SMB Nation Blog

Unitrends announced it has partnered with wholesale technology product distributor Tech Data Corporation to offer Unitrends Disaster Recovery as a Service in Tech Data’s Solutions Store in its TDCloud business unit.

“Our agreement with Tech Data tremendously expands our channel presence by making Unitrends DRaaS available to a vast reseller base,” said Bob Gagnon, Unitrends’ vice president of channel sales. “We are making a best-in-class managed service available for purchase on a subscription basis. And, doing so through Tech Data’s Solutions Store enables us to greatly simplify the ordering process for our IT channel.”

Unitrends DRaaS backup appliance solution guarantees full recovery of IT infrastructures in the cloud within hours of a declared disaster.

Hey folks, Harrybbb here! I am happy to announce that we have opened a short survey on Microsoft Satisfaction! It’s your time to shine and let us know what you think about the current and future direction of the company. We will have 3 questions, plus a comment box.

Want to chime in? Simply fill out the survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2QSBBNJ One lucky respondent will win an Ooma device for business!

attachedapps are a lightweight yet powerful solution designed to cure SMB customers’ biggest pain point of not being able to effectively retrain, manage and grow their customer base. A complete offering that no one else provides today, attachedapps are pain free to install, “attach” to Office 365 and run on Azure.   This allows for partners to cost effectively enhance their level of service to customers and drive incremental revenue.

Aislelabs , a leading in-store provider of marketing and analytics programs, announced its channel partner program for service providers including VARs, distributors, technology system integrators, Wi-Fi MSPs, retail consulting firms and marketing agencies.

This partner program is designed to combine Aislelabs technology with partner expertise and knowledge, creating a mutually beneficial relationship.

GoDaddy , the largest technology provider dedicated to SMBs, announced it acquired Mad Mimi in a deal that will expand GoDaddy’s product offerings.

Mad Mimi’s email marketing product is designed to help SMBs to create, send, share and track email newsletters. Its product will continue to be available as a standalone application, and GoDaddy and Mad Mimi intend to create a product using the Mad Mimi platform, planned to be available in 2015.

Somehow, some way, I recently lost touch with Intermedia. My bad. It’s been very busy. For example, this hosting company recently acquired AccessLine, an SMB telecom, to round out its portfolio. As I spoke with Michael Gold (pictured), Intermedia’s President, recently, it was apparent that Intermedia is driving is success strategically. Returning to the telecom conversation, here is what I know to be true. A lot of the Office 365 or Office 365-like solutions in the market address one side of the aisle: information. But few hosting companies provide a capable voice solution. Intermedia has filled this with its AccessLine acquisition. When I last visited AccessLine a few years ago, it was bringing to market a capable business class phone system that filled the gap created by Microsoft Response Point’s withdrawal from the market. I liked the right-sized fit it offered the small business with its reliance on a traditional on-premises phone system to keep it simple.

Logic PD announced a Wireless Communication Device Blueprint, an application guide for turning legacy equipment into wireless solutions.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, users want their applications to be moved online for ease of use and increased operational efficiency,” said Jason Voiovich, vice president of marketing. “Under pressure, OEMs are often overwhelmed by the proposition of retrofitting their legacy equipment and overlook the upside of adding a renewable revenue stream that comes with networked devices. The Wireless Blueprint guides them through the process and identifies the opportunities.”

Datapipe, a cloud and managed services provider, announced its acquisition of managed hosting and cloud company Layered Tech. This acquisition will allow Datapipe to expand into the government sector with FISMA and FedRAMP compliant Federal cloud offerings and will fuel Datapipe’s growth in managed cloud services.

I caught up with a busy Rob Rae at the CompTIA ChannelCon event recently to ‘check-in” with Datto. It’s a well-known success story in the SMB IT Pro community, as its wunderkind Austin McCord now has the community shining his shoes. And he, along with Datto, have earned their success the old fashioned way: hard work.

“We’re a business continuity company that’s always innovating,” shared Rob Rae, long-time SMB channel veteran and VP of Business Development. “We’ve always been a hybrid solution with replication to the cloud.”

I’m seeing more and more people embrace what they consider to be ‘The Cloud’ to store their files, be it Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud, or any of the other file syncing services out there.  Notice I say file syncing services and not cloud backup services.  These services have a lot of value and are very handy; I utilize them for work and personal life for sharing files, collaborating, or syncing across the numerous devices in my life.  That being said, they are not backup, and I run separate backup routines to protect important data.

I was at a get-together this weekend and the topic of backup came up.  I know it sounds like I go to some really exciting parties, right? But the subject came up because the host’s wife, who is a paralegal, mentioned that she was tasked with figuring out how to get some data off some older SDLT tapes.  When the discussion turned to occupations and I mentioned that I work in data-protection, she perked up and instantly asked me about the tapes and how she could get the data off.  I helped her with that task, which was no big deal, but her next comment caught my attention. She remarked how she didn’t understand why people still use tapes and backup software and why everyone doesn’t just put everything on Dropbox.  The simplest explanation that I could come up with on the spot was reliability, flexibility, and security.

The difficulties keep rolling for Microsoft Azure. Many Azure services are down just days after suffering a problem that left users in the Japan East region without services and management portal log-in problems and performance issues in numerous other regions.

Additionally, last week saw a global problem with Microsoft’s Visual Studio Online service. Visual Studio Online runs on Azure however, the company said that outage was the result of bugs in the app itself, rather than Azure.

The current outage started at 17:49 UTC, hitting Cloud Services and virtual Machines in multiple regions and has since expanded to Backup, Service Bus, Site Recovery, Azure HDInsight and Azure Mobile Services – all of which are experiencing full service interruptions in multiple regions.

According to the most recent update (6:12 pm ET/3:12 PT) on the Azure Status page:

"Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Mobile Services, Service Bus, Site Recovery, HDInsight, Websites and StorSimple - Multiple regions - Partial Service Interruption

“Starting at 18 Aug 2014 17:49 UTC, a small subset of customers are experiencing connectivity issues to some Azure Services which may include Cloud Services, Virtual Machines, Websites, Automation, Service Bus, Backup, Site Recovery, HDInsight, Mobile Services, StorSimple and possible other Azure Services in multiple regions. Recovery continues underway across affected regions. Customers in many regions began to experience service restoration.”

Media inquiries to Microsoft are being met with polite “we-know-there’s-a-problem-our-engineers-are-working-on-it-don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you” messages.

Podcast II!

View my podcast interview with RapidFire Tools' Mark Winter below:

GreenSQL, a provider of database security and compliance solutions for the cloud, has joined the not-for-profit Cloud Security Alliance, which has a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing and to provide education on the uses of Cloud Computing.

GreenSQL protects customers from SQL injection attacks and unauthorized data access. Its solution camouflages and secures database applications and its Database Activity Monitoring independently monitors and audits all database activity both in the cloud and across traditional database platforms.

Hey Folks, we're working on a new way to bring you our industry interviews!

Check out my first podcast below with Axcient's Joan Morales (pictured):

Information and communication technology company Fujitsu today announced the availability of datacenter capabilities in New York and California; it also plans to open a third Tier III datacenter in Regina, Saskatchewan.

These datacenters will offer Fujitsu customers access to outsourcing and private cloud management services; a premier network, systems integration and application management services; and Japanese bilingual services, a benefit to Japan Originated Companies. Bilingual services are important to both JOC companies operating in the Americas and those hoping to globalize and expand into the Americas.

