BMS Blog: SBS Consulting in the UK

People start their own business for many different reasons and in my case it was because I thought I could do a better job than the guy I was working for at the time.  I got in to an argument with him over levels of car stock for the engineers and was so convinced I was right I gave him the company car keys back and walked out – that was a bit rash of me really as I lived 30 miles from the office and had to beg a lift home from the sales director. That was nearly 20 years ago and I immediately set up BMS in competition.

Bearing the above in mind I can’t honestly say I started BMS with an exit plan in mind. What I can say is its something I’ve been working towards for the last 3 years or so, and today, that day has arrived. I’m therefore very pleased to announce BMS has been purchased by Entegraty Ltd. BMS will continue as a trading name of, and under the guidance and management of Entegraty Ltd, complete with all the existing staff and operating out of the same premises in Leicestershire.

I’m immensely proud of the company, the staff and the reputation we have built up over the last 18 years and I’m confident it will continue to thrive in the future, and I wish them all the best of luck.

Some have suggested I must be mad selling a company that provides a decent salary, security and realises a good profit. What they don’t see is the bigger picture. Priorities change and for me that means wanting to spend more time with my young children as they grow up, as well as looking for new challenges but with a more hands-off role. Selling BMS will allow me to do that.

Now is also a good time to sell as IT infrastructure companies look to acquire similar companies in a bid to grow out of the recession and get ready for the next big change in the industry - cloud computing – which is of course, already here. The IT industry evolves very quickly, and in the relatively short time BMS has existed we’ve re-invented ourselves 3 times over the years.

I’m often asked by members of the SBSC community what the secret to growing BMS and becoming successful has been, so now would be as good a time as any to summarise my thoughts on that as I hand the reigns over.

In my view there are many factors that go to making a successful and thriving company. Some of it is down to shear luck. However my top 10 do’s and don’ts (most of which I learnt the hard way) would be:

• Never let a salesman run your business or tell you they can sell their way out of trouble. Sales people are by nature always optimistic, which isn’t always a good thing.
• Remember – Profit is sanity, Turnover is vanity
• Don’t sell products and services – sell yourself, your company and your staff – people buy people
• Don’t be afraid to increase prices.
• Don’t employ expensive sales people to generate leads – pay a lead generation company to find the leads and then employ the expensive sales person to convert the leads. I’m constantly amazed by how many companies take on expensive sales people expecting them to generate leads. IT DOESN’T WORK!
• Don’t worry about perfecting a new service or offering first – get it to market and then work on making it better afterwards. Current example:Cloud Computing.
• Constantly review your marketing/PR/social networking effort – analyse what works and what doesn’t, ditch what doesn’t and put the money/time into what does.
• Constantly review your customers – consider getting rid of the ones in the bottom 25%, you can then spend more time concentrating on the ones that make you money. Controversial but it worked for BMS. Putting up prices often achieves this for you and stops you becoming a “busy fool”.
• Strive to become the  “expert” in your field. Do this by writing articles, books, blogs, getting quoted by the press, radio interviews, speaking at industry events,  putting yourself forward for roles such as Microsoft PAL or user group lead.  This all  gives you and your company added kudos among peers and clients and results in more business
• Talk to the community – I’m really not that clever and all my best ideas came from conversations with peers in the IT SMB space and listening to respected business leaders.
• Stop being an engineer and become a business owner. Not sure how to put the spanners down? Go talk to Susanne Dansey. She’ll soon put you right.

Ok so that’s 11 not 10! But at the top of the list has to be:

• Take action – It’s great learning all this theory but without action it simply isn’t going to happen. So get off your backside, YES NOW, and go and do it!

So what’s next for me? Anyone who knows me knows my passion for boating, canals and historic narrowboats. so I’m looking to invest in an inland marina or similar which will give me the opportunity to split my time between messing about with boats and looking after the kids, and to be honest I couldn’t ask for more than that!

So if you see me pottering around a Marina somewhere or cruising down the canal don’t forget to give me a wave.

I got all excited when I saw that Microsoft OneNote was available for the iPhone – and even more excited when I found out it was free for a limited period.

Imagine then my disappointment when it turns out it isn’t on the UK iTunes store, only the US one. However, there is a solution so if you are desperate to get OneNote on your iPhone and you’re in the UK here’s how:

Open iTunes. Click on ‘iTunes Store’ in the left hand menu then scroll to the bottom. Click “change country” and set it to United States.

Search for Microsoft OneNote and try to download it. When iTunes prompts for a user id and password, click ‘Create New Account’

Click through the welcome message

Tick that you’ve read the T&Cs and click ‘Continue’

On the next page enter your email address etc.

