SMB Nation Blog

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

The second installment of a new monthly blog series offering tips and best practices on various ways MSPs can help their SMB clients work through the most challenging daily business issues.

Last month, I opened my blog series for this year, known as “Better Call an MSP,” with a call for content and ideas. We want to hear from you, the members of our MSP community, about some of the more pressing issues facing your business.

In speaking with some of Continuum’s partners at our recent Partner Advisory Council (PAC) meeting, one of the challenges discussed was the hiring process – and more importantly, how to retain and keep solid, long-term employees. Several of the PAC members I spoke with noted that they want to not only become better at hiring, but also want to have a company that’s based on low employee turnover. While it’s true there have been countless books and articles written on this topic on a general level, a point was made that there is a need for more shared best practices and techniques specific to the MSP community. Having personally participated in hiring and recruiting processes that have worked, here are some tips to keep in mind when starting the hiring process to save both time and money – and to ensure that the hire is an appropriate long-term fit.

After four weeks of beta testing, Autopilot announced today a multi-channel marketing platform designed to help companies automate customer touchpoints and create personalized buyer experiences in online, offline and mobile channels.

Digital marketing is currently divided between email software solutions and marketing automation solutions, a division that makes solutions inaccessible or ineffective for marketers and their consumers.

For many years, I’ve watched from afar as the IAMCP has “hung in there” through various Microsoft generations. I was active in the late 1990s, when I worked at Clark Nuber, a Pacific Northwest accounting firm that had a robust Great Plains accounting practice. Fast forward the movie to present times, and we’re working closer with the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IACMP) than ever before. It serves all parties well.

Pictured: Long-time Microsoft SMB executive Arnie Mondloch speaks to the monthly Puget Sound IAMCP lunch meeting. Readers will remember Arnie from his leadership role several years ago in the Microsoft Small Business Specialist Community (SBSC).

Technology solutions provider Corporate IT Solutions announced today general availability of pCloud Workspace, a desktop-as-a-service offering that combines cloud flexibility and agility with stability and management of an enterprise application.

“With the rapid growth of mobile technologies and remote workforces, easy and secure access to enterprise applications and data from any device has become essential to organizational productivity,” CIO Jeffrey Boardman said. “Existing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) offerings have failed to meet many organizational needs due to their high cost and complex deployments.  Additionally, most of the desktop-as-a-service offerings available today are being outsourced to third parties. This creates significant reliability, security and compliance issues.”  

Good day, SMB IT Pro Community! Welcome to the second part in a three-part installment of the Microsoft Hot Links for SMBs! Here are the next 5 links to help you realize your business goals and find community information in 2015:

You don’t send me roses anymore, so I’m delivering them to you. With the dramatic business transformation in our SMB IT Pro community, new conversations require new outreach approaches. So I’m covering the Cloud Summit event, March 8-10 at the amazing Arizona Grand Resort and Spa. It’s just what the Doctor ordered – cloud content, spa and a seven acre water park. I need this “working vacation,” and I’d like you to join me.

I had the chance to chat with Melanie Gass, aka the “Microsoft Princess,” and well-known speaker at various SMB Nation events, about her popular radio show. Some of you may have been able to meet her at our most recent event, the Office 365 Tour 2015 in Los Angeles, CA. For those of you who didn’t, you can meet Melanie at any one of our tour stops, and hear her great presentations on SharePoint/OneDrive and Making Money with Office 365!

As many of you know, Melanie was dubbed the “Microsoft Princess” as recognition for her training and consulting of Microsoft’s various products. I asked her how she got into radio, and how she’s seen the environment change, among other things. Read below for our interview:

Soonr, a Silicon Valley, CA-based File share and Collaboration company, recently announced that it has made some enhancements to its partner portal. These enhancements are designed to make it easier for partners to provision and manage policies.

To be specific, Soonr partners can now deliver the company’s service with multiple customers from a single location. This means that partners won’t need to log-in to a specific account or team to set up services for a variety of customers.

 Frost & Sullivan announced today it will host a complimentary webinar about the trends set to impact the Latin American IT industry.

The webinar will be held at 8 a.m. PST tomorrow, March 3. Speaker Guilherme Campos, a Frost & Sullivan IT industry analyst, will explain Latin American developments in investing and adoption levels of security, cloud computing and big data.

One of the biggest points of contention between partners and vendors is who actually owns the relationship with the customer. It’s a topic that comes up frequently whenever partners talk about their relationships with vendors. Partners often complain that some of their vendors seem to want to disintermediate them from their customers, thus setting up a bit of a tug of war, with the unfortunate customer caught in the middle. For example, some vendors take the approach that if a customer is using their products, then they have primary responsibility for supporting the customer, regardless of whether or not a partner is involved in the sale. This can take the form of not enabling partners to bill the customer, not enabling partners to provide support, and/or not enabling partners to co-brand the product. While it’s understandable that the vendors want to ensure the best possible experience for the end user, many of them seem to forget the critical role that partners play in the process of selling and supporting the customers. These conflicts will likely only continue to increase as adoption of cloud-based apps continues to rise, since customers are now running software may be hosted by the vendors.

So, which vendors “get it”? One of our favorites is attachedapps. They have built a suite of contact and customer management apps that are designed to easily “attach” to Office 365 or Exchange, and they are taking a strict partner-first approach to selling to SMBs. For instance, they just enabled partners to have a tile in their customers’ dashboards where partners can display their logo, contact information, sales messages, or anything else they want their customers to see every time they access the apps. We haven’t seen that from any vendor! Plus, attachedapps enables partners to bill customers, provide support, and they have a very generous revenue sharing model. They have even designed their apps so that partners can easily add their own services like remote admin, migration and customization. No more tugging!

You should check them out: www.attachedapps.com/partners.

Charter Communications, Inc. announced today Charter Business is now Spectrum Business, which will leverage an all-digital network to deliver full-featured solutions at a low price to SMBs and larger organizations.

"Spectrum Business is more than just a new name. Over the past 12 months we have invested in our advanced fiber network, completed our transition to all-digital, and made enhancements to our product suite, including a doubling of entry Internet speeds from 30 to 60Mbps," said Jonathan Hargis, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Charter Communications.

Germany-based snom technology AG and GSMK Cryptophone are expanding their existing collaboration to develop highly secure encrypted telephones.

GSMK, a developer of protected operating systems and encryption solutions, and snom, a developer of professional and enterprise VoIP telephones, are working on desktop IP telephones that will be secure, encrypted, tap-proof and immune against attacks.

GFI Software released today the findings of a study examining business and societal impacts of cyber security issues, which revealed growing concerns of personal risk and potential for physical retaliation.

