SMB Nation Blog

We heard just now from our good PR friend Marie Rourke and Co. of WhiteFox Communications that SolarWinds, a provider of IT management software has agreed to acquire N-able for $120 million cash. The acquisition is a quick one in that is set to close by the end of this month.

Welcome to the real world. Sure, there are plenty of early BlackBerry 10 mobile device reviews being posted up. Fancy test labs are dissecting and reverse engineering the hottest mobile device on the market. However, at SMB Nation, we’re taking our testing the streets and have been giving the product a real world test.

Pictured: 14-year-old Harry Jr., with his BlackBerry Z10 device.

Date: Thursday, May 23, 2013

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

Presented by: Steven Snyder, Technical Marketing Manager, StorageCraft and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc.

Minimizing the impact of downtime for your clients’ businesses is critical. We all know disaster recovery preparations can appear to be costly and time consuming. With the StorageCraft® Recover-Ability™ Solution, you can easily put a flexible disaster recovery solution in place for your clients. And, most importantly, this solution gets your clients back up and running within minutes, not days. Plus, it places the recovery process directly under your control, so you don’t have to wait for vendor help when disaster strikes.

Karl Palachuk, President of Great Little Book Publishing Co., Inc. and well-respected SMB IT community author, will be hosting an online-only conference for IT Pros June 25-27. As a nod to his long-time friendship with SMB Nation, he is offering a discount code for $150.00 off the full event price.

Every conference has a certain vibe. The just-completed 7th annual SMB Nation Spring Conference is no exception. The last session on the last day (“KEY4 Microsoft SMB: Strategies for On-Premise and Cloud Solutions-Hybrid IT - Kevin Beares, Steven Banks and Cliff Galiher”) summed it up best: Eat your broccoli.

Since launching Windows 8 this past fall, Microsoft has experienced its brunt of comments, complaints, successes and opinions regarding this new operating system. Now, as a result of the backlash and noisemaking, the tech giant has listened to the market, and is reportedly making changes to the OS, calling it Microsoft Blue. According to various news reports, such as posted on ZDNET yesterday, Blue will be designed to address user complaints regarding the OS.

We released the new PC Pitstop white paper at the SMB Nation Spring conference. I know the details intimately as I wrote the paper! It is focused on how a well-respected and accepted end point protection suite known for its footprint in the consumer and SoHo market. Bottom line is that the white paper relates to the new PC Pitstop MSP program. It’s a portfolio addition you should strongly consider.

Owning a business is stressful, but running a business from home brings additional challenges, according to a new survey by Wakefield Research for cloud provider Carbonite. The study found that while home-based small business owners are concerned about data loss and struggle to find a proper work/life balance, a majority (79 percent) aren’t taking full advantage of cloud-based business tools.

Here we go again! As I do each week, I am really enjoying bringing our readers a quick round-up of the blog coverage I didn’t manage to get to during the week prior. We are coming down from our very busy Spring Conference and SMB 150 Awards Gala, which took place this past weekend. Now is the time for a bit of a “breather” until we start gearing up for our annual Fall Conference, which will be held again in Vegas, October 10-12, 2013.

Thursday, May 2, 2013 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

Presented by: David Hauser, Senior Director of Channel Programs, Carbonite and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc.

SMB Nation magazine moves to an all-digital format

I just had a telephone call with a longtime industry leader in the SMB community, and I told him that, after seven years in print, SMB Nation magazine was evolving to the digital format favored by readers everywhere. Beyond the traditional arguments for digital content we all know, such as environmental concerns, there are however, even more compelling strategic reasons I want to share with you here regarding this change.

Thursday, April 25, 2013 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

Presented by: Chris Henley, Product Strategy Specialist, Veeam Software and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc.

Modern networks rely on virtualization, and the power and flexibility of virtual machines. The data that supports these VM’s has become mission critical! Join us as we discuss modern data protection with Veeam Backup & Replication and the Veeam Management Pack for VMWare. Learn about:

By Anurag Agrawal, CEO, Techaisle

Over the last two decades, the global small and midmarket businesses, SMB (1-999 employee size) market has been the growth engine for the IT industry at large. The reason is quite simply that SMBs account for more than 80 percent of businesses in any country – developed or developing. For much of those two decades, SMBs have primarily focused on building core infrastructure with the bulk of their investment allotted towards buying PCs and desktop applications such as Office, desktop publishing and other industry specific software.

We recently received news that Melanie Gass, A.K.A. the “Microsoft Princess”, will be attending the 7^th Annual SMB Nation Spring Conference. I had the opportunity to speak with Melanie yesterday about the upcoming show, her work in the channel, and her live satellite radio show, which she broadcasts every Tuesday from New York City.

Date: Thursday, April 18, 2013

Time: 10:00 am - 11:00 am PDT

Presenters: Ken Gibson, Partnership Channel Manager, Kroll OnTrack and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc. 

Discover the best ways to prevent future data loss from happening, examine the best methods for backing up your data, and common mistakes people make when doing so. Join this live webinar to learn how your organization is impacted, and how partnering with a data recovery provider can help.

PS: One lucky webinar attendee will receive a FREE BlackBerry z10 phone! (Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery).

Register here

The Evolution of an Executive who has Successfully Weathered the IT Storm

If you met Rob Cheng, Founder and CEO of PC Pitstop on the street one afternoon, you would probably expect him to say that he has every kind of the latest techno gadget in his home, car, and while he’s on the move. However, Cheng, who divides his time between his homes in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, usually doesn’t even carry a cell phone with him when leaving the house, and when he does, it’s usually one of those “flip” style phones. Totally unassuming that he is, you’d never guess that Cheng founded PC Pitstop more than 10 years ago, with the basis of diagnosing common computer problems.

Learn How this Underrated Business Model Can Help Kick-Start Your MSP

By Chip Reaves, President, Bigger-Brains.com

Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur, or a soon-to-be entrepreneur, and someone makes you this offer: For a chunk of cash, and a small percentage of your ongoing revenue, they’ll give you a proven, documented business model for success in your industry. They’ll train you on how to operate your business, give you sales and marketing campaigns, negotiate discounts from key vendors, provide ongoing support, and they’ll include you in a community of like-minded entrepreneurs to collaborate with along the way—though none of them would be close enough to be a competitor.

Date: Thursday, April 11, 2013

Time: 10:00 am - 11:00 am PDT

Presenters: Chris Sterbenc, Channel Chief, Gridstore and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc.

Discover how to overcome the challenges of backup and recovery, why monolithic storage solutions don’t work, and new storage architectures to address these challenges. You’ll learn how to protect virtual environments with Gridstore Storage Optimized for Veeam.

By Josh Peterson, Owner, Axontech and President SMBTN, and Dave Seibert, CIO, IT Innovators and VP, SMBTN.

It’s true while the proliferation of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)laptops, smartphones and tablets has surged in the last 12 months within our industry to make things more streamlined for SMBs, it has, at the same time, caused headaches for partners. With a variety of different devices available, it’s hard to keep up on all of the different operating systems and programs. Of course, the end users still scream the usual: “Just make it work!” If you haven’t encountered these requests yet, chances are high that you will shortly. In fact, according to Good Technology’s 2nd Annual State of BYOD Report, 75.5% of companies are currently supporting BYOD, 13.3% will in the next 12 months, 6.1% will at some time in the future, and only 5% have no plans to support BYOD.

By Onuora Amobi, Editor, Windows8update.com

A Comprehensive Overview of Security in Microsoft’s Newest OS

The following was excerpted from Onuora Amobi’s eBook “Windows 8 Security – A comprehensive Overview of security in Microsoft’s newest Operating System.” For more information, and to read the full eBook, go to: http://www.windows8enterprise.com/new-windows-8-ebookwindows-8-security-a-comprehensive-overview/.

By Onuora Amobi, Editor, Windows8update.com

A Comprehensive Overview of Security in Microsoft’s Newest OS

The following was excerpted from Onuora Amobi’s eBook “Windows 8 Security – A comprehensive Overview of security in Microsoft’s newest Operating System.” For more information, and to read the full eBook, go to: http://www.windows8enterprise.com/new-windows-8-ebookwindows-8-security-a-comprehensive-overview/.

Date: Thursday, April 11, 2013

Time: 10:00 am - 11:00 am PDT

Presenters: Chris Sterbenc, Channel Chief, Gridstore and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc.

Discover how to overcome the challenges of backup and recovery, why monolithic storage solutions don’t work, and new storage architectures to address these challenges. You’ll learn how to protect virtual environments with Gridstore Storage Optimized for Veeam.

SMB Nation is proud to be an exhibitor at this year’s ChannelPro SMB Forum, running April 10, 2013 in Long Beach, CA. Stop by the SMB Nation booth to chat with Harry and discuss the SMB Channel!

This year’s ChannelPro SMB Forum features sessions on Cloud, Mobility and Hardware Trends, presented by speakers such as:  Ed Correia, Cecilia Galvin, Karl Palachuk and Dave Siebert.

Part One of a Four-Part Series offering guidance, hope and solutions for MSPs and VARs who are struggling to make money in the cloud.

One of the core pieces to building a cloud strategy for an MSP is the selection of services. There are hundreds of cloud-based services available, and deciding which to offer can be confusing—let alone selecting service providers. From my position as a solutions architect and partner at MG Technology Group, I am fortunate to work with MSPs across North America and have put together some useful information to help you through this process.

Date: Thursday, April 4, 2013

Time: 10:00 am - 11:00 am PDT

Presenters: Fmr. Senator John E.  Sununu, Co-Chair, inSPIRE STEM USA Coalition and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc.