As I reflected on my life in general, both personally and professionally, I identified areas where I've been successful on a consistent basis and then looked for common themes around those activities.  Then, like a bolt of lightning it hit me.  One area I had overlooked was how I've been able to excel at motivating and inspiring people. 

I get a great deal of satisfaction by challenging people to achieve greatness and then giving them credit for their feats of excellence.  It's funny, because as I was trying to figure out how to translate such an intangible trait my resume, the phrase “20 years of motivating people and kicking ass” came to mind.  But on a resume, that doesn't seem to as substantive as “15 years building SaaS applications” or “3 years of RoR programming.” 

So if there is a lesson in this post (beyond shameful self-promotion), it is to do what you feel good doing, regardless of what it translates to on paper.  Those who know me or get to know me understand the value I bring to the table, and that my intangible strengths cannot be bought, taught or manufactured.  I feel that skills such as these are core to the success I have had in business and, more importantly, in life. Without a doubt, they are directly tied to the wonderful relationships (both personally and professionally) that I have maintained throughout my life. 

So to wrap this up, I encourage everyone to explore within and discover how to nurture these kind of traits and focus less on “how will this look on my resume” and more on “how will these skills help me make a difference and change lives."  If all else fails, there's always the example set by this successful man!

Recently, I took a trip to the UK, and it’s almost shameful to admit that I hadn't yet made it to Europe.   Anyone who travels to the UK obviously has to use public transportation, so the Tube was a regular source of passage.  One thing that caught my attention was the phrase “mind the gap” when entering or exiting the train.  While at first this seemed a little comical to me, I later thought about it and wanted to draw this similarity to the business world. 

Often times we get caught up in the day-to-day and miss out thinking about the future and building a business for success. This gap in our thinking can limit our success.  It’s critical to allow people you surround yourself with to grow, take risks and be accountable.  As an effective leader, I feel the most important responsibility is to remove barriers and allow people to achieve their full potential.  Those who take advantage will help themselves, and the company, to reach amazing heights.  So make sure you mind the gap and give people a platform to get on the train. 

Over-analyzing, triangulating and posturing all come to mind.  The reason….people are simply afraid to fail.  I have never subscribed to this mentality and think it’s a sure fire way to destroy a business.  You must take risks and you must fail (from time to time). 

Failure is a critical part of the learning process and will make you a much stronger person and team in the long run. The days of “why try because, we will only fail” are OVER! 

I say fail fast and move on and don’t let the same mistakes impede your progress.   If you embrace this ideology, there is no challenge too big!

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Culture is something that is born out of a strong will to succeed and the ability to align yourself with extremely passionate people who share the same vision.  You have to work at it constantly and keep evolving it over time.  Strong cultures don’t just manufacture themselves, so it's important to treat culture with the same importance as having a business plan, creating a product and building a successful company. 

I learned a lot about building a good company culture from my co-founder and friend Frank Addante, who recently outlined his keys to success for Inc. Magazine.  In addition to founding email service provider StrongMail with me back in 2002, Frank has had great success over the years and built many awesome teams.  As I was reading his article, I began thinking of the common rules that I live for building healthy company cultures.

1. Always hire “hand-raisers.”  These are the folks who crave responsibility and always look for ways to help others.  Give people like this the appropriate accountability and guidance, and you will witness great things.
2. Make sure your goals are aligned.  Again, right or wrong, it's critical that people on your team know the vision, the role they play in that overall vision, what they are supposed to do and how it fits into the goals of the business. 
3. Treat culture like a job.  Let's face it…IT IS!  It is important to stress the values of the company and lead by example every day (not just when it's convenient to do so). 
4. Be accountable.  It’s not always going to be perfect, and it is important to understand that mistakes are part of growing.  Own up to them and learn from them.  I have certainly learned a lot of “what not to do” things with my time at StrongMail, but those to me are just as valuable (if not more).
5. Ask questions.  It’s often the simplest thing that is overlooked.  Many times we get caught up in the daily grind, and we think that a lack of knowledge is viewed as failure.  If you aren’t sure, ask.  Learning is a beautiful bi-product.

Remember, it’s only a job.  Work is a normal function of life and an inescapable reality, but as I tell people at StrongMail, if you make it as fun as possible, it doesn't have to feel like work.   

