Blog News

Continuing our thought leadership momentum, we’re happy to announce a robust line-up of Summer quarter topics for MSPs, Consultants and IT Pros. As is often the case with colleges in the Summer, we’re exploring a range of technology topics that, in some cases, push the comfort zone of technology professionals. And that’s a good thing: critical thinking!
Highlights are in order and you can learn about every complimentary lecture here. 

July 18: Online Video Marketing: Six Essential Principles of Success (Kevin Hunter)
This is a case of not judging a session by its title. The back story is that Kevin Hunter the THE MAN

Lead generation is absolutely crucial to your business. Lead generation is the practice of finding and drawing in potential customers to your business. There are a variety of ways to do this including via social media or even investing in certain tools that can help you generate leads.

One way you can easily generate leads without stepping outside of your website or investing in any expensive tools is to work through your own blog. In this article, we are going to look at 10 of the easiest ways for you to convert B2B leads through your blog.

Many small businesses do not seem to understand the importance of taking small steps all year long as one of the most vital keys to minimizing tax responsibilities and avoiding expensive tax penalties. As well, there are many eligibilities that small business owners are not even aware that they are entitled to, especially in light of the most recent tax reform laws.

Louis Columbus , CONTRIBUTOR

Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) spend more on software subscription services and new software, while large enterprises spend more on maintenance and consulting.

Let’s take a last look back at the recent Lenovo Accelerate conference. As is my tradition, I like to pause between my initial reporting and now (a couple weeks later) to reflect on what was communicated. Think of it this way. I call it the conference sun tan. When you attend and immediately leave a conference, you are typically pumped up and psyched. That’s the sun tan. What happens a week later? The sun tan starts to fade and we all return to normal. That’s the context for a look back.

Lenovo launched its annual partner confab by creating a humble vibe.

It’s right out of the old school business playbook. It’s about portfolio diversification, risk reduction and greater customer choice. And it’s ultimately about a stronger Kaseya. Just prior to its annual KaseyaConnect conference in Las Vegas last week, Kaseya announced its acquisition of Unitrends, a mid-market enterprise and MSP backup provider. In a 1:1 interview with Fred Voccola, CEO of Kaseya, I got the inside scoop. Warning. A couple more ten dollar words ahead.

Over the past year, I’ve worn out a Lenovo laptop as a road warrior. In a pinch, I went up to the SMB Nation mini-storage and grabbed a third-tier brand laptop to get me by until the annual Lenovo Accelerate conference this past week in Las Vegas. My intention was to ask the newly installed president Matt Zielinski just one question: sell me a laptop. I believe the president role in a large company such as Lenovo should be akin to rainmaker not bottle washer. Zielinski’s career path is on the sales-side, not operations. Could he sell me a laptop?

The big data analytics technology is a combination of several techniques and processing methods. What makes them effective is their collective use by enterprises to obtain relevant results for strategic management and implementation.

In spite of the investment enthusiasm, and ambition to leverage the power of data to transform the enterprise, results vary in terms of success. Organizations still struggle to forge what would be consider a “data-driven” culture. Of the executives who report starting such a project, only 40.2% report having success.

At this week’s Ingram Micro’s Cloud Summit conference for partners, MSPs and resellers, a new line of business called CloudBlue was announced and released into the wild whacky world of cloud computing. My take is CloudBlue basically aggregates a lot of existing Ingram Micro cloud assets under one umbrella. It is considered a new division within Ingram Micro and Microsoft is a significant strategic partner in this solution. Microsoft declined to specify if it was a financial investor.

By Raman Mehta, star Advisor, CIO | Sep 19, 2014 12:10 PM PT

With all of the excitement around Internet of Things (IoT), it can be difficult to separate hype from reality. IoT is more about disruptive new business models than technology.

Move aside SaaS, IaaS, PaaS (Software, Infrastructure, and Platform as a service) – there is a new kid, TaaS (internet of Things as a Service), in town.

I like to periodically communicate with SMB Nation members on business topics of interest. This is a startup and start over story. It’s about honoring the past but staying keenly focused on the future. I’m recapitalizing by divesting the house the Microsoft Small Business Server built (you can look at my LinkedIn profile to discover my 15+ years carrying the SBS flag here.

New documentation, still in draft form, details how companies can craft specialized reports and custom alerts from Windows Analytics' data and integrate the data with other info.

By Gregg Keizer

Senior Reporter, Computerworld | Apr 10, 2018 9:19 AM PT