When you get to the payment/information page choose ‘None’ as your payment method.

Next you need to fill in your address. Make sure this is a bona-fide US address – Go for something like Microsoft in Seattle for instance! A confirmation email will be sent out and then you can activate the account. Once activated you will be able to download OneNote!

Caveat – the first time I tried this I entered a .co.uk email address and the activation email never arrived. I tried again with a Gmail account and it worked fine.

I can now happily use OneNote on my iPhone and sync it with my desktop and laptop.

Confused by all this cloud terminology? Do all the clouds just seem grey to you? Not sure about the difference between a public and private cloud? Then check out this video featuring Zane Adam, GM of Azure at Microsoft as he explains what makes a private cloud.

Need to know more about the cloud? Check out Microsoft’s Cloud Power website

More from PDC10:

Mohit Srivastava shows in a seminar how to run your existing applications on Windows Azure using two new and highly requested features: VM Role and Admin Mode.

He demonstrates best practices for building and uploading customised OS images, deploying and managing services using those images, and automating configuration using Admin Mode and the service model.

I got talking to a couple of developers recently who had been to this years PDC10 conference in Redmond. For them it is the conference highlight of the year and they get to geek out on all the latest developments.

Personally I’m not sure I’d forego WPC for PDC but it looked like there was some pretty cool stuff going on, particularly around Phone 7 app development.

In this video from the conference Scott Guthrie talks about the latest features being discussed, along with some of the major points from this year’s keynote speech.

If you’re an MSDN subscriber there is a special offer running at the moment which means you can get 750 hours of Azure compute time completely free!

Microsoft’s Azure Platform is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. In this video Steve “Planky” Plank gives a brief walk-through on how MSDN subscribers can correctly set themselves up with the Windows Azure Platform, and a little bit on the features that users can expect.

If you’re a developer or want to check out the Azure platform this offer is definitely worth looking at!

As some of you will know, I spent a day installing, configuring and writing my first Windows Phone 7 app recently using the free WP7 development tools and the free getting started guide . Now, I’m no developer but I have to say I found the tools incredibly easy to use and learn. I was up and running in minutes and using  the Windows Phone 7 emulator had written my first program in less than an hour! OK I’ll admit all it did was write a message on the screen saying “Hello Windows Phone 7” but we all have to start somewhere!

To make life even easier there are some great templates and SDKs you can make use of as well. These 2 videos highlight some of those.In this clip Mitika Gupta, Program Manager in the Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows Phone, and Chris Devaraj, Senior PM in the pubcenter team, quickly introduce how easy it is to use the Windows Phone Ads SDK to incorporate advertisement into your app.

This clip features Unni Ravindranathan and Billy Chow joining Jaime Rodriguez to introduce the Windows Phone 7 design templates.

Even if you’ve never written a application before I’d encourage you to download the dev tools and give it a go. You never no, you might just end up writing the next killer app!

IT Pro Technical Evangelist Joey Snow invites Senior Architect Evangelist Brian Prince to Redmond to begin unravelling the mystery around Cloud Computing in this first video in the four part, Real World Azure series. Joey and Brian keep it light as they fill in the vocabulary for you. They describe what SaaS, Software plus Services and cloud computing are, and point out types of applications which are best-suited for the cloud.

I’m very pleased to say I’ve been invited to a roundtable discussion with Jon Roskill, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Partner Group from Microsoft.

As head of the Worldwide Partner Group, Jon Roskill is responsible for Microsoft’s worldwide channel strategy for the company’s commercial products and cloud offerings.

During the meeting I’ll be sharing your ideas and providing  recommendations to Jon. The aim of the meeting is to discuss how Microsoft and partners can accelerate customer purchases of Microsoft Online Services. Jon will be keen to hear from you what support Microsoft could provide to assist your business development. In addition he will be keen to hear about your experiences selling BPOS and your recommendations moving forwards.

I’ve already got a list of ideas and recommendations for Jon, but if you have any please get them over to me and I’ll be sure to add them to the list.

This is the first official hands-on video that contains a demonstration of every key feature and benefit of the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It also contains information on the most frequently asked features from social networking sites. Most importantly, it highlights the value proposition of the Galaxy Tab: Advanced Media, Productivity and Communication, and On the Go.

I suspect this is the device the business community has been waiting for when it comes to productivity. The iPad is a fantastic device for consuming information but in my view is limited when it comes to creating information. Samsung could really have something here. Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on one and give it a go!