“Cyber attacks have profound consequences for the business community, whether companies are the target, or the victim of an attack elsewhere. In the last few months alone we’ve seen major corporations targeted in systematic acts of espionage and geopolitical retaliation, as well as hundreds of thousands – potentially millions - of individuals affected by the fallout of data being stolen and misused,” said Sergio Galindo, general manager of GFI Software. “Usernames, passwords, credit card data, health records – malicious use of this data by criminals can quickly create financial hardship and significant stress for affected individuals, while the negative fallout for organizations the data was stolen from can range from loss of reputation to fines, falling sales, civil and criminal legal proceedings and more.”

Continuum recently announced that four of its MSP partners have been named as finalists for the Robin Robins “Better Your Best” competition. This particular competition allows MSPs to vie for the chance to be the spokesperson for Robins’ company: Technology Marketing Toolkit.

“We offer our congratulations to these top MSPs that have enjoyed significant revenue and profit increases over the last year by implementing Robin Robins’ proven marketing strategies,” said Frank Bauer, Sr. Channel Development Manager at Continuum.

Veeam Software today announced that the customer adoption of is Veeam Availability Suite v8 has gone above and beyond company expectations. The company reported that 36% of existing users upgraded to v8 within 90 days of the product announcement, and that there have been an average of 1200 downloads of the software per day.

Tadiran announced today it was awarded 2015 Unified Communications Product of the Year by TMC, a global, integrated media company, for its Unified Communications and Collaboration solution, Aeonix.

"It gives me great pleasure to honor Tadiran Telecom as the 2015 recipient of TMC's Unified Communications Product of the Year Award for their innovative product, Aeonix," said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. "Our judges were very impressed with the ingenuity and excellence displayed by Tadiran Telecom in their groundbreaking work on Aeonix".

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced today multi-protocol Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) PHY IP for PCI Express 2.0 and PCIe 3.0 technology for TSMC's 16nm FinFET Plus (16FF+) process have passed PCI-SIG compliance testing.

"PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 compliance was achieved with first 16FF+ silicon. The early availability of these products enables our customers to tapeout their leading-edge mobile, storage and enterprise designs sooner and with reduced risk," said Osman Javed, product marketing director at Cadence. "These flexible multi-protocol solutions provide customers a unique combination of SoC differentiation and future proofing.

LogicNow announced today the release of version 15.0 of its MAX Backup hybrid cloud backup and disaster recovery solution, a key part of MAXfocus, its MSP and IT support platform.

“MSPs want to be able to provide more value to their customers. Backup can easily be seen as a business continuity box-ticking exercise – as long as everything is safe if the worst happens, then all is well,” said Chris Groot VP, Sales, MAX Backup & Recovery. “But we and the MSPs we work with know that with disaster recovery, the speed of backup and the speed of recovery is vital. The new features and new direction of MAX Backup v15.0 mean that MSPs can offer disaster recovery services where downtime will be measured in minutes rather than hours, positioning them as the best provider of this mission-critical service to their clients.”

Mavenlink , a global provider of integrated business management software, today announced it garnered $19 million in growth capital, composed of $15 million contributed by shareholders and a $4 million credit facility. The round of funding was led by Carrick Capital Partners and Silicon Valley Bank.

Good day, SMB IT Pro Community! Welcome to the first part in a three-part installment of the Microsoft Hot Links for SMBs! Here are the first 5 links to help you realize your business goals and find community information in 2015:

Seattle-based SkyKick, a cloud migration company specializing in Microsoft Office 365, announced today Computer Reseller News, a brand of The Channel Company, named Peter Labes as a 2015 CRN Channel Chief.

Labes, SkyKick’s vice president of development, joined SkyKick in October 2014 and has increased international reach through agreements with distributors, IT solution providers and channel service organizations.

It’s been said the only reason you would ever engage in lead generation is because it’s a last resort. That is, you would grow by referral based on your reputation. When that doesn’t work, you’ll see companies go metric and engage in big data lead generation activities with little regard for business relationships. It’s more than apparent in the SMB IT community.

But there are a few exceptions. Datto is one of them. If you research the company, you can get your speeds and feeds fix and learn about its young wunderkind founder. That’s not what this blog is about. Instead, it’s about Datto going old school, and hosting a series of community gatherings across the US. This past week, I attended thE Datto event at a local restaurant, Duke Chowder House, with the Puget Sound Small Business Server (PSSBS) group. This night did double duty as the group’s monthly meeting as well.

Portal Architects, Inc., creator of SkySync, announced today it joined the Internet2 NET+ portfolio to enable higher education institutions to integrate their on-premises storage platforms with cloud-based storage services.

SkySync’s offering is designed to open up flexible storage options for higher education institutions and increase file, folder, sites and file structure mobility.

D&H Distributing will be hosting a webcast titled: "Windows Server 2003 End of Support - Customer Need Becomes VAR Opportunity,” on Thursday, February 26 at 11 am PST. This session will be moderated by Bill Hersh, Solutions Coordinator, and Matt Allison, Intel Server Champ, D&H.

“We have been introducing resellers to this opportunity since early last year, starting with seminar sessions and major technology focus throughout our trade show schedule,” said Jeff Davis, senior vice president of sales at D&H. “Now that we are nearing the actual EOS deadline, companies will be more eager to seek advice on how to deal with their new needs. We want to position VARs in the channel to capture that business, turning them into that trusted advisor who can support SMB end-customers through a transition to more secure, robust and powerful environment. Microsoft’s upgraded server solutions offer a sophisticated and advanced platform, so the upgrade cycle offers a good deal of benefits to all parties in the channel.”

Developer component provider GrapeCity today announced its Xuni product, a collection of cross-platform UI controls for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, is out of beta and has been released to the web.

"Now that Xuni is generally available for purchase, developers will be able to utilize the product to provide native experiences in Android, iOS and Windows Phone using the same API across all platforms," said Greg Lutz, product manager of Xuni.  As Lutz shared in the company's original beta announcement, "With Xuni and Xamarin.Forms, developers can code once in C# and XAML to create enterprise-level apps for all devices."

Being part of the analyst and blogger community grants one access to leading thought leaders in our professional community. So I always look forward to a chit-chat with Chris Frey, long-time Lenovo executive. Let’s start there.

Up and Not Out

Chris’ new position is as VP of the North American Commercial business, overseeing a combination of Channel, SMB and Corporate sales that will simplify Lenovo’s relationship with the Channel and better leverage our partners to acquire new customers in the commercial space. Essentially, that is good for us, the SMB Nation community member. Chris is “one of us,” who has responsibilities up the entire segment (up through retail, enterprise), but he thinks SMB first.

snom technology AG confirmed today appointment of Nadahl Shocair as CEO, following an announcement last week that HeidelbergCapital Private Equity Fund II had become its anchor investor.