By Bob Vogel, B2 Marketing

“Your best clients are someone else’s best prospects.”

That was one of the first notes that I jotted down while watching a recent webinar featuring noted IT Sales guru Gil Cargill.

Scary as it sounds, it only stands to reason that if you have any competitors in the market place, they are going to be looking for opportunities to steal your best clients – the larger ones that outsource some or all of their IT needs, pay their bills on time, and appreciate the value of outside experts.

By Bob Vogel, B2 Marketing

I first met Shane Swanson and Eric Pepe when prepping them for an HTG webinar sponsored by RapidFire Tools.

Shane and Eric both wear two hats: one belongs to ARRC Technology, the thriving MSP based in Bakersfield, CA; the other hat belongs to CharTec, the innovative ground-breaking spin-off that trains other MSPs how to run their businesses better.

One of the many things the two organizations share in common is Network Detective, the industry's leading non-invasive IT Assessment tool. They also happen to be long-time HTG members, so it made sense to have them as guest presenters for the webinar.

To hear a short excerpt (less than 10 minutes) of that webinar featuring Shane and Eric, click here.

Vaultize announced the beta release of its anywhere access connector for Google DriveTM for work, which will enable enterprise users to uniformly access edit and share corporate data across Google Drive, file servers and NAS from mobile devices. Built-in fully-integrated Enterprise Mobility Management and Data Protection and Data Loss Prevention capabilities are necessary to its end-to-end security.

Florida Polytechnic University , Flagship Solutions Group and IBM announced a new supercomputing center composed of IBM high performance systems, software and cloud-based storage, to help educate students at the only state-sponsored Florida university dedicated solely to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Sticking with my summer vacation theme for this newsletter, and relating it to my current trip to the CompTIA conference and the D&H Distributing New England show, I can state that I found a secret way to save big money in lodging accommodations. And it’s not what you think.

You probably expect me to point you to the Trivago “big data” site or the Priceline auction site to efficiently solve this problem to find the lowest cost hotel room that still meets your quality needs. Nope. Perhaps you think I’d send you over to AirBNB to take a walk on the wild side and stay in someone’s Manhattan rental unit. Nope. And you likely didn’t expect me to recommend you walk-in and accept the rack rate for a room at a hotel. That would most likely be the most expensive option of all.

New research released by TrackVia revealed that IT departments are now embracing the BYOD and BYOA trends, since enterprise tools aren’t meeting employee needs and IT workers can’t stop the trend.

After surveying more than 1,000 U.S. workers and 250 IT department employees, TrackVia found that nearly half of all employees felt that company-provided tools weren’t meeting their needs, which is why more than half of the employees surveyed admitted that they bring their own apps and devices to work.

Kaseya announced it acquired security and authentication provider Scorpion Software earlier this week. By integrating Scorpion Software’s AuthAnvil products into Kaseya’s suite of solutions, Kaseya will deliver the first comprehensive and integrated Security and IT Management as a Service solution.

Organizations must be able to provide employees with secure and simple access to necessary applications and information, yet they must be able to protect employee information and company data from unauthorized access.  Identity and access management is critical to MSP and IT departments faced with today’s security threats.

Thursday, August 14, 2014 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/909075792

Please register by 11am PDT to allow for pizza delivery, see details below.

Presented by: David Maffei ,VP of Global Channel Sales, Carbonite, Inc., Rachel Cafarella, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Carbonite, Inc., and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc.

The cloud has become the go-to technology for a number of companies large and small looking for a simple yet effective data recovery solution. Some situations, however, call for fast, almost-instant data recovery that can only be found in an on-site offering. In this Channel Expert Hour webcast, Carbonite offers a first-hand look at the Carbonite Appliance HT10, a hybrid solution that combines the speed of on-site data recovery with the security of cloud integration to provide powerful protection at an affordable price. You’ll learn:

Dell Software has announced the release of its Dell Backup and Disaster Recovery Suite, a bundle of data protection services designed with SMB needs in mind for cloud, on-site and virtual configurations. I was able to speak with Michael Grant, a Dell Account Manager, who explained the development process for this latest suite.

To begin, Michael stressed that the Dell team went straight to the source, their customers, for their common problems faced, as well as any emerging needs they need addressed. What the Dell team found was that many SMBs are currently working with a “one size fits all” solution, but the reality is that their needs have been changing, and many of “one size” solutions force SMBs to either over pay or under protect.

IP desktop phone developer snom technology AG and voice services and solutions provider Teliax announced at the ITEXPO West conference in Las Vegas that snom’s 7xx series desktop phones and Teliax’s VoIP management solution are interoperable.

“The entire snom line of IP telephones are very high quality and have a long history of reliability,” said Kerry Garrison, VP of Retail Operations at Teliax. “Completing interoperability with the snom line ensures that our customers will have an excellent experience when using these devices, enabling them to use the IVY platform with even more ease.”

On my current business trip, with its stops at the CompTIA ChannelCon conference in Phoenix and the D&H Distributing New England show in Boston, I am well and truly OOF. Don’t get me wrong – I mixed in a wee bit of pleasure along the way, visiting MoMA in NYC to look at modern art. It even had geek art!

It was at MoMA that I stumbled upon the OOF painting (pictured) by master artist Edward Ruscha (American, born 1937). While Ruscha has his own interpretation of the OOF as a cartoon strip utterance, I know it as a geek term:

Enterprise file-sync-and-share provider WatchDox announced the forthcoming availability of its Cloud Content Connectors, which will extend protection to files created or stored in cloud storage repositories. It will first offer its Cloud Content Connector for Google Drive.

Tour de Force CRM , a CRM, SFA, and BI software solution provider focused on serving B2B industries, has earned a position in the Niche quadrant of the Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation.”

Quantum acquires cloud backup vendor Symform

San Jose, Calif.-based Quantum announced plans to acquire Symform’s cloud storage technology and the associated development team, broadening its cloud-based backup offerings. While best known for its tape and disk storage solutions, Quantum customers have been asking for cloud backup capabilities, a request Symform’s technology can meet while adding cloud archiving and file sync and share. Symform’sdistributed cloud backup technology protects a customer's data by breaking it into disparate pckets which are then encrypted and distributed using the excess capacity on multiple customers' storage devices.

Gartner releases Magic Quadrant for UC 2014

Microsoft and Cisco maintained their lead in this year’s Unified Communications Magic Quadrant while Avaya and Mitel – thanks largely to its Astra acquisition – rounded out the Leader’s quad. The annual vendor ranking report focuses on on-prem UC equipment while a separate report addresses cloud-based UC offerings. There is an analysis of each vendor’s offerings and their relevance to the market. While Gartner is primarily focussed on enterprise deployments, the report has some significance for the channel as several of these organizations, including all the leaders along with ShorTel and NEC, have strong channel programs and SMB presence.

• Leaders: Microsoft, Cisco, Mitel (from Visionaries in 2013), Avaya.
• Visionaries: Unify (from Leaders in 2013), IBM (from Challengers in 2013)
• Challengers: NEC, Alcatel-Lucent
• Niche Players: ShoreTel, Interactive Intelligence, Huawei (from Challengers in 2013)

Symantec narrows the field, plans September CEO announcement

During its Q1 earnings call Mountain View, Calif.-based Symantec told Wall Street analysts its search for a new CEO is almost over and the company plans to make an announcement in September. Michael Brown, who has been serving as interim CEO since Steve Bennett was dismissed, said the search committee “has met with a number of highly qualified candidates” and is now down to the final vetting process. As for fiscal performance, earnings were up 50 percent for the quarter, generating a quarterly profit of $236 million, beating analyst expectations.

Force 3 Names New CEO, Lays Stake In Federal Networking And Security

In other executive news, Crofton, Md.-based Force 3 announced Mike Greaney is going to be its new CEO. Mike Greaney, who is being promoted from his previous position as President of Force 3 Federal, says he wants to see the company, currently known as a federal VAR, to carve out a specific identity and specialization in networking and security. Going forward, Greaney says Force 3 will transition to delivering next gen networking with SDN and cloud. Along with networking, security is going to be critical, especially for the federal government clients that make up 95 percent of Force 3's customers.

BlackBerry turns corner?

According to an internal memo reported by Reuters, Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry has finished shedding staff and will even hire in certain departments as the company looks to make up ground in the mobility market. “We have completed the restructuring notification process, and the workforce reduction that began three years ago is now behind us,” BlackBerry CEO John Chen said in the memo. “More importantly, barring any unexpected downturns in the market, we will be adding headcount in certain areas such as product development, sales and customer service, beginning in modest numbers.” Over the past three years, Blackberry has laid off 60 percent of its workforce while its share of the smartphone market dropped from 19 percent in 2010 to less than one percent in the most recent quarter (as reported by IDC). Chen, who brought a reputation for turning around troubled companies to the job when he took over in November, assured employees in the memo that Blackberry will meet its goal of having positive cash flow by the end of the fiscal year.

Security researcher cautions AWS customers

Organizations using Amazon Web Services customers should pay careful attention to the security architecture they use, warns Andres Riancho. An application security expert who leads the development and maintenance of web application security scanning project w3af, Riancho warned attendees of the 2014 Black Hat USA Briefings that cloud security problems, including serious breaches, can come from system configuration weaknesses and common web application vulnerabilities. Making a simple configuration error opens an attack vector that can enable an attacker to control virtual instances and access critical resources stored at AWS or any cloud hosting service. Last year vulnerability management vendor Rapid7 conducted a study which discovered thousands of publicly visible files, including account credentials and sales records. “It is my impression that this is not Amazon’s fault that these issues exist,” Riancho said. “Most of the vulnerabilities this year are from misconfigurations or small things where the developers working on applications made mistakes.”

TestudoData will hold webinars on August 15 and 19 to educate SMBs on the Postini Transition and migration options to Proofpoint or McAfee security services.

Intuit, Inc. study “Small Business Success in the Cloud” found that by 2020, nearly 80 percent of U.S. small businesses will be adapted to cloud computing, more than doubling the 37 percent currently using cloud technology.

Inuit believes that this will trend will transform the way that small businesses operate as they become more cloud dependent and gain access to services that can improve efficiency and success.

Happy Friday, SMB Nation Community! I am excited to share a somewhat different piece of news with you all. Harrybbb’s niece, Christa, took first place at the first-ever Paraclimbing National Championships, held in Atlanta late last month. This particular competition was a preliminary for the finals, which will be held in Spain this coming September. Christa will be competing with fellow lower leg amputees.

From the left, this photo shows the womens lower extremity amputee finishers:  Christa Brelsford (1st place), Bonnie Denis (2nd place)  Savannah Shanton (first place in youth), Lisa Aguilar (3rd womens), and Kareemah Batts (4th womens). 

by Webroot Guest Blogger

MSPs accustomed to managing on-premise security solutions take note: your business is moving to the cloud.

Security in the cloud is growing steadily. Gartner Inc. predicts that the cloud-based security services market will grow to $3.1 billion in 2015, up from $2.1 billion last year. The company notes that growth in cloud security will “remain strong.” Market researcher Infonetics affirms that trajectory. The company states that cloud-based security service revenue will expand at a 10.8 percent compound annual growth rate through 2017, when the company projects the market will reach $9.2 billon.

Naverisk 2014 R1, which promises to deliver unique and superior innovations in Remote Monitoring and Management and Service Desk Innovations to MSPs and IT service providers, is now generally available.

Telkonet business division EcoSmart, an energy management technology platform, announced its system will be installed in all guest rooms, lobby areas and meeting spaces at the Hilton Barra in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Global technology distributor Avnet, Inc. today reported its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2014 results. Its Q4 results were better than expected after a weaker than anticipated Q3 and fiscal year results marked Avnet’s return to year-over-year growth.

Sales grew by 8 percent to nearly $27.5 billion, and CEO Rick Hamada said “meaningful improvements” were made in FY2014, including adding $2 billion to Avnet’s top line, expanding margins and returns, and growing adjusted diluted earnings per share by 16.8 percent. 

FreeWave Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of Machine to Machine and Internet of Things wireless networking solutions, announced it will showcase its WavePoint platform at M2M Evolution’s 2014 Battle of the Platforms, a competition against other industry-leading M2M platforms.

Seattle, WA-based network security company, WatchGuard Technologies, recently announced a series of enhancements to its partner program, set for general release in January 2015. As of this writing, the updated program is not available in Asia Pacific. The WatchGuardONE program has pivoted focus from pure volume sales to a blend between volume sales and a big emphasis on reseller training and certification.

I’d like to start with a bit of background on WatchGuard, to set the stage before we get into the meat and potatoes. This organization has been in the Leader section of Garther’s Unified Threat Management Magic Quadrant for four (4) consecutive years. In addition, WatchGuard has received industry recognition for its WatchGuard Dimension visibility solution.

Email messaging and web security solutions provider AppRiver, LLC, released its mid-year Global Security Report, an analysis of threats and malware trends tracked during the first half of 2014.

Cumulus Networks today announced upcoming availability of Cumulus Linux 2.2, about a year after the original release of Cumulus Linux. The newest edition of Cumulus Linux supports 16 hardware platforms, two CPU architectures and five vendors, empowering customers with flexibility while providing high efficiency.

It’s that time of year again. Join us at the Brelsford house on Bainbridge Island, WA Thursday, August 21, from 4:30-8:30 pm!

We’ll have the food, giveaways and drinks, but it’s up to you to bring yourselves for great conversation and networking.

This year’s picnic is sponsored by Puget Sound Energy and D&H.

Register for this event at: http://westsoundtechnology.org/events/upcoming-events/august-annual-picnic

In a previous article, I discussed how many technology companies don’t really understand that partners are the key to selling into the SMB customer space. Some companies seem to get this, and are taking a “partner first” sales strategy. However, just allowing partners to sell your product and/or receive referral fees is missing a key aspect of the channel: it’s really all about services. Margins on subscription products aren’t typically enough to keep the lights on for many partners, let alone pay for a retirement shack on a sleepy Caribbean island. Again, attachedapps gets this. They are building their apps and partner program to enable partners to build a robust services business in addition to receiving generous margins on sales of the apps.

Today, D&H Distributing announced that it will be holding its annual, one-day New England Technology Show on August 12 in Quincy, MA. As of this writing, D&H is expecting over 500 reseller and dealer attendees to be at this event, slated to take place at the Boston Marriott Quincy Hotel.

Here’s an overview of the event agenda:

Middle and High school students across the United States can enter the third Verizon Innovative App Challenge and create app concepts that solve problems in their schools and communities.

