Expert PAnel: 2025 Forecast with DMARC, MAPs, AI and More!

Action Items

• [ ] Review and remove any old MailChimp records after migrating to a new email service provider.
• [ ] Explore the use of third-party DMARC monitoring services as a sales tool.
• [ ] Research the new Microsoft Partner Launch and Partner Success benefits to determine the best option for renewing the Microsoft Action Pack.
• [ ] Provide feedback on the adoption and usefulness of Microsoft Copilot in the SMB space.

Outline

Introduction and Panel Introductions

• Harry Brelsford welcomes everyone and mentions the agenda, focusing on 2025 forecast content.
• Andre Leroux introduces himself as the CEO and founder of US Service Center, specializing in cybersecurity and managed services.
• Alex Fields introduces himself as a Microsoft MVP and founder of Pro Mentor Com, a private community for MSPs.
• Nakia Carter introduces herself as co-CEO of NTC Tech, a Microsoft partner focused on modern work and power platform development.

Discussion on DMARC

• Andre Leroux explains the importance of DMARC, which requires SPF and DKIM records for email authentication.
• Andre shares his experience helping Harry Brelsford improve email deliverability from low teens to upper 20% open rates.
• Alex Fields discusses the importance of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for email security, especially for MSPs implementing Microsoft 365.
• Andre emphasizes the need to remove old authentication records when switching email service providers to avoid future issues.

Detailed Explanation of DMARC

• Andre provides a simplified view of DMARC, explaining its role in preventing spam and ensuring email deliverability.
• Andre highlights the importance of third-party providers for DMARC monitoring and reporting.
• Harry Brelsford shares his experience with email deliverability improvements after switching from MailChimp to Bravo.
• Andre and Alex discuss the challenges and importance of maintaining DMARC records for email security.

Sustainable Technology and AI Use Cases

• Harry Brelsford introduces the topic of sustainable technology, sharing his experience with an oil field services firm using IoT and AI for methane monitoring.
• Harry explains the importance of continuous data reporting for issuing carbon credits and maintaining environmental standards.
• Andre and Alex discuss the potential and challenges of AI, emphasizing the need for proper training and data protection.
• Nakia Carter highlights various AI use cases in Microsoft 365, including document creation, presentation assistance, and bot development.

Microsoft Action Pack Deadline and Partner Benefits

• Nakia Carter explains the end of the Microsoft Action Pack and the introduction of new partner benefits like Partner Launch and Partner Success.
• Nakia details the differences between the core, expanded, and launch benefits, including cloud and on-prem software licenses.
• Nakia emphasizes the importance of using the partner center for purchasing and instantiating new partner benefits.
• Nakia addresses common questions from the audience, including licensing purchasing through distributors and the inclusion of Office desktop licenses.

Open Forum on AI and Co-Pilot

• Harry Brelsford expresses skepticism about the current adoption and effectiveness of Microsoft Co-Pilot in the SMB market.
• Nakia Carter and Alex Fields discuss the challenges of implementing Co-Pilot, including training requirements and data protection.
• Andre Leroux shares his experience with Co-Pilot in Power Automate and its potential benefits for leveraging the Microsoft stack.
• The panelists discuss the broader applications of AI in business productivity and the importance of proper implementation and training.

Closing Remarks and Next Steps

• Harry Brelsford thanks the panelists and audience, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in the tech industry.
• Harry mentions the availability of the slide deck and recording for those who missed the live session.
• Harry announces the next quarterly briefing and encourages participants to stay engaged and informed.
• The panelists and Harry exchange final remarks, wishing everyone a successful and productive year ahead.

The expert panel discussed the 2025 forecast, focusing on DMARC, sustainable technology, and the Microsoft Action Pack deadline. Andre Leroux emphasized the importance of DMARC for email deliverability, highlighting the need for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. Alex Fields and Nakia Carter explained the transition from Action Packs to new partner benefits, including cloud software, on-premises licenses, and marketing tools like the Digital Marketing Center. They also discussed the challenges and benefits of AI, particularly Co-Pilot, noting its high cost and training requirements. The panel concluded with a brief on sustainable technology in the oil industry.

Harry Brelsford  00:06

Hey, there's Alex. Alex, you're mute. Thank you. Yes, all right. Hey, good

Andre Leroux.  00:15

morning, Alex. Morning,

Harry Brelsford  00:18

boys and girls, Lady And ladies and gentlemen, and let me admit I'll be kind of doing the control thing if you guys see someone in the lobby, go ahead and let them in. Okay, let me share, folks, thank you for your patience. Welcome. Okay, gentlemen, can you see my presentation screen? Yes, okay, perfect. Well, let's, let's get going. You know, always wait a couple of minutes. But anyways, welcome. We're already at mid January. It's kind of come fast and furious. There's a lot of 2025 forecast content out there. Carl pela check over at small biz thoughts had his last week. We think we have a different spin than I've seen the other presentations. And always like to say, make sure you go to several presentations in our community, right? It's sort of like college. You don't just have one book in finance. When you're a finance major, you have a bunch of them. So we'll jump right into it. This is the expert panel. We're revisiting one topic and introducing a couple. And here's Johnny. So we have Alex and Andre. We'll hear soon from the Kia, and maybe one or two other stray cats will roll in. But why don't we start with Andre go ahead and introduce yourself, what you're doing, and you're with the Chris Weiser thing. That's pretty cool down in San Diego earlier.

Andre Leroux.  02:11

Yes. So my name is Andre Leroux. I am the CEO and founder of US service center, and we specialize in cybersecurity, and we're managed service provider. We're We handle everything for our customers so we know what our customers need, especially for cybersecurity.

Harry Brelsford  02:34

Alrighty, very cool. Alex, over to you, rock star. To you for years, you you have the life I want. Go ahead, Alex, yeah.

