, Automation Nation attendees had a chance to view presentations, work in labs, and participate in panel discussions.

As some of the sessions were redo's from yesterday (so all attendees had a chance to participate), with just a few "net new" sessions, I won't bother going into all the details here. But if you'd like to know more, please feel free to read our Day 2 Recap (link) or the summary description for sessions from Round 7 to 11 (link)

Aloha

Well, that’s it for Automation Nation 2014. It’s been a whirlwind of a conference, to say the least, and we really can’t thank you enough for being a part of it. The partners, panelists, employees, and other vendors were a pleasure to speak with and learn from. As LabTech Software continues to evolve internal processes and find more of the "right questions," you can expect our tools to continue evolving to help better meet your needs 😃

[cwright01]

Day 2: Automation Nation 2014 #AN14 Recap

Keynotes, breakouts, and partners, oh my! Day 2 of Automation Nation has turned out better than I think any of us could have expected (except for our CEO of course 😃). For those of you who are attending this year, the keynote and breakouts are being recorded and will be made available later this quarter. However, for anyone that WASN'T able to join, let me try to break it all down for you.

Matt Nachtrab's Keynote

Today started bright and early with a keynote presentation by LabTech Software's CEO, Matt Nachtrab. During this presentation, he not only described the future of the LabTech University, he also showed partners what the new courses will look like - allowing LabTech partners to quickly get up to speed following workflowed training modules that've been broken out by roles.

From there, LabTech's CEO talked about the Synergy Platform, which encompasses TAPP, all of LabTech's APIs and SDK, and let's partners become a part of the LabTech Development Network. By being a part of this Development Network, Stack Advisors, one of the 1st LabTech Development Network partners, was able to get officially introduced to Webroot and help them create their new integration with LabTech.

After all that, Matt Nachtrab brought it all home by highlighting EDTS and how they're institutionalized automation in their business, which led into Operation Automation (aka. the subject of this year's conference). For those who weren't able to be in attendance, Operation Automation is essentially the goal LabTech Software has for each partner being able to incorporate automation into their business as effectively as EDTS has done (not unlike a blog post I wrote last week).

Two of the biggest items LabTech Software's CEO announced for current partners were:

Starting in Q3, LabTech partners will be able to receive FREE proactive monitoring of their LabTech Server with automated backups in the cloud for faster disaster recovery. This will involve partners opting in to have a secondary agent installed on their server, so that LabTech's Support Team can make these promises a reality.

Matt Nachtrab and the Product Management team are actively investigating a new method of remote control for partners to use, aside form LabVNC. While LabTech's still in the research phase of this, Matt assured attendees that this would be provided AT NO ADDITIONAL COST.

Brett Cheloff's Presentation

After Matt Nachtrab's Keynote, Brett Cheloff, LabTech's Director of Development, took the stage to talk about the 95/5 Rule, the "I See More" methodology, and where LabTech's UI/UX is going.

Brett let attendees know that LabTech is focused on the 95/5 Rule, which basically boils down to giving partners the ability to easily and intuitively do 95% of what they need done, in the screens they most commonly use. To achieve this, the LabTech Development Team and Product Management Team have adopted the "I See More" methodology, which stands for:

Install

Configure

Monitor

Manage

Report

or ICMMR (which is more easily pronounced "I See More"). By focusing on these 5 areas for each part of the product, Brett's goal is to make the full management lifecycle easier for partners, and provide them with a UI that helps educate about sections they may not be as familiar with.

Once he finished setting the stage for what LabTech's been working on, Brett gave Automation Nation attendees a preview of the new Computer Management Screen. And judging by the eruption of applause, partners think LabTech Software is on the right track 👍

Breakouts

For the rest of the day, Automation Nation attendees had a chance to view presentations, work in labs, and participate in panel discussions.

Some of the presentations helped show partner new functionality, like User Centric billing, Active Directory integration, ESXi host monitoring, etc., but the vast majority went into more business detail - such as pricing, PSA  best practices, how to turn a client into a raving fan within 60 days, and how to reach higher operational maturity levels.

