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D&H Distributing said today that it has joined the Windows XP Migration Million Mile Tour as an official sponsor. The North America tour is bringing together small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to learn about the forthcoming April 8, 2014, deadline at which time support for Windows XP will terminate.
By Jay McBain, Co-Founder, ChannelEyes
It doesn’t come as a surprise to Channel Professionals that things are changing faster than ever across the partner ecosystem. A perfect storm of new technologies, transforming business models, rapidly evolving competition, consumerization and economic forces have fundamentally changed the traditional supplier/partner relationship.
Not only are things moving much faster, the relationships have become significantly more complex. 10 years ago, a solid email, phone, advertising and events strategy was all that was needed to communicate effectively to partners and customers. Today we have more than 30 marketing vehicles in play, and the level of noise and clutter is, at times, out of control.
How to Get Started on XP Migrations Segment Targeting
By Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation
Capitalizing on the WindoWs XP migration opportunity demands that you prioritize the segments you service first. Why? Different industries have different behaviors. And there are flight to quality considerations. Let’s get started on your vertical targeting.
Accounting
Just to level-set, the deadline for extended support for Windows XP is April 8, 2014. In the U.S., the tax filing deadline is April 15, 2014. This duration gap of one week theoretically creates a dangerous condition where the accountant has potentially exposed financial information to intruders. How? Wise hackers might well be developing an April 9th zombie that specially targets accounting applications and data, seeking to exploit this duration hole. Accountants typically go “heads down” right after the holi day season. So from Thursday, January 2, 2014 to Wednesday, April 16, 2014, accountants are focused on tax season, and no system conversions are allowed. Because of that, and as of this writing in early 4Q, it’s essential you target the accounting vertical first. All I can say is get ready for a busy holiday season as you migrate accountants away from Windows XP.
Read the rest of Harry's article in the Q3 2013 Issue of the SMBNation Magazine!
Late last week we heard from our friend Robin Robins, founder of the Technology Marketing Toolkit, who informed us that she has developed (and is now offering) a new video seminar series to show you how to get more high-quality clients to outsource their IT support to you, without discounting or hard-selling. But Robins warns that you must not hesitate as this new content (geared toward) companies selling outsourced IT support services) will only be available for a limited time.
Here we go again! As I do each week, I am really enjoying bringing our readers a quick round-up of the blog coverage I didn’t manage to get to during the week prior.
Having just wrapped up our annual fall conference earlier this month, we are now moving ahead full speed into planning mode for 2014. This includes our brand new eight-city tour, which is set to kick off in January, as well as our “Million Mile Tour,” focusing on April 8, 2014 end-of-support deadline(s) for both Windows XP and any Server 2003 SKUs. The tour leverages the Microsoft Community Connections business model of “Lunch and Learn” type Pizza webinars, and will be coming to a city near you this fall and into 2014! To learn more and to register for the tour, click here.
Thursday, October 31, 2013, 10-11am PDT
Presented by: Harry Brelsford, Jay Weiss and Astro Brelsford - The SMB Nation Mascot!
It’s NOW TIME in SMB IT and we’re happy to announce the availability of the Combat Kit that includes several Lenovo devices for your XP migration efforts. Learn how you can “eat your own dog food” by using the latest Lenovo devices. And remove the fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) as you have Windows XP migration conversations with your customers. Learn how you can acquire the Lenovo Combat Kit for a three-week “show and tell” period to hold customer meetings, learn the product line, etc. Time to go FLAT OUT on the Windows XP migration opportunity (e.g. learn how to ad $50K to your bottom line this winter doing this work). Discover the terms and conditions for using the combat kit (it’s a $5,000 value). And much more…
Tripwire, Inc., a global IT security solutions provider, and Edge Web Hosting, a cloud hosting company, recently announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership. Through this partnership, the two organizations would be able to offer a solution that meets multiple security and compliance regulations, including HIPPA, FISMA, SAS and SSAE.
By Gordon Lord, Director of Distribution and Channel Marketing, Schneider Electric IT
Small businesses are often expected to have similar capabilities as larger companies, but with far fewer resources at their disposal. While all IT managers have their unique set of challenges, small-to-medium sized business (SMB) IT organizations frequently face a distinct set of difficulties, such as limited space, small staffs and limited budgets.
By GrantThompson, Managing Partner/Solutions Architect, MG Technology Group
Part Three of a Four-Part Series offering guidance, hope and solutions for MSPs and VARs who are struggling to make money in the cloud.