02:46

So, yeah. My name is Alex fields. I'm a Microsoft MVP, and I run a website called it, pro mentor com, which includes a private community called the square one. It's essentially a peer group of MSPs who meet every month. And yeah, I pretty much recently retired from, you know, the MSP game, and I'm just doing, like, full time community now. So I don't really have an official title for myself, and so I just call myself real human until I decide what I actually am doing. So great.

Harry Brelsford  03:16

Okay, we'll hear from the Kia folks if you attended the mid November event where we really focused on maps. We're going to do it again. It's just a good, important reminder. I have a couple of updates on that, and then I think, I think that's it. Bob ni trio, out of Scottsdale, was able to attend due to some house construction. We'll bring him back next quarter. Hope to make this a quarterly thing. He was going to talk about the importance of forms. Let's get started. Let's review the agenda. So we're

Nakia Carter  03:51

going to talk D mark. Oh, I don't know if you saw me, Harry, but I am here.

Harry Brelsford  03:56

Oh, Nakia, okay, yeah. Thank you, Nakia, introduce yourself, please. And I have a you, by the way, but okay, then we have your slide. Go ahead, please.

Nakia Carter  04:09

Okay, well, Nakia Carter, co CEO of NTC tech, we're out of Washington state. We're a Microsoft partner that has been focused on modern work and power platform development for the most part. But as Harry said, I have a slide, so wait till then. Thanks, Harry. We'll

Harry Brelsford  04:27

get to you. Okay, so folks quickly. We'll jump right into it. We're going to talk about D mark with two expert literally two experts, Alex and Andre. I've worked more closely with Andry. In this category, I'm going to introduce a new topic of sustainable technology. We'll wait till we get there. We hand it off to Nakia, probably the bulk of the gathering today for the Microsoft Action Pack deadline of the 21st what that means? Yes, and then as time allows, we're going to touch base. And Andre, if your time allows, love to have you stay on for AI and hands on. And you know is you're able. I know you have a couple things going on, but love to have you stay on and just give us the peanut gallery. Okay, Andre, and Alex, over to you. Andre, you prepared the slides. Maybe you want to kind of lead. And then Alex, please speak up and bounce up. Andre, go ahead, gentlemen. Yeah.

Andre Leroux.  05:30

So as of last year, the All, all the providers, all the main providers, required, d mark. And D Mark is a combination of having SPF records that are validated and the DKIM records that are validated. And so as of right now, you know, like, if you're emailing to to Google, any type of Google clients, Microsoft clients, they're going to require DMARC. Otherwise, they're going to bounce you out or put you in a spam folder. Yeah,

Harry Brelsford  06:04

yeah. You helped me with it. Thank you. You've helped me with that, with money.

Andre Leroux.  06:08

So, so Harry, how, how has your deliverability has been, you know, like, how has it improved since we've made Yeah,

Harry Brelsford  06:15

yeah, let's, let's go back in time, because, you know, I just switched to brevo, and I just sent out an announcement for the webinar, so I don't have that one in front of me, but back in the MailChimp days, rest in peace. But yeah, I mean, I went from the low teens. You got to remember, I have a pretty mature list, right? I mean, this goes back years and nooks and crannies, still an audience, but went from the low teens at one point hit the upper 20% open rate. I mean, for me, that's, that's awesome. You know, you start seeing 27 28% so it did make a difference. But Andre, I think because I switched to Bravo you and I will revisit this. Well, we actually did some DNS stuff and GoDaddy. But I think your concern with the MailChimp was this stuff changes. It takes a little maintenance. It takes a little bit of monitoring and care and feeding, because they do sometimes change the what word am I looking for, algorithm, or the things?

Andre Leroux.  07:20

Yeah. So the the so sometimes the providers will change IP addresses so the authenticated IP address that you're sending from isn't validating to your domain or your sub domain, whatever that is, you can go to the next slide. Okay, next slide, please. Yeah. So this next slide, I wanted to just provide the audience a simplified view of what D Mark is and and how it breaks down by by, I guess, authentication method. So SPF is your minimum, and SPF basically tells the the recipients, like the these senders, are legitimate senders. Otherwise, you know, for for DMARC, if it goes through the process and you eventually have DMARC categorized or configured, then what D Mark will tell the the receiving email email servers is to either spam it, quarantine it, or deny the service. But SPF is really the the basic authentication that you can have with the with the D cam that gives you some crypto, cryptography and some encryption, and then the D Mark puts it all together,

Harry Brelsford  08:48

Okey, dokey. Alex, over to you, is this a conversation that you're having with the other MVPs? You? I know it's not necessarily your expertise, but you're kind of like a color analyst on Monday Night Football, right?