Labs were almost 100% dedicated to scripting (from 101 - 301, with PowerShell & RegEx labs as well), with a single jam-packed session dedicated to automation - helping partners walk through a real world use case of creating brand new service plans within LabTech. From custom extra data fields, searches, group, and auto-joins, to fully tailored templates and monitors.

Panels were mostly about lessons learned by partners as they've grown their businesses from 250 endpoints to 5000 and beyond, with a separate Town Hall where attendees had a chance to ask the LabTech Software Leadership Team about anything and that's been on their mind.

Partners

I had a chance to speak with LOTS of partners today and you can expect to see this updated later tonight, as I actually need to head down to the Circle Bar for a scheduled meet up with one right now 😃

[update] So, as I was saying, there've been loads of conversations with Automation Nation attendees from all walks of life. But even with varied backgrounds, different verticals, and a wide breadth of experience levels, one theme kept reoccurring - compliancy. It seems that every IT Service Provider I spoke with has some sort of concern or on-going battle to meet auditor needs.

The specifics vary, but each conversation revolved around getting access to information LabTech should already be gathering. As partners kept saying, some times it's not enough to have the data... You need the data to be consumable for a highly analytic audience. So an auditor can easily see that while KB[insert # here] isn't specifically installed, that's because a different installed KB includes it. Or so you can provide an auditor a list of all your employees that can interact with Client A's endpoints, with a complete list of actions they could potentially do. There's still much more for LabTech Software to learn from our partners about this topic, so we can start helping you better address these types of scenarios, but the discussions happening here this week are a great start.

Next Steps

Tomorrow is the last day for Automation Nation, with a keynote by Google's former CIO, Douglas Merrill. I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for any new areas that haven’t been discussed yet, but if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to let me know in the comments below. Thank you again for being a part of this conference and I look forward to reporting back tomorrow!

[cwright01]

Day 1: Automation Nation 2014 #AN14 Recap

It’s been a busy, fun, and exciting day of registration + presentations for LabTech Software's PIN members and partners getting one-on-one consulting and script training. Happy Hour is just about to start, so we'll try to keep this as brief, but informative as possible 😃

PIN Meeting

For PIN members, the day started at 9am with a Quarterly Business Review (or QBR for short) by Matt Nachtrab and the Product Management team, led by Tony Thomas and Kevin Gibson.

While most of the conversations were under NDA (non-disclosure agreement), the overall consensus from PIN members is that LabTech has now reached a point where we can reduce our speed of growing the number of new partners and instead, accelerate business growth for existing partners. This was brought up at each Q&A during the QBR and LabTech Software has heard the message loud and clear. Lots of ideas were discussed around how LabTech can better achieve this and in the coming months, partners can expect to see more proof of this happening.

One-on-One Consulting

LabTech Software's Consulting team had a strong presence today with Shaun Peterson, Vinal Lang, and Will Smalley each helping Automation Nation attendees for 6 or more hours EACH, discussing a wide range of topics from permissions to ticket throttling.

During a discussion one of these attendees had with me over lunch, I found out he’d recently inherited LabTech from the previous LTAdmin, due to a “sudden" departure. What he uncovered was that the previous person in charge of LabTech had done little to nothing to really configure LabTech beyond the base out-of-box experience (OOBE). This had been causing major issues for the partner as they try to get clients to convert from Break-Fix to Managed Services. They were sending clients a bill every month with lots of tickets LabTech had generated, but no one in the company had any idea of the specific client value those tickets had. His goal today was to better understand the alerts themselves and “cull the herd” of tickets, so each tech in the company can better articulate what they mean.