“As snom's new CEO, I am proud to lead a great team of professional, talented, motivated and truly inspiring men and women who will continue to add value to our customers, partners, suppliers and shareholders,” Shocair said.

Continuum, a provider of fully-integrated managed IT services solutions, announced today it will offer Webroot SecureAnywhere Business- Endpoint Protection in its Remote Monitoring and Management platform to its MSP partners through a partnership with Webroot.

“Webroot SecureAnywhere is a smart, fast and very effective choice in antivirus and antimalware protection, using cloud data centers to instantly protect all users from new threats with endpoint security in real-time,” said Dee Zepf, Vice President of Products and Technical Services at Continuum. “Continuum has chosen to bundle Webroot with its RMM product because it saves time and helps partners to operate more efficiently and most importantly, our partners have asked for it.”

Bizzabo, a networking platform and event app, announced today the launch of Bizzabo Event Success Platform, its all-in-one management platform designed for event organizers.

“The Bizzabo Event Success Platform is the next step in the natural development of our product – a comprehensive system where event organizers can actually take more ownership of their event branding and overall event experience,” CEO Eran Ben-Shushan said.  “After working closely with thousands of organizers we understood the need for a holistic event software that works. We wanted to free the industry from a reliance on multiple siloed tech solutions that increase an event organizer’s workload, minimize their ability to measure success and limit productivity. By evolving our current product offering we are able to provide a one stop shop for all event technology needs, delivering the same quality we’re known for through a much more enhanced and complete experience from start to success.”

The platform is designed to streamline the planning and execution of events, offering tools to help event organizers measure success and tailor products and campaigns for their event. 

Trend Micro recently announced a new research paper that covers two malware threats based in the Middle East, using servers in Germany. The Trend Micro deduced that the two malware threats, Operation Arid Viper and Operation Adtravel, are connected to the same organization, and that these are both part of the cyberattack conflict in the Gaza region.

To begin, the Operation Arid Viper, which was first found in mid-2013, is a sophisticated piece of malware that disguises itself as a video attachment to an email. Once the target opens the file, the malware goes to work in a “smash and grab” to extract files. This particular piece of malware targets high-level Israeli officials.

Feeling like an underpaid superstar in the Office 365 community? The question I receive every day is: “how can I make more money as an MSP with Office 365?” It’s a fair question. The money motion surrounding the Office 365 opportunity is clearly different from the server-side, on-prem old school rock ‘em sock ‘em dance.

Enter SkyKick’s new Office 365 migration offer. Right now, you can think of the Office 365 opportunity life cycle as being in the early stages. So the type of work you can, would and should perform concerns migrations. Arguably in a couple of years, there will be less migration work, as the Office 365 product matures. So that’s why it’s important to understand and capitalize immediately on the SkyKick Office 365 migration offer.

Bell Techlogix, an IT managed services and solutions provider, announced today it has joined Microsoft’s Microsoft Surface Affiliate Partner Program.

Its participation in the program will allow Bell Techlogix to resell Surface tablets to public sector and education clients, further expanding their education and public sector service offering portfolio.

Yesterday, SMB Nation entered into an agreement for SoundLine Communications to be the exclusive telecom provider for SMB Nation! This is part of our strategy to continuously “get modern” using the latest technologies. In this case, we’re super excited about the HD sound quality offered by Sound Communications. We are also seeing an upgrade in our telecom functionality including the “park” feature that I had, to be honest, forgotten about. So we’re also excited for our links into Office 365.

Vocalcom today announced ITV, a client using its Omni-channel Customer Service Solution, was awarded “Best Customer Services in Telecom & Media” by United Business Media.

“We selected Vocalcom because they could provide everything we needed in one single package,” said Stephen Morris, ITV head of viewer services.  “We were looking for a ‘one-stop-shop,’ a truly unified communications provider who could supply us with a real omni-channel customer management portal that incorporated everything from voice, email, white mail, SMS and socials networks. Vocalcom provided just that and were instrumental in the seamless transition between customer management systems.”

A trending topic in the IT Pro community is Windows 10. Whether you fancy other communities, such as Office 365, Windows Server 2003 end-of-support (W2k3 EOS), post-SBS or hybrid, everything circles back to the desktop operating system. Love it or hate it, you can’t leave it.

I interviewed Onuora Amobi, the guy behind the Windows 10 Update site (where you can discover a primer on “What is Windows 10” here). He is a former Microsoft MVP for Windows, and he has been writing about Windows since Vista in 2007. Since that time, he has been following the Windows product development very closely. He has built an audience in excess of 250,000 followers. “It’s a lot of enterprise people on site and receiving the newsletters, lots of executives and tech people. The geography is 55 percent North America and 25 percent Europe with the rest varied.” Amobi shared.

BATS Wireless today announced the release of version 3.0 of its Automatic Aiming and Tracking Software.

"We are excited to roll out the newest version of our AATS software," says Phillip Cramer, VP – Sales & Marketing, BATS. "Version 3.0 gives end clients the ability to monitor, alter, maintain and coordinate their BATS systems in a truly user-friendly interface with ease and efficiency, leaving more time to focus on mission-critical tasks."

Columbus and SaaSplaza announced today a partnership to provide Microsoft Dynamics Cloud solutions to their North American clients.

Joe Zarrehparvar, Columbus executive vice president of sales, said Columbus selected SaaSplaza because of its experience with Microsoft Dynamics and its ability to meet client needs.

I’ll never forget the first time I spoke with Handy Andy. It was in the late 1990s, just before the Y2K New Year’s Celebration. We had been connected by, if memory serves me right, Meredith Lynch at Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's vaunted PR agency. The magazine, owned by Penton, had a Small Business Server newsletter for several issues. I had just finished skiing for the day with my family. Instantly, I knew Andy Goodman (Handy Andy) was one of the good guys.

That’s a slogan a popular tool company has been using for over 100 years. It’s also a concept that partners like you should keep in mind when helping your SMB customers. Just because something can get the job done, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to get the job done. A great example of this is managing contacts. When SMBs are asked what software they use to track contacts, you might think a majority of them would name one of the popular CRM products like Salesforce.com, Dynamics CRM, or any one dozens more. Instead, in several surveys conducted by Microsoft over the last 10 years, the #1 answer from SMBs is Microsoft Outlook. The #2 answer is Microsoft Excel. An e-mail client and a spreadsheet. Great tools for their designed purpose, but definitely not the best for managing company contacts, tracking sales or managing customers

A survey from Robert Half Technology of Chief Information Officers shows a majority plan to take a multipronged approach to protecting company security in 2015. 

"We live in an era where information security threats are a real business risk," said John Reed, senior executive director of Robert Half Technology. "CIOs are attacking the problem from all sides, but there is a strong emphasis on employee-driven measures. Vigilant IT teams and security-savvy individuals throughout the organization are a valuable and fundamental defense; without both, other courses of action will be less effective."

Imitation announced today availability of HGST’s 8TB Ultrastar hard disk drives with its Nexsan E-Series data storage solutions, bringing rack storage capabilities in a standard rack to 4.9PB.

“Users in media and entertainment, high performance computing and many other industries struggle today with how to deliver adequate storage for the exponential data growth in their organizations using limited budgets and resources,” said Mike Stolz, vice president of marketing and global services for Imation’s Nexsan solutions. “They also are challenged by how to properly archive and protect their high-value data through both primary and backup storage. With HGST’s 8TB drives, we can deliver more capacity to users and lower their operating expenses – but even more, we offer them new flexibility and options for architecting their data centers and deliver new levels of value.”

I’ve written far too many words for far too long preaching about business transformation topics surrounding Office 365. I’m now breaking away from my prepared comments, and the teleprompter, to promote a new way of thinking. Out with the old scare tactics and looking in the rear view mirror. Instead – time to look forward and understand and appreciated Office 365 on it stand alone merits.

If you’re with me, there is a community meeting in late February in SoCal (Irvine, CA) where you can endeavor to expand your Office 365 knowledge in a safe, secure and INDEPENDENT environment. It’s the Office 236 Nation community meeting tour visiting seven NFL cities. The first two events held in January were amazing and exceeded expectations.

So here is the “411” you need to know so you can attend this event.

By Dan Liutikas, Managing Attorney of ITLA and CompTIA’s Chief Legal Officer

Whether starting a brand new cloud services company or managing an intentionally small MSP business, today’s IT professionals can expect an ever-increasing array of issues to stand in the way of their success. The financial challenges alone keep many companies from achieving their goals, and a variety of personnel and regulatory concerns tend to make those objectives even harder to hit. Needless to say, small business owners have a lot to deal with each and every day ─ and legal concerns are often one of the biggest challenges.

For IT firms, virtually every operational or client-focused activity exposes some level of risk. Every entrepreneur and manager has to be readily aware of today’s business environment where conflict and litigation has become an accepted norm. Even when you think you have strong relationships with your customers, you may still find that these customers might let attorneys dictate how to approach dispute resolution with you rather than deal with the matters personally. Conflict resolution isn’t what it used to be, even in the SMB space.

snom technology AG , an IP telephone developer and manufacturer, announced today acquisition of HeidelbergCapital as its new majority shareholder.

HeidelbergCapital, by using its private equity fund II, purchased shares from Beaufort Capital GmbH in July 2014. André Deloch, partner at HeidelbergCapital and Chairman of the Board at snom, said it was important to HeidelbergCapital to support expansion and development of new products and software at snom. 

D&H Distributing recently announced the addition of new Connected Device and Office Automation solutions to its portfolio. Company reps explained that the pervasiveness of the “Smart” Office trend at the recent CES conference, as well as the overall automation trend, drove D&H to add the new services.

“More manufacturers are looking to integrate their connected electronics not just with a WiFi or Bluetooth feature, but with the user’s ever-present cell phone. The pervasiveness of this category at this year’s CES event is proof that smart technologies are sharply on the rise, adding to the ubiquity of the Internet of Things, allowing users to maintain control over their business locations, homes, and devices from across the office or across the world,” said Rob Eby, Vice President of Purchasing at D&H Distributing.

Techaisle recently announced the results of its 2015 US SMB Cloud Computing Adoption Trends study, which showed a current rate of 89%, with a projected Cloud Adoption rate of 96% by the end of 2015. The key finding of this study is that cloud has shifted greatly from a “future technology” to a part of mainstream IT. The Techaisle team offered a few suggestions for SMBs and IT Pros in their report blog this week.

(Pictured: Harrybbb and Anurag Agrawal at the 2015 IBM PartnerWorld Leadership Conference)

To start, although many organizations have been taking a shot at “The Year of the Cloud,” going as far back as 2010, 2015 appears to be the main connecting point between cloud and mainstream IT, and in turn, can be the end of the “Year of the Cloud” discussion. Let’s take a look at the report results for both SMBs and IT Pros/Cloud Vendors.

On the SMB side, cloud has four main takeaways from the Techaisle report:

Xamin, Inc. announced today it named Aaron Scicluna, EVP, as its chief business development officer. In his new position, Scicluna will work to strengthen delivery of services to Xamin clients and oversee new business channels.

“Fraud has always continued to evolve, but we are witnessing an accelerated rate of change that demands organizations adopt enhanced levels of cybersecurity,” Scicluna said. ”Xamin is committed to proactively working with our clients to simultaneously safeguard their critical data and support their compliance with the latest guidelines, and I am excited to lead our efforts in identifying opportunities to maximize the impact of our solutions within the marketplace.”

England-based TeamUltra announced today the launch of a six-part webinar series covering the lifecycle of enterprise service management.

According to TeamUltra, the webinars will aim to compensate for an industry lack of qualitative examples and information surrounding the ESM journey, showing webinar viewers real-world case studies

By Pete Engler, Channel Marketing Manager, Digium

A colleague recently attended a business technology conference and had a chance to listen to some interesting panel discussions centered on Unified Communications (UC) and the Cloud. Among the topics included were mobility, WebRTC, and various UC deployment strategies.  Of all the new information, insights, and ideas he heard, one statement in particular held his attention. The quote brings to light a basic principle that every technology reseller should understand and practice when it comes to selling UC solutions:  “Technology does not lead to behavior; behavior should lead to technology.”

A survey by Webtorials revealed that 75 percent of enterprises have deployed UC to some degree, with 21 percent indicating they had implemented full deployments. The businesses partially deploying UC are doing so in a trial phase and expect to eventually integrate completely. Regardless of deployment strategy, it’s worthwhile pointing out that the business (as a whole) looks at UC differently from that of an individual employee – there are different behaviors driving the decision to implement the technology. The business is centered on examining the total value of UC in employee collaboration with coworkers and clients, and understanding the costs associated with each feature. Is it really worth the cost to implement all of the UC features?  Whereas, an employee’s behavior, or interest in UC, centers on usability and the ease of specific UC applications to get things done. In other words, what can UC do to make his job easier? The combination of these two behavior types leads to the decision of a company’s need for full UC integration.

Satmetrix, a cloud-based solutions provider, announced today immediate availability of its newest customer experience management software, Satmetrix NPX.