You will find that creating a healthy company culture pays great dividends and creates a great sense of pride and satisfaction (not to mentions it's an excellent recruiting tool).   So I say create a culture that your employees will embrace and let the sugary stuff flow throughout the organization and watch the success roll in!  OH YEAHHH!  (Sorry, I couldn't resist, and hope I am not violating copyright laws!) :-)

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Want to learn more about email services and IT infrastructure? Check out our white papers!

THREE CHEERS FOR STRONGMAIL…

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SaaS -- Software as a service is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. SaaS software vendors may host the application on their own web servers or upload the application to the consumer device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires.

Think of this as the traditional ASP model from the Dot-Com boom. This is merely the act of offering a software solution such over the internet and charging fees for users per month (eg. salesforce.com).

PaaS -- Platform as a service is a runtime-system and application framework that presents itself as an execution environment and computing platform available over the Internet with the sole purpose of acting as a host to application software.

Think of this as the actual application framework that would run a SaaS platform that provides the technology stack (eg. Google AppEngine).

IaaS -- Infrastructure as a service is the delivery of computer infrastructure (typically a platform virtualization environment) as a service. The big push of virtualization technologies such as Xen, VMware, Hyper-V, KVM and others have really helped this category flourish.

Think of this at its most basic element of providing the actual physical (however in this case its virtual) resources like RAM, CPU, storage to run the application and platform (Amazon's EC2/S3, Rackspace Cloud, Terremark Vcloud, etc).

Now how do all these things fit together (or do they)? First these can all be used independently or together. For instance we have salesforce.com here at email software provider StrongMail to help run sales and support. We also use The Rackspace Cloud to fulfill the infrastructure for our Cloud offering. They are mutually exclusive to each other. These can however be used together and here is a simple diagram on how they interact and who would be interested in each layer. I hope this has been helpful.

Thanks to saasblogs.com for the picture.

Think about this like Legos or building blocks. Create a system that is modular in design that will allow you to add capacity where you need without adding complexity and tons of iron. If you take the time to design it properly, it will provide the flexibility you need without breaking the bank.

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PS...The video was filmed a bit choppy so don't think it's your ISP. :)

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In any case, back to reality. Don’t get me wrong, I think the cloud idea is fantastic. Utility computing, capacity on demand, real-time scalability are all great ideas that allow maximum flexibility, provide massive cost savings and allow companies to maximize the computing power amassed over time. The one thing I don’t like about the cloud is that it seems a lot of people are very confused about the concept. I think this is quickly being pushed into the same category as “Web 2.0” and other classics.

My opinion is that simply offering your solution as a SaaS (or Software as a Service) does not constitute “being in the cloud.” While this is an important component to this relatively new way to offer software products today and adoption rates are very high, this is not the sole concept of the cloud. I think the company rPath does a good job at laying out the base components needed for adoption of the cloud computing model.

Here's the moral to my post. Whether we have the terminology right or wrong, the goal of the cloud is extremely promising. Being an infrastructure guy, I salivate at the opportunity to architect, deploy and manage such systems. I love scale, high capacity, on-demand access and repeatability/reusability. It is also exciting to keep pushing our own technology to allow our customers more flexibility when they deploy (whether software, hardware or virtual appliance).

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1. It shows that people are relying more on email communications than ever before as a means of keeping in touch
2. It showcases the importance of the right message at the right time (quality of the message not quantity of messages)
3. I think Frank and I picked the right business to be in!

In all seriousness, mental illness of any kind is tragic. However, the article does demonstrate the impact the email has on our everyday lives. I can tell you first hand that email is addictive. If I didn’t think it was important, I wouldn’t be here at email service provider, StrongMail. While I don’t personally experience withdrawal symptoms when I'm away from email, I am usually glued to my mobile device, and I am always online. Mental illness aside, the article reinforced my belief that email is never a game of “more is better.” Content is king, but it has to be meaningful and sent to the right audience. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of data moving from one hard drive to another.

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The original email and Internet systems that we know today weren't invented by Al Gore, but by our own government missile defense system group called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), whose primary job was to handle research for all space and strategic missile research. NASA was then formed, and the activities of ARPA moved away from aeronautics and focused mainly on computer science and information processing.

One of ARPA's goals was to connect mainframe computers at different universities around the country so that they would be able to communicate using a common language and a common protocol. Thus the ARPAnet -- the world's first multiple-site computer network -- was created in 1969. In order to have an account on these systems you simply asked for one and they just gave it to you almost without ANY questions, completely overlooking security and accountability.