This challenge, designed to encourage youth interest in science, technology, engineering and math, lasts through Nov. 24. Teams will be judged on whether the concept solves community challenges, includes STEM principles, and is creative, unique and innovative.

In the world of business, investors have different liquidity preferences. For example, the investment portfolio of financial instruments such as stocks and certificates of deposit (CDs) are considered to be liquid. You can access the $$$ quickly. A real property portfolio top heavy in raw land real estate would be considered illiquid. The reason I’m seating the table herein is to weave in the world of Office 365.

RapidFire Tools announced that it is currently at the CompTIA ChannelCon 2014 event in Phoenix, AZ. At this event, taking place from today, August 4 through August 6, RapidFire Tools will be discussing IT Assessment Sales strategies.

In particular, RapidFire Tools will be demonstrating its latest HIPAA Compliance module, as well as the new multi-lingual reporting features of its flagship Network Detective solution.

Data protection and disaster recovery company Unitrends achieved its 22^nd consecutive quarter of record growth in Q2 2014.

Unitrends, within the past year, added 45 employees and 928 new customers and increased worldwide bookings by 51 percent and bookings throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa 770 percent.

Sales for Unitrends Enterprise Backup and Unitrends Virtual Backup grew 100 percent from the first half of 2013 to H1 2014.  ReliableDR grew more than 2,000 percent from H1 2013 to H1 2014.

SherWeb announced it acquired ORCS Web Inc., a Windows-based managed hosting provider that will continue to operate as a SherWeb subsidiary.

A day doesn’t pass without an inquiry from a sponsor/vendor/PR agency in the IT community proposing a great partnership. Those making this offer are well-schooled in a solicitation dialect that is ambiguous at best and deceptive at worst. In our experience, it’s been like the famous “money transfer scam,” repackaged in 2014 for the IT community.

Partnership Opportunity

Here is a representative e-mail from a vendor in the cloud space:

By Raymond Vrabel, Director, Technical Account Management, Continuum Managed IT Services

Part 6 of a monthly blog series examining tips on how MSPs can work to break “bad” business habits that they might unknowingly fall into as a result of just wanting to get things done.

In the previous installment of “Breaking Bad,” I discussed why you shouldn’t miss your mid-year business check-up. In this month’s blog, I offer a how-to guide on navigating the upcoming busy trade show/events season. Our industry is a bevy of event activity throughout the year, however the fall season seems to be the busiest with “back-to-school” mode following summer break. There are various considerations behind an events plan, including objectives for attending specific events, budgeting time and money, and the plan of attack on-site.

HP is capitalizing on the chaos in the server market right now with its new Smart Choice campaign. It’s aimed at educating and encouraging HP partners to sell into IBM server-side accounts. Why? Earlier this year, IBM stated its intentions to leave the server market. This follows its departure from the PC market in the 2005/6 time frame. It’s part of IBM’s reboot to become a cloud and services company. One man’s loss (IBM) and another man’s gain ((HP).

Recently, ManageEngine announced the latest app available for its existing FreeTools program, which currently has 40+ apps available. The WiFi Monitor Plus app is a free, easy-to-use tool that IT Admins can use to monitor and analyze available WiFi networks in their area, all from an Android device.

The IBM board of directors elected Alex Gorsky and Peter Voser to the board, beginning September 1, 2014 and January 1, 2015, respectively. After their elections take effect, the board will have 14 members.

“We are delighted that Alex and Peter will be joining the IBM board of directors. Both are accomplished international business leaders. Alex and Peter each have deep and successful experience running information-intensive global enterprises and both are well known as pacesetters in innovation. Their expertise and insights will be extremely beneficial to IBM and our shareholders.”

Gorsky is the chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson and held multiple executive positions with Johnson & Johnson prior to being named CEO. He also serves on boards of the Travis Manion Foundation and the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation.

Voser is a retired CEO of Royal Dutch Shell plc. He held various executive positions at the Dutch global energy and petrochemicals company and also served as CFO of the Asea Brown Boveri Group of Companies. He serves on the boards of a variety of organizations including Catalyst and the St. Gallen Foundation for International Studies and is the director of Roche Holding Ltd.

TES Global, a network of teachers worldwide with nearly 6 million registered teachers, has acquired Blendspace. Blendspace is a strategic acquisition for TES Global, as its web-based tools enable teachers to create self-paced digital lessons for students.

The Blendspace business and team will become part of Wikispaces, acquired by TES Global in February 2014. Previous Blendspace customers can continue to use Blendspace and premium features will now be available for free.

According to Ancestory.com: “In general, we think of a generation being about 25 years - from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child.” With that understanding, by the end of this blog, you’ll either concur or dissent that we’re going to see the elimination of software piracy within the next 25-years. I look at Office 365 as a piracy elimination tool as Microsoft’s third greatest move. The first was acquiring the MS-DOS operating system from the north Seattle computer shop on the cheap (see the book “GATES” for details). The second was the creation of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program where the best minds in the business provided no-cost technical support to customers on forum board and other “community goodness” vehicles.

This is how it will work:

Cloud infrastructure monitoring service Site24x7 introduced its partner program that will enable cloud, platform and service providers to deliver website, server and application performance management.

Site24x7 provides low cost, robust application performance monitoring, which is ideal for SMBs and customers looking for comprehensive and customized solutions.

A common question and concern in the vendor community is the impact of Office 365. On the surface, Office 365 facilitates the notion of doing more with a lot less. That’s not good for OEMs selling servers and other vendors whose business models are predicated on growth. But there bright spots:

Pictured: IT Pros looking at Office 365-ready devices at a Windows 8.1 device bar at a recent workshop in Toronto, Onatrio Canada

Like the Cloud technologies fueling the market, cloud migration is creating major opportunities for IT services companies and their investors. Thus it is unsurprising that SkyKick, a Seattle-based start-up that specializes in Office 365 migrations, has secured $3 million in funding – bringing total investment in the company to $7.2 million.

“This round will help us reach thousands more partners around the globe,” said SkyKick co-Founder and co-CEO Todd Schwartz in a statement.

The company plans to use the money to double its staff from 40 to 80 people and to seize the global opportunity for automating Office 365 migrations, including the sales, planning, migration and management.

To date, SkyKick has helped thousands of IT solution providers and distributors like Ingram Micro and SYNNEX Corporation move thousands of businesses to Office 365. Its founding team consists of co-CEOs Evan Richman and Todd Schwartz, who held various leadership positions on Microsoft's Office and Bing teams, and CTO Brad Younge, a member of the founding team at Drugstore.com.

This rounds also adds several strategic private equity investors as well as some notable angel investors such as investor/advisor to Facebook, Twitter and Urber, Tim Ferris, former Qwikki COO, Navin Thukkaram, and Ironfire Capital.

Ricoh Americas Corporation announced the release of the Ricoh App for Google Cloud Print web printing services, which will make its business-class printers and multifunction products compatible with Google Cloud Print.

This application allows organizations to print from devices with Internet access without the need for costly print servers and drivers, lowering the cost of business-class document services.

Earlier today, Microsoft announced that it has expanded its recent Microsoft Software and Systems Academy (MSSA) to include two new military bases in the Southwest. The two additions are Camp Pendleton in California, and Fort Hood in Texas, which are two of the largest bases in the country.

ABI Research analysis indicates that OEM and Aftermarket Telematics will become dominant sectors for cellular M2M connections, growing to at least a 40 percent connection.

As OEM and Aftermarket Telematics become dominant, advanced metering infrastructure and remote monitoring and control are expected to lose their positions as top market share for cellular connections.

As a small business owner, you probably know a thing or two about marketing. After all, getting word out and spreading the message about your goods and services is how you grow your business. So here's a question for you: What does potato salad have to do with your marketing? The chances are, unless you're running a salad bar, relatively little. But now there's a marketing lesson to be learned from this popular side dish thanks to a young, and hungry man, called Zack Brown.

Zack started a Kickstarter campaign, perhaps half jokingly, to raise the money to make a potato salad. He was only seeking $10 but his savvy campaign has now raised $52,000 in donations to date. That's a lot of green stuff going into just one salad!

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that attracts entrepreneurs, musician, artists, designers, authors or anyone else looking to raise some money for their project. In exchange for a donation, users receive a reward. For example, if a band is trying to record a new album, a small-time donor might receive a digital download of the album while someone investing more could be offered an autographed vinyl version of the album.

A lot of technology companies that want to sell into the SMB customer space don’t really understand the role that partners play. They tend to take the Field of Dreams approach of “if you build it, they will come”, thinking that SMBs will take the time and effort to search out new products, then purchase, install, configure and customize them on their own without using their trusted partner. Experience and research has proven that most SMBs just don’t have the time, patience or skills to do so, leaving a lot of company executives scratching their heads wondering why their product isn’t selling. That’s why it’s refreshing to see attachedapps launching their products with a true “partner first” sales strategy.

Seeking to bring order to chaos, Parallels recently launched SmartStart for Office 365 to help resellers, VARs and MSPs provision, implement and manage Office 365 and other services. But more on that in a moment.

Pictured: Todd Carter from Parallels demonstrating his company’s solutions

In meeting with John Zanni, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), he sees the market suffering from a service provider sprawl problem. SMBs are consuming more cloud services, with up to half of those purchases being direct. So you have SMBs having to manage different technologies from different companies with no integration. That’s causing SMBs to focus more on IT than running their business. “We need to get back to the VAR/trusted advisor model” Zanni stated. “Parallels’ mission is to help solve the service provider sprawl problem.”

By Bob Vogel, B2 Marketing

Shane Swanson and Eric Pepe both wear two hats: one belongs to ARRC Technology, the thriving MSP based in Bakersfield, CA; the other hat belongs to CharTec, the innovative ground-breaking spin-off that trains other MSPs how to run their businesses better.

One of the many things the two organizations share in common is Network Detective, the industry's leading non-invasive IT Assessment tool.

To hear Shane and Eric tell this story in their own words, click here to watch a short excerpt from a recent webinar they delivered for the HTG Group.

Good news for the IT channel in Spiceworks’ State of IT Survey

According to the most recent edition of Spiceworks’ annual State of IT report IT budgets are on the rise and will drive increased adoption of the cloud – and especially Backup and Disaster Recovery services – over the next year. More than 1,100 IT pros from North America and EMEA responded to the survey by the Austin, Texas-based IT support company, which found that almost half of respondents (42 percent) plan to increase their annual spending over the next year, while only 16 percent expected a decrease in spending. This will lead to hiring for 40 percent of respondents. The survey also dug into what trends are currently driving business and presenting the most promising opportunities in the IT industry. Cloud services are at the top of the list with 65 percent of North American respondents saying they use the cloud while the number for EMEA was 56 percent. Furthermore, eight percent of companies plan to adopt cloud services within the next six months. Only 27 percent of respondents indicated that the cloud is not going to be part of their immediate future. The survey also found that mobility is not losing any momentum, with 68 percent claiming they already have corporate BYOD policies in place. Of those, 60% supporting employee-owned smartphones, 51% support employee-owned tablets and 38 percent support employees’ laptops.

Latest Catbird release provides OpenStack security integration

Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Catbird released the latest version of its eponymous security policy automation and enforcement suite. While previous iterations of the solution only offered logic-based security for VMware networks, the 6.0 release adds the ability to protect OpenStack powered cloud services. The Catbird solution is designed to work with the virtualized infrastructure typical of today’s networks and clouds – filling a hole the company says is left by firewalls and intrusion detection systems that still function the same way they did 10 years ago. According to the company this is typical of 90 percent of its customers. The company expects the next five years mark a major shift from physical to virtual security systems that can match the automation, agility and awareness of the rest of the data center stack, delivering reduced costs more effective security and flexibility. Catbird is currently recruiting VARs and MSPs as it builds a channel program.

Microsoft CEO Nadella talks transition

The conversation during Microsoft’s Q4 earnings call was all about transition as the company posted strong growth numbers. "On an operating basis, we grew revenue 10 percent and operating income 12 percent," said CEO Satya Nadella. "We accelerated our commercial cloud business to a $4.4 billion annual run rate. And perhaps more importantly, we made bold and disciplined decisions to define our core as a productivity and platform company for the mobile first, cloud first world."

The company reported revenue of $23.38 billion for Q4, up more than 17 percent year on year, while net income dropped more than 7 percent to $4.61 billion. The numbers for the fiscal year end were also strong, with revenues of $86.83 billion, up more than 11 percent from the previous year, generating net income of $22.07 billion for the year, up 1 percent.

Last week the company announced it would lay off 18,000 workers – 12,500 from Nokia, which it acquired before Nadella took over and over his rumoured objections. This will lead to a restructuring charge of $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion which it will be realized in fiscal 2015.

Nadella made several product announcements during the call. For example, the company will not be divesting its Xbox division, something called for by some investors. Of particular interest to the channel, Nadella announced plans to "streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one, single converged operating system for screens of all sizes." The company currently sells and supports different OS’ for PC’s (Windows 8.1), The Surface tablet (Windows RT) and smartphones (Windows Phone).

VMware beats street with strong license, services

Like several other tech companies that recently announced their numbers (e.g.: Blackberry) VMware beat analysts’ performance expectations with strong revenues for Q2 2014. The results were led by strong growth in both licensing and services and continue to lay the foundation for VMware's three targeted growth areas: software-defined data centers, hybrid clouds and end-user computing. Q2 revenues were $1.46 billion, up 17 percent from a year earlier and significantly higher than the 1.35 billion expected by Wall Street analysts. VMware also reported GAAP earnings of $167 million (38 cents per share), down from $245 million (57 cents per share), a decline the company attributed to its acquisition of mobile device management developer AirWatch in February.

Juniper Networks to divest Junos Pulse suite for $250 million

Juniper Networks announced it will sell its Junos Pulse mobile security portfolio to Siris Capital for $250 million. "Pulse is a good asset. The issue is that it's not in line with our strategy, which is very much focused on cloud and High-IQ networks and how those markets are shaping," Juniper CEO Shaygan Kheradipir said during an earnings call with analysts. New York City-based Siris Capital is a private equity firm concentrated on technology investments. Both companies promised to work together to ensure customers and partners are fully supported through the transition. Juniper posted Q2 sales of $1.2 billion, a 7 percent increase from the same period last year, while net income for the quarter increased 125 percent to $221.1 million. Product revenue for Junos Pulse fell 21 percent from $19.3 million to $15.9 million, while the portfolio raked in and additional $15.5 million in services.

Provincial Development Group, Inc. announced its president, Blain Wease will be a presenter at CompTIA ChannelCon 2014. His presentation will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on August 4.

