SMB Nation Blog

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.

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.

eVoice yesterday released the results of a survey commissioned in Feb 2013 and conducted by j2 Global  to measure how SMB owners are using mobile devices in the workplace. The survey respondents were approximately 500 SMB owners from randomly selected websites.

Today, Datto, Inc. announced the launch of a new solution designed to provide both on-site and off-site BDR to SMBs. The new solution, called Datto ALTO, is built to be scalable and affordable.

Today, Cbeyond, Inc. announced the availability of a new one-stop online portal which will allow customers to better monitor and manage their cloud services. The Cbeyond Online portal is a self-serve offering that can be accessed via web browser or mobile devices, and will support the company’s cloud service platform, including newly-added TotalCloud Data Center and Phone System.

VoIPReview.org yesterday released a guide with the three questions business owners who are thinking of swapping to a VoIP solution have asked their community. The organization, an informative online VoIP resource, looked at the differences between the two main types of VoIP, Hosted PBX and IP PBX with SIP Trunking, to answer the three questions below.

Yesterday, Parks Associates, a Dallas, TX-based analyst firm, released the results of their study on SMB titled: “Small/Medium Business: Tech Support Opportunities.” The report showed that over half (55%) of the 500 SMBs polled experienced computer issues over the last year, and that they are shying away from face-to-face consultancies.

Spiceworks today released the results of a recent Carbonite-sponsored survey of SMBs concerning BDR and data protection. Overall, the survey found that 45% of SMBs have experienced significant data loss.

Yesterday, Acumatica, a Kirkland, WA-based Cloud ERP services provider, released the results of their Technology Adoption Report. This study, titled “Cloud ERP: An Adaptable, Consumable, And Flexible Option for Medium-Size Businesses,” was conducted by Forrester Consulting and covers the key benefits and concerns expressed by SMBs concerning the adoption of Cloud ERP.

Yesterday, Constant Contact, a Massachusetts-based online marketing company, released the results of their second Technology Pulse survey. Approximately 1305 participants from various B2B and B2C organizations on the Constant Contact Small Biz Council provided insight on the top tools to earn new customers and keep existing customers engaged.

Today, the SYNNEX Corporation announced that they will begin to resell the next generation of Office 365 services. As part of today’s announcement, SYNNEX resellers will also be able to use their own billing processes and sales models.

Yesterday, Clearwire Corporation announced a new 4G wireless broadband service for SMB customers. CLEAR Professional will be available beginning March 18 in approximately 80 US cities.

The following service options are available for the CLEAR Professional offering:

Broadvox today announced the release of a new Feature Guide for their Managed Hosted Voice service. The goal of this guide is to further education of the Managed Hosted Voice service’s advanced features for both existing and prospective users.

ADTRAN, Inc. this morning announced a series of enhancements to their Channel Partner Program. As part of this announcement, ADTRAN, Inc. will expand the financial and reward incentives for all three levels of their program.

Our friends at Techaisle are releasing a new study tomorrow, which they gave us a sneak peek at today. The report discusses the analyst firm’s research on global SMB mobile workforce forecast, which shows that by 2016 there will be slightly over 298 million SMB employees who will be mobile workers. One-fourth will be from the mid-market segment. Nearly 150 million SMB employees will be telecommuting and over 120 million will travel on business. The number of cloud users will likely jump from less than 140 million in 2012 to over 200 million in 2016.

It’s no secret that the U.S. economy (and in turn) U.S. small businesses have been hit hard over the past few years.  Despite a lot of discussions from the government, corporations and the media, it is not getting easier to grow a small business, and our economy has a long way to go before we fully recover.  As efforts continue to stimulate the economy with huge corporate bailouts and the ongoing frenzy to find and fund the next big start up, the true backbone of our economy- small businesses- continue to fight every day to keep their businesses alive and, as a result, our economy going--and they don’t get a lot of appreciation or support.

Intuit, Inc. today announced the results of the 2012 Small Business Employment Report for December and for 2012 overall. According to the report, there was a small overall increase in the small business employment sector. Wages and hours worked also increased.

I’ve never seen Microsoft VP of SMB&D Cindy Bates so enthusiastic about the SMB business and Microsoft’s action-packed calendar of product launches this fiscal year. Bates has been with Microsoft for nearly 14 years, holds an MBA from Harvard, and is one of the more passionate executives I’ve come across when it comes to the opportunity for channel partners in SMB. In a recent interview at her Microsoft offices at Lincoln Square in Bellevue, WA, Bates and I enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation, which highlighted a year of achievements and accomplishments that the tech giant has experienced, both overall and specific to the partner channel.

This morning, Paychex, a US-based payroll company, released the results of their 2012 Paychex Payroll Study. These results show a strong indication for organizations with 1-99 employees to expand their technology reach for 2013.

Today, Intuit released the results of their Small Business Employment Index November 2012 and Small Business Revenue Index report for October 2012. The reports showed that employment levels rose while revenue per small business again dropped.

TechSquad IT is now offering, as part of its MSP services platform, OKI Data Americas’ Total Managed Print™ (TMP) platform to the greater Milwaukee SMB community.

By adding OKI Data’s TMP platform to its selection of technology services, TechSquad IT will now be able to provide its SMB clients with a complete, outsourced, managed fleet solution.

I'm excited about this time of year. The holiday season has started with Thanksgiving followed by Black Friday and beyond. But I'm most excited about Small Business Saturday - now in its third year. It's the Saturday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I personally applaud American Express for starting this event to spend at least $50 USD at a local small business on that day. I've honored that. But as you can read in this entry there has been controversy that a private sector firm was funding,. promoting and exploiting a holiday opportunity. I understand that reasoning but in the absence of anyone else doing this, you gotta give it up for AMEX for getting this party started! I predict that someday, when this holiday is more secular and mainstream, AMEX will essentially hand-off this branding to a foundation.

This morning, Spiceworks announced the results of its bi-annual State of SMB IT survey. Conducted twice per year, the survey results revealed a 7 percent increase in SMB IT budgets in the second half of 2012, up from the first half of this year. However, respondents also reported a 4 percent decline among those planning to hire new IT staff.

Yesterday I had lunch with a busy Jonathan Friebert who directs Voices for Innovation (VFI). I learned that the VFI entity is more akin to a trade association thana PAC while enjoying fajitas with Jonathan! It’s a community of engaged Microsoft Partners who want to play in the political and regulatory sandbox. What it’s not, as far as I can tell, is a partisan political organization that makes specific endorsements of candidates.

A majority of SMBs in the UK and US are unsure of cloud services or think they are only for large companies, thus missing out on the opportunity to increase productivity and stay more effectively in control of their IT security, new research from AVG Technologies reveals.