In the last part of this series (go to: http://www.smbnation.com/magazine to download the Q2 2013 issue),I discussed positioning cloud services, bundling and adding your own intellectual property (IP) to cloud solutions. In this issue I will be covering adding billable hours revenue to cloud sales.
There are some really obvious things in this category–migrations for example.
StorageCraft told us today that they have released a new tool known as ShadowProtect IT Edition PRO, which provides IT professionals unlimited disaster recovery, data protection and system migration for Windows systems in their environment, without installing any software.
This week, VoIP-Catalog.com announced their list of the top 10 Business VoIP Service Providers. The rankings below are based on pricing models, service options and customer reviews.
The top 10 VoIP Companies as rated by Voip-Catalog.com are as follows:
By Danielle Sheer, VP and General Counsel, Carbonite; and Alan Guichard, Northeastern University School of Law
In this month’s edition of “Compliance in the Cloud” we take a look at the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act and the downstream compliance requirements on cloud service providers. The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, focused on reforming the financial services industry, in part by removing regulations that prevented the merger of banks, stock brokerage companies and insurance companies. As a result of permitting these types of mergers, however, financial institutions have access to an incredible amount of personal information.
We recently heard news that long-time community member, Dino White, President and CEO of New York-based Dicyn Solutions, recently suffered a stroke and was admitted to the hospital.
Please send positive thoughts to Dino and his family during this rough time! We hope he feels better soon!
Continuing its trend of acquisitions (on both fronts) Kaseya said that it has acquired 365 Command, a solution enabling IT organizations and MSPs to easily manage and administer the Microsoft Office 365 cloud application suite.
At Jabra, we hosts monthly webinars on subjects that matter to all of us – past webinars have covered the megatrends shaping the SMB market, the move to the cloud, and how devices deliver the total product experience in an increasingly software-centric world. We have a different guest host every month and believe that conversations and insight are more impactful than endless slides. Join us as we talk to industry experts, thought leaders, and others to better understand what's coming and what we – those of us who work with SMB's every day – need to do now to stay on top. To view past webinars visit us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
You already know the hardest part of business is finding, acquiring and pleasing customers; and of course, without them, there is no business. These relationships are typically built and grow over time and tending to them requires that you contact customers when you don’t have something to sell. The art of becoming a trusted advisor means that you establish a relationship where you inform customers without being self-serving - make an honest effort to pass along value for value’s sake.
By Bob Vogel, B2 Marketing
Many readers of this newsletter are owners or employees of very small IT service organizations, just like AF Technical Resources, a five-person shop based out of Milwaukee, WI.
Scott Granicki, the company’s owner, will tell you that being small has its advantages – most particularly being nimble, fast-to-respond, and being able to operate with much lower overhead than the larger IT shops he successfully competes against every day.
Click here now and you’ll hear Scott reveal how his little company is able – in his own words – “to cast a huge shadow and win business over the big IT firms.”
By Jesse Hebisen, Centurion Technologies
We have all been there; no matter how many times we tell them - DO NOT CLICK the link in the email, they still do it. Now the client is upset and you have to spend time to clean the computer and get them up and running again. Even worse, in the course of fixing the problem, the client may lose valuable data or emails saved before the attack.
But what if there was a different way to approach this age old problem? What if you could not only immediately erase the malicious code, but also make sure the client’s data stayed secure? When the client calls, what if all you had to do was tell them “Restart your computer”?
snom technology sai
d that it has doubled its factory warranty to two years on its entire line of desktop IP phones and its PA-1 pager, lowering the total cost of ownership and boosting customer’s return on investment.
SMB Nation today announced that Lenovo, the world’s largest PC manufacturer, has joined the Windows XP Migration Million Mile Tour as an official sponsor. The North America tour is bringing together small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to learn about the forthcoming April 8, 2014 deadline at which time support for Windows XP will terminate.
Earlier this week, Dot Hill Systems Group announced that they have entered into an OEM agreement with Teradata, an organization specializing in analytic data platforms. Under this agreement, Teradata will add the Dot Hill AssuredSAN 4000 Series midrange storage systems to certain data warehousing and data analytics appliances.
D&H Distributing is inviting its VAR partners to attend its latest Solutions Lab webcast, “iSCSI Storage: More Value Than Meets The Eye.” This educational session will be conducted via www.dandh.com tomorrow from 2:00 pm to 3:00 p.m. ET. The session, whih will include a live Q&A after the presentation., is presented at no charge for D&H customers, and will available to both US and Canadian resellers.
Artisan Infrastructure has formed a strategic partnership with Arrow Electronics to deliver cloud-based data protection infrastructure to support NetApp customers. Available as an offering for the channel through Arrow’s ArrowSphere marketplace, the new service includes NetApp data protection infrastructure and a full suite of service enablement to speed time-to-market, simplify billing and contracts and reduce management overhead.
Today, Ovum released preliminary research which showed that 90% of organizations are in danger of becoming irrelevant to their customers. The main obstacle holding companies back is a combination of slow decision cycles and a lack of workforce engagement.
I’ve always had a wandering eye for sexy user interfaces (UI). For it was I who worked on an early Apple Lisa computer when the IBM PC ruled. I quickly followed by purchasing an original Macintosh and salivated at the famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial reflecting the Orwellian “Big Brother” message of shattering conventional wisdom, and the MS-DOS view of the world. I raised the flag for the Windows NT Advanced Server release in the early 1990s when my fellow NetWare red heads sneered at the “comical” UI. We’re at the point again in our IT history. Windows 8.1 is here complete with the Start button the early “eight haters” missed so much.
By Paul Ayers, Offer Manager, Networking Solutions, Schneider Electric
If you’re centrally managing your customers’ data centers and server rooms, it’s increasingly likely that you’re responsible for more than one site. In many cases, it may be more like 5, 50 or even 500 sites being managed centrally without dedicated IT staff at each one.
In these cases, technology must do most of the heavy lifting. Here are four tested ways that can help you to manage your customers’ sites more effectively with a centralized IT management model.
Here we go again! As I do each week, I am really enjoying bringing our readers a quick round-up of the blog coverage I didn’t manage to get to during the week prior.
Having just wrapped up our annual fall conference a little more than one week ago, we are now moving ahead full speed into planning mode for 2014. This includes our brand new eight-city tour, which is set to kick off in January, as well as our “Million Mile Tour,” focusing on
April 8, 2014 end-of-support deadline(s) for both Windows XP and any Server 2003 SKUs. The tour leverages the Microsoft Community Connections business model of “Lunch and Learn” type Pizza webinars, and will be coming to a city near you this fall and into 2014! To learn more and to register for the tour, click here.
Please take some time to peruse a few snippets of information that we didn’t get a chance to bring you last week….let us also know if there was something we might have missed, which is not mentioned in this entry…because as you know…we love news!
Throughout this year, we have been reporting and blogging on our partnership with Class Action Capital, which has signed on to assist the SMB community on offering guidelines, tips and information on a landmark $7-billion-plus class action settlement against credit card companies Visa and MasterCard.
We did it once. We’re doing it again. In the middle part of the first decade--between 2004-2007--it was an honor and a privilege to travel more than 1 million miles evangelizing Windows Small Business Server (SBS). Guess what? We’re back, and for some very important reasons.
First – you the partners have asked for it. Not a single conversation occurs today where an SMB IT Pro asks me what to do next. With the SBS life cycle complete and the alternatives seemingly spooky, I can report that you should strongly consider embracing the here and now: Windows XP and any Server 2003 migration opportunity.
Earlier today, NETGEAR, Inc. announced the availability of the new ProSAFE 16-port Gigabit PoE Smart Switch, the GS516TP. NETGEAR explained that this device is designed for SMB workloads and can operate on either AC or PoE (Power over Ethernet).
A few key features of the GS516TP include:
D&H Distributing said today that is has finalized plans for its annual Mid-Atlantic Fall Technology Show. The event, which will be held near D&H headquarters in Hershey, PA, will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 11am-8:30pm.
MaintenanceNet said today that Schneider Electric has deployed MaintenanceNet’s Service360 Auto Quote solution to improve and streamline the way it tracks, manages and transacts warranty extensions for end customers of their AC and DC-based back-up power products in conjunction with channel partners across North America. Through Service360, Schneider Electric is also gaining new capabilities to build self-service and partner enablement into the sales cycle to further expand business opportunities while enhancing the customer experience.
We’re right here in the trenches with you. Attend this essential webinar with Windows 8.1 experts to discover the new features partners must know to serve SMB clients now. Over one dozen new features will be discussed and we’ll even tie-in the Windows 8.1 integrations with the newly released Windows Server 2013 R2. If you “tracked” with us in leading the Windows 8 conversation in early March 2012 through our extensive use testing the past 18+ months, you won’t want to miss this important and timely webinar. This is sure to be one of the largest webinar audiences of the year – don’t miss out!
Expert panelists include:
Attend our COMPLIMENTARY pizza party exam cram session to discover how to pass the Master Certified Migration Expert exam from SMB Nation and XPmigrations.com. In this packed two hour session, you will:
Bonus: Pizza, Beverages, Door Prizes!