Well, obviously, as time went by and the systems got larger and more interconnected, some people figured out the vulnerabilities and started to send out the first of many billions of unsolicited messages now known as SPAM. The question now comes down to how we can possibly patch a hole this big. Email authentication technologies like DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) are a start.

DKIM is a signature/cryptography-based sender authentication protocol developed in order to address the problem of forged email messages (missing security and accountability) and to allow an organization or individual to take reasonability for the message it sends, which has given rise to the concept of email reputation. Now, I won't bore you with the details of email reputation and authentication, but I do want to focus on why we got involved in this early on.

Email is now about as mainstream as any technology can be, yet the viability of email is continually being threatened by viruses, spam, spoofing, and phishing. All of these threats are shaking the confidence in email as a viable tool for communications and conducting business, and StrongMail is committed to help protect it. We have been participating in the DKIM standard since day-one, and we are proud to have our own employees acknowledged for their hard work in the standard.

StrongMail was the first technology provider to integrate support for all emerging authentication protocols into its outbound email products to simplify compliance with whatever standards are mandated. DKIM has since gained a lot of traction, and AOL, GMAIL, and Yahoo! now use it successfully in production.

Unless you're a member of the CIA, a Matrix super fan, or a cryptographic expert, signature-based authentication can be difficult to understand. In StrongMail, you don't have to think about any of that stuff, since we make it as easy as 1-2-3 with our step-by-step interface, which will either create, upload, or use the existing keys needed to properly sign and verify any email.

In fact, StrongMail is specifically designed to make it easy to work in the complex and ever-changing world of email standards. You even have the ability to apply authentication to certain email streams or campaigns based on your needs without sacrificing your email deliverability. Our offering is so simple that anybody with a mouse, keyboard, and monitor can institute email authentication.

Overall, DKIM brings accountability to the sender, establishes a reputation and confirms whether they should be sending email from a certain domain. By doing this, receivers can better separate mail streams from those who are good and those who are bad, which enables better anti-spam technologies and reduces false positives.

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First, I agree with many of the points in the article. It is very important to have an email platform in place that is capable of not only sending but generating millions of dynamic and personalized messages for rapid-response situations such as alerts, quotes, notifications, reminders, ecommerce, etc. For those applications, you need to have a system that will allow rapid and dynamic scale when needed without having to add a lot of extra iron in the data center.

On the other hand, if you’re sending millions of messages really fast, you need to understand that your delivery is largely (if not solely) based on your sender reputation and how the ISPs view you at the time of send. This is why it is critical to have a Message Transfer Agent (or MTA) that gives you the ability to adhere to the sending rules the ISP’s have in place at any given moment in time.

When we built the StrongMail platform, we knew that in addition to speed, we needed to build in the control to follow best practices and send email in the way ISPs like to receive it. Offering both together allowed us to provide companies with the flexibility, control and visibility they need to see in real-time what is happening to their email streams and act accordingly.

Let’s face it; the reason companies send email is because, when done properly, it is a very effective and immediate communications medium that can create valuable customer relationships. However, when done improperly, email can cause brand degradation and reduce customer loyalty.

That’s why when it comes to email, it’s important to act responsibly. Just because you can send a million messages an hour, doesn’t mean you should.

As I write this blog, I am also dealing with an internal Microsoft Exchange issue, and, even though my IP phone is handy, it can't compensate for the utility and effectiveness of email. Fortunately, we have email continuity in place, DR plans and full backups, because my preferred way to get and process information is email. The days of a simple phone call seem long forgotten (if not even preposterous for me to suggest). When Exchange went down and the back-up system was coming online, I actually heard people say “you mean I have to call someone to setup up a meeting?” as if to say that is the craziest idea they have ever heard.

As painful as an Exchange outage can be, losing your enterprise transactional email capabilities could cripple your ecommerce efforts. That's why trusting the emailing of order notifications and password reminders to your shopping cart system is never a good idea. These systems are designed to process online orders, not send email.

Email is certainly here to stay. It is an extremely important and effective communications tool , and it is growing by leaps and bounds every day. It seems like nearly everyone is rushing to buy the latest and greatest smart phones to get “on-the-go” access to web-based email like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail and to connect to their corporate email. As the founder of an email marketing company, this prevalence and reliance on email would seem to indicate that I'm in the right business and not just drinking the Kool-Aid.

Respectfully yours,
Tim “email is life” McQuillen