Third Tier: Be the Cloud – Client Facing Environment Demo & Chat

Tomorrow at 1700MST is my regular monthly Third Tier chat.

Since we’ve spent a fair amount of time on our Be the Cloud product (IaaS to your clients) backend setup, now it’s time to have a look at what the BtC clients would be working with.

The client environment is based on our SBS (Small Business Solution) that provides a Small Business Server like IT experience but greatly improved.

• Remote Web Portal access
• Remote desktop access
• Exchange services (OWA, EAS, OA, Public Folders, ETC)
• RemoteApp based application access
• SharePoint CMS for Check Out/In and Versioning in Documentation

Our goal in designing our SBS was to give our clients as close to a Small Business Server experience as possible.

I believe we’ve done that in spades and after our chat tomorrow I believe you’ll agree. :)

When: 1700MST

Where: Third Tier Join.me

A recording of the chat, barring any technical difficulties, would be posted on the Third Tier blog at a later date.

Philip Elder
Microsoft Cluster MVP
MPECS Inc.
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

SMB Kitchen ASP Author’s Chat: Wednesday the 17th Open To All!

You are invited to a preview during our SMBKitchen Chat on December 17th 7pm eastern. Download to your calendar now!

Our Chat will introduce the following new items at Third Tier. In addition we'll cover our usual content about security and patching. Join us for this special sneak preview of...

Tech Your Books: You know your books are supposed to do more for you than just keep you out of trouble with the IRS right? They are supposed to be a powerful business tool that helps you be more profitable and provide information so you can make evidence backed decisions about your business. It’s time to Tech Your Books!

Look, A Whale! What do you do when you’ve got a Whale? Be it a crisis or a project, your company could benefit greatly if you choose to have a third party representing your organization.

Our First Product: SBS IaaS Ever since Microsoft ceased production of small business server saying that small businesses would prefer to be "in the cloud" IT providers have wondered where that leaves them. Well we have a solution for you - Be The Cloud! 

Super Secret News: ASP members have been enjoying reading classified documents from US intelligence and security agencies giving them the early information on the latest hacks, industry targets and break-out infections. Learn about our after ASP plans to bring this information to you.

In addition to these great new Third Tier services, we are continuing to offer advanced helpdesk and microstaffing.If you would like to read more about each of these, we have some information available on our website already with more to come soon. http://www.thirdtier.net

And ItsA Gonna Be A Gooder! ;)

Philip Elder
Microsoft Cluster MVP
MPECS Inc.
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen ASP Project
Find out more at
Third Tier: Enterprise Solutions for Small Business

Microsoft Ups Support Ticket to $499 – We Have a Great Alternative: Third Tier!

It seems that this may, or may not, depending on one’s thoughts of how Microsoft sees IT Pros in today’s “Cloud First Mobile First” be another shot at IT Pros that provide much of the front line support to SMB/SME clients.

• Redmond Magazine: Microsoft Increases Support Costs for IT Pros

I’ve been helping out with Third Tier for well over a year and a half now. I’ve been privileged to work on a team of amazing folks as well as work with a great group of IT Pros.

I believe that we at Third Tier offer a viable alternative to Microsoft’s $499 ticket (though I’m not sure what that will work out to in Canada as we pay substantially more than the US equivalent) for spot support or even ongoing support needs.

Given the experience our team has the Third Tier rate of $175/Hour is very reasonable. Active Directory, Exchange, Remote Desktop Services, Hyper-V, VMware, Cluster, and very soon a number of key vertical products and services to help our IT Pros get the job done right the first time!

• Third Tier Help Desk

Third Tier offers a Micro Staffing program where we can be a part of your IT Pro team for ongoing support challenges or staffing challenges. We can be a part of your team for a very reasonable cost.

I’m also excited about some of the things we’ve been working on at Third Tier to provide our IT Pros with a one-stop solution for their data centre that will allow them to provide IaaS and even our SBS (Small Business Solution) at a very reasonable cost per seat! More to come on that soon.

One final thought. If one is caught in a bind with a server down situation then the Microsoft ticket may be the best way. With Action Pack we still get BizCrit (Business Critical) support though via a call back model.

Our response model tends towards scheduled time for tickets as opposed to crash responses. So, please keep that in mind.

Here are some of the areas we can help you with:

• Disaster Recovery Planning and Practice
• Infrastructure planning, migration, support, and recovery
• Active Directory and Group Policy planning, support, and recovery
• Remote Desktop Services planning, support, and recovery
• Exchange planning, migration, support, and recovery
• SQL planning, migration, support, and recovery
• Hyper-V planning, support, and recovery
• Virtualization Solution Performance planning and support
• Specialized Bookkeeping Support and Services
• IT Business Models, Plans, Direction, Vision, and More

Whatever the task, we have a team member that can help. Not only that, one can expect the task to be done in short order and in a professional manner.

If you have not checked us out before please do now.

Philip Elder
Microsoft Cluster MVP
MPECS Inc.
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen ASP Project
Find out more at
Third Tier: Enterprise Solutions for Small Business

Third Tier Brain Explosion: Technical Training Sept 7-8 in Orlando

If you’ve been to one of Third Tier’s Brain Explosion (BE) then you know to expect a day packed with intense tech. This is the 4th annual Brain Explosion. We’re splitting the BE into two days so you can properly digest the content and have time to socialize in between. This makes it an intimate affair where you’ll get to know the speakers and your fellow attendees both during the event and afterwards socially.

