WServerNews: Should we outsource, skill up or wing it?

In this issue

When your client outgrows you (Anonymous MSP). Exposing your Certificate Authority (CA). SetupDiag in Windows Setup. Transient file server connectivity issues. Keeping pace (or not) with the iPhone. Bulk convert Word docs to PDF using PowerShell. Factoid – Server to K4 checkmate! Plus lots more — read it all, read it here on WServerNews!

These pens are about to disappear into the Ether. This could be the biggest business opportunity since Facebook! Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

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Editor’s Corner

This week’s observations and ruminations from Mitch Tulloch our Senior Editor…

When your client outgrows you (Anonymous MSP)

Have you ever had a situation with your business where one of your clients has grown to the point where you have difficulties meeting their IT needs? How did you handle the situation? And what would you do differently if you could do it all over again? I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend who runs a small managed services provider (MSP) that provides IT support exclusively to clients that are small businesses. My friend is facing a situation where one of his clients is rapidly growing and will soon enter the mid-sized business category, which is a level that my friend’s company is currently not geared to support properly. This has placed him in a quandary because it poses an important business problem, namely how to maximize the return on the client when you know your company isn’t going to be able to meet their needs in the future. And how to retain the status as your client’s trusted IT adviser if their needs are now outside your capabilities. What’s the best way to proceed in such a situation so that both the client and your own consultancy benefits? For example, should you outsource, skill up or just try and wing it?

I suspect that many of our readers who are IT consultants or MSPs have faced similar challenges in the past or even maybe are facing them today. Below is the current thinking of my friend on this topic after meeting with the client to discuss their future relationship as businesses. If any of you have any suggestions or comments after reading this we’d appreciate you sending them to us at [email protected] and we’ll include them in the Mailbag of our next issue so other readers of our newsletter can benefit from your hard-earned business expertise in the IT arena.

So without much further ado, Anonymous MSP now shares the following story:

We’re a little MSP (7 staff) that specializes in little customers. Most of our clients have 10 or fewer seats which suits us for many reasons, not the least of which is they are easier to pick up than larger clients. We have a few sitting around the 50 seat mark. Our core service is providing them with hardware/software and administering/troubleshooting any of their issues.

Of course, we try to build our business and want to grow by adding new clients. Another way we can grow is if our clients grow too. Employ more staff, need more PCs, support, phones, services etc — it all adds up. But what happens if they grow too big? This is a situation we recently faced with one of our clients who, after a decade of developing a product, are now going to market with it.

For most of their existence, this client has been between 15 and 20 seats. They have trebled in the past 12 months and they advise us they are going to treble again in the next couple of years. Doing the math that means they are going to be 150+ seats soon.

That poses some special challenges for us. Right at the outset they told us they need to beef up security beyond our capabilities to deliver. 24×7 firewall monitoring, different AV solution to the one every other client runs, Group Policy changes, remote access policies — the list goes on. Then they want to ensure their ISO certification will survive an audit by having everything documented in procedures.

So I go to a meeting with the client and their management team to see exactly what sort of role they wanted us to play in their expansion. I was fully expecting to be told “We need someone else” and I entered the meeting with thoughts as to how I can monetize the value in the long standing relationship. Should I just walk away? Should I try and “sell” the client to another provider with the capabilities to help them? Should I try and bluff and wing it until they get wise and dump us? So we met with their new security officer, in house lawyer, admin management and their in house go-to IT person. The meeting started off with them saying “Can you please help us through this next phase of our growth?”

Our discussion was extremely frank and I was open about our limitations. We all know the rule book when it comes to larger networks but that’s a long way from being able to deliver using in-house resources. To my pleasant surprise they asked if we could assist them in outsourcing where required and manage their network for them, as well as continuing to provide help desk services.

Now this is where I’ve got to eat a bit of humble pie and admit I was completely wrong about this client and what they wanted. They were so happy with our history of honesty and commitment to service that the idea of going somewhere else never occurred to them.

When I first spoke to Mitch about writing this it was before the meeting with the client. The topic was going to be how to monetize a customer you know you are going to lose. Instead, it’s turned into a lesson about not making assumptions about what the client wants. Listen to them. Once again, going back to the basics of business proves to be the winning strategy.

Once again, we’d love to get some reader feedback on what our anonymous friend shares above. If you’ve experienced something familiar or have any thoughts on the situation he faced and how it ended up working out, please go ahead and email us at [email protected] thanks!