Alex Fields  09:05

Yeah, no, yeah. We've been doing this is one, you know, one aspect to email security. It's a very important one. And I think a lot of, especially a lot of MSPs who are implementing Microsoft 365 for customers as part of that process. You know, Microsoft, 365, and almost every migration wizard, or even just in the portal itself, it kind of instructs you to do that first step that he mentioned, SPF and the SPF record. You know, one way to think of it is like, if your local post ops have, like, a database of known return addresses that belong to like, if they looked at a piece of email or a piece of mail from me, Alex, and it what didn't match the address that they had on file for Alex, they might reject that message. That's one one step, but a lot of people never did the additional steps and turned on DKIM, which is digital signing, and they never created a DMARC record. And so there's a lot of people out there who still, today, don't have that done. So getting those other two steps done is pretty important. But I do find that, you know, the vast majority of people have at least done the SPF to some level, but it's important, because you kind of have to go through and learn, you know, all of the actual senders that you're using. So if you're signed up with a service like MailChimp, or, you know, any of these others send grid, or any of the mass mailing, Constant Contact, etc, they have information that you need to include in your record as well, so that when you go and turn that DMARC policy on, those mass mailings don't start getting rejected. They have to be known to be able to send mail on your behalf, right. As for the DM aspect, like to help people understand what that is, it would be like receiving an envelope that has a tamper evidence seal on it so you know it hadn't been messed with in transit, so that you know that the seal may be marked with this, like a, if you remember, like those wax seals, right? I just watched the movie do, and there's a moment in that movie where the Emperor receives a message from someone that should be dead, right? It's sealed with a wax seal from a Duke, and that Duke is supposed to be dead, so he knows right away this is, you know, this is bad, this person who is supposed to be dead is still alive, right? Because it's ill with the stamp that only could belong to that person. So that's kind of what that DKIM piece is, yeah, and the D Mark is really, like I said, the policy that pulls everything together, you know, just tells that recipient mailbox. How should I handle it if it doesn't have that stamp? How should I handle this if it doesn't have if I don't see them on the list of approved senders? Yeah? Cool. Okay,

Andre Leroux.  11:23

one, well, one thing that to to remember is like when Harry, when you switched from MailChimp to Bravo, we had to add those new records to Bravo. Yeah, but the most important caveat to that is, once you're completely migrated off of MailChimp, is to get rid of those records, you know, and that's that's going to be a problem in the future for a lot of people, they're going to forget to remove those, those additional authentication, authenticated servers.

Harry Brelsford  11:59

Well, I have you on speed dial. We'll have that session. Make sure that I did that. But any event Andre before we move on to the next slide, go ahead and, you know, in your own words, talk about the three points on why it's important. I mean, obviously we can read, but in your own words,

Andre Leroux.  12:18

yeah, in my own words. So the most important part is it prevents spammers from spoofing your your domain, your email address. That's, I mean, that's really the bottom line. And so if you want your emails to show up in people's inboxes, and especially as service providers, we're sending invoices to customers. We want to make sure they get our invoices and so that that's really the most important thing. It's not that difficult to do. And you know, within an hour, you can have all of this set up, and you can have your email deliverability 100%

Harry Brelsford  12:58

Yeah, yeah. And I'll add this when I get newsletters, and I won't name names other community. You know, a lot of people put out a weekly newsletter. She's and, you know, I'm no different. I get several. But there's one influencer in our space, and I need to get on his calendar, if I might bring you two, and he's a good guy, community leader, but his darn newsletter and training announcements and whatever, they're always in junk, you know? And I'm like, Dude, I mean, it's either me or it's you, but we should at least have the conversation.

Andre Leroux.  13:38

And one of the most important things is, you know, like I we don't accept any emails that aren't fully authenticated, so that, and that's how I discovered you, Harry, your emails were just showing up in our quarantine folder. That's right, that's

Harry Brelsford  13:53

right. That moving on. Andre again. Thank you for providing the slides. I'll let you lead. And then Alex, you're the peanut gallery.

Andre Leroux.  14:05

Yeah. So this just gets in the weeds, as far as what, you know, what, what each one is, but you can go to the next slide, I think, talking about the third, third party providers, you know, because a lot of provider, there's a lot of providers out there that are offering, you know, D Mark monitoring and this and that for MSPs, you can use that as a sales tool, because they will automate that process. You know, for for your own domain, really not necessary, but you know, if you want to have that, that that reporting capability, that's where these third party services come in flight. Yeah,

Harry Brelsford  14:46

and that's really a good point, because it kind of comes down to the both of you. I bored you and Nikki, I think you've been on one of my boring rants, but I still view our industry. Yeah, and a lot of us go back to the quote unquote day, but I still view it that we were specialists and we were surgeons. And now a frustration I have, and I hear in the community, is now, you know, I was a vascular surgeon, they moved me up to the top floor at the hospital, and I'm filling out Medicare D forms all day, and the surgeon says this, that is actually my sister's husband. And he's like, this sucks, you know? I want to be back in the emergency room, right? I like the adrenaline so that, I'll leave it at that. So yeah, the third party services at Chris Weiser event, in fact, Andre, I don't know if you've had the chance to see is easy demark in San Diego with the event.

Andre Leroux.  15:48

Yes, the they were there. I talked to them yesterday.

Harry Brelsford  15:52

Oh, you did, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, I don't know. I can't make so that's

Andre Leroux.  15:57

why it's top of mind right now. I'm like, okay, they're saying, to use it as a as a sales tool, you know, you put your, you know, your logo and stuff and how, have an exportable report that you can have a conversation to explain to customers in a simple way. You know, like what D Mark is and kind of it, the report looks similar to the first, the first slide that I had where it oversimplified the the different technologies and so, I mean, yeah, it could be a valuable cell tool, sales tool for for a lot of providers,

Harry Brelsford  16:34

yeah, and I see Dan Cook commented, Dan is in San Diego. Taller dude from Anchorage, Alaska always wears his red shirt for his branding. Dan, tech. Dan, thank you for your comment. Hope you're enjoying San Diego. Maybe you two can bump into each other. But Dan was just saying they're here, and that's quite a flight for dad. Gentlemen, there's another comment from, where do we go? Alvaro, I don't know if one of you guys want to take that over in chat, meeting chat, right above damn foot. What do you guys want to grab that fly by and thank you, Nakia for putting up some info.

Andre Leroux.  17:26

Are you able to see that? I don't see it.

Harry Brelsford  17:30

Yeah, let me. I'll read it to you. Uh, Overo says our partner idea change with this child. This is related to maps. That's why the key, okay, that's maps, okay.

Nakia Carter  17:44

Um, where we are. There is a question in the there is one question in the Q, and a section um is S, P, F, D, chem, D, Mark, only required for mass mailings, for one on one. And that's the question for one on one email exchange. Do I need to learn this stuff? Because we do not do mass emails.

