Over 18,000 Global Readers and Growing! DECEMBER 31th, 2009 - Issue 4-12   BusinessSpeak

Goodbye 2009 and the first decade. Hello 2010!

I am thrilled to share my recovery roadmap. I also tell a quick tale of business model diversification and provide you a link for the new 4Q2009 SMB PC magazine for you to read all about it!

Happy New Year everyone!

cheers....harry bbb
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation, Inc. | www.smbnation.com

Did you know? Our Small Business Server 2008 Blueprint book is now SHIPPING. Learn more here!

Read Harry's SMB Dude Blog here

Recovery Roadmap!

Recovery Roadmap! A lot of books will be written about this one. I'm speaking of the economic reset of 2009! The good news is that we all survived and lived to fight another day. And I'm not making a fictitious statement like you might see on Facebook. The small and medium business (SMB) sector of the economy outperformed Fortune One in all categories in this recession. But let's move forward!

This article is my "State of the Union" speech on the SMB channel partner community. My intent is to share strategies so you can spend the "recession dividends" I believe you have a claim on. I call it my recovery roadmap. This article presents traditional and emerging opportunities followed by a community update.


First Stop - Old School!

As you follow your recovery roadmap, your first stop is the "old school" of hardware, software, and services. At the top of my list for opportunities is Windows 7 for the client machines at your customer sites. Talk about deferred maintenance and pent-up demand (both traditional signs of a recovering economy), there are reportedly over 35M desktops running Widows XP in the USA alone that never went to Windows Vista and are Windows 7 ready (including many laptops at SMB Nation!).

Note: [In the GeekSpeak column, I discuss Windows XP to Windows 7 migration issues.] Another demand driver that I think Wall Street is underestimating is Main Street's deferred desktop maintenance strategy in this past recession. Folks simply stopped spending money. (Visit sites like the Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch to educate yourself on recent macro and micro economic behaviors.) So now you have fleets of fully depreciated PCs that will not be upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. Rather, the customer will opt to simply purchase a new PC with Windows 7 already installed and ready to rock.

Simply stated, performing Windows 7 upgrades for your customers can carry you in 2010 and is low-hanging fruit.

Another old schoolism concerns Small Business Server (SBS) 2008. This product should find its footing in 2010 after encountering the Great Recession. Many machines running SBS 2003 are at the end of their useful life and need to be retired in this recovery period. That's a good thing, because SBS 2008 requires a new hardware-level supporting 64-bit technology, and thus a hardware refresh! You'll see community partners, such as Jeff Middleton and his SBS Migration Kit, continue to capitalize on opportunities such as this. By the way, recessions are one of the drivers of innovation and recently a true competitor emerged on the scene for SBS 2008: IBM Lotus Foundations Start. I have witnessed a couple of demonstrations of this open-source-based small business server solution, and SBS MVP Eriq Neale (a fellow SBS author) gave a fantastic, well-received presentation on this "alternative to SBS" at the SMB Nation Fall conference in Las Vegas in October. I think it's great that the Foundations Start product has emerged to provide more channel and customer choices. We're all better for free markets that are driven by competition. Look for a future technical review of Foundations Start, a true contender in the SMB space, in 2010!

I need your help in completely understanding the virtualization opportunity in the SMB space in 2010. I believe this paradigm is still being defined. My belief is that virtualization has a simple and strong message concerning disaster recovery and rapid deployment scenarios. Our partner in virtualization crime, Doyenz, is a long-time SMB Nation sponsor (Disclosure: I am a member of its advisory board) and has defined the SMB virtualization conversation. But I still have more questions than answers regarding SMB virtualization. Is there really enough "there there" in our space or is virtualization better suited for the core "M" space and above where IT cost reductions and performance gain play?

Service delivery is the world's oldest profession, including you know what. So rest assured that the delivery of services by an SMB technology professional is here today, tomorrow, and thereafter. Up for healthy debate is the service delivery model and service relevancy. Service delivery has clearly been re-defined from break/fix to the managed services partner (MSP) model. Trading the randomness of pager calls for the stability of service contracts has resulted in a "better mouse trap" for consultants delivering services with their existing skill set. This trend will clearly continue into the recovery of 2010. Look for thought leaders such as David Schafran and Gary Pica, both speakers at the 5th Annual SMB Nation Spring 2010 event (April 30 - May 2, 2010, NYC-area) to drive this conversation.