This exam cram session is delivered by SMB Nation’s Harry Brelsford, a 17-time SMB author and career geek!
DATE: October 23, 2013
TIME: 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm
VENUE: Westfield Century City Microsoft Store
10250 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA, 90067
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Earlier this week, Xerox announced that they have appointed Mike Feldman as the new Corporate Vice President and President of Large Enterprise Operations. Feldman previously served as the company’s Senior Vice President in the Global Document Services Business Group.
Yesterday, Polycom, Inc., announced that it has expanded interoperability with the BroadSoft UC Services line. This announcement added Polycom’s VVX300 and VVX 400 phone models to the interoperability list, which will help SMBs provide HD video and voice capabilities in their offices.
We heard from StorageCraft today that they have partnered with Advanced Backup Solutions to integrate StorageCraft ShadowProtect software into its line of Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) Appliances and offsite DR infrastructure.
It’s hard to believe that just about one year ago, Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast, damaging so many homes and businesses in its wake. While my family and I did not experience any damage to our personal property, and my home office was spared, I do know of so many friends and family members who experienced flooding, loss of property and other damages as a result. For us, the worst part of the storm was power loss for just about a week—a small price to pay as compared with some of the other stories I have heard over the last year from both families and business owners.
Pictured at right: The boardwalk on Long Beach, Long Island, was one of the many areas that experienced devastation as a result of Hurricane Sandy last year.
A day ahead of retail availability, you can now download Windows 8.1 from the Windows Store. There are many important reasons to do this. First – you’ve got your START BUTTON back! And there is the Lock App screen, helpful hints including the new Help+Tips app, new Mail app, improved People view, new desktop themes, improved power menu, IE 11 reading view, improved tracking protections, more disclosure in Express settings, and SkyDrive acts as a local file manager. Plus there are a lot of internal programmatic patches/fixes and updates but these aren’t as dramatic as you might think. Why? Because the reality is the periodic updates (yes – where you reboot your machine or it automatically does so in three days) incorporate patch pacing – a different paradigm from Patch Tuesday. Does that make sense?
Seriously – this is our PhD thesis on the Windows XP migration matter. It looks at the situation from the obvious market measurement and deadline perspectives to the cost of keeping an aging PC to look forward alternatives such as, eeek, cloud solutions.
"I’m going to replace my old system with a new one with Windows 8.
Can you move all of my stuff (programs, files and settings) to the new machine?"
If you get this kind of inquiries from your customers, take a look further.
Whenever users buy a new PC, or even upgrade an existing one, they need to transfer their files, settings, and most importantly applications to new computers, without reinstalls and without losing any of the data.
This is especially timely nowadays: XP "end-of-life" is going to even further increase the movement from old to new systems.
Frank Miles of Redwood, CA, was not even aware that this can be done when he learned about Zinstall. Now, Frank reports that he is finally able to answer “yes” when customers ask him the question above, and even more than that – both consumers and SMBs are willing to pay quite a bit to save the pain and cost of reinstalling everything from scratch.
You can check out the product in this video or on the product page.
Zinstall products allow to turn the migration demand into hard cash.
We have now opened a new program, which grants an affordable license exclusively to PC Technicians.
Plus, first 100 SMB Nation members who sign for this Partner Program get a free NFR license of WinWin – Zinstall’s flagship migration product.
In order to claim the above, fill in the SMB Nation Partner Program Form.
By Ari Rabban, Co-Founder and CEO, Phone.com
“Bring your own device” (BYOD) isn’t a new trend, but that doesn’t mean SMBs–or large enterprises, for that matter–have worked out all of the kinks. Part of the challenge has to do with how the change in ownership affects control over apps and the device itself.
Avaya said that its newest focus is to set a standard for collaboration and communications that are simple and effective and engaging. The company unveiled a set of new software and cloud-based services designed to transform the way enterprises and organizations work. The company says that its simple, intuitive solutions will be designed for partners to help employees to work more effectively, engage more easily, and make decisions faster so organizations can experience the advantages of a new age of collaboration.
Lenovo announced this week at the EDUCAUSE annual conference, two new rack servers, the ThinkServer RD540 and ThinkServer RD640. Armed with the latest Intel Xeon E5 processors, these highly efficient and flexible servers are designed for easy integration into existing IT infrastructures that handle demanding virtualization, cloud and compute-intensive workloads.
By Darrin Swan, Director, Global Sales and Business Development, Dell Service Provider Program
Trying to survive on product margins has been a losing proposition for years, but an equally poor business choice is to offer just a portion of the key IT services that customers require. Comprehensive services are the lifeblood of your business, and MSPs have a prime opportunity to differentiate themselves and expand business by taking a holistic approach. The secret to service success is the same as the channel's long-proven value proposition: becoming your customers' trusted IT partner and focusing on their overarching business priorities, not only their technology needs. That's an ongoing challenge for MSPs, especially when it comes to small and medium businesses.
D&H Distributing said that it has furthered its partner services initiatives via CRM (customer relationship management) capabilities through use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The distributor will integrate this product with targeted, content-rich marketing and communications campaigns to more proactively support and educate its reseller customers, as an extension of the distributor’s personalized customer service model.
VMware announced today at VMworld2013 Europe that it has acquired Desktone, a provider of desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) with an advanced multi-tenant desktop virtualization platform for delivering Windows desktops and applications as a cloud service.
By Nancy Hammervik
The IT channel is so much more than a product and service pipeline. It’s a collective system of professional relationships, technical expertise, and customer support and service capabilities. Despite the addition of cloud and managed services, the channel continues to be a value chain that connects consumers, providers and vendors. Today, the IT industry is focused less on discussions around specific products and services and more on creating positive business outcomes. Perhaps that’s why it’s become more important than ever to build and maintain productive partner relationships.
Continuum said today that it has hired two new industry experts to its executive management team: Paiman Nodoushani, vice president, engineering and chief technology officer; and Jeanne Hopkins, senior vice president and chief marketing officer. The moves deepen Continuum’s strengths in product engineering and development, as well as all aspects of partner and acquisition marketing programs.
By Bob Vogel, B2 Marketing
One of the things I love about the IT industry is the true sense of camaraderie that exists among this great community.
It doesn’t much matter what part of the country I visit -- or what trade show, event or association I attend – the story is always the same: almost everyone in this industry willing to share information, knowledge, and experiences.
One of many such examples of this is Jim Turner, President of Hilltop Consultants. Click here now to hear Jim share some powerful advice about managing internal QA of your services, best ways to audit T&M clients, and how to win new business 100% of the time.
Here we go again! As I do each week, I am really enjoying bringing our readers a quick round-up of the blog coverage I didn’t manage to get to during the week prior.
Here at SMB Nation, we are still in regroup mode having just wrapped up our annual fall conference this past weekend. In case you couldn’t make it to Las Vegas for the event, make sure you go to our main home page where you can find several blogs and photos discussing some of the session highlights, as well as what went on during the exhibit hall and who were the male and female winners of the annual Jim Locke Award!
Please take some time to peruse a few snippets of information that we didn’t get a chance to bring you last week….let us also know if there was something we might have missed, which is not mentioned in this entry…because as you know…we love news!
International Communications Corporation said that it has selected D&H Distributing as the sole channel partner for the launch of its AT&T-branded activeARC converged data networking platform. Designed specifically to help SMBs handle the growing challenges of performance-hungry network enabled applications, the solution simplifies the network into a single control point, making it easier for SMBs to control their data networks even when IT resources are limited.
Days one and two of SMB Nation's Fall Conference included show floor time, various sessions on the industry's most pressing topics, and of course Karl Palachuk's "camera monkey..." View below for just a few of the highlights...more coming soon!
This morning, SMB Nation kicked off its second day of programming in Las Vegas with Bill Hersh of D&H discussing VAR Best Practices. In true Vegas fashion, Bill’s session featured a lively discussion which included complimentary morning Mimosas, Irish Coffee and Bloody Mary cocktails! I am sure the crowd was already engaged in the discussion, but of course a morning cocktail doesn’t hurt, especially when you are in Vegas!
D&H's Bill Hersh poses with his fellow staff members and attendee at the distributor's booth at SMB Nation's Fall Conference.
Kaseya earlier this week announced the general availability of Kaseya Traverse, a solution that is now delivered as SaaS, and provides enterprise-class network performance monitoring, business service management (BSM) and predictive analytics for cloud, on-premise, hybrid, virtualized and distributed environments. The new offering provides a strong complement to Kaseya’s award-winning systems management suite of products, enabling proactive management and monitoring of the entire IT infrastructure.
Vonage Holdings said today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Vocalocity for $130 million, including $105 million in cash and $25 million in Vonage common stock.
WD (Western Digital) introduced today the new WD Sentinel DS5100 and WD Sentinel DS6100 (S-series) ultra-compact network storage plus servers.
SMB Nation officially kicked off its 2013 fall conference in Las Vegas this morning (following its pre-day programing yesterday) with Harrybbb’s traditional welcome and keynote speech.
(Pictured): CompTIA's Kate Hunt poses with Harrybbb after accepting her community award as SBSer of the Year at SMB Nation's Fall Conference in Las Vegas.
