SMB Nation Blog

By: Pete Engler

With the start of a new year quickly approaching, it is a great time for resellers to evaluate their success over the last year and consider any changes to their business strategy or portfolio of products. For 2016, that will likely mean offering cloud services for your customers, or expanding the cloud-based service offerings included in your portfolio.

Over the last few years cloud computing services have dominated the Information Technology market, becoming the cutting-edge solution for many different products and services. Now that cloud computing is a few years old and customers are beginning to see the many benefits of using cloud services, the shift toward those solutions is growing at a rapid pace. Many IT products have made or are making their transition into the cloud as a preferred option for customers over the deployment of traditional premises-based solutions. Because of the increasing availability of cloud services from trusted vendors, and the high demand for cloud-based solutions by SMB and enterprise customers, now is the time for you to consider using the cloud as a way to expand your reseller business and increase revenue in the coming year.  

According to Forbes, the cloud computing market is increasing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8 percent and the trend is not likely to slow in the next several years. In addition to the market growth rate, the number of new products being introduced into a cloud infrastructure is also accelerating. International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts the number of new cloud-based solutions will triple in the next four to five years. With adoption rates of cloud services growing at such healthy levels the drive for cloud services is not going to let up anytime soon.

Cloud computing and cloud-based services have many benefits for your customers. One benefit is that cloud offers an easier path to make changes. Many cloud services have the option of month to month contracts, making it much easier to add or drop services, or change vendors. Another key benefit is not having a large upfront capital expenditure as you do when purchasing a premises-based solution. Removing this costly barrier to entry is quite appealing to smaller organizations and new businesses that may have more cash constraints. Conversely, a key pain point for businesses adopting a cloud solution is bandwidth, which can be easily remedied with the wide choices and lower cost of internet services currently on the market. 

For resellers, there are many benefits for selling cloud services. Most cloud services pay monthly recurring revenue (MRR) as long as the customer is enrolled in the service. Monthly recurring revenue that is built up over time offers revenue stability for you, instead of starting the monthly sales cycle at zero. Additionally, as resellers, you now have the option of purchasing cloud services through a simplified online process, making it much easier to buy and manage the services for your end customer. Increased competition and product options also result in better service and prices for the customer, and in faster deployment times and reduced support time. All of these benefits also work in your favor as a reseller or integrator and ultimately translates into higher margins.

The need to add cloud products and services to your portfolio of products has never been more important than now. Chances are, if you haven’t already faced a competitive situation where a cloud solution is being offered, you will soon. The start of a new year is a great time to research and select cloud-based solutions that will benefit the customers you serve, but also make you more competitive and help increase your margins.

Pete Engler is the channel marketing manager at Digium, a business communications company based in Huntsville, Ala., that delivers enterprise-class Unified Communications.

By Harry Brelsford, CEO, SMB Nation -

MSPs: Learn Enterprise Marketing, on an SMB Budget

Join SMB Nation and other MSP's
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015 at 12:00pm

Marketing is critical for MSPs to maintain their current revenue and grow their bottom line.You’re considering ramping up your marketing efforts in 2016, but is there a realistic way for an MSP owner/operator to accomplish their marketing goals without much time or budget? Where do you start? Where should you focus? What resources are necessary? Let us guide you through the complexity of marketing in a realistic and actionable way.

Click Here To Register!

Story by Harry Brelsford, CEO, SMB Nation - 

SMB Nation recently turned 16-years old and we wanted to wait until the holidays to share that news. We want to use this holiday season to celebrate our mutual success! And we look forward to continued success and a long life. So what better time than the moment to wish you our customers, readers, attendees and sponsors an AMAZING HOLIDAY SEASON! We appreciate your support.

Our community is a melting pot of ethnicities and we want to call out and support the following forms of celebrations:

• Christmas Day (Christian)
• Hanukkah (Jewish)
• Kwanzaa (African American)
• Ramadan (Muslim)
• Eid al-Fitr (Muslim)
• Saint Nicholas Day (Christian)
• Eid'ul-Adha (Muslim)
• Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexican)
• St. Lucia Day (Swedish)
• Three Kings Day/Epiphany (Christian)
• Boxing Day (Australian, Canadian, English, Irish)
• Omisoka (Japanese)
• Yule (Pagan)
• Saturnalia (Pagan)

- See more at: http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson246.shtml#sthash.c23rSm8r.dpuf

Thu, Nov 19, 2015 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM PST

Presented by: & Harry Brelsford CEO of SMB Nation and Grant Thompson Founding Partner MG Technology Group

Join us for Part III of our three-part webinar series focused on Windows 10.

In this installment, we direct our expertise to discussing Office 365 integrations with Windows 10 plus a host of special topics that have accumulated over the first two webinars. 

Topics include:

• Windows 10 with Office 365 is the Azure AD Join
• Any special reason why you are still using Office 2013 instead of Ofiice 2016? 
• What’s the current state of OneDrive storage with Windows 10 and Office 365? 
• Can you have both a personal and business OneDrive? 
• What is the difference Windows Home and Windows Business SKUs? 
• Windows Media Center was removed form Windows 10. Does Microsoft plan to make it available in any way or is there a workaround to regain that functionality? 
• Is there a Windows 10 Certification exam available yet?
• What about the Microsoft "snooping" in Windows 10 and other security concerns?
• Through Virtualization - can I control two simultaneous outgoing audio streams (two disparate audio jacks/cards) 
• And MUCH MORE…

Also remember since your customers are attending, you can register this event with Microsoft Community Connections and receive giveaway software and materials

Story by Harry Brelsford, CEO. SMB Nation - 

Last week I painted the IoT picture and enjoyed fantastic feedback. This week I share insights from wiser minds about IoT that I met at the recent AllSeen (www.allseenalliance.org) conference in Seattle.

I walked away from the annual gathering impressed with the momentum of IoT and wanted to learn more. Ergo my conversation with these two gentlemen below.

Greg Whelan is the principal of the Greywale Insights (http://greywale.com/) consultancy. What immediately struck me was how he wanted to pivot the conversation. It was like having an intellectual conversation with Jeff Middleton (sbsmigrations.com) back in the old Small Business Server days when he’d proclaim “let’s turn that argument on its head.” Whelan proposed we refine service providers as “outcome providers.” That’s how he sees the role of the MSP/computer guy in an IoT world. “Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) want OUTCOMES from a provider. IoT is a whole bucket of tools and services for the outcome provider to “provide” to SMBs.

“The outcome provider will have a role in helping IoT standardization. Currently it’s a DIY market without a set of standards. For example, you can’t utter “Good Night” today and have everything in the smart house respond such as lights, heat, and security.” Whelan shared. “The main point with today’s status is silos. The DIY can buy bits and pieces at Home Depot, Best Buy et al.”

Whelan’s forward looking statements continued with thoughts concerning standardization. It’ll take web companies who can scale and the outcome provider will deliver agnostic services, not just a Google House or an Apple House.

Which leads to my second conversation about scaling. I spoke with Eric Bozich (Vice President – Product and Marketing CenturyLink). CenturyLink is a sponsor of AllSeen. Bozich’s interest is to provide elements of the IoT value chain that go beyond telecom. “One thing we’re asking ourselves is how our customers are going to consume IoT. IoT will be about solving business problems and consuming services. Bozich stated. “CenturyLink will add value by proactively participating in the development of IoT solutions.”

You heard it here first.

BTW – in my resources below, you can watch a video of Whelan and Bozic. ;0)

I’ll end my two-part series with this thought. If only Radio Shack could have held on! It was IoT before there was IoT. Readers will recall the demise of Radio Shack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack). It could have been the IoT Store!

AllSeen Resources

Service Provider Panel Video, featuring Greg & Eric
AllSeen Alliance Events List
AllSeen Alliance Membership Tiers & Companies Participating
Full list of keynote presentations, slides and photos from the AllSeen Summit 2015

Old Lyme, Conn., November 9, 2015 – Sennheiser, a leading provider of premium headsets and speakerphone solutions, announces the launch of its new wired deployment headset Culture Plus. The new headset series is designed to facilitate office workers’ adoption of Unified Communications (UC) solutions and help activate their full potential.

Culture Plus headset 

Transitioning to UC environments means changing habits and communication cultures – within the organization as well as for the individual employee. As a direct communication interface between people, headsets play a significant role when implementing UC and positive communication experiences are crucial for higher adoption rates and hence a positive Return on Investment (ROI).

Sennheiser’s new Culture Plus wired series has been specifically designed for UC environments and swift user acceptance. The new, comfortable headset combines Sennheiser’s outstanding sound quality, 'instant comfort' features and an attractive design. Certified for Skype for Business and compatible with all major UC and softphone brands, the Culture Plus series is ideally suited for enterprises and offices that are adopting a new UC work-culture.

Culture Plus features Sennheiser’s sound quality, benefiting caller and listener alike. Sennheiser Voice Clarity, which is based on wideband sound, provides a warm, more natural listening experience while the noise-cancelling microphone ensures optimum speech intelligibility by filtering out ambient noise, delivering an optimal communication experience even in the noisiest environments. In addition, sound enhancement profiles automatically adjust audio settings to optimize either the voice quality of calls or the user’s multimedia experience. Culture Plus also features Sennheiser’s advanced ActiveGard™ technology developed to safeguard users from acoustic shock and sudden sound bursts.

The new headsets’ sleek look and quality design help ensure rapid user adoption. The stylish, contemporary appearance has been crafted with the user in mind, ensuring a good look whether used at the office desk or during video calls. The flexible, lightweight headband features leatherette padding that adjusts for a personalized fit, while large, acoustic foam ear pads with soft, removable leatherette covers ensure flexibility and wearing comfort throughout the day. The bendable boom arm allows the microphone to be placed in perfect position to ensure optimal microphone performance.

A functional in-line control unit ensures calls can be managed intuitively and seamlessly with the touch of a finger. In addition, the unit controls the switchable Noise at Work limiter compliant with EU’s Noise at Work Directive¤¤. When not in use, the headset can be stored and transported in a practical carry pouch.

“Headsets are an important consideration in any UC deployment”, says Lars Riis Rasmussen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, EMEA, at Sennheiser Communications. "Culture Plus is an ideal solution for organizations that want their office workers to rapidly adopt headsets in a UC environment. It combines Sennheiser sound quality and instant wearing comfort in a communications experience that will make it easier to enjoy the benefits and activate the full potential of UC solutions.”

The addition of the Culture Plus wired series complements Sennheiser CC&O’s broad product portfolio of headset and speakerphone solutions for contact centers, office and UC environments, which capitalizes on Sennheiser’s 70 years of sound leadership, research and development.

About Sennheiser
Audio specialist Sennheiser is one of the world's leading manufacturers of headphones, microphones and wireless transmission systems. Based in Wedemark near Hanover, Germany, Sennheiser operates its own production facilities in Germany, Ireland and the USA and is active in more than 50 countries. With 18 sales subsidiaries and long-established trading partners, the company supplies innovative products and cutting-edge audio solutions that are optimally tailored to its customers' needs. Sennheiser is a family owned company that was founded in 1945 and which today has 2,700 employees around the world that share a passion for audio technology. Since 2013, Sennheiser has been managed by Daniel Sennheiser and Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, the third generation of the family to run the company. As part of the Sennheiser Group, the joint venture Sennheiser Communications A/S specializes in wireless and wired headsets and speakerphones for contact centers, offices and Unified Communications environments as well as headsets for gaming and mobile devices. In 2014, the Sennheiser Group had sales totalling €635 million. www.sennheiser.com

For more information on our professional headset solutions, please visit www.sennheiser.com/cco

by Mark Cox • November 11, 2015

SAP announces a new infrastructure-as-a-service option for Business One Cloud which has been available in Canada since last Thursday, and in the U.S. for several weeks before that.

NEW YORK CITY – On Tuesday SAP entered the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) business around its SAP Business One Cloud solution. It provides SAP partners with more choices for deployment. Run in data centres operated by SAP, this new services offering will come with a range of complementary services like backup and restore, disaster recovery and platform maintenance. It is available now in North America, with expansion to Europe and Asia scheduled around mid-year 2016.  

“Three years ago, we started a journey to make Business One a player in the cloud,” said Luis Murguia, senior vice president and general manager, SAP Business One. “Our strategy was very simple – give the Business One customer a great customer experience in a 100 per cent partner-centric model, with subscription licensing available. Then two years ago, we introduced our multi-tenanted SAP Business One Cloud Control Centre that let partners host it, and have up to 25 customers running on the same copy of Business One.”

Murguia said that this July, SAP expanded the offering again with the introduction of browser access, allowing Business One to be run on a browser.

“Still, what was missing was infrastructure,” Murguia said. “Partners typically used AWS to host. The problem is that the ones which were small businesses can’t get good pricing from AWS. So we decided to get into the infrastructure-as-a-service business, and will offer the hosting ourselves to partners, so they can offer a full cloud experience for less.”

The offering was actually made available in the U.S., several weeks ago. In Canada, it has been available only since last Thursday

Read More

Presented by: Harry Brelsford CEO of SMB Nation & Grant Thompson Founding Partner of MG Technology Group

Want to learn more about Windows 10? Wondering where to find the information? Sign up here! 

Join us next Thursday for an educational webinar on Deploying Windows 10. -

This webinar will take you through Windows10 deployment from an outside-looking-in independent expert viewpoint. Needless to say, there are new and updated ways to deploy Windows 10. In this session, we review new recommendations for upgrading existing devices using a simple in-place upgrade process, provisioning tools for transforming new devices into ones ready for enterprise use, as well as updates to traditional deployment tools and techniques (ADK and beyond). We also talk about application compatibility, hardware requirements, and other common deployment questions.

Bottom Line: You’ll learn about the new release cycle, Azure AD, upgrade paths and scenarios, dynamic provisioning, and more. And can you really run Windows 10 on a stick?
Be sure to invite your customers to show them how the Windows 10 solutions can help them operate more efficiently and empower them to grow their business.

Also remember since your customers are attending, you can register this event with Microsoft Community Connections and receive giveaway software and materials.

Why one man’s new gig could be your next big opportunity

By: T.C. Doyle| MSPmentor

Dan Wensley joins Passportal as President. More than a “sell-to” product that MSPs can use to help run their businesses more efficiently, Passportal’s technology is an identity and password management system designed and packaged to be sold by MSPs to end customers for an affordable price.

When does someone’s new job spell opportunity for you? When that individual puts himself in a position to help grow your business. This is precisely what Dan Wensley, a familiar name in the MSP community, has done since signing on to become Passportal’s president and de facto partner strategist. Before getting to the “whys,” here are a few “whats.” 

For more than a decade, Wensley has been a familiar name and face in both the MSP community and partner ecosystem at large. A founder of MSP Partners, he spent seven years as vice president of sales and marketing for Level Platforms Inc. (LPI) before it was acquired by AVG. More recently, Wensley oversaw Plan27, a lead generation company that worked closely with MSP companies. In addition to his full-time duties, Wensley worked closely with CompTIA, where he served a three-year term on the trade association’s board of directors.

Here’s where the story gets interesting.

In October 2011, Wensley met and then became fast friends with Colin Knox, the CEO of Passportal. (You can see a photo of the two in an early meeting, which is making the rounds on Twitter here.) Passportal’s mission is to make secure password management for IT professionals simple. Its motto: “The End of Sticky Note Security.”

For the uninitiated, Passportal has developed a “fully managed, cloud-based software solution that automates password protection and makes storing, managing and retrieving passwords quick and easy from virtually any connected device.” That’s according to the company.

Knox, of course, could have chosen any number of go-to-market strategies to make his company successful. He could have gone direct to business customers or straight to consumers to build momentum for his brand. Instead, Knox decided to sell his technology exclusively through channel companies, MSPs primarily. “We are the only password management solution that is designed by an MSP for MSPs like yours,” the company says. “We are your channel provider that is integrated with all the tools you love including Active Directory, Connectwise, and Autotask.”

This is where Wensley comes in.

After years of helping to give the MSP market shape and definition, Wensley signed on with Passportal a year ago to help oversee its partner sales and management efforts. Wensley says he saw in an instant a nexus forming around security, RMM technology and password management innovation. Funny thing about Wensley, though: before joining Passportal, he was a self-described password slob. At one point, he says, he had as many as 32 different sticky notes stuck to his office wall with various passwords. Try as he might, he concedes he could never keep track of them. When he heard of a solution that could, he became intrigued—doubly so after learning that it was sold exclusively through the channel.

“I got involved [with the company] some time ago and have been taking it sorta slowly and methodically,” says Wensley. “After discussing where we wanted to go for the next few years, it became apparent there was a mutually good fit here.”

So here’s the “why” and “what it means” for you.

Passportal is now offering a passport management solution that is no doubt better than the one you likely offer customers, which is likely one-step better than an Excel spreadsheet and the safeguards that have been incorporated in PSA and RMM solutions but likely short of the few, comprehensive enterprise-class solutions offered from some very expensive companies.

Read More

By: Werner Reinartz and Rajkumar Venkatesan

Traditionally, marketers calculate the ROI of a marketing investment by measuring how much sales increased in its aftermath. This is a blunt metric: maybe the consumer had a different interaction with the brand that influenced them. Or maybe they had an intrinsic preference for the brand and would have made a purchase anyway.

Today the situation has changed. Marketers have access to data that allows them to track individuals’ various interactions with a brand before their purchase, and better understand what role each interaction — and individual preferences — played in the eventual sale.

This approach, called “attribution modeling,” allows companies to attribute appropriate credit to each online and offline contact and touch point in a customer’s purchase cycle, and understand its role in the revenues that ultimately result. A good attribution model should show, for example, precisely which ads or search keywords are most associated with actual purchases.

Developing an attribution model is a gradual process. You can’t get there all at once. There are four key stages in the journey:

Stage 1: Prepare your data

You can’t have any kind of attribution model without data around touch points and outcomes. Many companies collect this data but often store it in different databases and in ways that make comparison difficult. Once companies can access and analyze data around touch points and purchases, they can detect patterns and are ready to apply simple attribution models. These involve applying rules of thumb, such as “give all credit to the last point of interaction” or “give equal credit to all points of interaction with the customer before a purchase is made.”

They may sound simplistic, but even simple rules-based models can deliver immediate results. This was the case at one company we recently advised. Only after considerable efforts to get data for each touch point aligned in one repository could the company begin to figure out sensible rules of thumb to guide marketing investments. It began by simply allocating resources to each touch point as a direct function of its marginal ROI. Even this rather rough and ready approach sharply improved the company’s overall marketing ROI.

Stage 2: Experiment

As managers get more comfortable with a rules-based model they can begin to conduct experiments to fine-tune the attribution rules. Most importantly, you can start to assess the degree to which a given touch point depends on other touch points; you could, for example, test a search tool’s role in a customer’s cycle by turning display advertising on or off. This allows managers to identify clusters of touch points that might individually look less powerful but that collectively pack more punch than simply focusing on those that look individually strongest.

An insurance company we interviewed conducted several regional experiments to evaluate the synergy of television, organic search, and display advertisements. The company varied the exposure of its consumers to TV ads across the different regions they served. They found that organic visits to the website and display advertisement click-through all increased disproportionally in a region when consumers there were also exposed to TV ads. This experiment motivated the firm to start better coordinating their marketing campaigns across media channels.

Stage 3: Apply statistical models

  Read More

By Shannon Mayer, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Continuum Managed IT Services

The seventh installment of a monthly blog series offering tips and best practices on various ways MSPs can help their SMB clients work through the most challenging daily business issues.

In the last installment of, “Better Call an MSP,” we offered tips on staying ahead of the game when it comes to malware and virus attacks. Let’s switch gears and discuss the recent M&A activity that’s occurring on the enterprise and SMB levels. This type of activity is becoming more prevalent with both vendors and MSPs as they grow with the market. For instance, just recently, Dell acquired EMC, Barracuda purchased Intronis, and Solar Winds was acquired by two private equity firms. The same goes for the various MSPs that have been acquired or have joined forces to merge into one larger company to better serve clients.

What does all this mean for MSPs? First and foremost, transformation, now more than ever, is a necessity, rather than a proactive measure because as the market consolidates, competition increases. As an IT solutions provider, it is critical to deep dive into your business, looking at where you can add opportunities to set yourself apart from your competitors; this includes everything from offerings and services, customer service and value proposition. Let’s examine this closer.

1.) Increase Services/Increase Value Proposition: This is a good starting point, especially since there are specific focuses currently on certain services. For instance, security is currently at the forefront, and there are many opportunities in this area, such as password management, managed print and telecom. One way consolidation can be a positive for MSPs is by partnering with another firm that has the expertise and resources you want to add. For instance, if you want to add managed print, but don’t currently have a solution, seek out one of your peers who might have this area solidified. I have heard of several MSPs (including Continuum partners) who have partnered to add telecom and vice-versa; all of which have led to positive results.

When it comes to value proposition, separate yourself from your competitors to stay current and unique. This is especially important as you don’t want your services to sound too much like everyone else’s. How can you overcome this hurdle? One way is to perfect your “elevator pitch.” Can you honestly tell a potential customer what your value proposition is in 30 seconds or less? If not, then think about how you can be clear, concise and to the point without any added jargon or “filler” material.

2.) Build Customer Service: Regarding commodization of the MSP space, customer service is critical to your success. Did you know that it costs six to seven times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one? Think about the financial aspect of this, not to mention the time it takes to obtain and then onboard a new customer.

We’ve also spoken about pricing in this blog series, specifically when it comes to competitors trying to undercut each other. However, if your customer service goes above and beyond expectations, then you are more likely to retain your current customers (and also add new ones at the same time). In fact, according to global management consulting firm Bain & Company, “A customer is four times more likely to defect to a competitor if the problem is service related rather than price or product related.”

3.) Cultivate Relationships: Aside from always ensuring your customers are well taken care of, also show your appreciation for their business—not just when they have a problem that needs to be addressed. The key is to be proactive rather than reactive if you want to be unique in your business model. Don’t wait for a customer to call you when they are at the point of their system shutting down. Set up monthly check-ins to see how things are running; get to know them and what their needs are for both the long and short term.

Another way to do this is by “showing” rather than “telling” them, possibly on a quarterly basis. Lay out on paper what you as the MSP have done to support their IT efforts; numbers speak louder than words, and if there are specific instances of ROI that you can share, then make sure to highlight those components. This way, they can visibly see where their money is going and how it’s being utilized toward their business. If you need guidance in mapping out a strategy for these types of reports, look to your vendor partners for guidance and tools that can help. Many MSPs often are not aware that their vendors are always there to help and educate them, as well as providing products and services.

Letting your customers know you appreciate them doesn’t always have to be all about business. You could also let them know they are important by holding a local “meet and greet” type of event where you can socialize and they can get to know you and your staff in a casual setting. Other gestures like a special gift during the holidays or other company milestones can go a long way as well. You could also establish a loyalty program in which customers earn points that they could use toward services and product discounts.

Whether you start with implementing one of these components, or all three, remember that the key is to think of areas where you can position yourself as a unique market leader, ensuring you stay competitive, while providing the highest level of customer service to both current and new clients.

Shannon Mayer is Continuum's Senior Product Marketing Manager and is directly responsible for platform go-to-market strategy and messaging as well as business intelligence. She manages the Continuum Peer Groups program and content for Navigate 2016, Continuum’s annual partner conference. Shannon was named a 2013 Channel Chief by CRN and has also been named to the MSPmentor 250, CRN’s ‘Top 100 People You Don’t Know, But Should’, and CRN’s ‘Women of the Channel: Power 100’ lists. Follow her on Twitter: @shannonjmayer.

Story by Mitel -

Changes in the interplay between technology, location, culture and business are transforming where, when and how we work.

Workers are taking control of their work / life balance with traditional ‘nine to five’ commuting patterns changing. Employees are also seeking more control over the communications devices and applications they use.

There is also an interesting sub-trend involving the development of portfolio based careers.

These trends are confirmed by evidence from SMB Group about the changing use of business communication technologies with 92% of SMBs using at least one cloud solution, 60% saying that mobile solutions are critical and 86% using mobile applications.

Rob Charlton, CEO of Space Group said “As a company we are moving towards keeping and managing everything in the cloud…Whatever we need, whenever we need it, accessible from whichever device is most suitable and available at the time.”

Small and medium sized business today face the challenge of providing workers with flexibility while at the same time maximizing their productivity, controlling costs and ensuring that teams retain good interaction.

Stephen Tanner, Founder of OfficePOD Ltd commented “An organization cannot promote the idea of flexible working and merely cover the provision of a desk and a chair in a spare room. Employers have a duty to provide staff with the tools they need to work effectively and productively; this should include a suitable working environment, wherever that happens to be.”

To explore these issues further the team at global business communications vendor Mitel asked business users, leaders in innovation, architects, psychologists and human resource experts for their perspectives in four key areas:

• How technology trends are setting the agenda
• Next generation workplaces
• The impact of a global market
• Cultural changes and the impact on work.

To discover more insights download the full guide at http://www.mitel.com/knowledge-hub

Story by Harry Brelsford, CEO, SMB Nation - 

So where did I stray? I started my geek life as a young ham radio operator in Alaska. Yep – had to pass the test having memorized Morse code (kids won’t get that!). Then it was a software lifestyle and all that brought including a 15-year run with Small Business Server (SBS). All good.

But lately, since the demise of SBS, myself and other SBSers have been lost in the wilderness, asking huge questions about the meaning of life and why are we here? We’ve lost a few brothers and systems along the way. But I’m here to say that I’ve been saved by the Internet of Things and you can too!

What led to my being saved by IoT? It was a simple email from Tcat. Many readers recall Tcat is a frequent SMB Nation speaker and author over the past ten years (“New Success Secrets” and “Success Teams”). But there’s more to the story. Tcat was on the original SBS development team in the mid/late-1990s at Microsoft Redmond and owned the early Internet Connection Wizard (ICW) that allowed you to select approved local ISPs for your (ekks) modem-based Internet connection. We become fast friends and have stayed in touch ever since. Tcat always seems to land on his feet whether he is living in Egypt, Mexico or Georgia (true stories).

Tcat’s email was simple. He was in Seattle at an IoT conference called AllSeen (hosted by the AllSeen Alliance). It was a next generation geekfest just a few blocks away and AllSeen had selected Seattle this year for its big show. So I strolled over at Tcat’s recommendation and obtained a press pass so I could attend and report back to my loyal readers.

Findings

Here is what I found.

• IoT is the next great thing with silly numbers ($1.9 trillion) in future economic impact.
• IoT is just starting. You can see it for yourself with disparate home electronics “parts” at HomeDepot that don’t talk to each other over a common standard.
• The show was, in my opinion, more enterprise players such as OEMs and service providers (e.g. large telecoms) trying to figure it all out.
• The IoT paradigm is being defined right now, so there is a spoils go to the early bird mentality (sign me up – early is good).
• We’re creating the IoT community as I write this. Think of this as 1998 in SBS-land when folks like Grey Lancaster started a SBS BBS (yikes…modem-based) inside a local school he served in South Carolina). This is your chance to say you were there at the start and I’d encourage you to look into the IoT-friendly trade association Electronics Technicians Association- International (ETA) [http://www.eta-i.org/] which has served as an above reproach accredited vendor-neutral entity since 1978. (More on ETA in a future blog). Seen in the pic below is Joe Maher from the ETA (center) and Tcat (right).

                                                        Enjoying networking after the Seattle AllSeen conference.

Community Correlations

So what’s it all mean for the stereotypical tired old male SBSer, who won’t sell anything (according to old school SMB vendors LOL)? It’s a second chance. Most SMB Nation readers were born as geeks and will be buried as geeks. This is your chance to be born again, return to your roots, get your geek on and tinker and toil on the next great thing. Welcome home!

PS – That cool chick in the cover pic? That’s Tenaya Hurst @LininoWoman at the Seattle AllSeen conference. She’s one of us!

Story by Evans - 

Facebook is the largest social platform on the internet with over one billion users with more than 1/4 of its users active daily. It is very important to know who has been visiting your profile. Everyone would want to know who visited their profile but there isn’t such a feature on facebook that shows who visited your facebook profile.

I have find out an easy way to find out who visited your facebook profile to make you track those that have been visiting your profile and your stalkers. It’s very easy as it involves only a few steps. Please be informed that I am teaching this for people to know who mostly visit their profile and I’m not intending to promote any bad thing or product.

How to find out who visited my Faceboook Profile.

Let’s get started

1 Log into your Facebook account and visit your profile
2.Right click on your timeline and select open view page source. You will be taken to a new page
3. Here, Press CTLR+F and a new dailogue box will open on the right corner of your screen
4. Search for the word “Initialchatfriendslist”. without quotation marks
5. You will now see numerous ids which are nothing but only profile ids of those who visited your facebook profile
Identification numbers of those who visited your Facebook profile are the figures right before the “-0”, “-1”, “-2”, or “-3”. For example, “100003206416069-2” 100003206416069 <-This is the identification number of the person that visited my facebook profile.

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Story by Scott Bekker - 

AVG Technologies is restructuring its managed service provider-centric SMB business division and laying off 35 employees as the unit struggles to meet the company's overall growth goals.

"As we discussed in the last earnings call, our expectation of the uptake of our cloud-based services was not where we wanted it to be as a result of our existing customers' commitment to our traditional on-premise product," said Gary Kovacs, CEO and managing director, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of AVG's third-quarter earnings call Wednesday.
"To fix this, we have taken specific actions to improve our go-to-market strategy, including a significant restructuring and streamlining of the business and further simplification of our products to make it even easier for our resellers to go out with our products to serve their end customers' needs. These restructuring and leadership changes, we believe, will put us in the right position to capitalize on a large and growing opportunity," he said.

CFO John Little explained the restructuring would include "releasing approximately 35 employees," outsourcing a portion of the help desk and restructuring the management of the division. Little said the moves would save about $3 million over the next 12 months.

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In this East Coast vs. West Coast battle, it looks like the West Coast is winning.

Story by Molly Brown - 

According to a review of data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bloomberg found that the tech boom is shifting the richest cities in America to the West Coast. Three out of the top five land here with San Jose topping the charts.

Bridgeport, Conn., an ultra-wealthy suburb outside New York City where many in finance live, comes in No. 2, but San Francisco and Seattle follow, with Boston rounding out the top five.

Bloomberg looked at the nation’s 100 largest metro areas to crunch the numbers to see which city had the “highest output per resident” in 2014.

Apparently, tech is the new gold rush, with the gross metropolitan product, or GMP per capita in Silicon Valley at $105,482 — which Bloomberg cites is “more than double the national average.”

Seattle’s GMP came in at $75,874, but our neighbor to the south, Portland, is also seeing a large jump.

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By: Pete Engler

The reasons a customer chooses to do business with a value added reseller (VAR) often extend beyond the menu of available product and service offerings. The decision can also be influenced by the brands (or vendors) that the VAR represents, and the geographic region served. Reputation of the VAR also comes into play – and can be one of the most influential deciding factors, especially when there are competing VARs vying for a customer’s business. As a VAR, your position in the marketplace and the reputation you’ve earned could make the most significant difference in closing a sale with a new customer.

As a VAR in the technology space, it’s not uncommon to offer a multitude of different products in order to better position yourself to help solve a customer’s business need. Although, an expanded selection can cloud the customer’s decision or leave him confused and unsure of the best route to take. Helping your customer make the best decision and helping ensure your revenue continues growing really depends on your ability as a VAR to position your business and service expertise over the product(s).

What exactly does it mean to position your VAR business and services over products? First, a VAR needs to be an industry and business expert. That means having the capability to properly evaluate a business and its needs efficiently and determine the best solution path to implement. This seems obvious but it can be tricky due to the changes in the buying process. Consider that prospective buyers in business-to-business settings have typically completed 57 percent of their due diligence work before they engage a sales representative, according to a Harvard Business Review survey. Today’s buyers are more prepared and further down the sales funnel before engaging sales support due in large part to the infinite resources and peer reviews available online. This means customers are also further down the decision path before seeking out a VAR’s service and experience during the sales, installation and support process. If a prospect has already set his mind on a particular solution, but it’s really not the best fit, it makes your position as an advisor more challenging. Your expertise can certainly help prevent the customer from making a costly decision, but you first have to convince him that there’s a better alternative.

Being a trusted advisor for your prospects and current customers does require industry and solutions knowledge, but it’s more than rattling off product specs. The customer probably already has that information as part of the early funnel due-diligence. As mentioned previously, your role is to conduct a careful evaluation of the business's needs, so any problems can be identified and addressed, all within budget constraints.

Business owners are masters of their core business functions, but when it comes to choosing the right technology, they can overlook key solution integration details, pricing and feature gotchas, and other lesser-known deployment and maintenance considerations. That’s why they depend on you. Your expertise as a trusted VAR is critical to recommend and implement the technologies that keep their business running on a daily basis, and help the business avoid having to go through a trial-and-error selection process.

Once the sale is complete, your role as trusted advisor moves to the installation, maintenance and troubleshooting phases. This is where you and your team’s capabilities are tested most and where the greatest opportunity exists for damage to your reputation. If the install does not go smoothly, confidence is weakened. After the solution is installed and should an issue arise, you must move to resolve them quickly. Training of your customer support teams on the products and solutions installed is also imperative. Nothing erodes confidence more than an uninformed support staff that is unable to adequately resolve issues.

In the end, it’s your ability to manage any unexpected system hiccups and minimize headaches in the long-term that will solidify your reputation as an expert that can be depended upon by your customers. Building a reputation as a trusted advisor isn’t a tough thing to accomplish; but it is dependent upon your ability to consistently match the right solutions with each prospective customer, deliver expertise through competent and trained employees to install and maintain the solution, and provide top-notch customer service. The benefits of having a solid reputation as a trusted advisor are many; and it’s conceivable that you could grow your VAR organization exclusively on referral business.

Pete Engler is the channel marketing manager at Digium, a business communications company based in Huntsville, Ala., that delivers enterprise-class Unified Communications.

By: Carolyn April, Senior Director of Industry Analysis at CompTIA  -

The tech industry, like most others, has its fair share of pundits. Some predict gloom and doom if the stock market has a single down day or jump on every vendor or provider setback as if it were a long-standing trend. Then there are the channel optimists, who emphasize the positive points around industry news and put a rosier spin on any negative concerns. A commonly accepted business practice is to listen to both camps for their views and reasoning before developing your own conclusions, especially when your investments and reputation depend on the decisions you make with that information.

Overall, most IT professionals remain optimistic about the future of our industry, even in the face of tremendous change and new business challenges. In fact, six out of ten channel firms have a positive outlook on what the future holds for the channel in general, according to CompTIA’s 5th Annual State of the Channel research project. Five years ago, many VARs, solution providers and other industry professionals were concerned about their long-term business prospects with cloud computing gaining traction. The turnaround in the channel’s outlook is quite significant.    

Cloud computing is now cited as the chief reason to be optimistic about the channel’s future since, among other things, it opens doors to new opportunities. Whether or not there is reason to be this hopeful remains to be seen. But, according to our most recent study, channel companies are seeing the cloud as less of a threat. They are discovering that cloud isn’t a single business model; it gives them the chance to plug in at various points. They can sell SaaS, integrate cloud with on-premises solutions, broker and aggregate cloud options, develop applications and offer complementary managed services and other support options.

On the flip side, the cloud also has its skeptics. A subset of our study respondents remain pessimistic and about future of the channel and cite cloud a one reason. This is especially true of those channel firms that sell primarily to very small end customers. Why? Among these small-sized clients, cloud solutions offer a no-brainer alternative to on-premises hardware and software solutions (where many VARs still prosper). Likewise, one third of channel firms indicated that a wider availability of purchasing options and customer self-sufficiency were sources of concern for the channel’s future. This may be behind many of the smallest channel companies rethinking their customer value proposition. For example, 26% of firms with less than 10 employees currently list pure consulting services as their main source of revenue. If their end customers decide to convert to an all cloud model, these small VARs have to create support service offerings to help guide their clients’ decisions. Those opportunities seem to make the most sense. 

While cloud has the promise to simplify things for some customers, others continue to struggle with the growing complexity of IT. That’s great news for channel companies. The third platform technologies (mobility, cloud, big data, and social media) perplex many small businesses today, so IT firms that can help design, implement and support these solutions are truly relevant.

Companies with those capabilities should be optimistic. Of course, there are other reasons why the study respondents had a positive outlook on the channel’s future, including:

• Wider variety and use of technology by all types of customers and end users

• Increasingly complex solution and service options

• Larger demand for vertical industry expertise

These are market realities that provide channel companies with a reason to be optimistic and a number of roles to fill. The opportunities are theirs for the taking if they take the appropriate steps. With solid recruitment efforts and effective training programs, it will make it easier for channel firms to focus their efforts on emerging and more sophisticated technologies.

VARs and MSPs should also be making continual improvements in the business practices. A makeover of sales and marketing strategies can help bring in new customers from different verticals. Back office automation can help reduce billing and cash flow issues, and other tools can improve customer service and support operations. Channel firms that embrace an “as-a-service” way of life typically have a more optimistic outlook.

There’s plenty to be positive about in the IT industry right now. Based on all the information we compiled during the latest State of the Channel survey, a majority of firms are definitely more optimistic than they were five years ago. The real question right now seems to be “will that positive outlook continue?” Time will tell.  

Story by Jim Edwards - 

Anyone who has used Slack — the chatroom app for teams in workplaces — will tell you that it has one massive positive side effect on your working life: It reduces the amount of internal email you receive from your colleagues.

Once your company is on Slack, gone are the reply-all emails where someone just says "Thanks!" Those crushing inboxes full of dozens, hundreds or thousands of unread emails, seem so much less urgent when your company is on Slack.

And you've probably also noticed that the Slack mobile app has a superior direct-messaging experience compared with many consumer apps that only do messages.

But Slack founder Stewart Butterfield, speaking at Web Summit in Dublin on Tuesday, said those of you hoping that Slack will kill off email altogether might have a long wait.

"Email will be the cockroach of the internet," he said, when asked whether Slack will kill email. "I think we've got another 30 or 40 years of email left."

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BY SHAWN MURPHY, CEO and founder, Switch & Shift - 

It's not enough for twenty-first-century leaders to focus on getting things done. They must also connect with employees to inspire performance. Digging deeper, top management today needs to marry purpose and meaning to each employee's contribution. Amid these expectations, and these are but a handful, it's easy for a leader to overlook herself.

A leader depleted of energy is no good to anyone. Turning to digital for solutions, the list below recommends apps to help you be more effective in your life professionally and personally.

The recommended apps are broken down into six categories to increase your leadership effectiveness.

Personal Growth: Deepen your skills through personal development
Communication: Increase clarity, awareness, and understanding within your team
Productivity: Get more done and have energy left to be who you need to be to people important in your life
Inspiration: Know how and why to inspire people
Creativity: Add fulfillment in your work through creating solutions to business problems
Collaboration: Strengthen how you get things done through others. Work is a team sport.

1. Personal Growth

The Leadership Challenge: Hands down the best leadership app out there. Developed by the authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner and based on their best-selling book of the same name, this app gives you tangible actions to grow your leadership according to five leadership practices: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, Encourage the Heart. Excellent app if you want to grow as a leader.

Igniter: There's a saying, "Know what you stand for, or you'll fall for anything." To accomplish the first part of the saying, you need to know what your personal values are. Igniter, from Luck Companies, takes you through an automated process of identifying your core personal values. You ought to know what you stand for. Values are your true north.

Day One: Keep track of what's important to you. Capture ideas. Record memories. Day One is a journaling app to help you develop a routine of reflection. The best leaders take time to reflect.

2. Communication

Slack: My team of seven is completely virtual. Rather than overwhelm email with small requests or updates, of which there are many in a day, we use Slack. Think of Slack as texting on steroids. You can sync many other apps to Slack: Dropbox and Drive, for example. Try /giphy for some fun. Decrease unnecessary meetings and emails. Free up time to focus on higher-value leadership actions.

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Story by Avinash Kaushik - 

Facebook, at last count, has 1.5 billion monthly active users. YouTube has 1.2 billion users (watching 6 billion hours of videos!). Instagram has an estimated 400 million users.

Those are some big gigantic numbers!

I believe that every human with time to spare, and a connection to the web, should be on social media. The benefits are numerous. Facebook allows you to stay close to people you choose to. YouTube has democratized entertainment and education. Instagram allows you to express your creativity, and soak up expressions from others. Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, others have a role to play as well.

Humans, check.

But, what about businesses? Companies small and big? In India or Japan or the United States?

It comes down to two important questions: 1. Do the big gigantic numbers imply that your business should use these social media channels? 2. If yes, should your participation be the same as regular humans?

I believe that we have never answered the first question. Businesses were told: "The numbers are HUGE!" The second question was never answered either, but because all businesses know is how to pimp that became their default strategy.

The assumption is: Big Social Audiences + Big Pimping = Big Social Profits.

Big mistake.

You know that of course because for your business, after five solid years of investment, this has not proven to be true. Even the people who powered your investment in Social Media, the Gurus, have, reluctantly, accepted this reality.

I believe that it was erroneous not to answer the two questions above, it was erroneous to be tempted by the Big Numbers and not understand how Social Media channels actually worked (streams, home pages, personalization, rankings and more).

So, let's fix that error.

In this post let's look at each Social Network, see what B2B and B2C brands are doing there today, from that draw lessons as to 1. if your business should be on that network and 2. if yes, what should your content (and marketing) strategy be.

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Story by Steven Petrow - 

My column of two weeks ago (“Don’t make this mistake on LinkedIn”) drew lots of ire from some readers, not to mention a whole new crop of questions about conduct on LinkedIn. That column focused on what I called “inappropriate” or “bad” LinkedIn behavior, and I think it resonated so strongly because, as Peter Vincent, vice president of human rescources at the Audubon Society, told me: “LinkedIn is such a critical element in career management.”

Half a dozen readers specifically asked about a LinkedIn “mistake” of another kind, which is well-represented by this email:

“I quit LinkedIn because if you hit the wrong button in LinkedIn -- something related to Search for connections -- Linked In will automatically send an invitation to EVERYONE IN YOUR CONTACT LIST!!! Imagine: people you fired, people who fired you, ex-spouses and lovers, the guy you owe money to, your cable company, your proctologist, your kid's teachers -- you get the idea. LinkedIn's behavior in this regard is extremely arrogant, insulting, and embarrassing.”

As it turns out, a number of threads exist about this very topic on the LinkedIn site, including “LinkedIn automatically invited my entire contact list” and “People complaining I’ve sent invites to them but I didn’t.”

One user posted his advice: “Beware hasty button-clicking! As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, [LinkedIn] standard practice is to use [a confusing user interface] to get users to do things they don't intend to do. For example, to NOT invite somebody you SELECT their name, and to invite somebody you DE-SELECT.”

Does that sound confusing? Well, it does because it is. In a nutshell, let’s say you have 500 names among your contacts and you want to send invites to 50. To do that, you would need to “deselect” 450. This is neither intuitive – nor easy.

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Story By Harry Brelsford, CEO, SMB Nation - 

 When a conference concludes, you leave on a natural high. That’s called the sun tan effect and lasts a few weeks post-event. You know the feeling. You’re psyched to implement what you learned, but then like a sun tan, the glow fades a few weeks later. So I write this as I am sporting a sun tan from last week’s Seattle Startup Week (tan in rainy Seattle?). Unfortunately, I only participated on the last day (Friday, October 30th) as I was unaware of the event (scary) and learned of it when colleague Dona Keating posted up a Facebook notice that she was speaking mid-day Friday.

So I went to the event site (seattle.startupweek.co) and registered for free immediately. I did this so I could get in the loop. In essence, my registration will allow me to receive future updates. But my registration was also a lead for the sponsors. The primary sponsor is Chase, a financial institution underwriting the lion’s share of the event costs (more on that in a moment). For its sponsorship, Chase would have received over 3,000 leads (the total number of sign-ups) who attended over 170+ sessions sprinkled across Seattle, from October 26 - October 30. To be honest, it was an event and I learned from one of the 13 event managers that it’s held in 50-cities annually (like the Three Day Walk in a different realm). That would suggest that Chase is likely gathering around 150,000 leads for its sponsorship. I’d offer the leads are qualified, targeted and of high value to Chase trying to sell small business banking services.

Melanie Gass (Microsoft) and Pat Murphy (LeadScorz, a start-up) talking business.

From an analytical point of view, I noticed a correlation to the SMB Nation “crowd” we know and love in that we’re small business owners and ergo, entrepreneurs. But that’s where it ends. The Seattle Startup Week audience was significantly younger and far more likely to explore new business opportunities far afield from the on-premises Small Business Server paradigm and even Office 365. This is the millennial crowd working in co-worker open spaces. These 20-somethings are very smart and focused on the new-new such as a mobile app to find uber movers. Needless to say, I was impressed and I will repeat.

So given I was a “Johnny-come-lately” to the event, exactly what sessions did I attend? Full disclosure: the Friday afternoon reception and the Friday night Halloween Party. Next year I’ll actually go to lecture, LOL.

Story by Jeff Shuey - 

With apologies to Jimmy Stewart for co-opting his classic movie title. This week I went to Washington, DC to meet with my Senate and Congressional representatives. However, it wasn’t just me. There were about 50 people from the Microsoft partner ecosystem covering quite a few states. Many of us are also part of our local IAMCP chapters and a lot of us are also SMB’s.

The Voices for Innovation team coordinated the efforts and helped make sure we were ready to meet with our representatives. I’d like to thank Jonathan Friebert and Maddie Orser of Microsoft for putting all the pieces together and for bringing great speakers from Microsoft as well as from industry and governmental agencies.

What does this mean for the SMB Nation?

It’s simple. Microsoft is putting their best foot forward and is Fighting for Your Rights. We focused on seeking support for the LEADS Act – which emphasizes Privacy. You can find more on the VFI website or search for S.512 and H.R.1174.

What Can You Do?

The call to action is simple. Get involved. Search for apps on your mobile device using the term “Congress” and if you are a Windows Phone user this is a great app – Informed American. Connect with your representative’s in-person –in DC if possible and in your home town. They do want to hear from you.

Follow the VFI team on Twitter @VFIorg and on Facebook.

I’d like to reiterate my thanks to Microsoft and the Voices for Innovation team.

Sign up today! SMB Nation Webinar 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM PDT. Thursday, November 5th

Presented by: Harry Brelsford CEO of SMB Nation & Grant Thompson Founding Partner of MG Technology Group

This session will take you through what’s best in Windows 10. Expert Grant Thompson will filter out the “noise” so customers receive “signal” and are immediately productive at the end of this one hour investment.

Discover:
01. The Start button (Yah!)
02. Windows Store Apps
03. Cortana
04. Edge Browser
05. Virtual desktops/Task View
06. Action Center
07. Core Apps – Revamped and Revised!
08. Xbox….yes….Xbox!
09. Continuum (not the RMM company – a touchscreen-ism)
10. Unified Settings - sorta

Be sure to invite your customers to show them how the Windows 10 solutions can help them operate more efficiently and empower them to grow their business.

Also remember since your customers are attending, you can register this event with Microsoft Community Connections and receive giveaway software and materials.

Registration > https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1312087581753858

App store will work on all Ubuntu systems, whether they are bare-metal or virtualized and support private and public clouds

Story by CHRISTOPHER TOZZI - 

Canonical is launching yet another app store for Ubuntu Linux. Unlike its great, late desktop-oriented predecessor, however, this one is focused on the OpenStack cloud, with apps delivered via Juju.

Ubuntu founder and former CEO Mark Shuttleworth announced the new app store at the OpenStack Summit this week in Tokyo. The platform will provide a way for people running Ubuntu-based OpenStack clouds to install cloud applications via Juju and Horizon, the web-based management interface for OpenStack.

The app store will work on all Ubuntu systems, whether they are bare-metal or virtualized. It also supports private and public clouds alike.

This isn’t Canonical’s first foray into app stores. The company ran a similar system for desktop-based versions of Ubuntu, called the Ubuntu Software Center, for years until announcing last summer it was shutting it down to focus on mobile app delivery for Snappy Ubuntu Core.

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In past years, Microsoft has brought up the rear in many antivirus tests, sometimes earning a below-zero score. AAA certification from Dennis Labs suggests that Microsoft's antivirus is coming out of its slump.

Story by NEIL J. RUBENKING - 

For years, Microsoft's antivirus has been the sad sack in antivirus tests. Several labs have taken to calling Microsoft's performance a baseline. If you can't beat the baseline, you're doing something wrong. That trend seems to be changing, though. In the latest test results reported by AV-Test Institute, Microsoft earned a respectable 14 points (out of a possible 18). That's a lot better than its previous score of 9.5 points; 10 points is the minimum to pass this test.

It seems that Microsoft is on a roll. Dennis Technology Labs certifies antivirus products at a number of different levels: AAA, AA, A, B, and C. For the first time, Microsoft managed AAA certification.

Real-Life Malware

The researchers at Dennis Labs search for websites hosting drive-by downloads and other types of attacks. They capture the entire contents of each attack page and use a playback system to expose each antivirus to precisely the same attack. This kind of testing is quite labor-intensive. Dennis Labs typically evaluates nine or 10 products, where AV-Test and AV-Comparatives include over 20.

An antivirus product that detects the launch of malware and neutralizes the malicious process gets one point. If it also removes all executable traces of the malware, that's worth another point. For the best scenario, when the antivirus completely prevents execution of malware, three points are awarded.

Points go both ways, though. If the malware slips past the antivirus and runs rampant on the test system, that takes away five points. In past years, Microsoft frequently wound up with a below-zero total score.

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Story by Angela Guess

Robert Bates recently wrote for IT Pro Portal, “In order to implement ‘open data’ practices across a business and improve data flow that can result in better and faster analysis a cultural change needs to take place as well as a technological one. The most important change that needs to be instilled is transitioning the whole business, not just the data insights team, to adopt an agile approach to ways of working. Originating from software development, the principles that make up an agile working methodology can benefit all business areas.”

Bates goes on, “These principles include: Active user involvement; The empowerment for all employees to make decisions; Requirements evolve but timelines are fixed; Make small changes to test and then adapt as necessary; Focus on frequent delivery of products; Complete each feature/task before moving to the next; Adoption of Pareto’s Law (80/20) for efficiency and productivity; Test early and often; Collaborate and cooperate across all stakeholders.”

He continues, “While some of these principles may require slight amendment depending on the team or business unit that they are being applied to, using these as a base, teams can instil more efficient and productive ways of working, particularly in regards to the way they look at data, make requests for insight and apply business intelligence to projects. From a technology standpoint, in order to deliver BI that can quickly adapt to the changing needs of the business a new approach to how data is delivered is required. A new concept that is gaining traction in the business world is viewing data delivery as akin to a supply chain. Currently this is not how most data is accessed and delivered.”

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Story by Paul Heltzel

The rise of contract and contingent work is shaking up the traditional IT career path. Here’s how to navigate for success.

Disruptive technologies do more than shake up markets -- they drastically alter the way we work. And it’s not only nonstop cost cutting that has businesses favoring IT contractors they can bring on -- or scale back -- as necessary without paying benefits. Emerging platforms, in particular around the cloud, have many organizations shifting their staffing models toward project-based, contingent work in hopes of landing the key skills necessary for their businesses to stay competitive in a constantly evolving technical landscape.

In short, the days of decades-long careers in corporate environments may be dwindling for many IT pros, and while millennials coming of age in tomorrow’s gig-based tech employment market may be attracted to the idea of remote work for multiple clients -- as can be seen by the growth of co-working environments -- not everyone is prepared to embrace a nomadic future of career contingency.

Click here To Read More

Sign up today! SMB Nation Webinar 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM PDT. Friday, Oct 30th

Presented by: Harry Brelsford CEO of SMB Nation and Dan Shapero Founder of CLIKCLOUD Digital Marketing

In today’s ever-changing business landscape, cloud computing is profoundly shifting the way businesses operate. As more SMBs are moving to a cloud-based strategy, new growth opportunities are opening up for channel partners seeking a competitive advantage in the channel.

This session will examine the latest trends impacting SMBs and how they present unique opportunities for channel partners.
Attendees will learn:
● Learn how leveraging Office 365, among other best practices can help build a successful cloud business.
● Gain exclusive IDC research on the latest trends fueling channel success in cloud.
● Explore how leading Cloud Service Providers are capitalizing on Cloud as a “Door Opener”.
● Discover ways to recalibrate your sales compensation to support the Cloud business model.
● Learn about exclusive offers for to help partners implement Microsoft SureStep and Modern Marketing Programs.

Registration Link > https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/46816475679947778

Story by Glenn Dunks - 

Have you started your annual Halloween horror purge? October is the month to indulge your fright bone, and with All Hallows Eve falling on a Saturday this year, you’ve got a big last weekend to prepare full of things that go bump in the night before you’re considered once more to be a weirdo for watching all those horror movies all the time.

You’ve got one less thing to fear though, because we’ve scoured the online streaming services and picked the best scary flicks should you choose to partake. So make some popcorn, turn off the lights, and settle in for a scary movie.

Netflix

Is the granddaddy of streaming services on the Halloween bandwagon? Well, not as much as you might hope. You’d be hard-pressed to recognise about half of the movies on offer on the company’s Australian platform. Not even I had heard of Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred (2011), Playback (2012), Sxtape (2013) or Preservation (2015).

Best of the Best: Obviously some people have kids, so if you’re looking for kid-friendly then Netflix offers Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? You’ll get some wonderful 1990s nostalgia – Ryan Gosling pre-photoshopped sex beefcake! – plus the best parents teach their kids it’s okay to be scared.

Click here to read more.

Story by Tom Flynn - 

Big data and analytics market growth is far outpacing overall IT market growth, and that means the need for IT professionals who know what to do with the piles of data collected by businesses is growing just as fast. In fact, the McKinsey Global Institute predicts as many as 190,000 data scientist positions in the United States will remain unfilled by 2018. On top of that, some 1.5 million managers and analysts will lack the skills to understand and make decisions based on big data analysis.

“To capture the full economic potential of big data, companies and policy makers will have to address the talent gap,” McKinsey says. Otherwise, there will be a lot of unfilled potential in U.S. businesses to leverage big data and analytics to hone processes, develop new products, accelerate go-to-market strategies and measure customer sentiment.

The sector most likely to suffer from this skills shortage is the SMB market, which typically lacks the resources to vie for talent against large, deep-pockets competitors. For organizations in that situation, the answer could be to partner with a managed services provider (MSP)--one that delivers easy-to-use data analytics tools that enable SMBs to compete at the level of the big players.

And the time to act is now, since the big data and analytics market is poised to grow at a 26 percent yearly rate to $41.5 billion in 2018, six times faster than the overall IT market, according to IDC projections. That means if you can’t figure out how to leverage data analytics soon, others surely will – and some of them might just eat your lunch.

Click here to read more.

Story by Eric Ravenscroft -

Yesterday, Google announced YouTube Red. Google, blissfully unaware of what goes on in Incognito Mode, apparently thought that this was a good name for a service. It is not the first time that Google has made flagrantly terrible choices in naming stuff.

As a brand itself, Google is pretty great. The name is distinct, it’s become synonymous with search, and the company has even managed to convey a distinct identity of whimsy, curiosity, and experimentation. Which is why it’s pretty frustrating that every single time Google announces the name of a new product, it’s either a generic English word with “Google” slapped on the front, or it’s a weird name that makes no damn sense.

Google Now Is an Awful Name for a Great Product

Google is the only company that hasn’t tried to personify its voice assistant. And I’m okay with that. Siri, Cortana, and Alexa are all nice, but I’m not going to be upset if my phone doesn’t get sassy when I ask it to divide zero by zero. But I almost wish that Google did give Google Now a persona so it wasn’t so stupidly difficult to talk about it.

For starters, Google still hasn’t really clarified what Google Now is. Initially, it seemed that “Google Now” referred to the page of cards that attempted to guess what information you wanted at any given moment. However, it now seems that Google’s collection of voice commands is included in “Google Now.” Or is that part of something called Ok Google, as this help page seems to indicate? Google used to have a separate product called Voice Actions, but that’s now the name of Google’s framework for third-party developers to add voice commands to Google. Maybe Google’s voice actions have no name. But if that’s the case, then Google’s entire personal assistant product has no name at all. Which would be really silly, since the voice commands are way more useful than Google Now cards.

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Story by Rick Whiting - 

Business intelligence software developer Information Builders is making a major push into the SMB arena with its WebFocus Express business intelligence software. And it's relying heavily on its expanding channel operations to make that happen.

Last month Information Builders made it official that WebFocus Express is available through its channel network via distributor Arrow Electronics' Enterprise Computing Solutions business. But the New York-based company has been working with its growing roster of channel partners for some time to bring the Express product to SMB customers.

"We are very happy to see [Information Builders] investing more heavily in its channel efforts in the SMB market," said Arun Gollapudi, CEO of Systech Solutions, a Glendale, Calif.-based solution provider that focuses on information management and analytics services.

[Related: 2015 Big Data 100: Business Analytics]

Systech has worked with Information Builders for many years, largely concentrating on providing its flagship WebFocus business intelligence software to large businesses. But now the solution provider is one of a growing number of channel partners riding the company's SMB push and new WebFocus Express to reach new opportunities.

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Story by Leyla Seka, Desk.com - 

Startups are known for creative thinking, trying new things, doing things differently. Yet they often fall prey to a fundamental mistake: forgetting to serve the customer. It’s not easy to launch a product, manage everything from IT to accounting, fend off the competition, and grow a customer base — all at the same time — so it’s hardly surprising that half of small businesses fail within the first five years. At Desk.com, we work with many fast-growing startups, so we’ve learned a lot about the journey. Here are six ways some of those amazing companies are using customer support to ‘think different’ and beat the competition.

1. Make every employee an agent
Startups have no time for specialized roles. Every employee — from the CEO to the receptionist — must be part of your support team. When everyone spends time on the frontlines, it’s easier to stay aligned around customers and maintain service levels when things get busy. (And nothing helps you understand the ins-and-outs of a product like answering service calls.) Just look at Charitybuzz, which brings together celebrities and top brands for auctions supporting nonprofits. “Every interaction that we have with celebrities, charities, bidders, and auction winners needs to be amazing,” says Dwayne David, a Charitybuzz Customer Service Manager. So while the company has an official concierge team of three, everyone jumps in to help during the busy times.

2. Offer wicked-fast response times
Customer service has come a long way since the old days, when you had to call a company between 9-5 Eastern Standard Time to get help. Most companies today offer a knowledge base or basic self-service so customers can find answers 24/7, but of course, sometimes customers still need to reach a living, breathing person. Get a customer service solution that’s easy to use and optimized for mobile so you have consistently fast response times. HotelTonight offers last-minute hotel reservations for busy travelers who crave efficiency; a response time of < 10 minutes (incredible!) has been a key driver of the company’s explosive growth.

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By Harry Brelsford, CEO, SMB Nation - 

SMB Nation was present with bells on at the October 7-8 Channel Alliance Summit led by Frank Raimondi, down in Portland at “The Farm.” We caught up with Intel Vice President Todd Garrigues, who carved out a few minutes to discuss the Intel Partner Program. “My focus is on North America.” Garrigues shared. “There is a strong focus on helping grow a healthy diverse channel. We’ll look to continue growth and activity in client/server, IOT, verticals and segments. And we’ll be promoting a focus on technology trends.”

For the record, there are two types of partners in North America (which Garrigues reported numbers 24,000 members of whom 4,000 are actively engaged). The two types are (1) System Builders and (2) Branded Resellers/VARs/MSPs that have a focus on branded goods.

One interesting area of conversation included specialties. Garrigues communicated that there is a specialty program that provided training and recognition in the following areas: Education, Internet of Things (IOT), and High Performance Computing (HPC).

We ended our chat with Garrigues offering words of encouragement to focus on verticals that can enable channel partners to be successful. One example is retail with an emphasis on digital signage and mobile point-of-sale (POS).

By Jeffrey Schwartz, Redmond Channel Partner Magazine - 

Microsoft showcased its own new hardware products for Windows 10 at a recent New York event.

Inviting media, analysts and Windows Insiders, the company rolled out two new Lumia phones, an upgrade to its Surface Pro line and the company's debut into the high-end laptop market with the new Surface Book. The hardware rollouts put some metal around Windows 10, which originally launched back in July.

Microsoft described today's product launches as the "beginning of a new era" for Windows. The company also will support upcoming product rollouts by its key OEM partners, including Dell, Hewlett Packard, Acer, Asus, Fujitsu, Panasonic, LG and Toshiba.

The biggest surprise was the introduction of the new 13.5-inch Surface Book. It's a convertible laptop and tablet that Microsoft officials claim can run 12 hours on a single charge and is two times more powerful than a MacBook Pro. "It redefines everything you would expect in a laptop," said Panos Panay, Microsoft's Surface VP, describing it as "the ultimate laptop" too many times to count.

The Surface Book starts at $1,499 for an i5-based system using the new Intel Core 6 processor with 8GB of RAM and scales up to an i7-based system with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB drive, both supporting optional Nvidia GPUs. The Surface Book is targeted at artists, engineers and gamers who require significant processing power. When the top part is removed from the keyboard to function as a "clipboard," it weighs 1.6 pounds; with the keyboard, it weighs 3.5 pounds. The device has a 13.5-inch 10 point multitouch PixelSense display that renders up to 6 million pixels at 267DPI, Panay said. "There's nothing close to it," he said. A new Surface Pen supports 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity. "If you look at a photo on it, it will look real, if you look at a video it'll immerse you," Panay said. The top-end system will cost a hefty $2,699.

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By Kurt Mackie, October 21, 2015, from Redmond Channel Partner Magazine - 

Future SharePoint developments will focus on enabling organizations to deploy "hybrid" SharePoint architectures, according to a recent talk by a senior Microsoft executive.

According to Mark Kashman, a Microsoft senior product manager on the SharePoint team, Microsoft is building SharePoint with end user productivity, as enabled via Office 365 services, in mind. Kashman gave the keynote at the SPTechCon Boston 2015 event this past August (a video is now available on demand here).

Such hybrid SharePoint architectures, per Microsoft's definition, consist of SharePoint Server 2013 Service Pack 1 or the forthcoming SharePoint Server 2016 product running in an organization's datacenter. The server gets integrated with Office 365 services, which are run by Microsoft from its own "cloud" datacenters. This hybrid approach will support the new end user productivity technologies being envisioned by Microsoft.

In an earlier talk at the SPBiz Conference, Kashman had explained how past SharePoint Server products always had some cloud roots. Microsoft's current development strategy coming from CEO Satya Nadella is "mobile first, cloud first." Per that approach, Microsoft is using learnings from its massively scaled Office 365 cloud services to improve SharePoint Online first, as well as its forthcoming SharePoint Server 2016 product. Specifically, Microsoft is integrating new Office 365 services, such as Delve, Clutter and Groups, into both the SharePoint Online service, as well as SharePoint Server 2016. The integration effort is closing the gap between the on-premises and online products, providing for a more consistent code base, Kashman explained back then.

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Are you looking to buy or sell new, used or refurbishedIT and telecom parts and equipment includingcomputers, laptops, printers, VoIP phones, central office systems, PBX/Key systems or network infrastructure?  Whether you are a supplier, reseller, service provider, corporate buyer or self-maintainer, you can benefit from the PowerSourceprofessional community. PowerSource Online helps our members increase sales,build industry relationships and save time and resources with our best-in-class selling and sourcing tools. 

Computer parts suppliers and resellers gain a competitive advantage by easily posting their in-stock inventory of new, used and refurbished IT and telecoms parts to reach thousandsof buyers. PowerSource members can view and respond directly to buying requests for computers, telecom equipment, IT infrastructureand more.   

Corporate buyers have the ability to search over 3,000,000 lines of inventory in real-time from hundredsof the most

reputable suppliers in the secondary market industry. Our members areable to get the best possible prices on inventory items by sending multiple Requests for Quotes,and receiving answers quickly.In addition to being able to search for up to 100 parts at one time, buyers can also customize their search criteria to include only preferred vendors and trading regions for more efficient sourcing.

 By using PowerSource Online, IT,computer and telecom buyers and sellershave access to unparalleled opportunities to expand their customer base and increase their average margins.  Since 1997, PowerSource has helped thousands of computer parts and telecom equipment buyers and sellers efficiently source or dispose of all types of computer parts and equipment, generating substantial cost savings for buyers and improving sales for sellers and service providers. 

 Take the time to experience PowerSource Online by enjoying a free trial. This way, you can experiencefor yourself how our B2B exchange helps businesses connect with thousands of buyers and sellers of computer, printer, networking and telecom equipment. 

By Harry Brelsford, CEO, SMB Nation

Join the Queen of Lean as she introduces Sasquatch, the Slack companion application that transforms chat into workflow. In this introductory session, you will discover how you can use Sasquatch + Slack to run your MSP and CSP. Read more at http://idea2.com/sasquatch-slack.More importantly, you will learn about Slack and why it is the fastest growing enterprise software on the planet. Yes – you too can be a Sasquatch Slack Consultant to your SMB customers as a new service -- and it's easier than you think. Join this story-telling session to learn how Barry and Bonnie learn how to pivot their internal MSP and CSP operations using the dynamic duo -- Sasquatch + Slack.

This webinar is October 15, 2015 at Noon (12:00pm – Pacific = UTC-7)
Sign-up here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4668626796890831361

Webinar Series
#1: How Barry and Bonnie transform their customer experience with Sasquatch + Slack
#2: Adding Sasquatch + Slack to your services portfolio
#3: Sasquatch + Slack custom solutions

Hosted by Grace Schroeder. CEO of Idea2.com
"Product/marketing professional with expertise in product launch and sales management systems in Financial Services and Telecommunications industries. Grace is now the CEO of Idea2 LTD, a business that builds custom CRM applications with an emphasis on third party application integrations. Competing with “out of the box” CRM solutions like Salesforce, Idea2’s custom cloud platforms are built 10x faster and at a fraction of the cost of custom development. With this, companies are able to connect their core platforms with current and future third party apps. Idea2 combines all of the elements of a developer platform, custom applications, and harmonious integrations that efficiently share data and workflow."

+ Harry Brelsford (you already know him!)
This webinar is October 15, 2015 at Noon (12:00pm – Pacific = UTC-7)
Sign-up here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4668626796890831361

Story by Harry Brelsford, CEO, SMB Nation

I’ve escaped again. The post-Fall collapse that has afflicted my amazingly hard working staff has them taking a week off to recharge. But I’m online and ready, able and willing to report to you how the 13th annual Fall Conference changed.

Student / Teach Ratio

If the mark of a good educational experience is small classroom size so you get the teacher’s attention, I’d offer our 300-person show (in-person and online) is right where we want it. I repeatedly heard how meaningful conversations were cultivated in our three-day “Jam Session” format. Craving anonymity? Then we’re the wrong conference and I’d suggest you consider DreamForce held just before our event in San Francisco with over 115,000 attendees LOL! We’re good for making connections surrounding targeted content that this year included Office 365, Azure and Windows 10.

Disturbing and Disruptive Content

One of our speakers, Karl Palachuk, who always seems to be everywhere, likes to often repeat one of my keynote lines that conferences should be disturbing and disruptive. Hopefully we met our goals in spades there. The technical content, always the most well attended sessions, was delivered from a non-blue badge independent vantage point. Our technical content, led by Robert Crane and Grant Thompson, is our core asset in the SMB technology event field populated by one-day money-makers and booty shakers (you know who you are). The business content that I directed is a whole ‘nother story. My belief, as a weekend conference, is that the business track should be viewed as a three-day Executive MBA retreat. I specifically write content that is focused like an academic major, in this case Lead Generation/Management/Scoring. So over our long weekend you are immersed into a single topic that I don’t think is being well covered in other venues. For example – we went deep into predictive lead scoring. Boom!

I certainly didn’t make any friends with my keynote. In my sermon, I shared research I’ve conducted over the summer gathering facts from numerous sources such as extensive vendor interviews, reading research reports and talking with MSPs and CSPs. Invoking a fire-and-brimstone delivery method, I revealed the declining IT value chain. Work that MSPs and CSPs used to perform for $5.00 can now be accomplished automatically for a net cost of $0.50. So, I preached that you must repent and CUT COSTS because you can’t increase revenues fast enough. Cloud changes everything, and is causing a fundamental reset. You must terminate your staff of $100K server-side MCSEs and use cheaper faster contractors from WorkMarket or Odesk to perform the monkey work. SkyKick affirmed some but not all of my thinking in its keynote where it presented a pathway to recurring revenues. I guess that’s a nicer way of having this conversation than my fire everyone on Monday mantra.

Did I mention that conferences should be disturbing and disruptive?

What Others Are Saying

Our publishing partner Channel Pro covered the event here and Rich Freeman made the following, very well-written contribution: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/article/smb-nation-2015-spend-less-sell-more-survive-cloud?utm_source=cpdirect&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cpdirect10082015

Channel Pro also had a fly-by post-up concerning the conference here: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/smb-nation-2015-taking-place-redmond

Robert Crane, one of our leading speakers, opined here: http://blog.ciaops.com/2015/10/office-365-nation-wrap-up.html

Should there be another Fall conference next year?

The beautiful thing about a digital life is that we can solicit your feedback very quickly. Years ago, when Apple bailed on MacWorld, the CEO of IDG held a community meeting at the event seeking input about the future of the show. I’m doing the same using different tactics. My talented staff at SMB Nation can continue to add value to the community in a variety of ways. But is a three-day destination conference the proper way to achieve this goal? (Contrast it with having a traveling one-day road show, as an example.) Lemme know!

Office 365 is too key to the business world for forward-looking technology companies to ignore. Switch, a cloud-based business phone system provider, announced yesterday it is now fully integrated with Office 365 and also offers an open version allowing any business in the U.S. to sign up. 

“Any size business that moves to Google Apps and Office 365 understands the value of the cloud,” CEO Craig Walker wrote. “IT departments at enterprises that are making the move really, really understand it. They know that employees need to be productive when they work remotely, whether it’s down the block or on the road, and having on-premise email, calendar and documents doesn’t make sense any more. Cloud adoption is inevitable, not just for productivity suites but for business phones, too.”

Switch was built around the WebRTC framework, which continues to be heralded and updated by Google, Firefox and Microsoft, and now has data centers in Australia, Asia, Europe and the U.S. to keep multi-national customers connected. 

More information is available here on the Switch blog.

Technology distributor Avnet today it expanded its portfolio of offerings with SaaS solutions from Alert Logic. 

Avnet will provide Alert Logic’s services to VAR, MSP and ISV partners in the U.S. in Canada through Avnet Cloud Solutions. 

“Avnet’s new relationship with Alert Logic will bolster the ability of our partners to deliver critical cloud security services that help keep their customers’ data safe and compliant, allowing them to focus on running their businesses,” said Tim FitzGerald, vice president of Avnet’s cloud solutions business in the Americas. “The addition of Alert Logic expands our cloud ecosystem with another important ally toward providing our partners with the strategic guidance, resources and packaged offerings to quickly, securely, and cost-effectively build and grow their customers’ cloud computing platforms.”

More information about solutions from Avnet and Alert Logic is available here.  

The Internet of Things continues to lead industry news and innovation in the second half of 2015, and myriad providers and vendors are attuned to IoT’s importance. 

MachNation, an IoT insight services and application development firm, announced today recommendations for five security vendors and 10 requirements for creating a secure solution in “IoT Security Landscape and Vendor Recommendations 2015.”

“MachNation has been providing our customers with industry-leading analysis and strategic support for their IoT initiatives,” said Steve Hilton, co-founder and President, MachNation. “Today, we are thrilled to announce a new publication that provides a list of 5 recommended IoT security vendors and 10 requirements to help public and private sector organizations craft a holistically secure IoT solution. We recommend the IoT security solutions of ARM, Bayshore Networks, Cisco, Intel and Wipro.”

The report, available here, covers the five recommended providers in detail and provides information about 13 other IoT security vendors.

Security software provider Trend Micro continues to work to protect small business and enterprise from data vulnerabilities in hybrid cloud infrastructures. 

“A hybrid strategy helps many companies maximize existing infrastructure investments while successfully migrating to the cloud,” said Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president, cloud research, Trend Micro. “Even during an ‘all-in’ migration, there is a transition period where organizations have to manage IT assets across multiple environments. Security that can bridge both is a critical component in keeping corporate data safe and meeting compliance requirements. Our Deep Security platform allows users to pursue a hybrid strategy with confidence.”

Trend Micro’s integrated solution, Trend Micro Deep Security, is designed to enable compliance across workloads, giving organizations the ability to operate securely on-premises and in the cloud.

Ingram Micro announced today it was recognized in The Channel Company’s CRN 2015 Cloud Computing Partner Program Guide for its support and acceleration of partner initiatives in Ingram Micro Cloud Elevate. 

According to Ingram Micro, its free-to.enroll channel program is designed to drive partner channel sales and cloud profitability. 

"It's an honor to receive this recognition for a second straight year, as it further validates our commitment to channel innovation and partner success in the cloud," said Renee Bergeron, Vice President, Global Cloud Computing, Ingram Micro. "Ingram Micro Cloud Elevate provides channel partners with the resources needed to quickly expand their cloud footprint while accelerating business transformation and profitability."

The Cloud Partner Program Guide will be included in the October issue of CRN and is available at www.crn.com.

Voice over Internet Protocol is a key technology for businesses small and large, functioning as one of the most popular methids of communication both in and out of the office, according to Digium's newest infographic. 

The graphic highlights the rise of VoIP throughout myriad verticals and notes top reasons for companies to switch to VoIP, notably lower telecommunication costs and a desire to merge voice and data traffic.

Digium offers resources illustrating the transition to VoIP here for businesses and the professionals that support them. View the full infographic below. 

IBM announced this morning it entered into an agreemnet to acquire Cleversafe, Inc., which will strengthen IBMs ability to develop and lead storage and hybrid cloud. 

Cleversafe’s portfolio will be integrated into the IBM cloud business unit to provide clients with increased consistency in on-premise, cloud and hybrid cloud solutions. 

"Today a massive digital transformation is underway as organizations increasingly turn to cloud computing for innovative ways to manage more complex business operations and increasing volumes of data in a secure and effective way," said Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, IBM Cloud. "Cleversafe, a pioneer in object storage, will add to our efforts to help clients overcome these challenges by extending and strengthening our cloud storage strategy, as well as our portfolio.”

Cleversafe CEO John Morris said the acquisition will expand Cleversafe’s current solutions to better its client service as well.

StorageCraft announced this morning the StorageCraft Technology roadshow is set to make a stop at IP Expo Europe later this week to enhance its foothold in the U.K. and throughout Europe.  

"StorageCraft is enhancing its strong foothold in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom,” Ellen Marie Hickey, StorageCraft's European marketing director said. “This is an opportunity for IP Expo attendees to learn why information technology professionals trust StorageCraft backup and disaster recovery solutions in more than one million computer systems around the world."

StorageCraft will be available at booth M23 in the ExCel Exhibition Center from Oct. 7-8. 

The intelligent cloud is powering innovation industry-wide and key to advancement of Microsoft Azure. 

Microsoft Corp. announced earlier this week Azure will be available in more places worldwide with new features designed to offer users simplicity and flexibility. 

“We live in a connected world, and the intelligent cloud is powering it all,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud + Enterprise Division. “As data and devices continue to proliferate, there is vast opportunity for businesses to tap into their data to make their applications more intelligent. Through our offerings across applications, data and IoT, and cloud infrastructure, we are enabling companies to innovate more easily and rapidly, using the tools and platforms they know and love.”

Exciting product news include the availability of the Azure IoT Suite and the expansion of Azure Data Lake. Microsoft Azure services are now available in India, with O365 and Dynamics CRM soon to follow in the coming months. 

More product information and service announcements from AzureCon are available here.

U.K.-based Distology and threat protection provider Webroot announced today they expanded distribution of Webroot’s products into the UK and Ireland. 

“The MSP space in the UK carries huge potential and Webroot has taken a very dynamic and proactive approach to grow its presence in this market,” said Rick Yates, director of sales and marketing at Distology. “Webroot’s lightweight agent, two minute initial system scan time, and minimal impact on end user devices keep downtime to a minimum and service costs low. We look forward to delivering their innovative threat intelligence and Smarter Cybersecurity™ solutions to our extensive partner and MSP network.”

This expansion will allow Webroot to globally further its partner programs and provide MSPs, resellers and system integrators with privacy, performance and protection.

Jabra announced today availability of Jabra SPEAK 810, a speakerphone solution designed to mitigate traditional difficulties of conference collaboration and eliminate poor sound quality.  

"Businesses are becoming more focused on creating working environments and cultures that better enable them to compete,” Holger Reisinger, Head of Business Solutions, Jabra, said. “As a result, office environments are changing and becoming more dynamic, demanding and technology-enabled. New ways of working are adding flexibility to working spaces, practices and hours. Yet productivity must also remain a priority for business success and for this reason so should enabling effective collaboration and concentration.”

Important features include a directional microphone with a 15 foot range; connectivity through USB, Bluetooth and 3.5 mm jack cables; USB charge out for charging mobile devices; and a Kensington lock slot option.

Israel-based Covertix continues to facilitate migration to Office 365 with its SmartCipher technology, the company announced today. 

SmartCipher is designed to provide control, tracking and forensics for internal and external unstructured data files.

"Security concerns are the primary reason that many people are not actively moving to the cloud," said Covertix CEO Yoran Sirkis. "Covertix support for Office 365 eases some of those concerns."We live in a world without boundaries. Protection needs to follow each document, each piece of information because the endpoint no longer exists. It's now everywhere.”

Its technology allows governance of protected information across O365, including email and cloud storage. 

 by Harry Brelsford, CEO, SMB Nation

We’ve been talking a lot on O365 Nation about the financial and management benefits of moving to Office 365. Simply removing the internal infrastructure costs for Exchange can be a compelling reason for a business of any size to consider Office 365. That said, Office 365 is a service from Microsoft that offers so much more than a way to simplify the management of Exchange.

Are you getting the full advantage?

One area that is currently underutilized by many Office 365 subscribers is the included SharePoint Online license. For example, a recent Radicati Group survey found that only 23% of respondents are using SharePoint Online.

SharePoint Online represents a transformational opportunity for many of today’s business and you should be taking a careful look at all the opportunities. Maybe you don’t have an intranet today or all your internal files are in a file share. Your current Office 365 license allows you to change all this.

So why aren’t more people using SharePoint Online?

Radicati states that the “hesitant majority of enterprises that aren't willing to move to [SharePoint Online is] because of user issues, existing architecture and data security.”

(Source for above: http://searchcontentmanagement.techtarget.com/news/4500245119/Migrating-to-SharePoint-Online-is-a-tale-of-two-realities )

In some areas these objections are tried and true challenges with SharePoint on-premises for which there is a well-established ecosystem of vendors focused. For example, AvePoint, Cryptzone, and Metalogix are just a few of the vendors focused on data migration, architecture and security problems.

So what about user issues? This is a newer area of focus for the Microsoft ecosystem, but promises to help overcome one of the last real stumbling blocks to better adoption of Office 365 across the enterprise.

Depending on your SharePoint Online needs, there is help for the user experience issues. For example, Beezy offers tools to enhance the collaboration user experience on Microsoft’s cloud stack. ShareGate is a vendor with roots in the data and site migration space that is differentiating itself on the SharePoint administrative experience across Office 365. Thirdly, there is Akumina, who is bringing their founders knowledge of the site management and content authoring experience and applying it to a new turn-key Office 365 intranet site that they say you’ll be able to use and manage without being a SharePoint expert.

So don’t hold back on getting the most out of your Office 365 investment. Just as with SharePoint on-premises, there are several ways you can address some of the most common gaps in what Microsoft delivers out of the box.

By Nathan Mitchell, Appriver

The highly anticipated Office 2016 was released on September 22. While you will quickly notice that many of the Office apps appear very similar to the 2013 version, Microsoft, however has snuck in several new features that make Office 2016 work great with Office 365.

Sharing files and saving to the cloud have become very popular with Office 365’s OneDrive for Business. Microsoft has now further simplified that process by adding “Save to Cloud” and “Share” features right into the Office 2016 apps. With co-authoring also available in Office 2016 apps, the workflow for creating, sharing and collaborating has never been easier.

Right: AppRiver’s Office 365 Support Team Lead, Nathan Mitchell

 With collaboration and team work being a huge part of business today, the “Groups” feature helps teams communicate easily and effectively by acting as a shared inbox, calendar, and OneDrive. Office 2016 incorporates the new Groups feature in the Outlook app making it readily available for Office 365 users.

A ton of features have been incorporated into Office apps over the years and it can be difficult to remember all of those things. Not to worry though, as Office 2016 includes the new features “Tell me” and “Smart Lookup” that make finding answers to all Office questions a breeze. The Smart Lookup feature brings the Web browser right into the Office app so you can quickly and easily search the Web. The Tell me feature makes it easy to find commands or options within the Office app you are using. Tell me will be especially useful for users upgrading from older versions of Office with different interfaces who want a quick nod in the right direction.

SECaaS provider My Digital Shield announced yesterday it hired channel industry veteran  Stuart Selbst as its vice president of channel sales. In his new position, Selbst will oversee channel sales and marketing, as well as strengthening and furthering MDS’ relationship with partners and the channel. 

“My Digital Shield’s small business cyber security solution offers such a unique opportunity for channel partners to leverage among their existing customers,” said Selbst. “I look forward to leveraging my expertise across the channel to help MDS better educate the reseller community on its offering and help IT service providers strengthen their services portfolios with the addition of MDS’ small business cyber security platform.”

Selbst has been recognized for his channel expertise with awards from MSP Mentor, The VAR Guy and SMB Nation, included in the SMB Nation SMB Top 150 list from 2011 to 2013.

Today’s latest technology is designed to make decisions easier for both businesses and tech professionals.

Changepoint, a portfolio management and professional services automation service provider announced today it will reveal its business execution management solution at a U.S. Gartner symposium Nov. 5. 

"In today's evolving business landscape, CIOs and senior executives need solutions that enable them to make agile and strategic business decisions," said Mark Upson, President of Changepoint. "Changepoint's BEM platform does exactly that, and there is no better place to introduce it than Gartner ITxpo, where the focus is on bringing new insights and tools to a high-level audience of IT and business leaders.”

Changepoint will also showcase the solution at symposiums in Australia and Spain.

SaaS provider AppRiver shared two announcements yesterday: Penton awarded the company high positions on lists ranking MSPs and CSPs, and it will share its insights and strategies at Channel Directions Live. 

At the conference, AppRiver will accept its No. 31 ranking on the Talkin’ Cloud 100 list of Penton’s top CSPs and its No. 9 ranking on the MSPmentor 501 Global Edition awards list. 

"Evolving technology trends such as cloud computing, BYOD and sophisticated advanced persistent threats directed toward businesses are driving the adoption and demand of new security solutions," AppRiver channel sales manager Justin Gilbert said. "Not only have we designed our technology to keep businesses productive and information secure, but we're helping resellers become trusted advisors to their clients.”

Gilbert said the awards serve as a testament to  AppRiver’s continued dedication to its partners.

IBM announced today plans to expand its business solutions capabilities with new industry platforms designed to simplify and accelerate transitions to the cloud. 

These industry platforms combine multiple cloud business solutions, and the portfolio includes platforms built for personalized learning, insights and customer experiences. 

“Our portfolio of cloud business solutions is a recognition of the mandate for speed and time to value, along with the requirement of clients to personalize business solutions to their own processes and culture and deploy them via the cloud," said Sanjay Rishi, IBM Global Business Services, Managing Partner, Cloud Consulting Services. “Our new IBM Cloud Business Innovation Center will help us co-create with our clients, addressing their unique needs with tailored solutions, delivered on the cloud for fast results.”

IBM’s portfolio is built to address specific verticals and business functions. More information about available solutions can be found here.

For many, this is the brand that needs no introduction. Who can forget this German company with its yellow headphones in your youth, when you listened to the likes of the Allman Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, et al. I remember well, and Sennheiser headphones both revolutionized the listening experience and also kept family peace (so I didn’t play my rock-and-roll too loud).

Fast forward the movie and this well-respect brand associated with high-fidelity is not only alive and kicking but more relevant than ever. Sennheiser is now a major player in Unified Communications (UC) headsets. I’ve put the SD Pro1 to the test these past few weeks, and can report the following:

Supporting multiple call types. The ability to switch between my traditional Polycom VoIP phone and computer-based services like GoToMeeting and Skype is amazing. I can have my traditional calls via the SD Pro1 headset and my phone and then switch to Skype with push button ease for overseas clients. The “switching” has been flawless.

Range. Tested on the 20th floor of a busy downtown Seattle building, the range was impressive. I could migrate around the entire floor (even outside my leased office space) and once rode the elevator down, keeping the session alive until the 18th floor. That was unexpected.

Fidelity. The proof is in the ear of the customer. When using SD Pro1, I repeatedly asked how my sound quality was. I did this for two reasons. First, I wanted to know how well the SD Pro1 actually works. I’ve heard reactions from “fine” to “best ever.” Second, I wanted to practice what I preach. I’m so pissed off at people using UC solutions like Skype for Business and talking into their built-in laptop microphone. The sound quality for computer-based microphones sucks. I refuse to devolve about 15-years to poor quality VoIPy-like conversations. My point is that I’ve made a commitment to sound quality with Sennheiser and my entire staff is outfitted with the same. Stamp out poor sound quality in UC!

Music to my ears. Returning to my Sennheiser roots, I discovered I can listen to music while working and switch to incoming phone calls with ease. Using the online streaming capabilities of my laptop, I can listen to my beloved KEXP public radio (www.kexp.org) during the day. This hip station streams alternative music that keeps me calm and young at heart.

So find out for yourself if Sennheiser SD Pro1 allows you to step up to the next level with UC.

PS – Sennheiser is a sponsor at this weekend’s Fall conference in Redmond! Still time to join us in-person or via live streaming. Visit fall2015.smbnation.com.

by Harry Brelsford, CEO, SMB Nation

Marketing and IT — they’ve never been strange bedfellows, because, well, they’ve seldom been in bed together. In most organizations, they’ve slept in different rooms, if you know what I mean.

But here’s the thing: The terms of endearment have changed. Marketing has become so technology-driven, that you at least have to flirt with it. If you haven’t considered offering web hosting, website development, and other forms of digital marketing tools to your clients, you do so at your own peril.

This came to me as I reviewed the results of a just-released survey by RedShift Research sponsored by GoDaddy. It showed that a huge amount of money is sitting on the table among a still vast number of small businesses that have yet to take even the first, most basic step to get online with a simple website.

Getting them there may open the door more opportunities. “Companies that get online are likely to use other IT services,” GoDaddy SVP Steven Aldrich told me as we discussed the significance of the just-released survey.

Or as GoDaddy put it in announcing its findings:

“While those planning to build a website are as likely to telephone a customer as they are to email them, the survey found that those already with a website were twice as likely to communicate via email as to phone. That suggests that as these very small businesses get their own online presence, their communication practices will change, perhaps as they become more digitally sophisticated and their customer base grows.”

Note: Those “other services” extend beyond email. Digital marketing is on its way to becoming the next great imperative among all businesses, even including the very small ones (five employees or less) constituting the RedStart-GoDaddy survey universe.

Digital marketing is 90 percent technology-driven. Ergo, you, dear IT pro, will be an essential and trusted advisor on on this matter.

Let’s say you have a contract customer. Yes, you’re offering email, telephony, network management and monitoring. Great. But helping your customers with a website can also lead to a daisy chain of other related services — email marketing, marketing automation, live chat, reputation management, and a host of other related platforms.

This represents a huge potential opportunity. Consider: A surprising 59 percent businesses in the RedStart-GoDaddy survey didn’t have a website. Extrapolate: That means about 118 million small businesses need someone to help them get a Website — and then grow into other services.

And heaven help them if you don’t. Their competition promises to eat them alive. Look at these two other survey results:

59 percent of those respondents who already have a website say their business grew.
83 percent of small business owners who already own a website feel they have a competitive advantage over those without one.
Don’t write off those businesses without a website as hopelessly and forever behind the times. Of those surveyed, 55 percent said they intend to create a website in the next two years.

***

One other note of interest about the GoDaddy survey: It exemplifies the extent to which the company has re-calibrated its strategy. Remember those racy Danika Patrick Super Bowl ads? Gone.

“We’re talking about GoDaddy to the customers we’ve always had,” Aldrich said. “Much of our advertising and marketing is about the day-to-day effort by small businesses to keep the lights on.

“So our creative has shifted away from the sensational to that small business struggle.”

And that to note as well because where small businesses are pained is exactly where you can most gain.

by Patrick Houston, Editor-in-Chief, SMB Nation

Webroot and Lynx Software Technologies announced earlier this week the start of a strategic partnership combining security technologies to enable developers to build advanced threat detection and protection into IoT and IIoT devices. 

In the combined solution, components of Webroot’s IoT Security Toolkit are embedded inside the LynxSecure Hypervisor secure virtual space. 

“With constantly changing security threats, we need an IoT security solution that adapts to any environment while taking into account the importance of future-proofing and the need for living protection,” said Dick Williams, Webroot CEO. “As we bring our cloud-based threat intelligence to IoT developers through the Webroot IoT Security Toolkit, we see a very clear alliance with Lynx. By combining our technologies, we’re able to offer a unique solution to protect the connected IoT world from advanced targeted threats.”

The integration of Webroot’s toolkit substantially increases threat awareness, Lynx CEO Gurjot Singh agreed.

eFolder announced yesterday the eFolder BDR for Veeam service has been extended to support cloud-based disaster recovery for Veeam-protected VMware vSphere environments.  

VMware leads the market in virtualization software deployments, according to the IDC, and this addition to eFolder BDR for Veeam service is designed to enable IT channel partners to support and capitalize on this success. 

“eFolder BDR for Veeam is the most comprehensive off-site backup and disaster recovery service for Veeam,” says Ted Hulsy, vice president of marketing at eFolder. “Enhancing the service to support cloud-based disaster recovery of VMware environments, which we know to be the majority of Veeam deployments, gives IT channel partners the opportunity to offer a profitable, end-to-end disaster recovery solution for any virtualized environment.”

The solution can also be used with Microsoft Hyper-V environments, according to eFolder.

SMB Nation is incredibly excited to announce we are now offering a cost-friendly virtual opportunity for you to join the best jam session of the season! THE 2015 Fall Conference is going online to extend the experience to the worldwide community of professionals supporting the SMB market.  

This is your opportunity to learn more about Microsoft's best solutions for SMBs and enterprise from the experts that know them best, all from the comfort of your home or office. We're bringing myriad sessions straight to your computer in a live-streamed or pre-recorded format for just $99. 

Even though you'll miss in-person networking opportunities, you can still join the conversation by live-chatting during the sessions through your twitter account.

The sessions included in the virtual pass are denoted by an asterisk at fall2015.smbnation.com/sessions. If you have any questions about virtual attendance or which registration package is best for you, contact Jenny Hallmark at 206.201.2943 ext 102 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

Global technology and software leader Microsoft announced yesterday its next key update to the Microsoft portfolio: The worldwide release of its popular home and business Office suite.  

Its pairing with Office 365 and Windows 10 as well as increased built-in security make Office 2016 an exciting solution in both the SMB and enterprise markets . 

This latest update is designed to catch up with other popular business solutions that integrate opportunities for collaboration with co-workers and clients. 

“Collaboration is the way we get things done in the workplace, but the process itself can be complex and frustrating,” wrote Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office Client Applications and Services team. “It shouldn’t have to be. We set out to make working together easier and more impactful by building a suite of integrated apps and services that removes barriers and empowers teams to do and achieve more.”

Read the full blog from Koenigsbauer here to get insights on enhancements to connectivity and productivity and the details about Office’s most innovative features yet. 

Spending a fifth year on Inc. Magazine’s annual ranking of the nation's fastest-growing privately-owned companies is certainly something to celebrate.

Unitrends announced today its position at No. 1184 on the exclusive list, with a special nod to its recognition on the Inc. Magazine Honor Roll, which includes organizations recognized on the Inc. 5000 list five or more times.  

"Our ranking on this year's Inc. 5000 list and inclusion in the Inc. 5000 Honoree Club is recognition of an unwavering focus on creating the highest quality data protection solutions that enable companies to recover more than just data," said Kevin Weiss, president and CEO of Unitrends. "Equally as important, it demonstrates that the path to financial success is dependent on constant innovation, world-class, award-winning customer support, and a vision of where this marketplace is headed and how we as a company will lead that change.”

This year has been key in Unitrends’ expansion, with worldwide growth of Unitrends Cloud and the Unitrends Enterprise Backup software. 

Dell announced today it worked with Cloudera and Syncsort to co-design a new solution for Hadoop created to streamline the extract, transform and load process for data analysis. 

The solution’s features work to combat the lack of flexibility and the high cost of traditional tools such as RDBMS and EDW with increased customizability and improved access to insights. 

“Businesses are increasingly requiring quicker, cost effective and richer data insights to drive and accelerate their business results,” said Jim Ganthier, VP and GM of Engineered Solutions and Cloud, Dell. “Dell and Cloudera continue to jointly bring to market breakthrough big data and analytics solutions that deliver on those needs. Our new solution, which now incorporates Syncsort, will bring the power of big data insights to a whole new set of users who were once unable to justify the costs and complications of previously available commercial solutions.”

The solution is generally available today. 

Webroot announced yesterday it received the 2015 North American Cybersecurity for Robotics & Industrial Control Frost & Sullivan Product Leadership Award, which recognizes Webroot’s IoT cybersecurity and Industrial Internet of Things technologies. 

"We are honored to accept this coveted award, and it serves as strong validation of Webroot's overall IoT security leadership and unique, future-proofing strategy," said John Sirianni, VP of IoT Strategic Partnerships at Webroot. "While existing cybersecurity solutions for embedded devices focus on locking down systems at the time of manufacture—which has been shown to be ineffective against the evolving threat landscape—BrightCloud Threat Intelligence continuously monitors the origin and nature of attacks, and defends vulnerable IIoT devices and systems against ever-evolving exploits."  

Webroot’s technology combines BrghtCloud Threat Intelligence with Webroot’s device micro-agents to protect connected devices against threats including DDoS attacks, malware, ransomware and sensitive data exfiltration.

Cloud-based rich-communication service Voxox announced earlier this week at the Cloud Partners Conference & Expo it revamped its hosted PBX and SIP trunking solutions under the Voxox Office Brand.  

In this transition, Voxox will double the standard partner commission to 40-50 percent for the first year of hosted PBX and SIP Trunking deals for 12 months or longer. 

"The channel is our primary sales force so we are always thinking of ways to cater to partner needs," said Bryan Hertz, CEO of Voxox. "We saw an opportunity to enhance our hosted PBX and SIP trunking solutions tailoring the latest offering to our channel partners' requests, and we feel that the new Voxox Office suite offers an even better partner and customer experience. We are excited to roll out this offering."

Voxox Office combines both Voxox solutions and third-party products, as Voxox strives to offer the most complete features and solutions. 

Cloud services provider Accenture announced Tuesday it entered into an agreement to acquire Cloud Sherpas, a cloud advisory and technology services provider specializing in “pure play” technologies including Salesforce and NetSuite. 

“We’ve reached a tipping point in cloud as our clients rapidly adopt cloud solutions,” Accenture CTO Paul Daugherty said. “Accenture’s Cloud First agenda is a game-changer that offers transformational cloud services to help clients move their businesses to the cloud and achieve significant business results more quickly. I look forward to welcoming the talented professionals of Cloud Sherpas to Accenture.”

Combined, the two companies will continue to strengthen a strategic partnership with Salesforce, with thousands of certified professionals combined. 

More information about the acquisition and how it will affect customers and employees is available here.

SMB Nation, the events and media company for the SMB channel community, announced this morning it will host “The Rise of Cloud Vertical-ization” from 10-11 a.m. PST Sept. 24. 

The webinar, featuring AppRiver’s Scott Paul, will give MSPs and IT pros an opportunity to learn how they can deliver innovation and create profit.  

As platforms continue to mature, and more organizations are drawn to the financial and management benefits, cloud is spurring interest from industries that have been hesitant, including those most beset with regulation, compliance and privacy: banking and finance, healthcare, and legal firms and companies.

Organizations need help navigating the security and compliance hurdles they face, and cloud service providers are delivering more features, certifications and tools to help them. 

Managed service providers who bring these needs and resources together to create well-defined, compelling packages that are easy to implement are delivering real innovation and value.

Those interested in the webinar can register here.

SMB Nation and O365 Nation are excited to announce myriad new sessions were added to the conference site for THE 2015 Fall Conference, fall2015.smbnation.com. 

THE 2015 Fall Conference, coming to Microsoft Redmond Oct. 2-4, is an education and networking opportunity that’s better than going back to school—attendees can earn a major in migrations or clarify the complexities of Office 365 in just three days. 

Sessions include “Lead Generation via Attraction Marketing” and “Lync Sucked! Skype for Business Rocks!,” with industry experts Karl Palachuk, Grant Thompson and more offering presentations throughout the conference. 

The schedule and full list of sessions are available at fall2015.smbnation.com/schedule and fall2015.smbnation.com/sessions, respectively. 

Team communication and collaboration platform Intellinote announced yesterday new integrations with business applications including Salesforce, ZenDesk, MailChimp and Dropbox, allowing users to coordinate content and create actionable items within Intellinote

"Users and businesses use a number of different best-in-class business apps and tools,” Intellinote CTO Gene Sohn said. “But switching between them constantly to monitor activity, updates and changes takes up valuable time every day. With these new integrations, users can save time but still be on top of what's important, actionable or just informational - all from inside Intellinote - so they can prioritize responses and optimize effort.”

Intellinote also announced immediate availability of an integration portal that allows app developers integrate their apps with a REST API, Widget API or a Webhook API, which each provide different capabilities to developers based on individual or company needs.

Even the biggest industry names are thinking small. 

Sage announced today a global agreement with Microsoft to collaborate on product development, including Sage products built on Microsoft platforms and product portfolio integration. 

“We have enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with Microsoft for many years at a local level, but this new agreement is about taking a step back to look at the bigger picture,” said Alan Laing, EVP, global strategic partnerships and alliances at Sage. “We’re imagining what could be made possible for Small & Medium Businesses if our two organizations worked more closely together on a global scale.We’re really excited about the possibilities – the greatest developer minds working on the very latest platforms to build exciting new solutions for Small & Medium Business in the long-term. That’s what Sage is all about and we’re delighted to share that vision with Microsoft.”

This agreement will extend a relationship between the two companies of more than 20 years to deliver cloud, on-premise and hybrid solutions globally.

Connecting applications to the Internet of Things and web applications in the cloud is an important opportunity for developers, and IBM has stepped in to help with its latest acquisition. 

IBM announced yesterday it acquired StrongLoop, Inc., a provider of enterprise Node.js, enabling developers to create apps using APIs.

 “With this acquisition, the industry benefits from Node.js’ formal entry into the mainstream enterprise,” said Juan Carlos Soto, Chief Executive Officer, StrongLoop. “As leaders in the Node.js open community, we plan to further advance open, community-driven innovation coupled with global, enterprise class software and services offerings to grow client value in the API economy.”

IBM said it intends to integrate the Node.js capabilities into its software portfolio.

Microsoft Corp. unveiled this Tuesday new capabilities it will release in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, the latest version of its customer engagement solution. 

It enhanced and advanced intelligence, mobility and service, among other areas, with the new enhancements designed to provide a seamless CRM experience. 

“Microsoft’s obsession with customer success is rooted in our ambition to reinvent productivity and business processes,” said Bob Stutz, corporate vice president, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “Dynamics CRM 2016 is designed from the ground up to deliver core capabilities all in a single system to eliminate distractions, to make it easier to get things done, and to dramatically increase productivity so our customers can spend more time serving their customers.”

Microsoft also released earlier this week the Dynamics CRM Release Preview Guide.

Seattle Microsoft partners rejoice—the Seattle IAMCP is resuming its monthly meeting schedule beginning this month. 

IAMCP Seattle will meet Thursday, Sept. 17 from 11:30-1 p.m. at Microsoft Civica Offices - Bellevue to recap the Worldwide Partner Conference and discuss partner opportunities. 

“SMB's have traditionally been the backbone of the Microsoft partner ecosystem,” Jeff Shuey, IAMCP Seattle president, said. “The IAMCP is working hard to insure SMB's can stay informed and connected to the Microsoft Partner Network and to meet with potential partners, too.”

Full event details and registration are available at http://www.iamcp-us.org/events/event_details.asp?id=683031&group=

Technology and platform advancements are changing the way everyone in the industry works, and LOGICnow’s latest update to its IT service management platform is slated to enhance managed service providers’ delivery of service to their clients. 

LOGICnow launched yesterday LOGICcards, an enhancement to MAX RemoteManagement designed to provide MSPs with access to real-time data-driven insights. 

“In essence, LOGICcards embeds a data science capability within every one of our MSP customers, it’s like having an analyst in your business that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to identify improvement opportunities.” said Alistair Forbes, General Manager of LOGICnow. “Like cloud before it, the impact of machine learning for MSPs will be revolutionary and should not be underestimated. This moves beyond the traditional understanding of automation for MSPs to a new generation of business optimization opportunities. The confidence that the operational activity is undergoing continual improvement will free up MSP business owners to understand and address the major challenges they will face in the years to come.”

LOGICcards derives its insights, including trends and predictions, from billions of data points collected from the millions of devices managed by the MSPs using the MAX RemoteManagement platform. 

Machine learning will be part of the coming evolution of managed services provision, Forbes said, and LOGICcards will provide an engine of future growth for MSPs.

It’s been a record year for cybersecurity solution provider Webroot, which announced today achievements from its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2015, including double-digit year-over-year revenue growth in Q4.  

"We look back on a record fiscal year, not just financially but also in regard to the market movement toward protecting the Internet of Everything. We launched a number of industry-leading new products and technical innovations, and consumers and businesses alike have been quick to adopt our next-generation endpoint security products. Our BrightCloud Threat Intelligence Platform has been recognized for its behavioral analysis, massive scale and accuracy in detecting the latest URL, IP, file, and application threats," said Dick Williams, Webroot CEO.

In the channel, perhaps the most exciting event of FY2015 was the debut of the new Webfoot Channel Edge Partner Program, now enabling Webfoot to provide specific tools to support its network of partners. 

Webroot also reported it added 5.3 million new home users, more than 1 million business endpoints and 3,100 MSP partners during the fiscal year.

Binary Tree announced today it contributed two chapters to the second edition of Office 365 for Exchange Professionals, to be launched at the IT/DEV Connections Technology Conference Sept. 14-17. 

The e-book includes information on Office 365 designed to take O365 users from making the decision to transition to cloud to completing the migration from on-premises servers.

"Writing technical books in an age when technology evolves so quickly is a challenging task,” author Tony Redmond said. “We all have other jobs to do, and we simply could not afford to spend the time necessary to assemble the information contained in Office 365 for Exchange Professionals without the help of additional, experienced authors. We want to be able to publish new editions of the book to keep track of what happens inside Office 365 and that takes a lot of work and effort. Fortunately, we were able to get the necessary support from Binary Tree. We also received some great content for the book, covering the often intricate and difficult subject of how to sort out Active Directory infrastructures to make them compatible with the cloud.”

Binary Tree’s chapters cover tips and techniques for Office 365, as well as the importance and integration of Active Directory. 

Small businesses are different—they require scalable and flexible tools and technology tailored to SMBs to best serve their business and customers. 

Lenovo announced today a new portfolio of laptops and desktops  designed to increase efficiency, safeguard business data and support collaboration, including the ThinkPad E and S series desktops. 

“Small business users want to be mobile and secure and seek reliable high performance computing to work on their terms. Laptops for total mobile flexibility with excellent battery life or stylish desktops to meet the rigorous tasks of today’s office and retail environments,” said Dilip Bhatia, vice president PC Design and Marketing, Lenovo. “Our latest range of products designed for small businesses deliver on all fronts and offer customers peace of mind with class-leading security features, renowned reliability and performance options giving them the freedom to work how they want.”

ThinkPad E series PCs will be available in November and S series all-in-one and small form factor desktops will be available in select markets in Q4 2015, as will a variety of laptops designed for SMBs.

 ScanSource, Inc., a value-added distributor of specialty technology products, announced yesterday it enhanced its management structure for several business units in Europe, in an effort to further support company growth and leverage strengths of its executive leadership.

“We are very excited to be able to build on the successful acquisition of Imago, as it enables us to realign our business and better focus our efforts, so that we can best serve our reseller customers and vendor partners,” said Mike Ferney, president, Worldwide Communications and Services, ScanSource, Inc. “The dedicated leadership, sales, merchandising, and technical support teams in each region underscores our commitment to our partners’ success.”

Additions and changes in its management include the appointment of Ian Vicarage as president of ScanSource Communications, Europe, and the promotion of Maurice Van Rijn to president of ScanSource POS and Barcode, Europe.

IBM announced today the expansion of its Internet of Things platform, IBM IoT Foundation, through its integration with ARM. 

The collaboration is designed to connect ARM meed-enabled devices with analytics services, allowing for better gathering and analysis of device data.

"Deploying IoT technology has to be easy, secure and scalable for it to feel like a natural extension of a company's business," said Krisztian Flautner, General Manager, IoT Business, ARM. "By collaborating with IBM, we will deliver the first unified chip-to-cloud, enterprise-class IoT platform. This will empower companies of any size with a productivity tool that can readily transform how they operate, and the services they can offer."

The integration unifies the ARM and IBM platforms, enabling users to enhance operations, build value and improve engagement. 

RapidFire Tools, Inc. announced shared yesterday it will continue to present trainings for MSPs throughout September, in an effort to help MSPs and IT solution providers profit from network assessment.  

The company will offer “Top Ways to Use IT Assessments to Win New Business and Grow Your Customer Relationships” at the MAX 2015 event Sept. 10 and the upcoming ASCII Group SMB Success Summit Sept. 16. “We continue to focus on educating the MSP community about the revenue potential associated with network assessment throughout the client life-cycle, from prospecting and new client onboarding, through client service and business reviews, and even by delivering new services,” RapidFire Tools CEO Mike Mittel said. “The best way to communicate all these uses is to let solution providers see for themselves how these tools are used and what kind of branded reports they can generate.  RapidFire Tools is honored that so many trade show attendees have recognized the value of these solutions, and have gone back to put our network assessment products successfully into practice.”

Its training session won “Best IT Workshop” at a spring 2015 ASCII Group SMB Success Summit.

Webroot announced yesterday the release of the Webroot IoT Security Toolkit, which enables Internet of Things and Industrial Internet of Things solution designers and system integrators to integrate threat intelligence services and cybersecurity device agents.

The IoT Security Toolkit is designed to protect next-gen systems against advanced threats of ever-evolving malware, zero-day exploits and internal vulnerabilities.

"As the world begins to unlock the potential of IoT devices and platforms, cybercriminals are deploying more advanced attacks to hijack critical applications inside edge devices," said John Sirianni, VP of IoT Strategic Partnerships at Webroot. "Because the Webroot IoT Security Toolkit leverages real-time threat intelligence to protect deployed systems against cyberattacks, solution designers and integrators can meet the mandatory requirements for security and safety systems by ensuring that critical devices and systems operate as expected. Together with our strategic partners, we are playing a critical role in developing and deploying devices and systems that are defended against the zero-day and advanced persistent threats of today and tomorrow."

The toolkit includes device agents, BrightCloud Threat Intelligence Services and a secure web gateway.

Paying for the protection of DRaaS seems futile when the service provider holds data and systems at a ransom after a disaster.

StorageCraft announced yesterday at VMworld a new pricing model for the StorageCraft Cloud Services disaster recovery solution designed to make StorageCraft products more accessible and eliminate the threat of hidden fees.

“Data is the life-blood of a business. A business owner with data in a cloud should not be forced to pay a ransom to gain access to his or her data after a disaster. The new, simple pricing model makes StorageCraft Cloud Services as affordable as generic clouds, while offering recovery options that other clouds do not offer,” said Mike Kunz, StorageCraft’s Vice President of Worldwide Sales. “To put it simply, StorageCraft Cloud Services’ pricing allows users to focus on the recovery -- not on what is affordable to recover or how to pay for a recovery. Other vendors charge high fees at the time of recovery, such as essential CPU, RAM, and bandwidth resources. StorageCraft Cloud Services supports your business’ recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives, including full virtualization.”

Features of StorageCraft Cloud Services include instant virtualization and networking of cloud-based backups, personal control of cloud backups and a self-service Cloud Services portal.

SMB solution provider Sage announced today Sage 50 Accounting—U.S. Edition has been updated to include 10 most-requested enhancements for its SMB customers.

“The latest version of Sage 50 includes a number of enhancements requested by our customers and designed to make day-to-day tasks such as accounting, payroll and payments even easier for small business owners,” said Connie Certusi, Sage EVP and general manager. “The new iPhone and iPad apps give customers the flexibility to check inventory and create quotes on the go, while the new chat feature allows customers to get help as soon as they need it without having to pick up the phone.”

Other updates include simplified installation, chat support and customizable lists.

A new type of malware discovered last month is an undetectable threat to email inboxes, and it’s able to work its way around a sandbox gateway appliance.

Quick Heal Technologies announced today its research labs found APT-QH-4AG15 last month, malware designed to infect highly-protected networks.

“Our global reach allows us to identify advanced persistent threats (APT) such as this one in all corners of the globe, with a goal of catching them just as they emerge and containing them before they spread,” said Sanjay Katkar, CTO, Quick Heal Technologies. “Our initial findings have taught us that even the most advanced sandbox-based appliance protection can be breached. As a result, enterprises need to consider and implement multiple layers of protection to safeguard their networks.”

Sandbox-based gateway appliances rose as an enterprise solution to reduce or mitigate the threat of spear phishing attacks, yet this breach may raise concerns about the reliability of sandbox gateway appliances, Katkar said.

Quick Heal released a report on the threat, available for download here.

As nations across the globe remember the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II this week, the industry can celebrate another milestone—Germany-based Sennheiser’s 70^th year in the marketplace.

Take a listen to audio solution provider Sennheiser, which announced last week the anniversary and discussed its updated portfolio.

Its call center and office segment, launched into the telecommunications space in 2011, is key to the company’s continued growth, according to Sennheiser, with year-over-year sales growth of 103 percent.

“Sennheiser has decades of experience delivering high-end, industry-leading audio products to a roster of complex verticals,” said Bill Whearty, vice president, sales and marketing at CC&O at Sennheiser. “Competitors have difficulty comparing our legacy in the professional audio marketplace, which harks all the way back to 1945. We’re proud to leverage that expertise and engineering prowess in the contact center and office environments, so the business community can benefit from this level of quality technology. As the company celebrates its 70th anniversary, we look forward to observing our fine standards of audio quality, elevating the effectiveness of even the most sophisticated telephony system.”

The company is focused on fostering CC&O growth in the United States, Denmark, Germany, France and Benelux, and estimates increased market shares in the telecommunications and office markets.

The second day of VMworld 2015 brought three key VMware announcements: new solution EVO SDDC, updates to its unified hybrid cloud platform and previews of vSphere Integrated Containers and Photon Platform.

VMware, Inc. announced today new features for its unified hybrid cloud platform, designed to enable customers to create a consistent environment across public and private cloud.

"Digital business transformation is creating new opportunities and new risks across every industry," said Raghu Raghuram, executive vice president and general manager, Software-Defined Data Center Division, VMware. "Applications are the fuel of this digital business transformation. With our One Cloud, Any Application, Any Device™ strategy and our unified hybrid cloud platform, VMware is empowering the next wave of industry leaders to deliver applications with the stability, security and reliability of an enterprise, while allowing organizations to innovate with the agility of a startup."

Within its unified hybrid cloud platform, VMware expanded and added services in VMware vCloud Air and released several new products for the software-defined data center.

Several of the new features and products associated with its unified hybrid cloud platform offering are available now, and the rest will be available later this year. Full pricing and availability can be found here.             

It’s not over quite yet. Cloud is expected to continue to drive revenue for technology pros in a second wave of cloud adoption, according to findings from a Cisco-sponsored global study. 

Cisco released earlier this week “Don’t Get Left Behind: The Business Benefits of Achieving Greater Cloud Adoption,”an InfoBrief developed by IDC and based on primary market research with executives in 3,400 companies in 17 countries.

“As we talk with customers interested in moving to the second wave of cloud, they are far more focused on private and hybrid cloud—primarily because they realize that private and hybrid offer the security, performance, price, control and data protection organizations are looking for during their expanded efforts,” said Nick Earle, senior vice president, global cloud and managed services sales, Cisco. “This observation, which drove our strategy to build a portfolio of private and hybrid infrastructure and as-a-service solutions, is reflected in the new IDC study, which shows that 44 percent of organizations are either currently using or have plans to implement private cloud and 64 percent of cloud adopters are considering hybrid cloud.”

“Don’t Get Left Behind” includes information on cloud adoption by industry, economic and business outcomes of cloud, and cloud adoption in the countries included in the study.

Read and download the full InfoBrief here.

Attend "Myth busters: Debunking the myths of DaaS and its providers,"  and you'll be able to definitively say, "I ain't afraid of no DaaS."

Companies worldwide have deployed Desktop-as-a-Service, supporting employees with a simple, secure and highly-accessible workspace solution. 

Though it's a simple way to enhance productivity for employees, confusion still surrounds DaaS, especially surrounding what it includes, how it's deployed, and how MSPs, VARS and telecos can add DaaS to their product line as a very profitable part of their business. 

SMB Nation will present "Myth Busters" from 10-11 a.m. Sept. 10 in a live webinar, joined by Scott Markley, nGenx channel sales executive. nGenx continues to be a leader and pioneer in DaaS, and Markley will share his extensive industry experience to bust the biggest myths surrounding DaaS and show you how your business can profitably expand into the cloud.

Learn more about the webinar and register here.

Founded just two years ago, My Digital Shield doesn't take baby steps, but rather leaps and bounds with its Security-as-a-Service solutions for small businesses.

MDS announced yesterday it was voted and awarded “Best New Product” at the ASCII Success Summit in Boston, Mass., recognizing the innovation and affordability of MDS’ cybersecurity solution.

“We are honored to have been selected by ASCII Boston attendees as the ‘Best New Product’ award recipient,” said Andrew Bagrin, founder and CEO of My Digital Shield. “We are thrilled to have the ongoing support from our partners and the channel community and are committed to accelerating the continued expansion of MDS’ affordable cyber security solution.”

MDS supports MSPs and SMBs across various industries, including retail, hospitality and professional services.

Private, OpenStack-based clouds received a boost yesterday from IBM, which announced Blue Blox Cloud is now available in global IBM cloud data centers running SoftLayer infrastructure. 

Blue Box, a private-cloud-as-a-service solution acquired in June, is now fully integrated into its OpenStack portfolio as an open-source private cloud and demonstrates IBM’s ongoing support of OpenStack.

“I’ve been impressed by the way the IBM and Blue Box engineering teams have collaborated to quickly bring Blue Box Cloud to a worldwide infrastructure platform,” said Jesse Proudman, CTO at Blue Box, an IBM Company. “Today, we’ve taken a big step toward our goal of delivering private clouds to customers anywhere in the world—and we’re offering deployment timelines that are unheard of within traditional private cloud.”

The Blue Box solution is designed to simplify and bring consistency across cloud types, with a focus on combining the benefits of private and public clouds to support private cloud users.

It’s better than a back-to-school sale on crayons and composition notebooks—disaster recovery and backup solution provider StorageCraft will continue to offer a significant discount on several ShadowProtect solutions in response to ongoing support from users and partners.

StorageCraft announced today it is extending a 30 percent discount offer through Sept. 30 to partners and non-partners on virtual licenses, packs and bundles for its ShadowProtect and ShadowProtect SPX software purchased through StorageCraft and its distributor partners.

“The promotion has proved to be popular as IT professionals around the world have taken advantage of the opportunity to protect access to their data and systems with one of the most-trusted backup and disaster recovery solutions on the market,” said Mike Kunz, StorageCraft’s vice president of worldwide sales.

The ShadowProtect family creates backup images of Windows and Linux virtual machines, with recovery available minutes after a disaster, according to StorageCraft.

Those interested in learning more about StorageCraft and its solutions in-person can visit booth 2240 at VMworld Aug. 30 to Sept. 3.

AvePoint announced yesterday immediate general availability of a new version of AvePoint Online Services, a 100 percent Azure-based Software-as-a-Service platform for Office 365 designed to simplify the transition to O365 and Azure.

AvePoint Online Services integrates with Azure Active Directory and SQL Azure Data Base, and provides IT pros simplified platform access with tools to scale storage for O365 reporting.

“One of the major benefits of the cloud is simplifying IT operations to focus more on the needs of business users,” said George Petrou, Chief Technical Officer, AvePoint. “With the latest release of AvePoint Online Services, administrators can easily access and scale the tools they need for Office 365 management while boosting user productivity and ensuring organizational governance policies are met through automated service requests and insights available within the SharePoint Online interface.”

More information, including testimonials and the link to a free trial, are available here.

Sharing is caring, right? After all, we’ve welcomed many business solutions in the past few years allowing us to collaborate with colleagues, clients and customers through services like Microsoft SharePoint.

Microsoft announced yesterday availability of SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview and a new cloud hybrid search preview for SharePoint Server 2013 and 2016.

“One of the more difficult challenges, beyond deploying software, is managing the IT infrastructure to support it,” wrote Bill Baer, SharePoint senior technical product manager. “In many cases, IT investments directly impact the bottom line. SharePoint Server 2016 has been designed to reduce the emphasis on IT and streamline administrative tasks, so IT professionals can concentrate on core competencies and mitigate costs. Tasks that may have taken hours to complete in the past have become simple and efficient processes that allow IT to focus less on day-to-day management and more on innovation.”

Perhaps one of the most exciting developments in the Microsoft announcement is a cloud hybrid search preview, which will allow Office 365 and SharePoint users to retrieve information from on-premises and O365 content with a combined search index in Office 365.

The full announcement and links to download the cloud hybrid search and SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview are available here.

SolarWinds N-able, a RMM and service automation software provider, announced yesterday the upcoming release of its IT service management platform for MSPs serving small and midsized businesses.

MSP Manager, available this September, is designed to increase efficiency and profitability for MSPs, with features including centralized customer knowledge management, mobile applications, integrated billing and a customer portal.

“One of the toughest challenges facing small and medium-sized IT service businesses is profitably growing revenues while acquiring new customers,” said JP Jauvin, General Manager, SolarWinds N-able. “Many IT service professionals are either using manual processes or complex software tools to manage the business, but what they really need is a cloud-based IT service management software platform that is simple, affordable and easy to manage.”

Pricing details and partnership information are available from SolarWinds N-able.

 By Pete Engler, channel marketing manager, Digium

The end of summer means most schools are heading back into session, which also signals the perfect time to think about the value of continuing education and training programs within your business. It’s not uncommon to hear kids complaining about having to go back to school, or questioning the real-world applications of what’s being taught in the classroom. As adults, we also tend to overlook or forget the benefits of a structured learning program, long after those school doors have shut behind us for the last time. Yet, continuing education should reach far into the workplace for the lifetime of our careers, particularly in our quickly evolving, technology-filled world. Ongoing training programs are especially beneficial to a value-added reseller (VAR).

For VARs in the technology sector, the importance of continually educating and training employees can make a significant difference in selling, installing and supporting your customers’ solutions. This customer-centric approach also plays a tremendous role in managing and improving your margin and profit. Investing in and completing technical certifications to become experts in the vendors’ solutions you sell may require an upfront cost, but it is well worth it – you should see a significant return on investment when it comes to training.

Having product experts on your technical staff acting as subject matter experts allows you to have a much more efficient and effective process when it comes to supporting customers. Additionally, once you have a set of employees certified on a vendor’s solutions, those employees can then use the training resources provided by that solution vendor to set up an internal training process for the rest of your organization, helping ensure that all of your employees are knowledgeable and able to support your customers. A well-trained staff goes a long way in supporting and protecting the lifetime value of a customer. After all, customers can lose confidence in their VAR if they do not see them as true experts in the solutions they offer.

As part of establishing an internal training process for your organization, you need to start by training the entire sales team. This includes educating your sales and sales support staff, the sales engineers, and the internal and/or external account managers. A sales team must have the ability to articulate the benefits of a product or solution, and how it can solve problems or improve processes for a customer’s specific needs. Not only does the sales process need to match the margin goals of the organization, but the training of the sales team (and training that may be available to the end users) also needs to be aligned with the sales process as it could be the key to closing deals and improving margin.

Once a deal is won, installation of the solution will begin and training will once again have a distinct impact on the process. Successful training of the installation technicians and the administrators that are installing and supporting the solution will factor heavily into your margin and cost reduction, mainly in terms of employee hours required to complete the install. Well-trained techs can cut the installation time significantly and allow more customers to be serviced by your organization. More customers, installs and monthly recurring support revenue will assist in providing the growth path for any successful VAR.

During and after the installation of the solution, the end customer can be trained in order to shift part of the support burden to that customer. This is particularly applicable when it comes to enabling the customer (and their employees) to handle basic tasks and management functions of a vendor’s solution. Sometimes, that may come down to training the customer’s organization on something as simple as knowing how to access solution help features, or training the end customers to use a database or knowledge base to assist in correcting issues on their own. Training the end customer can also provide additional revenue to any sale. Whether the sale of training is vendor provided or consists of training courses built by you as the VAR, there is the possibility of additional revenue by selling that end-user training.

Training is often an overlooked topic or is prioritized much lower compared to other business projects and goals. However, taking the time to ensure your team is well trained to sell and support the customer will bring more profit and margin per signed customer. It also allows you to free up time to increase the number of customers you are able to service, and to offer improved service and support that helps retain those customers for the long term.

Pete Engler is the channel marketing manager at Digium, a business communications company based in Huntsville, Ala., that delivers enterprise-class Unified Communications.