[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Dear Mr. Schnell: - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"
Monday, September 06, 2004 11:10 AM bradley

Dear Mr. Schnell:

Dear Scott Schnell:

My name is Susan Bradley and I'm a Small Business Server owner.  I'm also very interested in security and protection of my clients' data on my system.  I have friends who work in industries that also need to protect data and have seen your RSA security keyfobs and am very interested in deploying them in my firm for two factor authentication.  There's one problem.  I don't need 25 of them.  As Dana Epp points out in his blog entry, you are forgetting that there's a marketplace down here for us little guys. 

We have data just as critical as the big guys, just as sensitive.  Just because my firm likes to be a “boutique” sized firm, likes to stay small doesn't mean that I don't have security needs too.

I want the added feature of a secondary authentication means as we know that Passwords are getting nailed and it's sometimes hard to get people to use passPHRASES.  So when you have your next quarterly sales forecast meeting, can I have you think about us small firms too?

We're just as paranoid, just as needing security, just as protective.  Don't forget us down here.  And that goes for any vendor.  Belarc's inventory tool need to package themselves in a manner that they would allow consultants to legally use it.  My fellow SBS consultants have contacted Belarc and they blew them off. 

I'm interested in Postini's mail spam filtering as they don't use RBLs and what not but instead use “reputational“ filtering.  That smtp connection starts suddenly flooding their servers with email messages and they know somethings up.  But they too only offer it via ISPs and larger companies.  So I have to find an ISV that will bundle this in rather than letting small firms sign up.  

I understand economies of scale and all that, but call me blonde, I just think that firms that don't at least investigate ways to come into the Small business space are not fully investigating the growth potential down here.

Guys, look around, there's a small business marketplace down here served by consultants and outsourced technical support folks.  Scale your products down and you can “play“ in this market. 

Filed under:

# re: Dear Mr. Schnell:

Monday, September 06, 2004 5:20 PM by bradley

Dear Mr. Schnell,

As has most eloquently been pointed out Susan Bradley, you are definetely ignoring a large part of the market.

Sure the single invoices may not be as big, but I think you would be pleasantly surprised by the volume of smaller invoices.

Please reconsider your current position.

Regards

Gordon Ryan
Australian based small business consultant

# re: Dear Mr. Schnell:

Tuesday, September 07, 2004 4:51 AM by bradley

Amen !

Benjain Mateos.
Exchange consultant based on Spain.

# re: Dear Mr. Schnell:

Thursday, September 16, 2004 6:26 AM by bradley

You go, girlfriend!

Mark Bradley
Based in Schaumburg, IL - USA

# re: Dear Mr. Schnell:

Wednesday, September 22, 2004 3:18 AM by bradley

Hey Susan,

I agree, take a look at the url www.defender5.com I think you will find their products interesting and they _do_ cater for us little guys.

Sue Suffield
Somerset - UK

# SBS Users are NOT Second Class Citizens, and RSA Agrees!

Thursday, September 23, 2004 11:38 AM by TrackBack

You know how a month ago I made a comment about how during evaluation of RSA SecurID for my organization I realized that the costs were just to prohibitive, and I made the comment to RSA (and other vendors) of: A note to the security vendors out there. Small businesses are not second class citizens! We have security needs just like the big boys. Why is it so hard to believe a small business of 5 or 10 people wouldn't want to implement strong security solutions? Think about that next time you do market research. You are missing a HUGE target demographic and I bet if you looked... you have some easy wins that could increase you sales pipeline. Susan picked up on that and wrote an open letter to RSA with her own views of this. Then a couple of days ago I made the comment that I was pleased to see AOL partner with RSA for OTP two factor authentication. They showed they could bring the cost down for small business, and I was hoping Susan's letter might make a difference for us SBSers. Well it did! RSA has responded to her, and she has posted that response on her blog. I was wondering why I had so many hits from RSA in the last week. It was weird to see such an incline. I know I have a couple of regular RSA readers, but I had like 10x the normal hits from them. Now I know why. Anyways, the result? RSA is going to be introducing a 10 seat licensing pack within the next 90 days! Thats the power of blogging at work people! Now, lets hope they take advantage of SBSers like Susan for expertise on rolling out SBS specific wizards and configuration! Kudos to RSA for listening. You just earned some points in my book....