New product ideas come from everywhere—customers, vendors, sales teams, competitive pressures, government regulations…you get the idea. Your product dreams are often bigger than your ability to productize and bring them to market. There is a proven way to see through the clutter and prioritize the winners: Listen to your customers.

At Intermedia, we help Web hosts, MSPs and other IT service providers bring their customers’ demands for better email, Web mail, wireless email and lightweight business applications to market. We prioritize new features and products based on real customer problems articulated to us. It sounds obvious, but too many companies launch new products and features that are not solving even a single problem for their customers. The product, and in some cases the company, are doomed to slow growth and failure since the market messaging never strikes a tone with a customer.

What drives Intermedia? Customer feedback about their business challenges. Two business problems we are asked to repeatedly assist with are productivity and security—primary issues that all businesses struggle with today. Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo and AIM are great tools for communicating with others. We all use them, but using them at the office is becoming an issue for many businesses. From productivity problems to security problems to intellectual property leaks, public IM access at work is a problem.

After listening to our customers’ frequent requests, we recently launched a secure instant messaging solution based on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. This product idea was driven directly from our customers and is driving rapid adoption of this new service. In the end, this product will be successful because we are solving fundamental business problems with secure, business centric, instant messaging.

In 2007, the masses spoke and demanded access to their email from anywhere. No longer could email access be limited to the desk at the office, the computer at home or an executive with a BlackBerry/Treo. In 2007, 24x7x365 email access from any device became the norm.

In early 2007 in the US, we saw the success of the AT&T Blackjack, T-Mobile Wing and BlackBerry's Pearl become available in fashionable colors. In June, we had the blockbuster success of Apple's iPhone launch. Clearly, the masses had decided that access to their email and the Internet on the go was mandatory.

Our role as service providers should be to foster access to email in any way possible. 2007 might go down in US technology history as the last year that the wireless carriers dictated not only the device, but also the accessibility and affordability of email on the device.

2008 brings many changes to the mobile device world – from Apple's promise of an SDK for the iPhone, to further enhancements and more device permeations in the Windows Mobile world, to the excitement around the Google Android devices.  In January 2008 the iPod touch was given the ability to send and receive email via WiFi.

While some argue that the iPhone is not a "business device," momentum seems to be moving that way as AT&T has recently created "business plans" for the iPhone. With a secure IMAP connection, business owners and IT administrators should rest assured that their users' email is being transmitted securely to an iPhone. While push email is always preferable and always part of the BlackBerry/Windows Mobile/Good Mobile – Microsoft Exchange combination, a business that has their employees connected to their corporate email 24x7x365 sees a giant productivity boost.

All of this is disruptive to Web hosts, IT Administrators and wireless carriers. It is important that we all strategize to create an unhindered email-connected world and making hosted Exchange available to your customers is the easiest way to get started.

On premise installations of Microsoft Exchange or other enterprise class email platforms no longer make sense for most companies with less than 1,000 mailboxes. Beyond the costs for hardware, licenses and IT administration time, companies are increasingly accounting for employee productivity loss due to downtime, SPAM and lack of mobile access to email.

This week I spoke to Lee Karjala, General Manager of STKUSA. STKGM.COM is a leading wholesaler of dry goods to dollar stores. They have been in business for 20 years. They primarily sell to independent stores, convenience stores and drug stores.

In the last year they have moved several of their back-office and internal systems to outsourced Web-based providers. Previously they had an IT staff of two with a cost of over $100k per year to maintain basic services such as their on-premise Microsoft Exchange corporate email. Previously they had daily issues with an excessive amount of SPAM, viruses and downtime. Previously they had standalone fax machines.

By switching to Intermedia's Hosted Exchange service, they instantly had relief for their SPAM and virus problems. They also no longer had to experience regular outages that the IT staff would spend hours struggling with. Employees are also regular users of Outlook Web Access for full email capability off site.

STKUSA also subscribes to Intermedia's Fax via Email service. Now, all employees can have their own fax number and all of their faxes are sent directly to their email. Faxes are now never lost, backed up and are accessible from anywhere.