“The IT space is in a tremendous season of opportunity and transition,” says Wease. “I look forward to discussing tangible ways of navigating transformation and transition with business leaders who are walking through these waters in real time.”

Unvired, Inc. today announced the release of its Application Development Platform for Wearables, allowing developers to build applications for Wearables including smart glasses and smart watches.

Along with the release of this platform, Unvired launched its first Glass and Wear applications that integrate SAP, bringing information from SAP onto Wearables.

Registration Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/363612904

Thursday, July 31, 2014 10:00 - 11:00 AM PDT

Presented by: David Maffei, VP, Global Channel Sales, Carbonite and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation

Carbonite is very excited to announce its new Partner Program designed to help you differentiate yourself from your competitors and provide you with the programs and tools to make the most of every sales opportunity. As we evolve our channel first strategy, we set out to re-design the partner program to help support and grow both our respective businesses. Join us to learn more about new:

By Stijn Hendrikse, CMO of MightyCall

As customers get in touch through multiple channels, SMBs are turning to cloud-based call center technologies to create deeper, more meaningful engagements.

Companies big and small know how a momentary lapse in customer service can have huge consequences. Keep a customer too long on the line and he hangs up. After that, he goes on to Facebook and Twitter to share his poor experience with hundreds of followers.

While companies with sizeable budgets can hire entire teams to handle voice calls at a call center and still respond quickly to customers on social media, small and medium businesses (SMBs) are often constrained by cost, manpower and know-how.

Level 3 Communications, Inc. announced it was selected by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to deliver a comprehensive suite of local area network managed services for the agency within the National Capital Region under the Washington Interagency Telecommunications System 3 contract.

Tony Scott, VMware CIO and senior vice president, has joined the Board of Advisors for channel-exclusive managed IT services solutions provider Continuum. He previously worked as a CIO at Microsoft and The Walt Disney Company and was General Motors Corporation’s CTO of Information Systems & Services.

Tony Scott will also speak at Continuum’s first user conference, Navigate 2014, which will take place September 21-23 in Boston.

Local SEO focuses on searches within a defined geographic area. You’ve probably already experienced local search by typing something like “best restaurants in Seattle” into Google which will return a list of local restaurants along with a map showing their locations.

Appearing in these local search results is very important for small businesses because the majority of their customers are located in a set area around their business. So what do you need to do to appear in these search results? Here are 4 basic steps that all small businesses should be taking to improve their local search results:

PowerSourceOnline.com is the largest B2B computer, printer, networking and telecom exchange that connects buyers and sellers of IT parts. The online marketplace for buyers and sellers of telecom systems and parts, networking equipment, computers and laptops and other IT equipment is the largest online network for the secondary telecommunication and IT marketplace. Since its creation in 1997, PowerSource remains committed to providing quality sourcing and disposition solutions of hard-to-find, excess, discontinued, obsolete and end-of-life computer parts and systems. With a global member base of over 2000 members consisting of Dealers, Resellers, Brokers and Service Companies, locating computer parts, systems, telecommunication equipment, peripherals, printers and networking equipment has never been easier! In 2010, Telecom Finders joined the PowerSource Online website and community to add telecom parts and equipment to the already expansive IT and computer parts and equipment database.

The growth of Office365 is enabling solution providers to extend their reach into the SMB customer segment in ways never possible before. However, there are some gaps in Office365 functionality, and Microsoft is increasingly looking for partners to fill them. One of the main areas of opportunity is to address the #1 business pain point for SMB’s: retaining, managing and growing customers. attachedapps are uniquely designed to enable partners to take advantage of that opportunity, while increasing their level of service to customers and driving incremental revenue. The apps are hosted on Microsoft Azure, and are sold on a subscription basis. Each app is designed to be very simple and inexpensive, yet flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of customer types and needs.

It pros, especially those who provide any measure of tech support to “regular” people, are usually an underappreciated lot. I have a friend who regularly fills her Facebook wall with rants about how stupid “regular” people are and about how they blame her whenever they screw up their technology.

“Of course your keyboard stopped working when you spilled your coffee in it.”

“No you didn’t delete the Internet.”

“It means any key not the any key.”

“You utter and complete dolt!”

I made that last one up, but I’m sure she thinks it every day. I’m equally sure it’s common throughout the tech support community.

Anyhow, there is some evidence suggesting that IT people, especially tech support, occupy a rung on the social and professional ladder somewhere between Comcast retention reps and lawyers.

That’s why several IT focussed companies, including Symantec, Rackspace, Canon and Spiceworks, have been trumpeting SysAdmin Day. In fact, Spiceworks has expanded the concept into a Christmas-like season with a 12 Days of Sysmas concept, complete with daily giveaways and contests.

Founded in 2000 by Ted Kekatos, SysAdmin Day is an annual day of appreciation for IT pros.

“My inspiration for the holiday was a print ad that HP was running showing their new model at the time, an HP LaserJet 4000 printer,” Kekatos told Spiceworks in a 2011 interview. “I had just bought several of them. The ad showed a sysadmin sitting in his cube. Outside of his cube was a line of users bringing fruit baskets and flowers. I tore out the ad and showed it to my coworkers. I thought ‘Hey this is great! A sysadmin is getting flowers, fruit and wine from his users!’ So that was how System Administrator Appreciation Day 1.0 got started.”

Kekatos went home and registered the name and put up a simple website picking the last Friday in July because it “seemed like a good day to have a company party with ice cream and cake.”

“We’re all about IT pros,” says Jen Slaski, Exec. Director, Marketing Communications for the Austin, Texas-based Spiceworks, adding that the company which provides networking and solutions for IT staffers has been doing something to celebrate the event every year since it opened its doors in 2006.

This year you can download all kinds of cool SysAdmin Day things from Spiceworks, including:

• A fun infographic: "Should You Buy Your SysAdmin a Beer?"
• A SysAdmin Day song
• SysAdmin wallpapers
• SysAdmin Day eCards
• An eBook: "Hiring Managers Tell All"
• A funny wordle

The company also ran a contest for a funny T-shirt (they ordered 250 and had 4000 entries in the first day), is running a streeter called IT Ambush – one of those go-out-and-interview-the-common-man features like Jay Leno used to do (or Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans if you live north of the 49^th Parallel) – on itsYouTube channelthat asks those “regular” people what their SysAdmin does for them, and will live stream a special SysAdmin Day edition of its next CTRL+ALT+TECH episode at 10am CDT Friday, July 25th. (You can find out how to tune in here or, if you’re in Austin, you can attend in person and be part of the live studio audience. Lunch will be served.)

It’s not shocking that Spiceworks has embraced the event so vigorously. Today there are about 5 million IT workers in the Spiceworks network (out of a total of about 15 million sys admins globally), collectively supporting about 104 million workers in 1.8 million companies, and influencing about $570 billion of the global $3.8 trillion IT industry.

The whole thing has been a huge success for the company, which provides networking and management solutions for the IT community. “That’s one of the cool things about this,” says Slaski. “We came up with the whole concept for our existing users. But now we are getting new people coming into our community and participating. We’ve also seen other tech vendors jumping on the bandwagon and doing their own promotions around it.”

