If you are looking for an IT development and support role, in a fast growing business, then we want to hear from you.
You’ll have a good head for problem solving, good people skills, and a proven aptitude to writing code. You will be a linux developer and know your way around php, mysql etc.
Salaried 20k+ depending on experience.
Drop an email to: careers@igaware.com
I recently saw an article entitled ‘Go Ahead and Shoot the Server: End of Microsoft Small Business Server Inspires Cloud Adoption with Small Businesses’. What utter nonsense. It seems that cloud purveyors remain firmly detached from reality.
The only thing Microsoft’s decision has inspired is for customers to open their eyes to non-Microsoft alternatives such as the Igaware Linux Small Business Server.
If you have an office with staff, then there’s really no substitute for having your data and email on a local fast network under your control. We wrote about cloud nonsense here.
So before you start shooting your server, speak to us about an Igaware Linux Small Business Server – you’ll find it faster, more robust, secure and easy to use, and delivered at a lower cost.
The computer reseller business model has been, and still is, very much about making money from fixing things. In fact, not just fixing them, but patching, updating and adding on extra stuff to make things work properly and remain secure. And after 3 or 4 years, you can make money all over again by changing everything because the vendor has announced ‘end-of-life’ for its products (that’s if the customer still trusts you).
This ‘traditional’ reseller model relies on customer pain, and lack of awareness of pain free alternatives. It is painful for the customer, stressful for the reseller, profitable for the vendor, and the only way to scale such a business is to grow engineering resource that eats up your profits.
But what about cloud computing? Well, yes, there is cloud computing, but in reality it’s not the panacea the marketing hype has promised (I wrote about this here). The reality is going to be (it has in fact been for a long time) more hybrid computing, so the above model will persist.
There is, however, another model for resellers working in the SMB sector. One that is profitable and will have you jumping out of bed in the morning, not to fix a server that’s crashed, or pacify a customer who’s cloud service is offline, but to grow your business of happy customers. A model that avoids customer pain at every turn, removing the stress and cost of having to constantly fix things.
If you are an IT reseller in the SMB space then you will likely have been selling MS SBS. You may still be selling it, even though it has been ‘canned’ by MS. Maybe you don’t know of an alternative, or perhaps you are worried you don’t have the necessary skills. There is an alternative, one that’s easy to migrate SBS customers to (we have a migration guide), and that provides a more robust, secure and pain free solution to your customers and you; the Igaware Linux Small Business Server. You won’t need any Linux knowledge, there’s no hardware to build or software to load. It’s very easy (read this).
The Igaware Linux Small Business Server has been engineered to be rock solid, secure and easy to use and has a proven track record over 15 year. The Igaware Linux Small Business Server is delivered in rude health, and is monitored throughout its lifetime, kept healthy with constant updates, and upgrades, and support is just a phone call away. The Igaware Linux Small Business Server looks after itself, releasing you from the patching merry-go-round, and taking away the worry of the server crashing. Fit and forget.
And because customers find it reasonable to pay for using a small business server that is rock solid, secure, maintained and supported, there is a recurring revenue stream that flows straight to your bottom line.
To learn more about becoming a reseller, drop an email to sales@igaware.com
Related articles: http://www.igaware.com/blog/igaware-linux-small-business-server-easy-linux-sbs-linuxsbs-igaware/
I’m often asked ‘what sets Igaware apart from other vendors’. We’ll if there’s one word that sets the Igaware Linux Small Business Server apart then that word would have to be easy. (If asked for two words, I’d say hassle free).
Here’s a few questions that should help give you an idea just how much easier the Igaware Linux Small Business Server is to deploy and look after:
Which of the following would you consider to be easier?
So there you have it, the Igaware Linux Small Business Server isn’t just robust and secure, it’s also incredibly easy.