When I proposed a future where email, fax, voicemail and more could be tied to a CRM platform, Lee agreed that this would be the perfect integration.

As hosting providers we know that these services are becoming more accessible to small and medium sized business – but as of yet are not as integrated as they are at large enterprises. Hosting providers that help make this vision come to life will see great revenue growth and will successfully transition from a hosting provider to an IT solutions provider.

Recently, I spoke to an employee at Point MultiMedia, a pre-trial consulting firm that specializes in audio and video services for law firms and court cases around the country.  The company is small, yet has wide experience and thousands of hours of experience in video depositions, to in-court technical support.  They are a customer of Intermedia’s messaging and collaboration services. 

Point MultiMedia has employees managing several clients at locations across the US at all times.  They depend on their access to email, to communicate with each other and their clients.  They use several different devices to connect to the Exchange 2007 service including Microsoft Outlook 2007, Outlook Web Access,  and BlackBerry’s.  All of these connections are secure, easy to use and reliable.  They also use Exchange’s public folders features, to store documents, files and have a company calendar.  They have also created distribution lists to consistently handle communication across the company’s employees. 

Recently Point MultiMedia signed up for Intermedia’s Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services account.  Doing so entitled them to a free copy of Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007, which was recently shipped to them.  While they have not yet built out a SharePoint site, they do have plans to do so in the near future.

Talking with this customer highlighted that existing customer's can sign-up for new services, yet take some time to start using them.  This demonstrates the benefits of communicating with existing customers on a regular basis.

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform! Customers have been actively using SharePoint to enhance their businesses ability to collaborate, and enhance their business processes for years. WSS v3 takes the platform to the next level. If you have not looked at SharePoint in the last few years or at WSS v3, I encourage you to have a look.

This week I spoke to an Intermedia.NET Windows SharePoint Services customer. Cybernetic Learning Systems (CLS), a product technical training company, has been using Windows SharePoint services to manage consulting and training engagements with customers. They specialize in developing training for sales & marketing management, product management, and technology at global 1,000 companies. Today it is common for large corporations to bring in professionals to develop and implement a training program. CLS is also a vendor for other companies that need to supply a training component during an implementation.

If you can imagine, CLS is managing many projects and training programs for many companies at one time. One of their core uses of Windows SharePoint Services is to track projects, tasks and people. WSS is a world class, yet affordable solution that was simple to implement for the company. The templates included with SharePoint allowed CLS to quickly get started with managing their projects and clients. A SharePoint project site is a key component of each of their engagements.

They also use SharePoint to share documents with their partners and clients. Many of their clients already have intranets, however gaining access and creating a shared documents library can take a long time for a large company's IT team to set-up and create access profiles for. A secure WSS document sharing site can be created in a short time by CLS.

CLS has been an Intermedia.NET customer since the late 1990's. They have continued to evolve and grow and chose hosted Windows SharePoint services to solve a need. They told me that their core competency is training, and not managing servers and applications.

So, do you think SharePoint is a hosted application? To me, SharePoint is the ultimate SaaS platform - it's got all the core plumbing and features that are needed to build customizeable and scalable applications. With WSS v3, SharePoint has become a viable alternative. I attend the SharePoint user group meetings in NYC, and the buzz, user & developer interest and attendance is at the highest level ever!

All hosting companies have customers from many disparate industries. Those of us that do not interact with customers all day long always benefit when we review the types of businesses that we serve. I promise you that not all of your customers fit into the categories you think about often - ie., Real Estate, law firms and manufacturers. Today I spoke to the Operations Manager of the Pink Elephant Group. He uses Intermedia.NET to host his corporate email and Blackberry accounts.

The Pink Elephant Group has nightclubs and events in several cities around the world including New York, Las Vegas, Miami, Chicago and St. Barts. They depend on Microsoft Exchange to communicate with employees and locations around the world. They use the Public Folder feature to share calendars and keep track of each night club and the schedules and events they are booking. Most of their mailboxes are accessed via Blackberries or Outlook Web Access by management, event promoters and more.