So, to everyone who has provided me with tech support over the years, Happy Sysadmin Day. It’s your day so kick back with a beer and put your feet up. But make it a quick one okay? My computer keeps showing me this unhappy face emoticon on a blue screen and a “your computer needs to restart” message:

IBM company SoftLayer will offer the option to provide InfiniBand networking technology to connect SoftLayer bare metal servers. This option will increase accessibility to high performance computing as part of technical computing and enable companies to move HPC-level workloads to the cloud.

Earlier this week, D&H Distributing announced that has added new resources for its backup and disaster recovery resellers. These new resources include an interactive Solutions Lab webcast, to be broadcast this week, as well as a new marketing template for resellers to use with their end-users.

My Digital Shield announced the first version of its cloud-based security solution for small and growing businesses is available through its website and the channel.

MDS’ solution is designed to give small businesses access to enterprise-level security that is easy to install, configure and maintain. It protects against data breaches, hackers, and viruses while requiring no additional updates or plug-ins.

Today, BlackBerry Ltd. announced that it has released its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES10) as a hosted solution. BES10 Hosted grants users access to the BlackBerry EMM and security with the convenience of a hosted option, and it is now available globally via the company’s channel partners.

In economics there is the concept of a free good. Over the past several years, using the free good analogy, Microsoft Partners participating in the cloud Essentials program were gifted 250+ Office 365 E3 licenses for internal use. It served my own small business well, as everyone had full licenses, including our college interns. As you know, the Office 365 E3 SKU is one of the most robust levels.

Cloud company INetU announced it will offer integrated managed services across multiple cloud environments including support for Amazon Web Services. It will work to provide infrastructure to customers whether they run all on AWS, all on INetU, all on public or private clouds, or in combination.

At last week’s Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), I had coffee with J.D. Sherry, Vice President, Technology and Solutions, Trend Micro. It was a chance to rediscover Trend Micro and thus reintroduce it to the SMB Nation community. To be honest, it’d had been too long since we last spoke, both figuratively and literally.

Pictured: Trend Micro’s “Go Big” Presence at WPC

Data protection and disaster recovery company Unitrends announced it was recognized in Gartner, Inc.’s “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliances.” Gartner, a leading IT research and analysis firm, evaluated providers based on their ability to execute and the completeness of their vision.

Xerox announced John Kennedy will join the corporation as chief marketing officer and a vice president. Kennedy comes to Xerox after 18 years with IBM in a number of senior marketing, sales, and strategy roles.

Kennedy’s most recent role at IBM was as the vice president, global business services; in this role, he was responsible for marketing and generation of demand for their global business services.

Cisco, Microsoft announce data center initiative

Cisco and Microsoft announced a three year partnership to improve integration across their cloud and data center offerings. Under the agreement the tech giants will enhance the integration between their portfolios and streamline incentives for their mutual channel partners to go to market with joint Cisco and Microsoft technologies such as Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), Cisco's Nexus switching line and Microsoft Cloud OS solutions including Windows Server, System Center, SQL Server and Microsoft Azure. The deal builds on a 10-month pilot program announced last year that was expected to drive more collaboration between the two company’s partner communities by providing them with more training resources on bundled Cisco-Microsoft solutions. The new program will kick off with a joint initiative aimed at migrating Windows Server 2003 customers to Windows 2012 R2 on the Cisco UCS platform. Microsoft will end Windows Server 2003 support on July 14, 2015. The companies' partner incentive programs will be aligned as part of the new agreement, a key component of which is the new Cisco Referral Program (CRP), which will reward Microsoft partners for selling integrated Microsoft and Cisco data center solutions.

NetApp, Microsoft partnership extends private storage to Microsoft Azure

NetApp took the wrapper off a new solution that will extend on-premise data directly to the Microsoft Azure public cloud as part of a hybrid cloud environment. This is the second offering in NetApp’s Private Storage for Cloud initiative, which uses direct, secure connections to public cloud storage to combine the best features of on-prem storage and public cloud storage. The program was unveiled in 2012 with a similar engagement with Amazon Web Services. According to the company, the idea is to provide customers with the flexibility and cost savings of public clouds with the control and privacy of NetApp private storage. The new offering uses Microsoft Azure ExpressRoutetechnology to create private connections between customer IT infrastructure and Azure data centers, just as NetApp Private Storage for AWS uses Amazon's AWS Direct Connect technology to accomplish the same task. Similar arrangements are planned with other cloud services providers as they introduce similar high-performance direct connection capability.

Microsoft partners to provide Office 365 and Intune tech support

Through the newly announced Cloud Solution Provider program, Microsoft unveiled plans to allow its channel partners – including distributors, MSPs, ISVs and hosting providers – to bundle their products and services with Microsoft cloud services. Under the program, selected partners will be responsible for provisioning and managing cloud software for their customers, and they'll also handle technical support, said John Case in a WPC keynote address. This means partners will be able to give customers a single bill that includes both their services and Microsoft services, said the Corporate vice president of marketing for Microsoft Office. The program will be rolled out to "select" partners over the next year, starting with Office 365 and Intune. Azure, Dynamics CRM Online and other cloud services will be added later. Case did not disclose what qualifications will be required to be selected for the program. According to Microsoft Office 365 is its fastest growing business ever, turning over $2.5 billion annually. About three-quarters of Office 365 customers already get their services through a Microsoft partner.

Job cuts loom as Microsoft plans major reorganization

According to a report published by Bloomberg, Microsoft is planning to cut thousands of jobs in what would probably be the largest round of layoffs in company history. The Redmond, Wash.-based software company’s last major layoffs were in 2009 when it shed about 5,800 people in a move that cut $1.5 billion. Since it acquired Nokia’s handset division for $7.2 billion in April, Microsoft has more than 127,000 employees globally. While industry speculation is rife about how many people will lose their jobs and what divisions will be affected, it is no secret that new CEO Satya Nadella was opposed to the Nokia acquisition and will abandon the “Devices and Services” vision of former CEO Steve Ballmer that drove it instead preferring to focus on “platforms and productivity.”

Last week’s major event was the Microsoft Wordwide Partner Conference in Washington D.C. As you would expect, the entire week’s news cycle was dominated by Microsoft-related news, however a few other developments squeaked out so we’re running two Week That Was entries this week – the normal one and a special WPC Edition.

Verizon continues to revamp partner program, opening up enterprise accounts to the channel

Verizon Enterprise Solutions – the enterprise-oriented business arm of the New York telecom giant – is continuing to revamp its U.S. partner program by opening up about 1,700 of its biggest enterprise accounts to partners. Before now these accounts were the exclusive domain of Verizon’s direct sales team while the company’s channel partners concentrated on SMBs and the smaller end of the enterprise market. Going forward, the plan is to have partners collaborate with the direct sales team on the enterprise deals. Since reinventing itself last year as a more channel-friendly organization, Verizon’s partner base has grown rapidly, more than doubling to about 1000 partners. Verizon also announced the expansion of it’s partner program into Europe so this number will continue to grow, although the carrier says its preference is to focus on working with a smaller number of more intimate VARs and MSPs and to recruit a cast of thousands.

Apple enters enterprise market through partnership with IBM

Just as Blackberry, once the king of business mobility, seems to be continuing its consumer-oriented efforts through a recent deal with Amazon that will provide access to hundreds of thousands of Android apps, Apple is moving the other way. Apple and IBM announced a new strategic partnership through which IBM will develop more than 100 industry-specific iOS apps, platforms and services that will help Apple penetrate the enterprise market.

The two companies unveiled the first four areas they plan to focus on:

• IBM MobileFirst for iOS Solutions will be a series of business-focused applications targeting specific industry opportunities and has a planned release in the Fall.
• IBM MobileFirst Platform for iOS will deliver end-to-end enterprise mobile services including analytics, workflow, cloud storage, fleet-scale device management, security and integration.
• AppleCare for Enterprise will see IBM provide on-site Apple customer support for enterprise customers.
• Through IBM MobileFirst Supply and Management Big Blue will supply and activate iPhones and iPads, and providing MDM services and leasing options.

Extreme Networks absorbs Enterasys’ channel with joint partner program

San Jose, Calif.-based Extreme Networks finally integrated its disparate channel programs into a cohesive approach to market. The company has been supporting two separate programs since it acquired Enterasys last November for $180 million. The new program – the Extreme Partner Network – will increase both partner services revenue and deal registration and incentives. According to the company, the Extreme Partner Network will simplify the partner sales process by delivering a single distribution network for the combined product portfolio, while streamlining the partner segmentation and rewards system. The Extreme Partner Network segments partners into one of four tiers: Diamond, Platinum, Gold and Silver based on sales volumes and their Extreme pre-sales certifications. Another new feature of the Extreme Partner Network is ExtremeWorks, a services program that allows partners to either resell Extreme's professional and support services or offer their own directly to the client.

Rackspace upgrades cloud offering, positions for expanded managed services

Rackspace expanded its public cloud offering with the addition of two new service levels and an improved, more transparent pricing model in a move that will both position the company as a managed services provider and reduce opportunities for channel partners as it goes more direct in its sales model. The move isn’t shocking to many in the IT industry as Rackspace has been cultivating a reputation for being less than friendly to partners and has been accused of undercutting and going direct. The two news service tiers, Managed Infrastructure and Managed Operations, include a free cloud-monitoring service and technical support. Rackspace also unveiled a new program called developer+ which will allow software developers to sample the company’s cloud services with an “infrastructure credit.” The new billing model transparency comes through a commitment to make sure that the price of the cloud infrastructure is a distinct line item rather than being bundled in with numerous other calculations as has become typical in the industry.

I have to give credit to Cbeyond. It plays to win (versus being conservative and playing “not to lose”). I’ve tracked this company for many years and Cbeyond is always innovating and taking an aggressive posture in the SMB community. The “new” Cbeyond 2.0 is no different. The “old” Cbeyond was primarily focused on delivering high-quality telecom solutions to the SMB market via an aggressive direct sales model and a channel partner program. But times have changed and Cbeyond has reinvented itself to be a total solutions company with both voice and data packages. I wouldn’t say Cbeyond was or is necessarily known for being the lowest cost provider but it doesn’t have to be. It provides value. Read on.

Pictured: The Cbeyond gang with customers at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2014 event in Washington DC.

By Bob Vogel, B2 Marketing

The Network Assessment is arguably the most important and versatile service that you, as an IT service provider, can offer. And there are inexpensive tools available that allow you to perform this highly valuable service very quickly, and at little cost to you.

Datto and RapidFire Tools are teaming up to educate the market about the top ways to use IT assessments to not only find and win new business, but also to grow your existing accounts and keep them longer.

Click here to sign up for the next webinar, coming up this Thursday.

Sabre Corporation is hosting a hackathon to challenge developers to create revolutionary apps for the travel industry. The 24-hour hackathon, held on Aug. 1-2, is a non-stop event that allows developers to use Sabre’s APIs and other open technology providers to create a working travel application prototype.

Cloud-based intelligent sales automation software market leader Velocify announced it was chosen as one of AlwaysOn’s Global 250 Companies to Watch.

As recently as five years ago, small businesses of all shapes and sizes did the bulk of their digital work in front of a stationary, traditional PC. Unable to move around, entrepreneurs would boot their machines, wait for them to load, sign-in, and use a mouse and keyboard to find, edit, and create documents, presentations, and other necessary assets for their business. These steps were common and not considered terribly burdensome at the time. Today, however, technology has advanced and business is moving faster than ever.

NetSuite, Inc. announced they have acquired London-based Venda, in a deal that will allow NetSuite to expand into the European market.

By acquiring Venda, a leading cloud-based digital commerce solution provider, NetSuite will be able to better deliver an omnichannel commerce experience to their customers.

Cloud-based rich communication service Voxox has set a company record for third-party recognitions in the first half of 2014.

“Voxox is working tirelessly to establish the communication experiences of the future,” said Bryan Hertz, co-founder and CEO of Voxox. “We are honored that so many influential industry organizations have recognized our efforts, validating our position as an unrivaled unified communications leader and innovator.”

Parallels this week announced that it is the first company to support the new Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program, which was recently announced at WPC. In the wake of this new program, Parallels has developed SmartStart for Office 365, a program that helps Microsoft-approved resellers quickly get traction.

So what is it? Parallels SmartStart for Office 365 is a fixed-rate, low-cost implementation of the company’s Parallels Automation service with the addition of user training and certification, as well as the ability for partners to create a custom “storefront” or add any of the 500 current services available on the Parallels Automation platform. Any size of partner, from enterprise to SMB, is able to quickly deploy the full range of Microsoft cloud solutions. To date, Parallels partners have completed over 1.5 million Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange business class seats, with that number expected to grow exponentially in the coming years.

Dell Software yesterday launched solutions Dell DL1000 and Dell DR2000v and introduced an updated version of its AppAssure data protection software solution.

AppAssure 5.4.2 includes many new features such as cloud access management, cloud archive and import, scheduled and incremental archive, and expanded platform support.

Qliktag Software Inc. announced that it has strategically acquired epcSolutions’ Data Aggregator Software and related technology as well as social media and digital agency Buzzfactory Interactive Pvt. Ltd.

Acquiring epcSolutions’ technology is very strategic to Qliktag, as its assets will integrate well with current Qliktag solutions and Qliktag will obtain its existing customers. Nutrifacts, a mobile app for scanning groceries and product barcodes to receive nutritional information as well as discounts, is a significant part of the acquisition. 

Call it the economic multiplier effect. Microsoft is one of the biggest economic engines in the Seattle area (along with Boeing and Amazon). As is common in a sector, there are newly-formed businesses being created almost daily by former Microsoft employees. One such company is BitTitan, a software company that has an Office 365 migration tool. In 2007, Geeman Yip left Microsoft to create a tools software company. His intent was to fill gaps in the market, such as a migration solution. It’s important to remember that this was literally at the start of the Microsoft Online Services with its Business Productivity Office Suite (BPOS) product.

Yip shared that his company, while starting as a cloud-based migration solution, has expanded into other cloud services, where BitTitan can provide solutions that reduce friction. It has the following portfolio in market today:

Pictured: Harrybbb and the G-man!

Email marketing service provider StreamSend shared six steps how agencies and marketers can assist clients by adding online remarketing to their clients’ email mix and boosting email campaigns’ conversion rate.

Unitrends introduced Unitrends Virtual Backup 8.0 Monday, a virtual appliance that provides hypervisor-level protection for VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix.

This product, a vast improvement on its predecessor, PHD Virtual Backup, is a standout among competing systems in the industry. Compared to its peers, UVB 8.0 uses 66 percent less storage space and 75 percent less virtual resources, yet backup and recovery can be performed up to 20 times faster and it has the lowest overall cost of ownership.