Through his One-on-One Consulting, Will, Shaun, and Vinal were able to help this partner not only better understand the value of those tickets and cut down on the ones that were completely irrelevant to their Service Contracts, but also how to speak to the importance of alerting on non-monitored items (ie. missing AV, out-of-date AV definitions, etc.). Simply by monitoring these items, he can at least notify Break-Fix clients of potential issues before they turn into a true outage. And if clients ignore the warnings and get hit with a large bill afterwards, his company will have a better position to start talking about the benefits of fully Managed Services.

Script Training

An intro track AND an advanced track? Where do I even start?! For Day 1, Automation Nation attendees got to go on a deep dive around LabTech Scripting with both Scott McQueeney (Script Training Specialist) and Dustan Yates (Senior LabTech Scripting Engineer). Scott helped partners just starting with scripts get more comfortable / familiar with different intro use cases that can be replicated over and over again to help with Activity Automation. On the end of the spectrum, Dustan helped our more veteran partners go deep into the bowels of specific script functions, discussing how they work and how they can be used together to filter return information to determine which steps should be completed next.

There was a lot more covered today, but certain areas (like the non-disclosure topics) will get further fleshed out during Day 2, so I’ll hold off on them for now 😃 Thank you all for being a part of our journey and I look forward to reporting back tomorrow!

[cwright01]

Day 0: Automation Nation 2014 #AN14 Ramp-up

Tomorrow is the start of LabTech Software's 5th Automation Nation in sunny Orlando, FL! Our intent this year will be to enable both existing and new partners from a technical AND business aspect (with brand new Breakouts tailored for each), plus, allow our partners to engage / network with other IT Service Providers in a safe, comfortable setting.

This past Friday, Bernadette Wilson (@bernadeditor), an Associate Editor for Business Solutions Magazine, posted an excellent recap of her recent conversation with LabTech Software's Director of Marketing, John Timko, about Automation Nation 2014. For those of you who had a chance to read it (link here) you already know that this year, we’ll be focusing more on business training - a big shift from the almost 100% technical focus of our past 4 conferences. But… it’s still a LabTech conference 😃 so be sure to expect plenty of topics geared towards our more technical attendees 👍

With that said, there’s one topic related to #AN14 I’d like to talk about today. 

The Myth of the Single Pane of Glass

As many IT Service Providers know, and an MSPmentor guest blogger called out on Wednesday, there’s a general feeling that the “Single Pane of Glass" is a myth. And you know what? It’s kindda true. The “Single Pane of Glass" is an ever elusive dream that IT Service Providers desperately crave and RMM tools are constantly working to provide.

So why is it a “kindda” myth?

The idea behind a “Single Pane of Glass" is corralling all of the different tools IT Service Providers use and getting the SAME functionality from another, more all-encompasing product (ie. their RMM). It’s a goal we all run towards, but the goal posts are constantly moving.

To me, the “Single Pane of Glass" is more dream than myth. And a big dream at that. But at Automation Nation 2014, partners can expect to see that LabTech is not only dreaming BIG… we’re also turning those dreams into a reality. Virtualization monitoring & management? User-centric capabilities? Out-of-band management & setup? What would these things look like to you?

Starting tomorrow, you’ll see our interpretation of what we heard from LabTech partners. A “Single Pane of Glass” may feel like a myth today, but LabTech Software's goal is to make that dream a reality for our partners, one release at a time.

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among stars – Les Brown

Each day (after Happy Hour 😃 of course) I’ll provide a high-level recap of the day’s events and some key thoughts partners shared with me. However, if MSPmentor does a Daily Recap for Automation Nation 2014 like they did for Kaseya Connect, I strongly recommend checking it out too. See you all tomorrow!

[cwright01]

Day 3: Final LabTech @ FOSE Recap - An Overview

It's the final day of FOSE (the Federal Office Systems Exposition in Washington, DC) for all attendees and exhibitors. With LabTech Software's objective of learning what high level problems government clients need solved, so we can solve said problems and provide the solutions to our IT Service Provider partner base - our trip has been a huge success!