We’re very social; we’re very technical and this event is going to be as fun as learning new tech can be. Our staff dedicates their days to supporting IT Professionals in the SMB market space and they run their own small IT firms too! The content of the Brain Explosion is designed to be boots on the ground issues of today that you can go and implement right away.

Read all about it: http://www.thirdtier.net/brain-explosion/

You can register one of two ways. Register for the Brain Explosion as a pre-day event at the GFI conference. This option will allow you to automatically extend your hotel stay too. Or registered directly with Third Tier for the Brain Explosion only. For this second option, register an account at http://www.thirdtier.net/helpdesk, press Payments, Buy Credit, Purchase more Support, add the BE to your cart and proceed to checkout. It’s $99 which includes Content, food and a pub meet up. Questions? Email Amy@thirdtier.net
 
Onward,

Amy Babinchak, Susan Bradley and Philip Elder
SMBKitchen ASP

Third Tier Brain Explosion: Our New SBS!

I will be presenting along with our Third Tier team as a Pre-Day Brain Explosion (BE) for the GFIMax conference in Orlando, Florida on the afternoon of September 7th and the morning of the 8th.

We are splitting things into two days to give folks a chance to both digest all of the content but also to allow BE attendees the chance to meet and chat with us.

Cost for the Pre-Day BE is a very reasonable $99.

Registration for the event can be done on the Third Tier Portal under the Purchase Support option (windowed scroll bar in there that's a bit difficult to see) or on GFI's site (Pre-Day Landing Page).

The content I will be working with will be the technical aspects of delivering our new SBS.

What is that you might ask?

S = Small

B = Business

S = Solution

It is our very complete solution set that we have been deploying to our client sites for about six months to a year now.

• RWW/RWA Replacement
• RDWeb and RDGateway
• Exchange/OWA/EAS
• Exchange 2013 CU4 (SP1)
• SharePoint
• SharePoint Foundation 2013
• Remote Desktop Services
• Remote Desktop Session Host and RemoteApps
• RD Endpoint access

Our last ASP SMB Kitchen subscriber chat was spent walking through SBS and how it is essentially seamless to our clients. One WAN IP is all that is required just as it was with Small Business Server.

The beauty of the solution is the simplicity with which things change for our end users: Virtually not at all. :)

We supply an on-premises solution that gives everything Small Business Server has given them. Plus, we clearly demonstrate that our product is on par with or better than any Cloud based solution out there just as SBS has been to small businesses for the last ten or more years.

Looking for that on-prem replacement? Please subscribe to our ASP Project as our monthly chats and content supplied by our team will facilitate that search.

Want the technical pearls to deploying this kind of solution for your clients? Then please do register for the Brain Explosion and wear a brain bucket! :)

Thanks for reading.

Philip Elder
Microsoft Cluster MVP
MPECS Inc.
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen ASP Project
Find out more at
Third Tier: Enterprise Solutions for Small Business

CCH Taxprep T1, SMBKitchen Project, and Third Tier

Things have been moving along at a great pace!

With tax season upon us we had a crazy number of calls over corrupted Print Formats in CCH Taxprep T1 2012 v1. Somehow during the conversion process from the previous year’s Print Formats things got mangled and we were running our feet off trying to keep up.

We ended up needing to rebuild the Print Formats and get them hooked into the HP LaserJet printer setups that we have for them. Most of our accounting firm clients use multiple Print Format files with custom configurations depending on the forms being printed. Some get duplex printed to save paper while others are simplex printed such as the invoice and title page.

Once those and a few other small bugs in the accounting applications were settled down things have been relatively stable for us with ongoing systems, cluster, and end user needs.

Amy Babinchak of Third Tier extended an invitation to me to step into the Third Tier fold a little while back. Monique and I discussed my involvement with TT and the time commitments required along with an idea of what to expect in the way of trouble tickets and figured it would be a good fit.

Now, we do get support requests via the blog every once in a while, and via other forums I participate in but for the most part things are MPECS and contract client focused. Well, that’s not too challenging if you know what I mean! ;)

I’m very happy to report that the trouble tickets that I have been a part of over the last week or two have indeed been challenging, successful, and very rewarding. The folks we get to serve in TT have been second to none and the TT Team is phenomenal.

Joining Third Tier was indeed a great decision. :)

Now, the SMBKitchen Project content is soon to be updated with quite a few items. One is a just finished video walkthrough of setting up Hyper-V on a Windows 8 client machine, installing two VMs, one a Server 2012 DC and the other a Server 2008 R2 router, along with the requisite steps.

I have a number of documents in the works. One on sizing a Hyper-V solution tailored to a client’s specific needs and the other a two part document introducing a client and their needs in part 1 and a full-on RFP response proposal in part 2 that we presented to the prospect. This particular proposal is one of the best documents I’ve ever done so I look forward to sharing it.

With our regular client needs, now Third Tier’s needs, SMBKitchen work being done, and ultimately my taking a hardline on spending time with my family things are very brisk.

Posting to the blog over the next while may be a bit spotty due to demands on time here but we will do our best to keep the relevant posts flowing!

Thanks for reading and for your support over the years! :D

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer