SMB Nation Blog

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.

Earlier this week, HP announced its pledge to assist government agencies to maximize storage investments with new offerings that include the next generation of its MSA entry disk array, enhancements to the HP StoreEasy Storage portfolio and a new program for HP channel partners.

The new HP MSA 2040 Storage system simplifies management and improves performance up to four times faster than traditional external disk storage solutions. The enhanced HP StoreEasy Storage portfolio enables SMBs to efficiently manage and protect increasing amounts of file data without the need for special skills.

By Ian Moyse - Sales Director, www.workbooks.com  

The need for change and acceptance of the fact that your “status quo” for business may be no, has never been truer.  I have been speaking on the effect of the cloud for the past 8 years, and the past two have provided much comment on the visible effects we had and are seeing.

Before commenting on why IT supply chains have to adapt and why now is the time to take action I would like to draw context from other sectors and the customer experience they deliver that is causing a well-publicized demise.

Inspired by this week's news that Google is unifying storage across its products, Barracuda Networks announced is getting bold with a new program designed to increase the amount of free cloud storage for its own Copy users from 5GB to 15GB. Copy is a new online file syncing, sharing and storage service built on the secure Barracuda Cloud. Since its public debut less than 90 days ago, Copy already is approaching half a million users worldwide.

Spiceworks revealed in a survey that while SMBs show strong support for BYOD initiatives, they still see the technology as a security threat due to employee loss, theft of misuse of mobile devices.

The Spiceworks study “As BYOD Becomes Mainstream, Complexity Increases for SMBs,” revealed that 61 percent of SMBs have implemented a BYOD policy. However, despite this shift toward greater support, only 37 percent are managing or plan to manage mobile devices using a mobile device management (MDM) offering. The independent study was sponsored by Fiberlink, a leading provider of mobility management solutions for businesses.

Long-time SMB Nation friend Matt Landis, a Microsoft MVP in the Lync telecom/UC area, posted up the results of an informal survey about higher education and the computer guy. The results are disturbing and warrant further analysis. When asked about graduate school, his IT experts universally replied NO THANKS! You can read his original work here.

I disagree. Consider the following...

Last week we blogged that Microsoft is making changes to its Windows 8 OS, reportedly naming it Microsoft Blue. Today, we heard that the company has now renamed this initiative Windows 8.1.  

Small Biz Thoughts recently announced that Founder, Karl Palachuk and his brother, Manuel Palachuk, both of whom are well-respected voices in the IT industry, will be presenting sessions for the company’s IT Business Reboot 2013 online conference between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm PDT June 25-27. The two brothers each have over 25 years of experience in the SMB field, and in 2009, they co-authored a how-to guide for zero-downtime network migrations.

Many of us remember when Intel launched its Intel Hybrid Cloud device and the Intel AppUp Small Business Software Service with much fanfare just about two years ago, with tons of promise. It was ahead of its time pioneering the “devices and services” paradigm so popular today. It was the “third-way” in the polarizing argument(s) asserted by on-premises extremists and Cloudies. Many MSPs that I know had signed up for the service, and had high hopes for what it could do for both themselves and their SMB end users. Intel even went ahead and put together a launch platform held at SMB Nation’s Fall Conference in 2011 to target its sweet spot of SMB MSPs who largely attend our events…from what I understand, they came in droves to check out this new game-changing cloud product.

(Pictured at right): Karl Palachuk, Founder and CEO, Small Biz Thoughts / Great Little Book Publishing Co., Inc., said he doesn't feel there is a correlation between the end of SBS and the end of the Intel server.

The role of IT in setting strategic priorities and achieving business success is growing for companies around the world, according to new research released today by CompTIA. According to the trade organization’s research, more than three-quarters of businesses say technology is important or very important to their success; the majority plan solid increases in IT spending this year; and four in 10 have expectations of hiring new IT staff in 2013.

CompTIA’s International Technology Adoption & Workforce Issues study is the result of a survey of more than 1,250 business and IT executives in countries around the world, some with mature economies and others, maturing.

Birch Communications alerted us this morning that it has signed an asset purchase agreement to acquire select customer and network assets from Lightyear Network Solutions, Inc.

As a provider of data, voice and Wi-Fi telco services to SMBs, Lightyear is expected to close this, its 18^th acquisition since 2006, during Q3 this year.

At the start of its BlackBerry World event this week in Orlando, FL, BlackBerry introduced its new Q5 smartphone that is part of the new BlackBerry 10 family. The BlackBerry Q5 smartphone features a QWERTY keyboard with discrete keys in a new design that aims to provide a fast, effortless experience for users on the go.

As part of my political exploration and participation in the Microsoft “Voices for Innovation” (VFI) political trade association and its closely related PAC, I’m invited to the best free lunches on the block. Seriously – VFI works with the PAC to bring in super speakers to Microsoft Redmond. This is my third such lunch event and the featured speaker this time was Sidney Rittenberg.

Microsoft today released news that they are running a 48-hour “Refer-a-Colleague” program for the upcoming WPC event in Houston, TX. Under this program, current registered attendees are eligible to receive a $100.00 refund for referring a new attendee to the event. In addition, anyone who is referenced will have $100.00 taken off of the final conference price.  

VaultLogix is now offering a free trial of its business-class MobilePlus service, which provides backup, recovery and data protection for mobile workers’ Windows and Mac laptops and desktops.

ManageEngine said today that it has added change auditing and mailbox access monitoring to Exchange Reporter Plus, its Exchange server reporting software. Now, Exchange Reporter Plus can report and alert on critical Exchange events that carry security or compliance implications. In turn, organizations can use Exchange Reporter Plus to implement or enhance an email security and compliance program that easily demonstrates regulatory compliance and prevents data leaks.

Sophos today announced the availability of Sophos UTM Connected, the latest version of its UTM solution. This release introduces expanded UTM managed endpoint protection with unique Web in Endpoint functionality, broader wireless coverage for large scale wireless deployments and higher performance networking.

This past weekend, I tuned into 60 Minutes, as I do most Sunday evenings, to wind down, and I came across an interview that one of their correspondents did with a former U.S. Marine who is now an SMB. The clip, titled, “Succeeding as Civilians,” featured a veteran, who had been injured during combat, and got his start as a small business owner through a program designed to help disabled and wounded veterans literally get back on their feet and get into business.

It made me think, while watching this 60 Minutes clip, on how I have recently spoken to many IT members in our community who are former military. One such conversation I had recently was with Joseph Bettencourt, Founder and CEO of Portland Computerworks. While Bettencourt was thankfully, not wounded during his military tour, he took the experience he picked up during his time at tech school in the U.S. Air Force, for Computer Information Systems. He told me that he was one of four chosen out of more than 300 students for a special assignment working at a Computer Forensics Laboratory near the NSA. By the time Bettencourt finished his military experience, he picked up various Computer Certifications from the Department of Defense Computer Training Institute as well as computer training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA.

(Pictured at right): Joseph Bettencourt, Founder and CEO, Portland Computerworks

You and I have chosen a “geek life,” and we must live with the consequences. That means the SMB landscape changes very fast and can surprise even ardent analysts, much less day-to-day practitioners. Almost in a stealth mode, Dell has acquired several capable SMB players as it works to build a comprehensive solutions portfolio. 

Shortly after returning from the SMB 150 awards and the SMB Nation Spring Conference in Redmond, WA, prominent and long-time SMB community member Alan Shrater passed away quietly at his home on Wednesday afternoon, May 8th.

(At right): Alan Shrater at Microsoft Redmond this past weekend.

By David Hauser, Carbonite

The cloud is growing – and fast! According to technology research firm Gartner, by the end of 2013, the size of the cloud computing marketing will be at $150 billion. That’s why now is the time to make sure your reseller business is set to grow with the cloud.

As the world becomes increasingly more connected through the use of laptops, tablets and smartphones, the desire to back up and access the content of these devices online has skyrocketed. Instead of using unreliable and antiquated backup methods – like CDs, zip drives and external hard drives – people are turning to the cloud for automated and affordable, secure offsite backup. Cloud backup allows users to enhance efficiencies, cut costs and most importantly, free themselves from physical devices.

Lenovo announced this week at its Accelerate Channel Partner Forum its new ThinkPad S431, a premium laptop PC featuring an elegant floating design. Touchscreen display an option in versions coming out this July. Optimized for Windows 8, the ThinkPad S431 offers enhanced performance and 15 percent faster processor speed than previous generations. The laptop is ideal for professionals who want a combination of style and substance. It is also a good fit for small businesses that need a laptop to do it all – great performance for work tasks and an excellent experience for personal computing.

When Mike Foreman was chosen to lead the small business group at AVG Technologies, he was quick to tap into his own experience as a small business owner, having managed and sold two IT businesses before joining AVG. As a former reseller, he was also determined to create products and programs that work for both the partners and SMB customers.

A tip of the hat to our partner ChannelProSMB for its recent SMB Forum in Long Beach, CA. SMB Nation happily supported this second year show. The show presented a balanced attendee/sponsor mix fortified by top speakers. My expectations as a sponsor on the floor were managed and I will repeat. Just my little “Yelp” to get this party started.