18:12

It would be for all email and so for example, let's say you use office 365 or you know some provider like that, they would provide you a set of records that you need to put into your DNS hosting provider that says this domain is allowed to have mail exchange with Office, office 365 as an authorized, you know, service to distribute mail on behalf of this domain. So whoever hosts your domain, some people are with like a service like Name Cheap or GoDaddy or network solutions. Somebody owns your domain, you would need to put records in place that tell them you know, Microsoft or whoever your email service provider is, is, in fact, an authorized sender of email. Said it applies to all email, and if you have additional third party services like Constant Contact, then, yes, they should be in there as well, but it doesn't only apply to them. Yeah, cool.

Harry Brelsford  19:06

And folks, a couple of you joined late as always, Give me. Give me about 24 hours. I'll get you the slide deck and the link. I'll do post production, slap it up in YouTube for the webinar. We do have a couple of people. This a good story. A gentleman named Chris, out of south of Portland, Oregon, races those little hydrofoils, the baby hydrofoil boats, right? Not the big boys. And he's in New Zealand at the World Championships. So he said, Can you record it? So I said, okay, alright, we're moving on sustainable technology. I'll take this one quickly, because I do want to save enough time for the other topics. But quickly, you'll, you'll get it. I have joined. Is, I almost call it a main side hustle. I I've always kind of done three or four things, you know, tension, Deficit Disorder or whatever, and sort of that, you know, Small Business Server folks. It just still stuns me. Went away 10 years ago, off the shelf, out of distribution. They announced it in 2011 that it was going to happen, and then finally got that out of the disties that that was kind of the final channel, was the disties and and so a lot of us have been looking for other things. I have a lot of these conversations. I've seen people Chad Musker from Atlanta, went into commercial real estate. He moved to Florida. You know, people are doing what they do. And, you know, I in no way have abandoned SMB Nation or the SMB MSP community. I'd like to say I've expanded so I'm acting as the CTO of a relatively small, I'll call it an oil field services firm, and what we do is it's very technical, so what we do is plug orphan wells because they spew methane and bad stuff, especially sites that have used fracking. It gets even worse with fracking. And so we come in, we have a variety of funding sources, including a new credit carbon credit marketplace. I was on the team that launched that don't want to mislead Yemen my fourth month, so I was I was on the bench. I wasn't the starter, but I was on the field and but, yeah, three and a half million wells. But if you look at the lower left, this is the point of the slide. That's the CEO's wife, Stacy, who's a professional, you know, very competent. This is part of our technology, and so we have an ERP system, or supply chain management, as you would hope you know, sophisticated. And what you're seeing there is a methane sensor on a tripod with solar power, and then we use an IoT approach to transmit the continuous monitoring to the mothership, right? So Starlink. So this thing feeds Starlink, and then it comes back to the mothership. And the reason that's important is, if you've worked in certain aspect, well, I mean, y'all know HIPAA, that's the easy case. But pharmaceuticals, they have to track every pill the entire way, right? Not, not, not good. If you lose a pill, it's CVS down the street, not good. So we're similar, by analogy, to that. So we have to feed the state of New Mexico, Pennsylvania, we're in 13 state, of course, Texas, but we have to feed them continuous data, because for them to issue a carbon credit, which we have a car, I told you a carbon credit marketplace, we sell that as a revenue source to like Delta Airlines and so on. They have to get continuous reports right that, first of all, we're not sleeze bags. We really did it. Number two, it's working, right. It's not leaking methane. And then Nicole over at the right, for giggles, guys, if you've seen land man up on Paramount plus, I mean, this is it. This is you know, welcome to your new job. Be careful what you ask for. And finally, a well known name in our space, Joe Panetta Terry. So the infamous Joe Panetta Terry, the fastest typist in our you know area for MSP, technology stuff. If you're not aware, he got acquired twice. So you'll remember bar guy in talking cloud, and then he got acquired and then started up e to e entrepreneur to exit for MSPs, doing the m a thing. He cashed out, moved to Florida, and so this is his side hustle, and it's so sustainable. Tech partner, good old Joe. If you haven't heard of Joe, go to the site. Look about. He's, you know, he's a he's the goat, he's a legend. Um, I'll leave it at that. We'll move on. Let's go. Hey and Nakia, I hope you heard me earlier. Just say Next slide, please. I'm driving today, so that's fine. Uh, please introduce yourself, man. You got a yard long. LinkedIn loves you. That's that's some SEO searching.

Nakia Carter  24:49

Apologies if that's a lot. But thank you to you Harry, and hello to everybody. I'm not going to go, you know, super deep into this. Slide. Just co CEO of NTC tech. We do modern work and power platform power platform development for the most part, although we also do full code apps, and we have some other services as well. You'll see all my street cred on this, this slide, and you can, of course, when you get the slides, you'll be able to go more into it. If you would just want to Google my name, Nakia T Carter, you will find me in the search results. Okay. So next slide, Yep, alright. So action pack, that's what we are here for. And I have seen some questions in the window that I had been answering. So we're going to get a lot more questions answered through this. So Microsoft Action Pack is a pack that a lot of Microsoft partners have been using to give internal use rights for different softwares like Microsoft Cloud, im 365, other ones, different softwares, different software packages. So one of the great ones was they give you some cloud stuff, and then they also give you some on prem stuff with your action pack. But now that is ending, and there's going to be a few other things that you can move to, even though we're using the word migrate. That's in quotes. It's not a real migration. It's like, you buy the new pack and then you just instantiate it into your tenant, just like if you use, if you use Office, personal, Microsoft, office 365, for family. Whenever you get a new license, you just basically get the new one, and it just kind of like transfers over. That's the same thing that's going to happen. You're going to do that type of migration in the partner center by basically buying a new subscription and and then instantiating it in your tenant. So it's not a real migration. Don't feel like we're going to move tenants, or your ID, your partner ID, because that was a question in the chat. Your partner ID should not change. It should be the same thing. You're just basically getting a new pack. And these are the packs that you'll end up getting. So next slide, oh yeah, this is talking more about the action pack going down. And, you know, there's these other action packs that are still be available as Microsoft is changing the Microsoft partner network programming, the action pack is going away, the Learning Action Pack is going away, as well as legacy gold and silver benefits, because now we're going into solution designation, as opposed to gold and silver. There's a point system, as opposed to seats sold or revenue, which was the latest thing that Microsoft had changed. Those ability to get your gold and silver. Now it's based on points, which has to do with revenue, but also has to do with which you can get through C pour or D por, but it also has to do with your certifications. How many people you have certified at a certain level for certain things to get certain designations. And there's a couple of other points that you have to make in order to get into a Microsoft solution designation, which is replacing gold and silver, which also has a cost, kind of like gold and silver. But anyway, going back to the action pack, let's go to the next slide. Okey, dokey. There we go. Yep, here are the different types of action Well, Action Pack replacements. They're called partner launch benefits. And the partner success ones, the core and the expanded one, the core one and the launch benefits are kind of similar. They are on I got QR codes on the page for you to go to the pages to be able to see all the different information. They'll

Harry Brelsford  29:11

get the deck. So, folks, you can either shoot the screen or just wait, give me a day. You'll get the deck. Please continue.

Nakia Carter  29:19

Yeah. So they all include cloud software. I believe both the core and expanded also includes on prem, but the thing that most of us are worried about are the software that you get for the cloud as well as marketing help so you get access to the thing was that thing, the Digital Marketing Center, the DMC, you can also get access to the PMC, the partner Marketing Center. The DMC gives you the ability to have. Of email campaigns, I think like between six and 12 week email campaigns that you can just put all the emails in that you want to send the campaign through Microsoft already has a few that are pre built for certain types of campaigns, like one for modern work. There's ones for like teams, there's ones for like, security, so different flavors of stuff. I think there's ones for Azure, but we don't really do that much Azure, so we don't send that out, but there's a bunch of ones that are already there. And you can build your own campaign so that it automatically goes out, it posts to LinkedIn, as well as sending those emails out to folks. So it's kind of a multi threaded campaign tool, yeah? Really nice tool. I love it. Go ahead, Harry, yeah.

Harry Brelsford  30:50

I just wanted to add that, folks is now that I'm in house, which is a change. And by the way, as you look at side hustles, that's not all bad. That's not all bad to go inside of a company and see it from a CTO perspective, right? It rounds you out, because my life has basically been a, you know, consultant or or now, you know, channel partner, MS, I mean, a computer guy, whatever you want to call it. But to go in house has been a real learning it's and I use outside experts now, mainly over in DevOps. But the point is, Nakia. I see the use case with the day to day of Microsoft integrating LinkedIn to the platform, right? Because it's like, well, that's pretty cool. It makes some suggestions. It does some voodoo, and maybe I'd see that as an MSP, maybe not. But I appreciate it being in house, right? I'm like, you know, wow, Nakia, please continue. Thank you, Harry.

Nakia Carter  31:55

So, yeah, lots of different benefits in it, and they're also in the core benefits, there's also CRM available. So that's why it's a little bit higher. We are mixing and matching between we had managed the MSP or we had the maps as well as core, because core expanded and launch benefits have already come out, so we had kind of mixed and matched, and we plan to still do the mix and match between launch and launch and success, unless something has changed. We're supposed to be adding co pilot, or copilot is already added to these benefits. So I would highly suggest that you check them out, do your comparisons on those on those web pages, as well as that PDF, there's a comparison guide, benefit guide, the comparison and then the benefit guide that you can use to help you make a more informed decision. Now I'm going to read the questions real quick. So too, please. Yeah, just pause for a second here. So someone asked, How does Microsoft handle licensing purchasing through organizations such as Pax eight and sure, Web. Okay, so if you're referring to maps and these launch benefits and things like that, that type of purchasing has to happen through the your partner center. It doesn't go through your your your disties. Now, the the things that go through your disties licenses to your part, your your customers, through a pack Satur share with None of that changes. So this doesn't have anything to do with that. If that, if that's what you're mixing those two together. The the maps that all your partner benefits have to go through your partner center, be purchased from there and then be instantiated from there. Make sure that when you do instantiate it from there, make sure you're signed in in that browser and in that same browser, into the company that you actually want those licenses to go into, because, if not, if you're in like a partner or a company that you're working with, and you happen to be signed into their stuff, but you signed into your partner portal, and you go to instantiate these licenses, they could end up in that person's portal and not in your portal. So you want to make sure that you're you're signed in in the browser, and that's the only sign in in that one browser where you're doing the instantiation of your partner licenses. But yes, they're two separate things, then the next question, or at least somebody put here the partner launch gets 365 Business Premium with desktop apps licenses, right? Yes. So you do get your Office desktop licenses for that. Yes, you do. It says you mentioned it was all cloud. Oh, no, when I Oh, you mentioned it was all cloud was it was going. Going that route to replace e3 from the action pack. No. What I was saying was that sometimes there's on prem benefits that you get. So there's the cloud version of stuff, your m3 65 you know, your power platform, your copilot, that type of stuff. Then there is this stuff that you can instantiate on prem. Windows Server, SharePoint Server, although those are those are going away. Folks, 20, 2019, SharePoint is going away. Windows servers going away. Their end of life thing. Same thing with Skype for Business, which actually end of life in October of this year. The other two end of life next year. So you want to be aware of that. But any on prem licenses, project on, you know, when they used to have project on, Project Server, those types of licenses are the things that you get that you can instantiate, and say, an Azure infrastructure, you know, set up a Azure, sure, yeah, configuration where you have your servers and all of that stuff, and then put it there so it's server based stuff on prem based stuff. So you still do get your your your office for your desktop in your office, for the cloud that licenses is still there, but that's what I meant. Okay, next question, my action pack renewal is due, but the landing page purchase comes up saying you need permission to get to that page. You can't get to that page, most likely, because Microsoft is probably already even though it's not the 21st but they're probably already getting rid of the ways that you can get repurchase an action pack ahead of time. So some people were like, Ah, maybe we can, you know, buy another action pack and then not have to worry about this for another year. They're probably already cutting that off. So that's probably why you're seeing that now, okay, I'm going to go a little bit more further before I go into, oh, somebody else was answering some of these things. Go ahead, Harry,

