326: Interview With John Moder of Crisp Solutions, LLC - Part Two

Topics:

-This week we continue our conversation with John Moder, owner of Crisp Solutions, LLC in Des Moines, IA

-We kick off the show talking about billing practices, MSP, value based billing

-It took John about 7 months of hourly billing when he started 4 years ago before he started being able to sign his first managed care contract

-John discusses coming up with his formula and the struggles in doing so. Jerry can relate to those difficulties.

-The hosts ask John for his opinion about value based billing on a recent episode with Tim Nyberg. Methods of efficiency and grey areas make it difficult to diagnose.

-Jerry has an tough story to tell with macOS Server 10.10 and legacy software that simply went south.

-NOC (Not Our Customer) is a concept that a friend introduced John to. If a client doesn’t get the value that we add, perhaps they simply are “Not Our Customer”.

-One of John’s customers took on an email migration project on his own, only to raise the white flag requiring emergency assistance over a holiday weekend.

-John is curious about Jerry’s one man show and that ultimately leads to business growth and exit strategies

-Hiring is not only a question of quality, but how it may directly impact your own income.

-No matter who you hire, they will not have the same desire as the owner. This is a challenge many of us know all too well.

-John attended the ACEs Conference this year and took a lot out of the experience that he can apply to his business

-John is very active on the MacAdmins Slack as @jmoder. You can also find him online at crispsolutions.net

324: Update Your Gateway, We're Not In Kansas Anymore

Topics:

-Jerry compares a client to an itchy mosquito bite. He also references one of our old favorite methods of troubleshooting - removing items in the /var/folders directory.

-While working on an iMac, Jerry hears that “pop” sound and immediately knows that it is the stand hinge has snapped. One method of repair is from “The Mac Hack”:
https://themachack.com

-Joe questions the organization and direction of icons on the Mac. Sam compares it to a direct opposite of Windows desktop icons.

-The Ubiquiti UniFi initial splash screen raises unnecessary alarm bells

-Ever since diagnosing the Cloud Key disconnects as being power related, Joe’s team has had major strides in stability of the gen 1 Cloud Key by connecting to power as opposed to relying on POE.

-Sam has some follow up on using his offsite controller and adopting his client devices into sites

-Although discussed before, figuring out how to sell additional services like UniFi monitoring to existing clients is a challenge

-Autofill options in Safari were prompting for Keychain credentials with one of Joe’s clients. After some research, he found similar instances with a laptop in clamshell mode. The odd fix was to disable Touch ID for use in Safari.

-As regular listeners are aware of, Jerry has recently located. He has an odd story of unmarked trucks making deliveries from Amazon. With enough pushback, he was able to push for a change to licensed drivers and companies.

323: Catalina Ready - Interview With Jason Dettbarn / Founder & CEO of Addigy - Cloud Based Mac Management Platform

Topics:

-This week we have the pleasure of speaking with Jason Dettbarn, founder and CEO of Addigy Technology. Addigy Technology provides Cloud Based IT Management of Mac Computers.

-Jason left his job at Kaseya to start Addigy in 2014.

-He talks about the annual Addigy User Summit, held in Miami, FL. The dates for 2020 are March 25-27. Go to addigy.com/command to find out more.

-Jason talks about how MDM is the path forward, but you need additional tools that go beyond the configuration profiles of MDM.

-Some of the macOS Catalina changes to watch out for are:
—64-bit application requirements
—Notarized software
—Z shell default

-A very interesting tidbit of information from Jason - Little Snitch is the genesis for Privacy Preferences Policy Control settings that began in Mojave

-Scripting is still a big component and Jason talks up its importance, as well as submissions from the community to assist others.

-The Addigy community is the future of the product and our peers is what makes it powerful: https://support.addigy.com/support/solutions/folders/8000086921

-With the big changes coming to macOS, blocking upgrades may be a necessity and Addigy is a tool that can assist

-The Addigy agent can also assist with peer to peer downloads of large packages, like the macOS installer

-Jerry asks the questions on pricing and how to get started: addigy.com/signup

-The fact that Addigy is a true multi-tenant platform allows consultants to have separate APNs certificates and Apple Business Manager tokens for each of their clients

-Okta integration is here and Azure as well as others are just around the corner. Keep up with Addigy updates to learn the latest and greatest.