I continue my personal crusade to have you reinvent yourself as an entirely new class of service provider: Trusted Business Advisor. During the recession, our magazine tagline was exactly that, and I still passionately believe many readers are picking up pennies while dollars fly by. Here is what I mean. Increasingly the technology bits are becoming less of the focal point and the business purpose of technology has been magnified. If you think of yourself as a white-collar consultant providing business technology advice, more dollars via richer engagements will flow your way. Here is one example: SMB enterprise resource planning. Long-time SBSer Alan Shratter of Denver, CO, recently led a Microsoft Small Business Server Advisory Committee meeting in Seattle. He stayed over the weekend, going to my son's soccer games and the like. We chatted about business (of course), and he expressed his continued passion of providing meaningful business-consulting services, such as EPR planning, deployment, and implementations, to small business customers. In his case he is uniquely qualified as both a SBSer and an CPA. We concluded that there is truly enough "there there" and the SMB ERP example is one of the best examples of being the ultimate Trusted Business Advisors in our space. I suspect the paycheck isn't bad either. As I've written on these pages in the past, we use NetSuite to drive EVERYTHING we do, and it's making a huge difference. My standard "one-liner" joke in this past recession was that if I lost my job at SMB Nation, I'd open shop as an ERP consultant in the SMB space. There is truth to humor!

HINT: Look for SMB Nation to drive the Trusted Business Advisor conversation in the economic recovery with a new twist. We are teaming with a well-respected and accredited MBA program to deliver the SMB Nation Pocket MBA program. Think of this as an executive MBA program for the SMB consulting practice business owner. More details soon, so be sure you sign up for my e-mail newsletter via the Join the Tribe button at www.smbnation.com. Consider our SMB Nation Pocket MBA to be your "kit" in an SMB channel partner marketplace awash in kits. (Note to self - that should be an entire article unto itself in a future issue!)

Emerging Technologies

Time for a fast Economics 101 lecture. Listen carefully. Technology will drive this economic recovery. Not housing, not automobile sales, not MLM schemes. Consumer spending will be a smaller part of this economic recovery as households continue to deleverage from previous borrowing excesses. The quantum-leap in technology innovation on your roadmap to recovery will be in new neighborhoods: VoIP, Cloud. In effect, it's time to reinvent yourself - again.

VoIP

A mantra to repeat in 2010 is "Yes I can!" when it comes to SMB VoIP. Many old school SBSers and I had the good fortune of getting involved in SMB VoIP a few years ago with the Microsoft Response Point, the telephone system for small businesses. That journey ultimately took us into the larger world of SMB VoIP far beyond the Response Point product.

Factoid: Much of the Response Point team was disbanded in a recession-related reorganization in April 2009. A Response Point Town Hall Meeting in late June 2009 indicated that the product was under strategic review and still for sale and supported by its OEM partners such as Aastra, Syspine, and dLink. A follow-up Response Point Town Hall meeting was planned to occur in December 2009, but as of press time had not been announced.

So in 2009, SMB channel partners witnessed the power of SMB VoIP and concluded that this is the start of a new voice communications-driven epoch. This "catch the wave" sentiment is exactly why we have launched a two-day SMB VoIP workshop inside the Channel Partners conference (Virgo Publishing), March 1-3, 2010 (Las Vegas). We are tremendously excited to help SBSers and SMB consultants get from (A) data networking to (B) SMB VoIP.

Cloud

A man walks into a bar and asks a lady if she's been to the cloud. What sounds like a bad bar joke actually has some relevance. In all likelihood, she is already in the cloud, unlike Cloud Nine from the barfly's off-color, pick-up line. Rather, she is tweeting, blogging, Facebooking, and using a cloud-based e-mail service such as Hotmail. These are examples of offpremises technology. So why did the SMB channel partner respond with such hostility to cloud offerings from Microsoft and Google? (Both are SMB Nation sponsors, but I do not hold stock in either. This disclosure thing is out of control!) All I can say is "Holy shifting supply curves," and resistance is futile! Recessions leading to recoveries result in new business models, and technology is one of the factors that shift supply curves in economics. In this case, the ease of implementing and maintaining cloud-based robust applications (such as our beloved NetSuite ERP system) and inherently lower IT costs are driving this new parade. I suggest you lead the parade rather than follow and realize your role as a traditional channel partner has fundamentally changed forever. Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) pays an 18 percent commission (that's in year one, followed by 6 percent annual commissions thereafter) and then largely performs that back office work of the traditional SMB IT consultant. My SMB tribal members are not excited about an 18 percent commission and like to perform the technology work. The result is something of a recovery resentment against hosted applications.

Factoid: Google Apps was presented at the SMB Nation Fall event and several attendees mentioned that Google has a different business model than Microsoft BPOS. Apparently referral partners receive a one-time $50/payment for securing the account and Google then has a direct relationship with the customer, as it was presented to me. I will continue to explore this matter more.

This new "sales agent" role is somewhat off-base for the average reader of this journal. I think the answer to cloud-based computing is that SMB channel partners become the Trusted Business Advisors discussed above. Think about it. How much money do you make today from the resale of hardware and software? The payoff is really in the form of the services you sell. It's exactly the same in cloud-based computing. And instead of selling maintenance-type services, you now will proactively sell into the customer account with your business technology consulting services.

Everyone I speak with acknowledges that resistance to cloud-based-hosted applications is futile. The future is coming fast, and I am not going to miss out. Much like we created Telephonation, we are creating and launching CloudNation in 2010. I'm tremendously excited about this, and you will hear from me frequently as I share my cloud computing journey with you. SMB Nation intends to migrate its VoIP system into the cloud as well as Exchange-based e-mail. We'll be there right in the trenches as we build a new SMB cloud community and enjoy new elevated conversations.