AVG Technologies is now offering enhanced support for Apple’s Mac operating system (OS) environments within its AVG Managed Workplace 2013 remote monitoring & management (RMM) platform. At the same time AVG Managed Workplace becomes the first RMM tool to offer agentless iOS management of Mac OS X devices including iPads and iPhones.
We heard today from Intronis that the company has formed its Partner Success organization. Led by Jasmine Lombardi, vice president of partner success, the new team is responsible for simplifying and accelerating the success of Intronis' partners.
“It has always seemed to me the real art in this business is not so much moving information or guidance or policy five or 10,000 miles. That is an electronic problem…
…The real art is to move it the last three feet in
face to face conversation.”
— Edward R. Murrow, ABC TV’s “Issues and Answers,” August 4, 1963
It’s interesting that no matter what field of study or industry you dig into, you see this same sentiment expressed. Big ideas always make great press, but success always comes down to deployment, implementation & user adoption – the last three feet. This is where big ideas either persuade listeners to decide to get on board or they get ignored, and all the big plans and ideas come apart. As you probably know, Jabra is a big believer in the last three feet – that’s where we live and that’s where our customers live, too.
EVault, today announced EVault Storage Cloud – Data Protection Service for NetApp. As part of the news at NetApp’s global technical conference, EVault also announced it has joined the NetApp partner program for Service Providers.
Here we go again! As I do each week, I am really enjoying bringing our readers a quick round-up of the blog coverage I didn’t manage to get to during the week prior.
In addition, here at SMB Nation, we are in total crunch time mode gearing up for our annual fall event to be held this week in Las Vegas at the Rio! We have designed a brand new Web site specifically for this event, which you must check out today. For additional information on the new Web site, our cool XP Migrations video produced by Bigger Brains, and our fall conference, check out our blog post here. Hurry up, and get your registration in, as we are just about a couple of days away from this event…it’s go time!
Please take some time to peruse a few snippets of information that we didn’t get a chance to bring you last week….let us also know if there was something we might have missed, which is not mentioned in this entry…because as you know…we love news!
N-able by SolarWinds has launched what is reportedly the industry's first MSP Playbook, which delivers best practices and step-by-step business and technology guidelines to MSPs worldwide. Designed as an end-to-end business plan, the new MSP Playbook is valued at more than $50,000 and provides new and established MSPs with the checks and balances needed to build and maintain a successful managed services practice.
8x8, Inc. said today that it has sold its dedicated server hosting business to The IRC Company, Inc. (dba Black Lotus Communications) for $3 million in cash. The transaction signed and closed on September 30, 2013.
By Brian Ferguson, Product Marketing Manager, Digium
Having a well-known and reputable brand is vital to a company’s overall success, today. Companies are increasingly dedicating more dollars to building and maintaining their brand, and it usually comes out of their marketing budget. Larger brands are shelling out millions of dollars to support brand building; but, for SMBs, an Unified Communications (UC) phone system is often an overlooked – and affordable – tool to help not only build their brand, but compete with the big guys.
For our new blog series “Community Rocks! Profiles in SMB IT,” we spoke with Joseph Fulgieri, (pictured) owner of JMF TechServices. Located on Long Island, NY, Fulgieri is a one-man shop hybrid MSP who specializes in almost any type of IT need that a small business owner requires. Read more to find out how Fulgieri got his start in IT, how he once got paid by a client in homemade empanadas, and what his personal business philosophy is.
We are a vibrant community that has no problems offering advice and opinions. That’s great because we need your help now. In preparing for the SMB Nation Fall Conference (Oct 10-12), Scott Bekker (Editor, Redmond Channel Partner magazine) and myself are going to deliver a speech on “Why Most Partner Programs #FAIL!” In order to develop the absolute best content for this speech, we need to gather your input on what’s the partner program landscape in our community. PSST: Today is the LAST DAY to complete the survey!
ConnectSolutions today rolled out CoSo TeamUp Premium, a solution that it is touting as reportedly the first “instant-on” enterprise-class, unified communications offering for emerging mid-market companies.
Comcast Business announced today that AnyMeeting, a provider of small business web conferencing, has joined its Upware marketplace. Upware is a suite of cloud-based business solutions that can be purchased and accessed on-demand through Comcast’s integrated web portal.
snom technology said today that its 7xx series and 8xx series desktop IP phones, as well as the PA-1 SIP paging adapter, are now fully interoperable with Clarity Telemanagement’s hosted VoIP service.
We heard from Dell Software earlier this week that NetVault Backup, its enterprise data protection solution, has been fully integrated with the Dell DR4100, a scalable, disk backup appliance with built-in deduplication and compression capabilities.
This past Friday, I had a chance to sit down with Amanda Lee, Public Relations Manager at Tech Data, and Sheri Hedlund VP of HP at Tech Data. They were pretty excited about a new service offering from HP that the distributor will be able to provide to the MSP community. Tech Data partners will now be able to sell a piece of technology knowing that the distributor has a SKU for on-site set up and installation. Yep—you heard that right--certified experts will provide the work on your behalf.
With the first day of enrollment for ObamaCare kicking off today, it’s only fitting that a recent Xerox survey revealed that even though more healthcare providers continue to adopt Electronic Health Records (EHR), there is still a need for doctors to educate consumers about digital medical records to comply with upcoming federal mandates.
Earlier this week, eFolder and their recently-acquired company, Anchor Networks, announced a 22-stop tour through the US for MSPs and VARs. This tour will include dates between Oct 8 and Nov 21, and will stop at major cities throughout the US.
A quick and gentle reminder that next week is *the* week for all of us at SMB Nation…it kicks of our annual fall classic event at the Rio in Las Vegas! Time is running out, but you can still get yourself in gear and get your registrations in!
You could say that some men are “in touch with their feminine sides,” but stereotypically it wouldn’t be something that you’d often see from a world leader, high-profile athlete or a mega-CEO like say, Donald Trump, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos or Apple CEO Tim Cook. However, outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is another story…Ballmer not only showed his raw emotions, breaking down during his exit speech earlier this week—he showed his true emotions center stage at Seattle’s Key Arena in front of his 13,000 employees.
Here we go again! As I do each week, I am really enjoying bringing our readers a quick round-up of the blog coverage I didn’t manage to get to during the week prior.
In addition, here at SMB Nation, we are already gearing up for our annual fall event to be held next week in Las Vegas at the Rio! We have designed a Web site specifically for this event, which you must check out today. For additional information on the new Web site, our cool XP Migrations video produced by Bigger Brains, and our fall conference, check out our blog post here. Hurry up, and get your registration in, as we are just about one week away from this event…it’s crunch time!
We heard today from Dan Fine, Managing Partner of Seattle-based Microsoft Dynamics partner Fine Solutions, that his company has been named to the Inc. 500/5000 List for the fifth year in a row.
D&H Distributing has been named “Distributor of the Year” by BenQ America Corp., a global DLP projector brand and a provider of monitors and interactive displays and signage.
Continuum said it has gone to great lengths to ensure it is fully prepared to assist its partners and their clients in meeting the standards of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. In addition to strengthening its technical, administrative, and physical security, the company has created the Continuum HIPAA Resource Center to provide up-to-date compliance information for MSPs that helps them gain a better understanding of the technical implications involved with new HIPAA rules.
SMB Nation announced today that it has partnered with Outlook Foundation on the “Drag It, Drop It, Delete It,” Campaign for the SMB Nation 11th Annual Fall Conference to be held Thursday, Oct. 10-Saturday, Oct. 12 at the Rio Conference Center in Las Vegas.
By Anurag Agrawal, CEO, Techaisle
Steve Daheb, Chief Marketing Officer, Citrix, says, “Citrix is a cloud solutions company that enables mobile workstyles.”This philosophy’s execution is anchored to its three product pillars: 1/ XenDesktop, 2/ Netscaler, and 3/ XenMobile. It has committed itself to an ambitious definition of enterprise mobility, with a framework spanning nine components; customers can use Citrix technologies to create an integrated, single vendor solution covering all nine areas, or can opt to plug competing products into any of the nine areas – an approach that Citrix has labeled “any-ness.”
NetEnrich today announced two enhancements to its IT operations platform. The first is a new, customizable, widget-based dashboard that unifies both internally and externally hosted services and infrastructure into a single view, tell-all dashboard.
Vistara said that is offering a limited time promotion for enterprises and MSPs with active Dell packetTrap network monitoring and tool licenses. If you remember, Dell packetTrap announced earlier this year that they would be discontinuing the service. This was following the acquisition by Dell of Quest packetTrap last year.
MSPs in the U.S. and Canada now have an extra month to take advantage of a 30-percent discount for using StorageCraft Cloud Services—the company has decided to extend the offer’s deadline to Oct. 31, 2013, due to the tremendous response that it has had from MSPs.
Speed is your most effective weapon – and greater mobility means faster results.