We learned that federal government agencies are being given directives that include requirements of enormous scope and potentially huge impact (EO 13636, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NIST 800-53 Revision 4, the GSA’s Cloud First Policy, FedRAMP, FISMA, FCCX, NSTIC, etc.) and to meet the goals and timelines for progress of these initiatives, federal government agencies are likely to need the assistance of IT Service Providers. Most of the areas IT Service Providers will be assisting with will involve migrations from on-prem to cloud and possibly even helping to connect networks / setup file sharing between agencies.

To assist our IT Service Provider partners with this, LabTech Software will need to aggressively investigate commonly selected cloud solutions and possible integration with said solutions. Many companies do this today (RightScale, enStratus, Tapp, etc.) and LabTech will now need to determine what specific use cases need solving and how they can best be addressed.

While federal government agencies have no choice but to comply with these new initiatives, state and local agencies can choose to opt-in. Personally, I see this as the norm as time goes on, simply due to the cost savings that will continue to be highlighted at the federal level. State and local agencies will see the potential to free up budget and jump at the opportunity, while looking to the federal guidelines as a baseline for the selection process (ie. FedRAMP).

Security initiatives are a must for feds and may or not be addressed by state and local agencies. However, as more information gets shared between agencies across all areas of the government, in time, even the more burdensome security guidelines are likely to be adopted. That's the intent behind the information sharing initiative - not just enticing agencies with ease of data access, but also slipstreaming (aka. forcing) requirements that allow the United States as a whole to address technical debt and build for the future of national cybersecurity.

And finally, mobility (BYOD, MDM, EMM, etc.) is still a grey area of accepted risk. Yet, the area is ripe for evolution during the transition to cloud, lest mobile devices and the people behind them become the weakest link in ensuring national security. It will take time though. Until then, policies will pop up with differing levels of standards and control, completely dependent on the reason behind the policy.

Well, that's it for LabTech @ FOSE. It's been an enlightening trip to say the least and we really can't thank you enough for being a part of our journey. The partners, agencies, panelists, and other vendors were a pleasure to speak with and learn from. As LabTech Software continues to monitor the needs of our IT Service Provider's potential future clients, you can expect to see more of these types of reports / updates. But most importantly, you can expect our tools to continue evolving to help you meet their needs, so you can win more clients 😃 See you next time!

[cwright01]

Day 2: LabTech @ FOSE Recap

For those of you who read my recap of FOSE's opening day (linked here), you already know about the GSA's Cloud First Policy, how that will be driving federal government agencies in the coming months / years, and how IT Service Providers are going to be needed to help fill the gaps in implementing all of the different initiatives that have been put in place. What I failed to clarify is how these policies would affect state and local government agencies. So... before diving into how cloud, cybersecurity, and mobility (BYOD, MDM, EMM, etc.) all come into play, I'd like to correct that.

Short Version: State and Local government agencies are not required to abide by these guidelines. They're recommended, but not required.

Now that we've addressed that, let's talk about the fun stuff 😃

As I mentioned yesterday, the GSA’s Cloud First Policy, essentially says that if a safe and secure cloud option exists, then the cloud option MUST be chosen. Not “should be”, not “is highly recommended”, or “strongly suggested" - it MUST be chosen. At a federal level, the primary reasons behind this push are risk mitigation and to march toward improving critical infrastructure security (EO 13636) - essentially allowing IT to reduce the NIST Cybersecurity Framework areas they're required to keep up with. In example, a cloud provider would be responsible for protecting, recovering, and detailing how those tasks are accomplished, so an Inspector General (IG) can report on them. This may be an oversimplification, but that's the general gist. Once in the cloud, IT and Security then hash out what controls need to be put in place, using the guidelines set forth in all of the other initiatives mentioned yesterday (NIST 800-53 Revision 4, FISMA, FCCX, NSTIC, etc.).

Yet at a state and local level, the primary reason for adopting these guidelines is to reduce costs. Each federal agency has successfully shown year over year reduction in costs by migrating to cloud. In their view, it's a byproduct of reducing risk. But with state budgets continually being strained, their view is that reducing risk would be a byproduct of lowering costs. It's a difference of degrees that will matter dramatically for any IT Service Provider looking to understand a government client's motives.

When making decisions on which cloud option to choose, there are lot of options. The three I'll callout specifically though are Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft (simply because they had a panel together). Each of them had essentially the same talking points: "Your data is your data," elastic scaling, only pay for what you use, etc. However, there was one topic which highlighted a key difference - their strategy for the market.

Amazon: Cloud only focus

IBM: Heavy focus on cloud, but moving to better include hybrid

Microsoft: Strong focus on hybrid

Every cloud option should be evaluated to ensure it fits the business need, just like new software is evaluated. But beyond the standard checklist, it's also important to choose one that closely aligns with your client's overall infrastructure and data strategy.

So how does mobility play into all of this?

For IT Service Providers, mobility in the government sector doesn't appear to have a clear direction yet. However, as more and more parts of IT get moved to the cloud, it will need to be addressed sooner rather than later - if for no other reason that the security gap it creates. For the federal government, mobility is disconnected for all of these strategies; even though the strategies have direct mobile implications.

What's essentially being said, without being said, is that mobility is a known and currently accepted risk.

When the initiatives discussed here were first being formed, there was a HEAVY onus on IT to control any and every mobile device that entered a building with restricted information. Then, leaders decided to loosen restrictions so they could use the coolest new toys and still get to meetings. Since the loosening of those controls, they haven't been revisited - but expect a course correction. Any revisiting that takes place though, may not include the same level of control that was used previously. Based on the final discussion of the day, it's most likely to address monitoring and alerting of mobile events for notification and auditing purposes - something that would fall squarely on the OS and / or software providers to worry about.

Are government agencies building out BYOD policies? Yes.

Are they being driven by an overarching need? Not really.

In fact, NASA was the first federal government agency to put an official BYOD policy in place. It took an enormous amount of time and effort to plan and implement. So why did they do it?

To improve "user experience"

Because employees were doing it anyway

It's a known fact that employees will break policy - even government employees. Until an official plan is put in place to address how security can be balanced in a mobile world capable of connecting to cloud services, mobility in the government is likely to remain a grey area of accepted risk. Some agencies may be forming their own policies, but without a go-to set of guidelines, the policies are likely to be as dissimilar as the policies found in the private sector.

One additional BYOD point of interest: NASA did find that after putting a policy in place, while there was no reduction in hard costs, there was an increase in employee productivity.

Tomorrow is the last day for FOSE, so I'll be on the look out for any new areas that haven't been discussed yet. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to let me know in the comments below. Thank you again for being a part of this journey and I look forward to reporting back tomorrow!

[cwright01]

Day 1: LabTech @ FOSE Recap

If LabTech Software's intent at FOSE (the Federal Office Systems Exposition in Washington, DC) was to learn what high level problems government clients need solved, so we can solve said problems and provide the solutions to our IT Service Provider partner base - then I'd say today was a success!

Let's start with why government agencies are going to be relying more on IT Service Providers. For starters, government agencies are receiving a nearly impossible list of initiatives and policies that need to be implemented. Executive Order (EO) 13636, NIST 800-53 Revision 4, the GSA's Cloud First Policy, FedRAMP, FISMA, FCCX, NSTIC. Each of these initiatives include requirements of an enormous scope with the potential for huge impact. And that's just from the sessions we could attend during Day 1 of 3!

On the bright side though, there's clarity in the chaos.

All of these federal initiatives build upon a few core concepts, which today helped clarify and this post will hopefully illuminate for you. From a National Security standpoint, there are five (5) main cyber threat classifications:

Espionage

Infrastructure (ie. Power, Water, Transportation)

Criminal (aka. hackers)

Cyber-enabled Economic Theft (or theft of intellectual property)

Individual (aka. the Lone Wolf - à la Snowden)

With these threats in mind, the government attempts to focus on 5 key areas:

Protect Infrastructure

Protect Networks

Effectively Respond to Attacks / Threats

International Diplomacy / Cooperation

Shape the Future

The federal initiatives I mentioned above (EO 1636, NIST 800-53 rev 4, etc.) each serve one of two purposes: handling technical debt or building for the future.