“To deliver successful customer experience management, you need three things: robust software, quality data, and the expertise to make sense of it all,” Satmetrix CEO Richard Owen said. “Satmetrix NPX is a complete and intuitive technology solution that manages the customer experience process and delivers truly valuable and actionable insights to key stakeholders throughout your organization. Satmetrix NPX is a game changer that allows companies to be pragmatic, proactive and responsive with their customer experience programs in ways that give them a competitive advantage.”

Insite Software, an eCommerce platform and data product provider, and Agency Oasis, a full service digital agency, announced today a strategic partnership intended to compliment Agency Oasis’ partnership with experience management platform Sitecore.

"Commerce is exploding, and we have always been at the forefront of helping companies provide a better customer experience," said Bob Naughton, chief revenue officer, Agency Oasis. "We have been custom building .NET eCommerce applications for more than ten years, and we are proud to partner with Insite Software to enable its InsiteCommerce customers the ability to execute on their direct selling processes."

By Nathan Mitchell, AppRiver

Many organizations have a regulatory obligation to retain various types of data and ensure its authenticity and integrity.  So, it’s not a surprise when customers ask us about eDiscovery capabilities within the popular cloud-based communications and collaboration solution. 

Discovery is the term used for the initial phase of litigation where the parties in a dispute are required to provide each other relevant information and records, along with all other evidence related to the case.  You can use eDiscovery in Office 365 to search for content in Exchange Online mailboxes, SharePoint Online sites, or both.  You can even copy the data to a Discovery Mailbox or export it to a PST file. 

Voice software provider Green Key Technologies announced today it hired Steve Van Deusen as director of compliance technology.

"I am excited to be a part of this stellar development team with such an innovative telephony solution," Steve Van Deusen, Director of Compliance Technology, said. "The voice network is rapidly growing and I look forward to helping brokers and traders achieve the highest compliance capabilities possible."

DCIM provider Raritan announced today its fifth consecutive recognition for The Channel Company’s annual CRN Data Center 100 list.

"We are delighted that CRN editors have recognized Raritan once again for its ground-breaking technologies and solutions," said Ashley Fox, Channel Sales Director-Americas at Raritan.  "Working together with our outstanding channel partners, we are advancing data center infrastructure management and helping customers reduce power and cooling costs, better manage assets and capacity, and improve productivity.  Our solutions are designed to meet the diverse needs of data centers around the world."

Aria Systems recently announced that it has been awarded the HIPAA Certification after a strenuous 6-month audit process by a third party. This latest certification is added to the company's existing certs in TRUSTe and PCI DSS v.3, the latest framework standard for credit card security.

GridVision announced a generalized ticketing system earlier this week, which will be integrated into the GridVision portal. This is the first in a series of enhancements the company plans to roll out for its cloud-based IT Automation platform.

“We developed the GridVision platform in direct response to market demands for real-time, simple, extensible and effective automation of IT services. The feedback we have received from our user community since the launch of GridVision has been invaluable and we are pleased to provide these enhancements to empower resellers and IT managers with enterprise-grade management capabilities that will improve customer service while reducing costs and streamlining operations,” said Christian Ehrenthal, CEO and co-founder, GridVision (pictured). 

Adobe announced today Adobe Experience Manager was recognized by Forrester Research as a Leader in “The Forrester Wave: Web Content Management Systems, Q1, 2015.”

“Forrester’s latest Wave report, in our opinion, underscores the rapid evolution in Web content management,” said Aseem Chandra, vice president, Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Target, Adobe. “We believe our ranking as a Leader validates that Adobe Experience Manager makes it incredibly easy to deliver content consistently and with speed across all channels and connected screens. The innovations we are working on will continue to position our customers well ahead of the competition.”

Are you looking to buy or sell new, used or refurbished IT and telecom parts and equipment including computers, laptops, printers, VoIP phones, central office systems, PBX/Key systems or network infrastructure? Whether you are a supplier, reseller, service provider, corporate buyer or self-maintainer, you can benefit from the PowerSource professional community. PowerSource Online helps our members increase sales, build industry relationships and save time and resources with our best-in-class selling and sourcing tools.

Computer parts suppliers and resellers gain a competitive advantage by easily posting their in-stock inventory of new, used and refurbished IT and telecoms parts to reach thousands of buyers. PowerSource members can view and respond directly to buying requests for computers, telecom equipment, IT infrastructure and more.

SolarWinds announced today enhancements to its security information and event management product, SolarWinds Log & Event Manager.

Enhancements to SolarWinds LEM, designed for resource-constrained IT organizations, include the introduction of new Configuration and Rules Wizards.

Passportal , a password management software provider, announced a strategic integration with ConnectWise PSA , which develops service management software for IT service providers, VARs, ISVs and MSPs.

“IT security is a top priority for any channel partner that wants to ensure their customers’ success and protect the businesses they serve and own from data breaches, network vulnerabilities and cyber security threats,” says Knox. “By seamlessly integrating our purpose-built password security software with ConnectWise PSA we’ve made it easier for channel partners to use these two technologies together and proactively protect and serve their clients with confidence.”

D&H Distributing today announced that it has won 11 categories, and tied for 3 categories in the ASCII Group Distribution Survey 2014. This survey, which was conducted in November 2014, is based on the replies of 100 ASCII Group members, most of whom are SMB resellers. Respondents were asked to rate distributors based on their level of satisfaction with the organization. 2014 marks the 6^th year in a row that D&H has led a majority of the survey categories.

“It’s an honor to receive such recognition from ASCII’s VARs. As a distributor, we’re glad that our level of service has remained effective over the years,” said Jeff Davis, Senior Vice President of Sales at D&H Distributing. “D&H learned decades ago that our success depends on that of our resellers in the field, so we’re vested in helping to develop their businesses through training, programs and personalized support. We won’t waver in that commitment.”

That’s a slogan a popular tool company has been using for over 100 years. It’s also a concept that partners like you should keep in mind when helping your SMB customers. Just because something can get the job done, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to get the job done. A great example of this is managing contacts. When SMBs are asked what software they use to track contacts, you might think a majority of them would name one of the popular CRM products like Salesforce.com, Dynamics CRM, or any one dozens more. Instead, in several surveys conducted by Microsoft over the last 10 years, the #1 answer from SMBs is Microsoft Outlook. The #2 answer is Microsoft Excel. An e-mail client and a spreadsheet. Great tools for their designed purpose, but definitely not the best for managing company contacts, tracking sales or managing customers.

Kony, Inc. announced today growth in the number of partners offering “ready to run” enterprise-grade applications on its business mobile app marketplace.