In today’s turbo-charged business environment, it isn’t the big that crush the small – it’s the fast that defeat the slow. So giving your team tools that allow them to make better decisions faster is smart. SMB’s that can collaborate, iterate and execute faster than their bigger dinosaurs are the ones that not only survive but thrive in this new future of smart, nimble work.
An easy, flavorful addition to any Sunday football gathering which makes for a quick workweek lunch. Add favorite crackers or bread and enjoy! I use a large 12 quart pot, but the recipe can be halved for a 6 qt.
Ingredients:
1 - 2 lb. cooked chicken diced into small pieces (for best results pull off bones from rotisserie chicken from Costco/Safeway, etc… otherwise use chicken breasts sautéed in skillet)
1 large red onion (or 2 small onions)
1 ½ -2 lb. of carrots
1 clump of celery
2 sweet peppers (e.g. one red, one yellow) Fat from ½ to 1 pound of cooked bacon
1 bottle of beer (the skunkier the better; Guinness or IPA work well)
3 – 32 oz. packages of low sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon of olive oil
We are a vibrant community that has no problems offering advice and opinions. That’s great because we need your help now. In preparing for the SMB Nation Fall Conference (Oct 10-12), Scott Bekker (Editor, Redmond Channel Partner magazine) and myself are going to deliver a speech on “Why Most Partner Programs #FAIL!” In order to develop the absolute best content for this speech, we need to gather your input on what’s the partner program landscape in our community.
CloudBerry Lab told us today that it is now offering a new revenue opportunity for all MSPs and Microsoft Partners by supporting Windows Azure Storage in its’ white-label Managed Backup.
Jesse Hebisen, Centurion Technologies
You work hard to acquire and retain your clients. Every day they rely on you for one thing – keeping their computers and networks working. But we all know that when the malicious email comes with “the link”, THEY WILL CLICK ON IT. The client’s computer is down, productivity is halted and remediation is paramount. Your client is unhappy and you have to switch gears to focus on their problem.
According to a recent survey sponsored by Quest Software and conducted by Dimensional Research, companies of all sizes are grappling with a host of migration issues and concerns. A poll of nearly 500 IT professionals with responsibility for corporate desktops and laptops at global organizations revealed that 47 percent still haven’t completed their migrations off Windows XP. As industry averages for the time needed to complete an OS migration range between 12 to 24 months, it’s clear that many in-process migrations won’t be completed before Microsoft’s April 2014 end-of-support deadline for Windows XP.
For our new blog series “Community Rocks! Profiles in SMB IT,” we spoke with John Benjamin, (pictured) owner of Cavu Networks. Located in Bainbridge Island, WA, Benjamin is an MSP who specializes in almost any type of IT need that a small business owner requires. Read more to find out how Benjamin got his start in IT, what his personal business philosophy is, and how he came to adopt his pit bull mix rescue dog, Lucie.
Thursday, September 26, 2013 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
Presented by: Josh Peterson, Bering McKinley and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc.
Join this webinar to learn the one secret used by the big MSPs to consistently crush the little IT guys: Peer Group Membership!
By Ari Rabban, Co-founder and CEO, Phone.com
Would you pay $33,000 for a used Dell PowerEdge R410 blade server? What if it were the one that made WikiLeaks a household name?
That’s what someone paid on eBay, where Bahnhof, Wikileaks’ hosting provider, put the server up for sale. The auction is a cautionary tale for any SMB that outsources its telecom or IT to a cloud provider.
TwinStrata has released the the results of its 2013 Cloud Storage and Disaster Recovery survey. Conducted between May to August 2013, the report analyzes responses from 288 IT personnel. According to the survey, the results indicate widespread acceptance of cloud storage and demonstrate the tangible impact cloud storage can have on disaster recovery strategies.
In what many analysts and media have been speculating for the last couple weeks, BlackBerry announced this morning that it has signed a letter of intent with consortium to be led by Fairfax Financial Holdings. The news comes shortly after various news outlets reported that the smartphone manufacturer would lay off approximately 40 percent of its staff in the coming months.
Here we go again! As I do each week, I am really enjoying bringing our readers a quick round-up of the blog coverage I didn’t manage to get to during the week prior.
In addition, here at SMB Nation, we are already gearing up for our annual fall event to be held Oct. 10-12 in Las Vegas at the Rio! We have designed a brand new Web site specifically for this event, which you must check out today. For additional information on the new Web site, our cool XP Migrations video produced by Bigger Brains, and our fall conference, check out our blog post here. Hurry up, and get your registration in, as we are less than three weeks away from this event!
The ASCII Group this morning informed us that they have released the winners of its esteemed 2013 ASCII Cup, as well as other vendor contenders and the top distributor within the SMB channel community.
Phone.com