*The Igaware Linux Small Business Server has, yes you guessed it, an easy to use web interface that includes a system status page showing any issues before they become a problem (the system will even drop you an email if there’s something that needs attention (we get a copy too, just in case you missed it), be it disk errors, high load average, failed backup, and much, much more.
**Igaware Linux Small Business Server can be installed and synchronised in real time to a second Igaware Linux Small Business Server, for zero downtime. I should probably write a blog article about this unique enterprise class feature!
An integral component of the Igaware Linux Small Business Server has always been Samba. Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) or as a domain member. It can also be part of an Active Directory domain.
Version 4 of Samba goes even further delivering Active Directory Domain Controller compatibility, including;
We aim to have Samba 4 rolled out to Igaware Linux Small Business Server customers in the next couple of weeks.
‘The cloud’ is just a new name for hosted IT services, where a server is hosted by an IT company connected to the Internet. The cloud is as much marketing hype as a valid method of IT service delivery. In fact I’m not sure exactly what it means any more, with many people now thinking the cloud is what I thought was called the Internet. Whatever it is, it’s not the white fluffy, cuddly entity the marketers and big vendors would have us all believe.
The main argument for having services hosted is that customers don’t need to worry about maintaining on-premise servers, patching applications, and rebooting systems that crash. Even if this was true, which it’s not (see below), you will have lots of new things to worry about like where is your data, who owns your data, who can spy on your data, what happens to your data if you want to leave? Oh, and what impact is there on your business if you can’t access your data?
Even in the cloud, servers still need maintenance, patching, and rebooting, with serious impacts on customers when it goes wrong, as it did last week for Microsoft cloud customers.
Last week Office 365 users received a crash course in the reality of being in the cloud. First, Microsoft’s Lync instant messaging service suffered an outage followed by a nine hour outage of the company’s Exchange email service. Outages have been attributed to problems that arose during a data centre migration.
Rather than push people into the cloud, wouldn’t it have been better to have created on-premise servers that were properly engineered in the first place? We think so.
Imagine having a server that is so reliable that the only way you can stop it is to turn it off. And that never needs to be rebooted, and never crashes, and automatically patches and updates itself. That would be good, especially if in the unlikely event it did ‘blow up’ that you could be up and running again in a matter of minutes.
I guess it would also be less frustrating if you could instantly speak to a human being if you had a problem, rather than being kept at arms length by the vendor, leaving you to look in on-line forums to find out ‘what the hell’ was going on.
The Igaware Linux Small Business Server is just such a server. It can be hosted in your office where you can see and touch it, and still access it when the ‘lights go out’ in some distant data centre following a digital infarction of a ‘unique nature’, or ‘external network failures’.
Igaware has many customers, with remote workers and satellite offices, using a centralised Igaware Server hosted at a head-office using a decent Internet connection (you can have multiple WAN connections for fail-over and load balancing too!) who enjoy ‘the cloud’ – only it’s private and under their control. Many of these have migrated from the Cloud back to in-house as issues of latency, cost, control and support are very real.
Oh, and lastly let’s remember the core sales message from Cloud vendors that it’s low cost – it’s not. There are hidden costs for additional functionality, storage etc. that soon mount up. Not to mention the cost of downtime. And if you’re not happy at the point you realise it’s not all fluffy and white, you may find solace in on-line forums for the unhappy cloud people, or you can contact Igaware for a rock solid, alternative that is fully supported, and more cost effective.
A imminent update to the Igaware Linux Small Business Server will deliver full Active Directory Services including Group Policy Objects and more. News to follow….
Since Microsoft ended the life of Microsoft Small Business Server, many have chosen to make the switch to the Igaware Linux Small Business Server (see here, and here). Migration from Microsoft SBS is easy and nothing to fear for Microsoft engineers. Our guide ‘Migrating from Microsoft SBS to Igaware Linux Small Business Server‘, gives you an idea of just what’s involved. As a supported product, you can always pick up the phone if you are unsure of anything; with the Igaware Linux Small Business Server you are not alone.