You see, at a federal level, leaders have begun to adopt the idea of focusing on core competencies - which means only doing what you NEED to do. And if you boil down the government's core roles, they're here to serve and protect (how well those pieces are done is always open for debate though). When a new agency is formed, it's given direction on how it's meant to serve - essentially it's Mission Statement. While fulfilling that mission, the agency must then ensure it protects the public - which typically means protecting the information that agency has been entrusted with (NOTE: armed services protect on a whole other level outside of this discussion).

So... In a rapidly evolving world, where new technology and new applications of existing technology are created almost daily, how is an organization that needs an Authorization to Operate (ATO) to be declared by a Designated Approving Authority (DAA) after a Certification Agent (CA) has certified a new system for usage supposed to keep up? Answer: Offload it to other organizations that can.

Enter the GSA's Cloud First Policy, which essentially says that if a safe and secure cloud option exists, then the cloud option MUST be chosen. Not "should be", not "is highly recommended", or "strongly suggested" - it MUST be chosen.

For cloud software providers and resellers, this is going to be a HUGE win as vendor contracts come up for renewal. But IT Service Providers will win big too! If you recall my post from yesterday (link here) government contracts for projects will still need to be fulfilled. And when an agency needs to make a one-time shift from on-prem to cloud, or from one vendor solution to a different vendor's cloud solution, who do you think is going to be doing that work? In all honesty, a large chuck will go to the software provider's professional services team. However not all software providers offer professional services, which will leave the burden on the agency to migrate from one solution to the other. How can they reduce that workload? Outsource the work to a company already familiar with the software tools and processes. Who does that best? IT Service Providers!

Beyond Cloud First, there are also initiatives to setup network communication and file sharing between agencies across the government (EO 13636). Yet another area government agencies will likely seek outside help and IT Service Providers can shine. 

Will government IT departments play a role? Absolutely!

Before any of these projects can get started, the government networks and data have to be siloed. Due to how soon agencies need to show some progress, government IT departments are going to be starting with the easy and / or large parts first - getting unclassified data segmented off. As they continue to break down the different classifications of secret and top secret, the unclassified parts of the network will be ready for connection to other agencies' unclassified networks. Since IT will already be busy getting more sub-networks created and organized, a gap will be created for IT Service Providers to fill.

There was a lot more covered today, but certain areas will get further fleshed out during Day 2, so I'll hold off on them 😃 Tomorrow, I plan to find out more about cloud, cybersecurity, and how mobility (BYOD, MDM, EMM, etc.) plays into these and other government initiatives. Thanks again for being a part of our journey and I look forward to reporting back tomorrow!

[cwright01]

Day 0.5: LabTech @ FOSE #NIHITO

For a software company, in particular for a software company's Product Management team, there are 6 letters that should always be focused on: N-I-H-I-T-O (also known as "Nothing Important Happens In The Office"). It's the concept that ideas, solutions, and most importantly, market problems, need to be fully vetted in the real world by getting out of the office and speaking with the people who allow your company to exist - customers (or in LabTech's case, partners). LabTech Software has fully embraced this idea and instituted a program called "Follow Me Home," where a member of the Product Management and / or Marketing team travels down the road, or even across the country, to meet with our partner base and learn about their business and the pain points they experience while trying to grow.

If you had a chance to read my post from yesterday (link), you know that LabTech Software has allowed me to travel to FOSE (the Federal Office Systems Exposition), which is held in Washington, DC. After landing at the Ronald Reagan Airport (DCA) this morning, I grabbed a rental car and headed out to visit one of our partners.

It was an incredibly enlightening experience.