“Industry experts are predicting that the demand for mobile apps will dramatically increase for enterprise organizations in the next few years,” said Burley Kawasaki, senior vice president, products, Kony, Inc. “To meet this demand, enterprises are looking for ways to empower their businesses to rapidly deliver secure, enterprise-level mobile apps with great user experiences. Our goal is to provide a rich collection of pre-built apps and app models through the Kony Marketplace, which they can use to quickly build their mobile apps.”

Kony also released the Kony Sales app suite and Kony Modeler.

IT Solutions distributor Avnet Technology Solutions announced today its Avnet Services global business unit was named an HP Learning Partner.

Avnet solution providers can earn HP ExpertOne certification through Avnet Academy. Courses offered focus on technical areas required to support aspects of HP solution deployment, design, administration and management.

SAP SE unveiled today SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, built on the SAP HANA platform and designed on the SAP Fiori user experience for mobile devices.

"Today SAP is redefining the concept of enterprise resource planning for the 21st century. SAP S/4HANA is about uniting software and people to build businesses that run real-time, networked and simple," said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. "When Hasso Plattner invented SAP HANA, we knew the day would come for SAP Business Suite to be reinvented for the digital age. At a moment when businesses around the world need to enter new markets and engage with their consumers in any channel, there's now an innovation platform designed to drive their growth. This is an historic day and we believe it marks the beginning of the end for the 20th century IT stack and all the complexity that came with it."

Schneider Electric introduced today the Advantage Max Data Center Health Check, a low-cost service contract option for SMB data centers.

“Schneider Electric is capitalizing on our existing strength in the DCIM space to help small- and medium-sized data centers and IT rooms access the same technology being utilized by some of the largest enterprise data centers globally. The goal is to provide a very cost effective way to analyze this space, which is experiencing increasingly high demands for availability, lower tolerance for downtime and the need to manage resources more effectively,” says Lance Bishop, Director, Professional Services, Schneider Electric. “This option to our Advantage Plus, Prime, and Ultra Service Contracts better positions managers to optimize overall data center operational efficiency, performance, and cost.”

On the one hand, I’m holding a “Selfie Stick” that takes the business photography I do for SMB Nation to a whole different level. On the other hand, I’m trying to suppress my inner narcissist who wants to come out and play.

As you know, every article and blog at any of our sites (SMB Nation, Telephonation.com and O365nation.com) has to have a piece of art before we will publish. It’s typically a photo related to the story. For years I could be seen with a Nikon DL-5000 camera. Today I carry the Nokia Lumia 1020 phone with the 41 megapixel camera based on the Carl Zeiss “PureView” lens. More on that in a moment.

Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2295831220530158594

Thursday, February 5, 2015 10:00-11:00 AM PDT

Presented by: Dave Waldrop, President and Director, attachedapps, Sylvia Grabner, Customer and Partner Service, attachedapps and Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman, SMB Nation, Inc.

Come learn how you can easily attach revenue to your Office 365 sales with attachedapps! attachedapps are powerfully simple apps that enable partners to easily add more value and revenue to their Office 365 and Exchange customers. We will be following up on previous webinars and live events by give you an in-depth look at attachedapps, including a live demo, and providing an early look at new features that are going to be launched soon. We will also discuss how other partners are using attachedapps and our plans for evolving the partner program.

I’m a humble bumble today.

A few weeks ago, I made a friendly bet with Boston-based Continuum, concerning Super Bowl 49. If my beloved Seattle Seahawks won, I was to receive two Lobsters as my payoff from Shannon Kohn Mayer, who recently moved from LogMeIn to Continuum and has a channel role. If the New England Patriots won (which they did 28-24 late in the 4^th quarter of the Super Bowl game), I am obligated to deliver Pacific Northwest salmon and coffee to Shannon’s desk in downtown Boston on my next trip. This will likely be in mid-August when I attend the D&H New England Show. You can see in the pic that I’m posing with the booty while wearing a Belichick hoodie.

Shannon Kohn Mayer, Senior Marketing Programs Manager at Continuum.

Mayer, shown in the picture, commented: “Recently, our #Boston office had a friendly competition with SMB Nation Founder, Harry Brelsford. If the Seattle Seahawks beat the New England Patriots, we would have had to send him TWO lobsters from James Hook and Company... Sorry, Harry! These guys are staying put!”

So what’s the take away from this? Not much really in terms of IT business but a lot in terms of relationships. Have fun. Enjoy the ride. And as for the game, congratulations to the Pats for a comeback victory. Everyone loves a comeback. For the Hawks, I’d offer being a risk taker got us to the Super Bowl but if not for that last play, I’d be enjoying two lobsters!

Kaseya today announced availability of Release 9, which adds a brand new mobility management solution, as well as the launch of Kaseya’s new private cloud infrastructure. I had the chance to speak with Kaseya President and CEO, Yogesh Gupta about the development of this new release, and what it aims to do for SMBs.

I’d like to start this article with a friendly reminder about Kaseya: their team is focused purely on the SMB sector. In addition, for the past 18 months, the company has been consistently rolling out product portfolio updates via its innovative agile development methodology. These updates are oftentimes based on feedback from the Kaseya user community, and what they want in a solution. The approach here is more “how do people want to use technology,” as opposed to “this is how you use it.”

CloudMSP recently announced that it will be the first North American cloud VAR to offer the Zynstra Hybrid IT Solution via the channel. As many of you remember, Zynstra launched in NorAm, following major success in the European arena.

The major features of the Zynstra appliance are:

Axcient, a cloud-based Recovery-as-a-service provider, announced today immediate availability of the newest version of its granular recovery for Microsoft Exchange offering.

“This upgrade to our granular recovery for Exchange solution allows Axcient to offer a powerfully simple solution for e-discovery that is unmatched in the market,” said Justin Moore, CEO at Axcient. “Our customers now have a more efficient and faster way to protect and recover their MS Exchange databases at a lower cost than alternatives in the market. With today’s announcement, we’re continuing our commitment to provide the industry’s most comprehensive Business Recovery Cloud solution, in order to protect IT infrastructure across organizations, no matter the size.”

Field Nation, a work platform that connects independent contractors and organizations, launched today its mobile app for Android-based systems.

“The new Field Nation app is faster and easier to navigate, from work order acceptance to completion and payment,” said Travis Emslander, Chief Technology Officer at Field Nation. “Now service providers can perform work order tasks in the field as they are completed and respond to new work opportunities in a timely way. Plus, organizations gain real-time visibility and faster response rates to existing and new work orders. It’s a win/win for providers and businesses using the Field Nation platform.”

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

The first installment of a new monthly blog series offering tips and best practices on various ways MSPs can help their SMB clients work through the most challenging daily business issues.