Those of us that are not night owls who party with the A-List crowd can only imagine what the high-paced and exclusive world of big-city night clubs is like. The Operations manager finds the security of Microsoft Exchange, the ability to have public and private contacts (one employee has over 4,000 contacts) and the always up-to-date push email and calendars to be the key features his business depends on. Formerly, they had an Exchange Server 5.5 on-site installation that was simply taking up too much time for the business to maintain, let alone upgrade. The hosted Exchange model allows them to grow their business, the number of locations and employees without worrying about licensing, software updates and the reliability issues associated with running their own server.

Another key reason hosted Exchange fits their business is that they need to keep their corporate domain separate from their marketing domains and email newsletter activities. They have a large number of active email newsletter and club event announcement emails that they send out through another service at a separate domain. They could not afford to have their corporate email blocked because of SPAM or DOS-like issues.

Finding a customer outside of the industries we've tailored our products and marketing to is always eye-opening. These customers raise businesses issues that we may have never thought about, but our services address all the same.

This week I spoke to an Intermedia.NET Private Label Microsoft hosting reseller partner. This partner specializes in bringing wireless communications and account management to their clients. Many of their clients are small and medium sized businesses in the entertainment business. These clients demand an elegant, yet bulletproof solution that brings all of the pieces together. They demystify all of the components and enable the full feature set of today's wireless devices and smartphones.

It always amazes me to learn about the entrepreneurs who bring much needed services to market that the giants in the industry do not offer. Email has been a critical application in business for over 10 years, and mobile phones for over 15 years. Star Communications, Inc. has agreements with all the leading mobile providers and leverages their buying power to enable the powerful features of Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft ActiveSync, Blackberry and Good Mobile, creating a complete package of voice, data, synced email, calendars and contacts. This powerful combination is not available in the retail channel in the US today.

Star is happy to partner with Intermedia.NET and other wireless services providers to help their customers have the best and most feature rich experience for their clients. Some of their clients have existing IT personnel, but the worlds of wireless, Exchange and SharePoint are often easier to outsource to a knowledgeable provider that will support them. Star often becomes the "division" within the "IT division".

When Intermeida.NET launched its private label hosted Exchange business in 2002, we knew that we would enable new business models. Our partner community has since grown to over 2,000 companies of various sizes, all with unique business models, marketing strategies and services they are offering. Some of the most exciting offerings that our clients market are those centered around the power of wireless access to Exchange and Web based services.

I recently spoke to one of Intermedia.NET's customers, a Greenhouse & Nursery Pesticide Manufacturer. Our primary contact and the company's HR manager and Microsoft Exchange administrator was a great example of how the hosting industry is becoming more important and accessible to companies and end users every day.

Many companies in our industry tailor their marketing, products, support materials and user interfaces to one of three different end user groups - the technical professional, the non-technical small business owner or a combination of both. While some business models require one of these to be the primary target, it's important to consider the reality of modern business. Sometimes, the end user at a customer can change - in this case, from a grad student with a technical background to a non-technical HR manager. The hosting industry's audience is wide, so we should be doing more to design our products and services for a wider audience.

This particular customer's business is totally decentralized. They have employees all over the country, and one primary office. The management team and sales people are empowered to communicate from anywhere at any time through their BlackBerrys. With Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, Outlook Web Access and BlackBerrys, Intermedia.NET is enabling the company to function in a virtual way - saving costs and increasing the productivity of a distributed workforce. The company contracts with another provider to assist with other services, such as desktop/application support and back up.

Our contact indicated that Intermedia.NET is always there when an employee needs assistance with the services we provide. The other provider is always available to assist when an employee needs desktop support. This customer depends on Intermedia.NET to run their business. Luckily for the company, its HR manager is interested in learning more about IT products that aren't necessarily within her position's domain.

However, there are a number of companies out there who must ask their office managers, HR departments or administrative employees to manage their outsourced technology and some of these people aren't as eager and able to learn as quickly as this particular HR manager. It is these people that the industry should really be keeping in mind when designing our products and services.

Do you, as a hosting company professional, see your company as providing more than just "Web site hosting" and "Email hosting"? Do think of your company as "The IT department"?