Harry Brelsford  37:09

no, I was just saying, boo,

Nakia Carter  37:13

yeah, you know how? You know how Microsoft is. They like, they like to find those loopholes that close them. Yeah,

Harry Brelsford  37:18

I'm showing my screen. But later on, I got an email to renew action pack, and it had a link. I'll do a fact check. I'll see if that link still works. So anyways, could

Nakia Carter  37:30

be interesting, yes, if it still does work, but I you know, for them to be blocking it from the partner center. Now I can see them, you know, already doing that, trying to get ahead of the game. We only have six more. Six more. Yeah, six more days anyway, yeah. Okay, next slide. Okie dokie, okay. So, like I was saying, this is kind of like a little teeny tidbit of what's going on in the partner success core benefits, where you get your Business Premium and includes co pilot. Now the co pilot we have to be a little bit careful with, because the last time I saw the copilot, don't it was not the m3 65 co pilot that everybody thinks it is. It's the co pilot that searches the web for you, the enterprise level copilot that searches and brings stuff back in, but doesn't necessarily search the things inside of your organization. They may have changed that. I haven't looked at the licensing again, you know, very recently, but the last time I looked, it was that type of copilot, the one that you see in the browser when you go to, you know, when you're using a Microsoft Edge browser, and you see the little copilot symbol. That copilot, not the other one that most people think are going to help them with, Word or PowerPoint. It's not that one, but they might have changed it, because there was a lot of complaining around that. That is the one that I really think a lot of people should focus on, because especially if you need a CRM, because CRM is in this benefits package, and you get five licenses, and I think y'all know how expensive CRM is, and then you also get access to the D the DMC and the PMC. Sorry, Harry,

Harry Brelsford  39:26

no, I said, yeah, yeah. CRM is expensive. One of my first jobs at this oil field services company was to implement CRM. It's two things. It is expensive. Now I think it's still value given, value received, because these oil dudes were using yellow legal tablets when I showed up. And I'm like, that information just walked right? You know, we don't have IP and but it's expensive. But the other thing, and we'll get back on track, folks, but the other thing. Am learning very quickly, is CRM training, right? So I got a couple malcontents. I got a little people that are a little bit caustic. I've been there before, but, you know, that's the hidden devil of CRM is okay? We did all that. You got to use it. So I'm working through it. There we go. Next slide. All right, I I'm happy you can take the I mean, it's highlighted yellow. Warwick out of Australia, was asking questions. If you want to snag it, it's pretty straightforward,

Nakia Carter  40:34

yeah. And I think there's um, um, a question kind of like this around that, what they were saying that their renewal is in, oh, wait a minute, no, this person is saying, Oh, they use maps since it was first available and they're given, like their they love maps, you know, yeah, I think lots of us,

Harry Brelsford  41:03

yeah. He wanted a test environment for sales and trading. That's actually pretty cool.

Nakia Carter  41:07

Mm, hmm, yep. So, like I said, those, you can get those use it for that type of thing. But there's also that on prem stuff that you also could have used it for, but some of that stuff is already transferring over, or most of it's already transferring over into these new licenses, okay, but there's a question that's saying, Oh, I'm sorry.

Harry Brelsford  41:30

No, no, no, you have a question in chat, please

Nakia Carter  41:32

go, yeah, yeah, which is actually kind of well, kind of like, but anyway, my renewal is on May 2025, you're good until then. Because that's the question, Am I good until then, or do I need to take action before January? You're good. Your maps is not going to go away after. You know january 21 if you're you're you're deadline is, I think ours is in March or in April. Then that's when you switch over. That's when you won't have the ability to go to maps. You'll have to choose another, another option, or another two options, so you're good through May, you'll still have your maps. And then when it's time to renew, that's when you'll be like, Oh, do I need to go to core? Launch core. Do I need to go to? You know which, which ones do I need to go to? And then you'll, you know, make your decision by doing some research ahead of time, so that when your deadline comes around, you know exactly which one you're going to go to. And there was a question kind of similar from the audience about that before that's on this slide that you know, what happens if my renewal date is past that time? Or would it happens if my renewal date was before that time? This one actually is before that time. So they could have gotten, they could have possibly, at that point, gotten a new maps, because it was still very much live, but now you know probably not so much. Yeah,

Harry Brelsford  43:04

yeah. And John seech Andre. I don't know if you knew you met John in my workshop a year ago. And so Cal the the big guy up at the front table with me, based in LA, good man. Good man. Okay. Hang let's get back on screen. Three. Ah, I'm on duty, okay, and then you're up, yeah, we'll go to an open forum. So I'm a killjoy in a curmudgeon sometimes when I here, let me put on my analyst hat. Here we go. So I got my analyst hat on, and CO pilot's a funny beast. You guys, you know, typical Microsoft a lot of funding in Redmond, a pump co pilot, my Dallas show. Microsoft was an in kind sponsor. They did write me a check, but they covered some internal cost to use the Microsoft conference center in North Dallas. Very nice, by the way. And so, you know, we're good. And they came and made a presentation, and it was co pilot this, and co pilot that. Here's what I've discovered. That workshop was in September, and I was always already a little suspicious of co pilot, you know, I just know Microsoft too well and don't always trust them. But here's something that came out last week, right? It's, we're basically headed into earnings season, and this was a thing on CNBC, which is the photo, and they talked about co pilot one year later. And this is important, you guys, because extends deep into corporate America. Companies aren't 100% sold. That's fair. Um. The AI, you know, blah, blah, blah, copilot use accelerates inside companies, but cost concerns way. Here's my translation. Is down at SMB, and I understand if you're just going to quit the webinar right now. I get it, but I think copilot said dud right now, right? It's targeted to the enterprise. The funding in Redmond is towards the enterprise. I mean, I appreciate them in Dallas, participating in my workshop, you know, carrying the flag, as we say, and good people. I mean, you know, there is fine. It's fine. But when I saw this on CNBC, and I just look at my own feedback, love to hear, well, we're this an open forum so we can go around the horn with people. We're really talking AI. There's two topics, AI and co pilot. I just wanted to get that off my chest that I present to you that co pilot today in SMB is a dud, and not, not that they won't get it right on the third try, right? You know, Microsoft, they'll get it right, but Nakia, you're nodding. I'll start with you. Any any thoughts on co pilot adoption rates and functionality and that kind of thing?

Nakia Carter  46:13

Yeah, for for SMB, I think it's kind of pricey for them still, it's still too pricey, so that type of adoption is low in the SMB space. Because of that, I think also the curve there's okay. So some people think they can just take the co pilot, especially the m3 65 co pilot license, and just turn it on, you can, but there's going to be problems. Okay, some of those problems. So there's a whole journey that you should go through before you turn on your co pilot licensing, making sure that the data is clean, tagged properly, records management. DLP, you know your security, your access controls, are proper. You know, making sure that you're you're properly testing use cases. Make sure those use cases are going to be something that is useful to the company that you get folks on board to adopt the AI, because that's another thing you need to make sure that you're keeping people in the loop so that they feel comfortable as this change is going on, and they understand what's happening. So there's all types of fails going on across that whole spectrum. But also because people think they can just turn it on, which it for some have found that it's a little bit of a problem. Some people, so some companies are kind of small, you know, they they're using SharePoint for everything, or they're OneDrive for everything. So they have, like, data that they probably shouldn't have in their SharePoint, but because they feel that people can't find it, because it's not on the navigation, it's not easy to find a blah blah blah that they can't get to it. Well, copilot kind of makes it so they can get to it. So for example, and I thought that I was giving this example before, and I thought nobody actually does this, but found out that somebody does do this. If you have your, like a spreadsheet in your in your leadership site that has everybody's salary in it, and Joe asks what everybody's salary is, and it's not properly locked down. CO pilot's going to be like, Sure, here you go. And that has literally happened, literally to a company recently that I know of, because they did not know that, and they thought it was just easy. It's another one of those. Microsoft says it's so easy, but then when you get into it, it's not that easy. But then if you get to the like the mid level in the enterprise space, it's more that copilot has some holes. There's not a whole lot of understanding. People want bots made, but they think that it's going to be something that's cheap. So, you know, there's all of that scramble. I think that's just delaying co pilots emergence in the market.

Harry Brelsford  49:23

Yeah, Alex, over to you. You, you're, you're a thinking, man, what's your take? Yeah, no,

49:30

I think that's right. It's probably the adoption has been slower for a variety of reasons. I would say that one of the largest is probably actually training. And it's training at multiple layers too. It's, you know, it's training the IT professionals who manage it, like, you know, Aki was just saying that we had these issues with over exposing information. There are ways to mitigate that. Your IT administrator has the ability to make sure that copilot only has visibility into the things that's supposed to have visibility into, and only share information with who it's supposed to share. Information with and so on. But you've got to, you've got to kind of know how to do that. So that's part of it. And then as well, at the end user layer, you know, I think a lot of people think that AI is further along than it is. And when you listen to, like podcast interviews with people like Sam Altman, you think, like, Oh, we're, you know, this is going to be, like, the future is here now, right? This is magic, right? But it's not, it's not quite to that level. So like, for example, if I were to, you know, open up my PowerPoint, and I actually have the full co pilot license, and I started playing with this to say, like, Hey, how can it help me with content creation? You know, I give presentations all the time. Like, I was giving this presentation today on email authentication and DMARC, for example, could I just tell it, hey, build me a presentation about this. It's going to pull in all the information. Just make me a bunch of beautiful slides. It's fairly underwhelming, if that's what you think it's going to do. But if you already have some slides built out and you want help improving them, it's a pretty valuable tool. And so knowing how to prompt it, knowing how to work with it, is a big deal. And it's just like anything like, if you move from, you know, a really old version of Office, like you're still on 2007 2010 and then you move up to the newest, you know, Microsoft, 365, tools. If you don't get trained on some of the new functionality and features in those tools, you're going to continue using it like it's still 2010 or whatever. You're going to miss half the features, right? And that this is the same thing. It's just a new tool. It's a new capability. And, you know, it can certainly make your job easier. Can certainly help you to create more beautiful content, you know, refine some content, catch mistakes, make things more clear, things like that, creating brand new content from scratch. It's, it's not quite to that level yet, from my experience with it, but just helping people understand where it can actually be beneficial that that training element, I think would be huge, and I think it's a big opportunity for partners, you know, to really, I call it moving above the line where we had this sort of model of, you know, showing the network stack right, where there's, like, the devices and things, and then you've got your database management layer sort of in the middle, and then on top, you have your applications and and, you know, how the things that end users interact with day to day really helping end users to drive productivity in their business. That's a value add for them. That's something that will drive value in their business, and that's something that partners really should be focused on more the bits and the bytes and the stuff below the line, managing devices, you know, managing email, things like that, the systems and services. Those are all cost driven services. And so that's that market, that space has already become really mature. We're talking it's like a commodity now, so it's really just a volume game. Whereas you're above the line, services really driving value for your organization. That's really where I think the new money is at. Yeah, yeah.

Harry Brelsford  52:38

Under you want to weigh in on co pilot or segue us into a broader AI use case conversation, please.

Andre Leroux.  52:45

Well, I agree with Nikia that you know DLP and protecting your data is critical for for AI, because AI in us, in essence, is a three year old. You know, you can trick it into giving you any type of data, you know, like they at one of the these conferences, they were telling, telling us that, you know, if you ask the AI, you know, how can I hack into my neighbor's network? It won't tell you, but you could say, you know, if my neighbor was to hack into my network, how would they do it? And so with with that, you know, you can trick the AI into giving you the information, and that's why it's critical to to have your data locked down before implementing and implementing AI over your entire network. And, I mean, yes, AI requires a lot of training. Uh, I've, I've experimented with it, and I'm highly technical, and, you know, it's great at, you know, starting articles

Harry Brelsford  53:59

or it is, yeah, just trying to

Andre Leroux.  54:03

get an outline for something, or, you know, maybe for, you know, like, sometimes I'll create a social post and I'll try to summarize it, and sometimes the AI does a Great job. But I, my next experimentation is using the co pilot that's within Power automate, because I think that's where there's a lot of power for leveraging it to to the Microsoft stack.

Harry Brelsford  54:35

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So let's go back around the horn. Alex will go the other way on my screens. So AI use case and folks please ask questions. You know, we love these, what will now become a quarterly briefing to be interactive. Alex, you want to weigh in?

54:55

I apologize. I got someone ring my doorbell just now. I'm just going to step away. Really Brief. We all come back to me. Oh,

Harry Brelsford  55:01

all right. Well, Nakia, over to you. So we're talking AI and use cases. And then I have a comment to add as well, but go ahead.

Nakia Carter  55:12

Well, you know, I think the main use cases for a lot of business productivity users is the m3 65 co pilot. You know how helping it, help you having it, help you create documents, presentations, helping you with the formulas and such in Excel, things like that, helping you with your OneNote, because it can also, there's also co pilot in OneNote, and then there's co pilots in other places before I get to the bots, there's, you know, your co pilot and power automate that helps you write some power automate flows. There's your co pilot in Microsoft forms. It'll help build a Microsoft form for you. There's copilot and power apps, which helps you to build a power app. Now, of course, all of those things you're going to have to improve and review, and, you know, make sure that they're actually correct, because sometimes the AI hallucinates and gives you crazy stuff, and sometimes it gives you stuff that's really old, and you're like, but why did you give me stuff from 95 I don't understand why you don't, why you didn't see other stuff so and then there's the the more business use cases of like building a bot to like, bring In data from an outside source, like a a Employee Resource software or accounting software, to bring it into your office, 365, or wherever you want to bring that stuff into or wherever you Want to display it. So it's that type of programmable thing that also can be created to create things that your business users, mostly at the leadership level, or leadership levels normally, are the ones that would be using.

Harry Brelsford  57:20

Yep, and we got a couple minutes left. Last call for questions. I do like to kind of honor, you know, the time we set so we got about two, three minutes left. My take on AI is, I've certainly used it for generative AI with my writing. My favorite is otter. And now there's other tools, but otter was early. It takes my Well, quite frankly, it takes this webinar and does a pretty good job around the 90% confidence level of translating it. And then when I post up to both YouTube and the SMB Nation site, that's Google juice, right? Google goes, woo hoo. You know, there's words for their little spiders to get a meal. And then the other thing I would say is, again, folks, that's really interesting to go in house, because in the oil industry, I've been doing some research, and AI does have a role now, it tends to be on the front end and drilling, and we're on the back end of, you know, capping abandoned wells. But there was a really good article MSN had recently about in Midland, Texas, one of these windowless rooms with mounted monitors. It's sophisticated, you know, kind of like a power grid room that you see on TV when the cold spells coming and they've reduced their staff, you know, he I think the article set from 30 employees down to six. That's what AI is doing for the oil industry. That's a use case. Did we have? Did I have a question to just pop up my screen?

Nakia Carter  58:59

No, that wasn't a question. I just when you mentioned otter, I forgot about the co pilot in teams, which isn't called co pilot. It's called teams premium. So if you're looking for the co pilot that's in teams, it takes the notes for you and action items like otter that's teams premium licensing that you have to get. It doesn't say teams co pilot.

Harry Brelsford  59:25

Okie dokie, folks, we're at time, and the way I think we keep you know your confidence and trust is we're going to end the webinar. So give me about 24 hours and I'm going to kick it. You can see on the slide, you'll get the email addresses of the panelists with their permission, you'll get the deck and the recording, and then we'll be back next quarter. It's good to kind of get back to this. Yeah, it. We used to do it quarterly, and then the pandemic hit. Then everybody burned out on Zoom, and we're kind of back. I. So alright. Thank you very much. Have a great day. And I want to say, Go University of Texas Longhorns, but unfortunately, we are not in the national championships next Monday, so I guess I go with Notre Dame. Oh, and by the way, Andre danfoot is in a blue shirt on site, so look for the tall guy in a blue shirt.

Andre Leroux.  1:00:24

Sounds good. All Right. Take care. Bye. You.