322: Dante's Ring Of Sonos

Topics:

-Since Sam missed last weeks show, he wanted to get the latest updates from Jerry on his home/office move

-Jerry raves about the Eero product as he has a trouble free set up in the new house. https://eero.com/shop/pro-wifi-system

-With Joe doing more Synology installations, he questions his co-hosts on their choices of RAID and comfort level with redundancy.

-Continuing the NAS conversation, Joe mentions the options for SHR2 and how a client surprised him with questions regarding Synology RAID F1, a RAID format specifically for use with SSDs.  The idea being that SSDs would normally have a similar lifespan, so F1 is an uneven parity distribution approach will lead to that one SSD reaches its lifespan earlier than others 

-The elders of the Internet (IT Crowd reference)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg

Joe’s discussion about a Synology causes Sam to recall the story of a Synology failure at a client.  The series of events, like restoring from Backblaze B2 and Hyper Backup’s proprietary format made a new approach necessary.

-Jerry recalls a funny story of how a client thought they were taking Drobo backups offsite by removing one of the drives and taking it home

-Sam has one of those days where he goes down the rabbit hole at a completely new client.  His almost comical experience with UniFi and Sonos equipment took him the entire day and still left him scratching his head.

321: Green Acres

Topics:

-Special thanks to Puelle Design in Portland, Maine for hosting Joe's mobile recording studio this week.

-Joe is in the Northeast! He is visiting family for some milestones before heading on the road again

-Jerry is in the midst of a move to a new home and new headquarters of MacWorks.  He calls it the reverse Green Acres.

-After having a car mishap, Jerry discovers CarPlay in his rental car

-A recurring theme for our show has been value based billing and, of course managed services plans.  Joe & Jerry share ideas about their formulas for monthly billing.  Ideas like billing per user or per device, preset hours per month, and services used are among the topics of discussion.

-Prepaid discounts are an enticing way for clients to buy in to ongoing services.  “Monthly check-ins” are also something that clients seem to be drawn to.

-Do you install Watchman Monitoring on client devices for free as a “loss leader” or break even point?  What happens if you end the relationship?

-Jerry has a couple of funny client anecdotes with his classic impersonations

-He also has his fair share of gripes

-Joe's client had an issue in Calendar on her Mac: "The server responded with an error. There is insufficient storage space for "event title" in "calendar name" in account "iCloud". The choices were Try Again, Ignore, or Revert to Server. He removed a calendar she didn't need that only had a few events on it, and it solved the problem. Then we added a few tests, and she seemed to hit the limit again. We then moved a calendar with a lot of events to a local On My Mac calendar for archival purposes, and instructed the client to move needed events back onto a calendar on the server. Hasn't happened since.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202158

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319: We All Have Some Value Based Billing In Our Soul

Topics:

-As much as we love Ubiquiti, Jerry has an axe to grind on this week’s show with regards to Cloud Keys

-Joe addresses the details of the issue based on his own experiences with Cloud Key power failures and the mongo database that Ubiquiti uses

-Specifically with the first generation Cloud Keys, Joe’s solution was to add power instead of relying on POE. This has been addressed with the newest generation, which now has a battery backup.
https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-cloudkey-gen2-plus

-Jerry doesn’t stop there. He has another saga dealing with a Ubiquiti install

-A strong case for an off-site controller that Richard Wingfield brought up is updating a singular controller as opposed to each cloud key at client sites 

-Circling back to value based billing, the crew reflects how they have already been using it in some respects and how to implement it properly in the future. As Jerry said, “We all have value based billing in our soul”. 

-Sam’s concern with this method is that there is no formula to calculate jobs

-Calculating monthly costs for monitoring & managing network devices leads us down the MSP path. How to bill appropriately? Do you require it? What’s not included? Questions that must be addressed when proposing services like this.