Community

This recession has clearly reset expectations about the SMB community.
New programs, mergers/acquisitions and partnerships are being announced daily. Leading industry figures are changing jobs and suddenly there is a proliferation of business coaches. You can follow much of the play-by-play up on social media sites like Facebook and via Twitter, so I'll leave that for you to do in your spare time.

<Continue reading this article in 4Q2009 SMB PC Magazine - details below>

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT - KONNECT PHONE TESTED POSITIVE

Whether we like it or not, very soon, someone is going to introduce everyone of our accounts to VoIP, and it will probably be a data guy.

It is very important that you add VoIP to your offering, not just because of the additional income that comes from further monetizing your existing accounts. But to PROTECT your accounts from establishing an ongoing relationship with a potential competitor.

There are several solutions to choose from and we have checked out quite a few. Some are fairly easy to set up and others are a nightmare. Many are great on the surface but once you dig a little deeper, lack the features and functionality that most small to medium businesses expect.

We have searched and tested several products and one of the systems that we found to be incredibly easy to deploy, scalable, and full featured, was the KONNECT office phone system.

We featured the system in a couple of past newsletters and several of our tribe have partnered with Aksys and are reselling the system as part of there extended offering.

Our VoIP department ordered 3 of these phones to test. What we discovered was the easiest office phone system setup that we have yet to experience.

We were making calls in 15 minutes and had a full feature setup completed in under an hour.

This included Analog and VoIP.

We used:

• CBeyond as our SIP provider
• Comcast for Internet
• Comcast VoIP line as our analog source.

After getting these setup, we threw one of the phones in a box and took it across town to a friends place of business. After plugging into the internet it was like we were still in the office with all of the systems features and functionality in tact.

There is no other equipment, just the phones. So there is nothing to lug around, integrate with, connect to, or service. The phone's style is attractive, it feels substantial in your hand and the feature buttons are easy to access and understand.

The web based setup is simple, including the feature buttons.

We have been testing the KONNECT phone for a week now and has had a great experience with no problems. Using the KONNECT system is the easiest way that you can start offering VoIP tomorrow.

Here are the key things about the KONNECT Office Phone System that set it apart:

• It can scale one phone at a time without requiring any server, PBX, or hosting fees.
• It supports effortless multi-site operation for distributed offices; and
• It lets users keep their land lines and make use of VoIP services

15 minute video |1 minute preview video | KONNECT Web site

Portfolio Diversification - Business Model Lessons

Investors like to make end-of-year portfolio trades to alter their asset mix. But enough of this Wall Street babble. What I really want to share with you is renew recovery hope and encourage you to think anew about your core business model. Should you consider starting a second company in a different line of work to diversify away systematic risk in your portfolio? With the recovery at hand, it seems like a good idea to consider starting a new business, if you were ever going to do so.

Because a video is worth a thousand words, please watch my interview with Pune India entrepreneur : Ashutosh S. Karkhanis on my recent trip to India (underwritten by Level Platforms and MSPONE for a series of workshops). Ashutosh runs two thriving businesses and is always looking for opportunities.

4Q2009 SMB PC Magazine Is HERE!

You can download here: http://smbnation.com/Publications/Magazine/tabid/72/Default.aspx

Guarantee service response times. Increase customer satisfaction. Grow your business.

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If you answered "no" to any of these questions, be sure to attend SMB Nation?s Autotask webinar for an in-depth discussion of Service Level Management programs, best practices, and steps for developing an effective plan for your individual business. Topics include: setting and measuring internal service levels, tracking and measuring performance against goals, and creating custom Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for your clients.

Establish Service Response Time Goals, And Monitor Tech Performance IN REAL TIME!

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With Autotask software, you can easily establish discrete response goals by priority, issue types and sub-issue types. Set your goals for first response, resolution plan, and time to complete. Sort all open tickets by NEXT service level event due. Even set-up workflow rules to automatically generate notices when service deadlines are at risk, and auto-escalate the ticket.

Autotask is the all-in-one IT Service Business Management Software

Most importantly, Service Level Management with Autotask is fully integrated, at no additional charge, within your overall business management solution and is remarkably easy to use. You also get CRM, Project Management, a full Service Desk Solution including Dispatching, built-in Knowledgebase, Time and Expense Management, Billing, and so much more.

To download Autotask's white paper on Service Level Management or a datasheet describing Service Level Management with Autotask, visit:

http://www.autotask.com/landing/service_level_management.htm

Don't miss the 5th Annual SMB Nation Spring event, April 30-May 2, 2010

Check-in to our "recovery program" so YOU do not MISS the economic recovery with self-defeating business behavior.

Breaking News - This conference is now MORE TECHNICAL than ever led by our beloved MVP community! <MORE>

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