Throughout last year, in my Breaking Bad blog series, I discussed various tips on how MSPs can break the cycle of various “bad” business habits. We covered everything from getting to know your customers,how to combat business complacency, and how to bring out the best in your employee talent. In keeping with that same theme, I would like to welcome you to this year’s new blog series, “Better Call an MSP”. And, if you’re wondering whether we’re playing off the upcoming “Breaking Bad” AMC spin-off series, “Better Call Saul,” you are correct!

As many of you know, SMB Nation has its HQ in western, WA, just outside of Seattle. This means that we are throwing our support behind our own Seattle Seahawks to win the 49^th annual Super Bowl, taking place this Sunday at 3:30 pm PST.

Pictured: Jenny and Edna showing 12^th Man Pride

GO HAWKS!

AppRiver, an email messaging and Internet security solutions provider, announced today its selection as a finalist in the 2015 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

“In a world of off-shore call centers, detached IT Help and increasingly complicated solutions, AppRiver has given tech a name, a face, a personal touch- qualities that are increasingly rare in the Digital Age,” said James Wirth, director of support at AppRiver. “We try to create a positive customer experience from first contact to post-op support.”

Canada-based Decisive Technologies announced today it has further extended relationships with myriad industry companies, including Cisco, HP and VMware, which contributes to its position as one of Canada’s largest specialized Enterprise IT Infrastructure providers.

“It has been an interesting year to say the least,” Decisive Technologies President Mike Smith said. “The hard work and dedication of everyone at Decisive has been instrumental in growing this company into one of the largest specialty IT infrastructure companies in the nation. Our relentless and ongoing focus on building a tremendous team of specialists, one that has such extensive real-world experience solving real-world problems, is an investment that continues to deliver returns—both for us, and for our clients. Their pride and dedication in designing, building, and implementing enterprise solutions that help our clients grow their business is what will continue to separate us from our competition.”

Decisive underwent a full rebrand within the past few months, creating a communication infrastructure designed to better cater to its clients.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Connie Certusi, Executive Vice President of Small Business Solutions at Sage about a blog she posted to a women in business site. Connie opened our conversation by saying that, as people are making individual resolutions, the start of the new year is a great time for SMB owners to take stock of their business and look at key focus points for the year.

In the Sage blog, the four key recommendations for SMB owners in 2015 are: Embrace the Cloud, Keep an eye on regulatory issues, Go mobile and Don’t forget your customer. Let’s take a look at each one of these in a bit more detail.

Voxox, a cloud-based rich communication service, announced today Cloud Phone Pro, a hosted VoIP solution designed to serve both SMBs and large businesses.

Cloud Phone Pro provides a fully-hosted solution that allows customers to replace existing phone service and continue use of the same devices.

Unitrends today announced that the Unitrends ReliableDR 4.0 solution is now generally available. This version extends recovery capabilities to Microsoft Hyper-V environments.

“With ReliableDR 4.0, we now offer storage replication, Microsoft Hyper-V as well as VMware vSphere replication, and integration of ReliableDR with Unitrends Recovery-Series, Unitrends Enterprise Backup, and Unitrends Virtual Backup platforms,” said Mark Campbell, Chief Marketing and Technology Officer, Unitrends.

Unitrends ReliableDR 4.0 is available via a certified reseller, and is positioned as an add-on to the company’s virtual and physical backup appliances. Key features include:

Pivotal announced 2014 marked record growth worldwide in adoption and sales of Pivotal Cloud Foundry, booking about $40 million in software sales.

“2014 marked a new era of enterprise cloud innovation, driven by tremendous business demands on IT to deliver next generation consumer services and industrial technologies,” said James Watters, Pivotal Vice President Cloud Platform Group. “Cloud Foundry became the world's fastest growing open source product ever with companies in all major geographies and vertical markets moving to an open cloud platform.”

Digium, Inc. today announced Switchvox Rescue, a business continuity solution to protect Switchvox on-premises business phone system customers against unexpected phone system unavailability or failure.

“Switchvox Rescue offers customers an easy way to maintain communications continuity in the face of disaster,” said Adam Kramer, product manager for the Switchvox product line. “Digium’s Switchvox platform is unique in that the same core software is shared between the on-site and hosted versions. By adding our SIP Trunking services to the equation, we can offer a temporary, cloud-based recovery option in a way that is both reliable and effortless for our customers.”

Welcome to new world of Office 365 critical mass. Yesterday at Microsoft Advanta, over 100 IT Pros gathered for the kick-off Office 365 Nation community group workshop. Bright and early, subject matter expert Grant Thompson started with well-received lectures on Click-to-Run Deployments and Line of Business application deployments and Migrations. Later in the day, Melanie Gass delivered speeches on Office 365 Licensing, SharePoint and OneDrive. She concluded later with a “night school” session on how MSPs can make money with Office 365.

The “Best of Show” award went to SkyKick with its audience wowing academic conversation on the hot topic of the day: Office 365 migrations. Other highlights included a largely paperless conference experience where surveys and alerts were handled by a dedicated mobile app.

Dell announced today release of Dell KACE K1000 Systems Management Appliance version 6.3, which includes increased functionality and visibility, as well as the addition of systems management support for Chromebook.

“With the proliferation of mobile and smart devices connected to corporate networks, it is imperative for organizations to make systems management a top priority,” said David Kloba, vice president and general manager of Endpoint Systems Management for Dell. “We’re redefining systems management by delivering a comprehensive, easy-to-deploy anypoint management solution for hundreds to tens of thousands of computers and devices, helping IT to significantly reduce costs.”

Spiceworks recently announced the results of its 2015 IT Budget Report, a survey of 600 IT Pros in the US and EMEA countries, conducted between September and October 2014. Participants were asked a few questions regarding their predictions for 2015 budget numbers, as well as allocation details. Interestingly, most respondents said that End of Life deadlines in 2015 are driving their IT spending for the year.

Going deeper into this point, the Spiceworks survey showed that 67% of IT pros said EoL is the driving factor for new hardware and software purchases this year. It is important to note that “Additional growth/need” was tied for first place with IT Pros, signaling an uptick for the channel. “Project Need” took second place for 57% of overall respondents.

There has been a lot of talk about how partners can and should adapt to the rise of cloud-based applications, with particular focus on how to replace revenue from sources like on-site server and software installations. Harry had a 3-part series on the issue a few months ago, and many other knowledgeable sources have written and spoken about it. In short, the transition to the cloud is happening, and is even picking up speed. This means that partners need to adapt in order to capitalize on the transition. Smart partners are finding new ways to attach revenue to cloud-based software like Office 365. That’s where our friends at attachedapps come in.