This partner recently became HUBZone Certified by the US Small Business Administration - a government program based on Keynesian economics that rewards businesses who operate in and hire employees from pre-designated rural or urban communities. By becoming certified, businesses are able to receive preferential access and consideration for federal "opportunities." Considering their proximity to the DC area, the thought is that this IT Service Provider will soon be getting overwhelmed with new contracts (in a very good way), especially as we get closer to October - when the fiscal year ends and budgets get spent to ensure equal budgets are received next year.

For those of you who may not have experience working with government contracts, it essentially works like this: each year, the government assigns a budget and that budget must be utilized IN FULL in a multitude of ways - one of which being government contracts for projects (work) that needs to be performed. This allows the government entity to keep operations running, while putting money back into the overall economy, without the need to hire more employees for new projects, or deal with re-training for employees who've just finished a recently completed project. If an allocated budget isn't used in full though, next year, that government entity will receive only what was actually used and have to justify why it needs more than it was able to get by with previously.

For IT Service Providers, here's where it gets interesting:

Those contracts need to be distributed in a very particular way. A certain percent can go to a single private sector business, but the rest need to be divvied up based on business size, the type of people who own / operate the business, etc. Essentially, they have a checklist of what kinds of businesses those contracts should be awarded to. This falls perfectly in-line with a statement that we heard at CIOSynery in Atlanta, GA, where a panel of government IT directors said,

"We typically know who we want to get the contract long before bids come back. However, we still have to complete our due diligence."

But, getting back to our partner, there's a fear that their existing workforce won't be able to keep up with the increase in demand for services. Even now, this partner has technicians who complain about the types of work their clients request - such as cleaning up the wiring at a client site. And who can blame them? If you've spent your life working towards a career in IT, getting certification after certification, only to find out that clients just want you to organize some wires behind a desk, you might feel a bit frustrated as well.

What you'd be forgetting though is that most IT Service Providers are a small business, very similar, if not identical, to a start-up company. And when you join that company, you need to Check Your Ego at the Door. Or, to use a baseball reference - you have to play for the team on the front, not the name on the back. Which brings us to this partner's #1 pain point:

Finding qualified techs / engineers with technical aptitude.

Right now, this partner is handling roughly 225 workstations and 25 servers per tech. A pretty impressive number considering the types of clients they serve: real estate offices, non-profits, small law firms, etc. (but they do have some large law firms too, which I hear are extremely pleasant to work with). That said, there's a feeling that some techs may not be pulling their weight as much as others, which is potentially holding them all back from being able to do more. So we talked about the idea of incentivizing automation. LabTech scripts may feel daunting at first, but the power they can deliver is beyond compare. Drag and drop scripts can be nice for quick simple tasks, but what about a script that automatically configures your client's Outlook to Office 365?

How much do you pay for your RMM tool? How much do you pay your engineers? Now... how often are they using LabTech as a fancy remote control client for a 30-45 minute task on each end point at a client site that's converted from on-prem to Office 365? 112 - 168 hours if they're managing 225 workstations. Your techs and engineers know the steps. They know what can go wrong. They know how to work around those gotchas that don't show up in the standard online documentation. Start by getting the steps written down, with command paths and switches - save the gotchas for later. If you can get 80% of it documented, you at least have something to begin scripting, plus (if you're managing 225 workstations per engineer) you may have just saved 90 - 134 hours per tech. If a tech helps makes this possible, or even better, if they step up and create the script themselves, why not reward that? Or make Task Automation a part of their annual review process. You know, the carrot and stick approach.

Finding qualified people will always be a struggle. They're out there, but when an IT Service Providers need one, they need them yesterday. By adopting a culture of automation, you will quickly find that some people are eager to step up to the plate - usually the ones who ask "why aren't we doing this?" and others will consistently be "too busy." There's a need for people who just get the job done, but IT Service Providers also need to breed new innovators who'll help the business scale. And one of the best things about those people - they inspire others to join.