Now on to a few other techbits…

Exposing your Certificate Authority (CA)

If you have an Active Directory environment and you need to issue SSL or other kinds of certificates, you should consider deploying a Standalone CA for this purpose even though an Enterprise CA is easier to manage. The reason for doing this is because of a setting called Supply In the Request which is selected by default in the default template Windows Server uses to generate new certificates. If you don’t understand the consequences of this setting there’s a danger you could expose your CA to the Internet which could allow malicious actors to issue arbitrary certificates from your CA. Swedish PKI expert Carl Sörqvist explains this in detail in the following article:

Supply in the Request Shenanigans (Q&D Security)

https://blog.qdsecurity.se/2020/09/04/supply-in-the-request-shenanigans/

SetupDiag in Windows Setup

Although we work a lot with Windows we missed the following news from last summer. Starting with the Version 2004 release of Windows 10 the SetupDiag utility, a standalone diagnostic tool you can use to get details on why a Windows 10 upgrade was unsuccessful, is now built into Windows Setup

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/upgrade/setupdiag#setupdiag-in-windows-10-version-2004-and-later

We need to keep a closer watch on what new features are included in each release of Windows 10. Here’s a summary of the release info from version 1507 up to 20H2:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-information/

Readers who see something interesting that’s new in the current version of Windows or Windows Server can feel free to shoot us a quick email at [email protected] and we’ll make note of it in our newsletter giving you credit.

Transient file server connectivity issues

If you’re client machines are Windows 10 and they’re experiencing occasional problems connecting to SMB shares on file servers running Windows Server 2016 or later, you may want to try disabling Receive Segment Coalescing (RSC) on your servers. I was told by a colleague recently that RSC has caused problems along these lines since around Windows 10 Version 1909.

To disable RSC on Windows Server use the Disable-NetAdapterRsc cmdlet:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/netadapter/disable-netadapterrsc?view=win10-ps

And for explanation of what RSC is see the following:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/hh997024(v=ws.11)

You may also have to disable it on the NICs and WiFi adapters of your Windows 10 machines.

Keeping pace (or not) with the iPhone

Last but not least, and in the strange and weird department, is this news about how iPhones and similar devices can interfere with medical devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators:

An IPhone 12 can temporarily shut down implantable defibrillators (Neoscope)

https://futurism.com/neoscope/iphone-12-shut-down-pacemaker-near-it

Not sure if that means I should carry my iPhone in my back pant pocket or not, but guess it’s OK as long as I use a standup desk at work. And let others sit when I use the subway.

Got comments about anything in this issue?

Email us at [email protected]!

Please tell others about WServerNews!

Enjoy this issue of WServerNews and feel free to send us feedback on any of the topics we’ve covered — we love hearing from our readers! And please tell others about WServerNews! It’s free and always will be free — and they can subscribe to it here. Thanks!!!

Tip of the Week

>> Got any IT pro tips you’d like to share with other readers of our newsletter? Email us at [email protected]

Bulk convert Word docs to PDF using PowerShell

We learned this cool little trick from Patrick Gruenauer:

PowerShell: Convert Word documents to PDF documents (Bulk) (SID-500.COM)

https://sid-500.com/2020/10/20/powershell-convert-word-documentes-to-pdf-documents/

If any readers have similar tricks they’d like to share please email them to us: [email protected]

Admin Toolbox

>> Got any admin tools or software you’d like to recommend to our readers? Email us at [email protected]

This page by wiseTools lets you check a published SPF record or DKIM key:

http://tools.wordtothewise.com/authentication

WsDisplaySettings is a command line tool to save and restore Windows display settings to and from file:

https://www.wizardsoft.nl/admintools/admintools.html#WsDisplaySettings

Droplet Computing has a solution they run older apps on modern operating systems:

https://www.dropletcomputing.com/products/windows/

Factoid – Server to K4 checkmate!

Our previous factoid and question was this:

Fact: Researchers have found the manual for the world’s oldest surviving computer

Source: https://www.engadget.com/oldest-computer-manual-zuse-z4-161214346.html

Question: What’s the oldest computer manual (hardware or software) that you still have kicking around your home or workplace?

Matt Wright responded:

Hi Mitch, Count me as one who’d prefer to still write on paper versus utilizing technology. In fact, many times if I don’t have paper to write down notes and to-do’s, I’ll think it’s easier to use ye old memory instead of pulling out my smart phone (at work I do use tools like Outlook for reminders and such). Unfortunately my memory isn’t as reliable as technology and I oftentimes regret not using my smart phone. But I won’t change, I don’t think. Too old.

On the same note (he he!), I am one who enjoys writing with a fine pen. It really is a pleasure and well worth the money spent on them. But you have to guard them closely because we all know as soon as you turn your back, pens disappear into the Ether.

Wow, the Ether must be full of lost pens then. I wonder if there could be a business opportunity here? Harvesting lost pens from the Ether and reselling them at bargain prices. EtherealPens.com maybe. Wow, just wow.

Returning from dreaming of earning big bucks let’s now move on to this week’s factoid with thanks to Kathy Berardi for suggesting it to us:

Fact: Deploying servers is similar to playing chess.

Source: https://bigstep.com/blog/checkmate-which-is-the-queens-gambit-move-for-servers

Question: Are any of our newsletter readers chess freaks like I am? What online platform do you use to play? (I use Chess.com on my iPad and exclusively play 3-minute games of speed chess (too boring otherwise). Are you following the tournaments online like the Tata Steel Chess Tournament currently covered live on ChessBase? Who’s your favorite player? And what was the most exciting victory you ever had playing chess?

Email your answers to [email protected]

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