We recently received news from Robert Crane, Director, CIAOPS, and well-respected speaker at past SMB Nation events, that he is starting a new email course for SharePoint. This course is in conjunction with his newest Getting Started with SharePoint Online template, for consumers and resellers. The course itself is available for resellers, and includes a series of daily templates.

This course has 23 lessons in all things SharePoint. You can learn more about it on Robert’s site: http://blog.ciaops.com/2015/01/free-sharepoint-online-email-course.html

Robert also plans to release a lesson plan for Azure later this year.

By now, you are familiar with the Windows 10 conversation that reached a new peak a week ago Tuesday with a public-facing webinar. Shouts out included product features and function, such as the Start button, and a conversation about Windows as a Service (think in some ways how Google Chromebooks works). I’d implore you to read this PC Magazine article for your Win10 speeds and feeds fix.

What I want to do with this blog is provide more context.

inhouseIT, an IT solutions and services provider based in California, announced today it is offering ShoreTel Sky solutions to customers, joining ShoreTel’s Enabled Tier of the Champion Partner Program—Cloud track. ShoreTel provides phone systems and unified communications solutions.

“Having been a ShoreTel Champion Partner for many years, we have never been more excited about this latest cloud solution.” said inhouseIT ShoreTel Practice Director, Toby Turko. “ShoreTel Sky is an end-to-end cloud phone system. The inherent flexibility allows companies to add unified communications, contact center capabilities, and CRM and ERP integrations as they need them. Our customers have been waiting for an amazing experience like ShoreTel Sky.”

ShoreTel’s partner programs are designed to educate solution providers on how to best deliver Shoretel products and services. 

We recently received news that Microsoft Community Connections has unveiled a new program for its IT Pro partners. The Simple Tech Tips Program is aimed at empowering IT Pros with the latest tech content.

These IT Pros can then use any of the prewritten content in their marketing communications, such as newsletters and blogs. As Harry said earlier this week: “Knowledge is Power.” This prewritten content from the MCC program will be updated twice a month, and will feature new tips and tricks for SMB solutions. In addition, the new program allows access to 10% off software and 5% off of all other items.

SMB IT Pros can register for the program for free by filling out the short form here.

Continuum, the channel-exclusive provider of fully-integrated managed IT services, announced today the launch of its “Company News” blog, which will spotlight its MSP partners and update the partner community on news, products and resources.

“At Continuum, we believe we’re only successful as long as our partners are successful, and that’s the power of great people,” said Jeanne Hopkins, Senior Vice President & CMO at Continuum. “We want to celebrate all of their big wins as well as help to educate our entire partner community to become more successful. In 2015, we continue our commitment of making a wide variety of educational resources available. Our new company blog is just one example of helping our partners to succeed with lots more resources to come this year.”

It’s been asked of many: “given the chance to do it again, would you do it differently?” The answer is a resounding yes. The idea of building an independent Office 365 community is now a reality with Office 365 Nation (o365nation.com). And our momentum is accelerating. There is a hunger for an “outside looking in view” of the Office 365 world. Thus, we have a mobile app to accelerate the experience.

First – scan the QR code pictured and download the mobile app for your Android, Apple or Windows phone. Okay – now that you have done that, we can continue.

Today the application is focused on our seven city independent Office 365 tour traversing NFL cities. It all starts next Tuesday, January 27^th followed by the Silicon Valley on January 29^th. Wanna learn more, “old school” style? Then visit our traditional tour site at o365tour.smbnation.com. But we’d actually prefer you use the mobile app.

Tomorrow, the application will be an integral part of the day-to-day Office 365 Nation community motion. We’ll have the ability to alert you to important news. We can survey you on the fly, as we want to be your independent Office 365 Ombudsman, keeping a watchful eye over Microsoft. Imagine that I’m in a meeting with the Office 365 product team in Redmond and I instantly survey the community about some pending proposition or initiative. You get the point, I hope. The Office 365 Nation mobile app is an enabling technology bringing us closer together to accomplish more goodness.

IBM announced availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 through its Power Development Platform, Innovation Centers and Client Centers.

IBM said it hopes the move will enable independent software developers, in-house client and open source developers.

Today, four northern California schools announced that they have received $20,000 in grant funding from Verizon, as part of the Verizon Innovative Learning Grant. This grant is designed for K-12 schools to earn funds and develop STEM education programs. This is a strong initiative by the wireless company to foster the love of science, technology, engineering and mathematics to build a strong tech workforce in the future.

“We created this program to support the integration of innovative STEM initiatives in schools across the country, and we are pleased to recognize these schools," said Russ Preite, region president for Verizon Wireless. "The proposal submitted by these schools exemplifies the type of initiatives that will provide exposure to students around STEM fields, and also offer [the] students hands-on project-based learning opportunities that will help increase their interest and achievement in STEM.”

In the study of economics, there is an academic debate as to whether a “free good” truly exists. It’s not that something is just “free,” but there is the discussion of the whole opportunity cost.

But I’ve discovered what I’d consider to be a free good, and you should take advantage of it if you live in my community of Bainbridge Island. Think of it as a publically-financed UBER. It’s called BI Ride (pictured) and I recently used it. The driver told me he wishes more people would use it.

DataBank, a Texas-based operator/builder of data centers, today announced that it has completed its compliance exams, conducted by third-party firm, 360 Advanced P.A.

The exams showed that DataBank has a superior level of compliance with HIPAA, SoC 1 and 2 and PCI standards at its Dallas and Richardson, TX centers, as well as at its Edina, MN data center.

NeoDeck Holdings Corp., a Puerto Rican provider of healthcare solutions, announced today a partnership with DataMotion, a SaaS and health information service provider. 

Through the partnership, NeoDeck will provide its customers with access to DataMotion’s portfolio of cloud-based encryption technology. Products including Secure Messaging and SecureMail will allow for clinical and non-clinical exchange of PHI while maintaining full compliance with HIPAA and HITECH.

Last week, I spoke with Zynstra executive Andrew Morlidge, days before the company’s US launch of its SMB Hybrid IT solution (and just days before the Seahawks won the NFC Championship to go to the Super Bowl). In a wide-ranging conversation, we focused on a few core conversations: demographic, segment and opportunity.

Demographic

I offered that Zynstra, who previously announced its forthcoming SMB hybrid solutions at our SMB Nation Fall 2014 conference last October, stands to benefit in this way. If you look at the SMB Nation community as a whole, I believe it breaks down this way today:

Datapipe, which provides managed hybrid IT solutions for the enterprise, announced today its acquisition of GoGrid, a multi-cloud solution provider for Big Data deployments.

“GoGrid has made it easy for companies to stand up Big Data solutions quickly,” Datapipe CEO Robb Allen said. “Datapipe customers will achieve significant value from the speed at which we can now create new Big Data projects in the cloud. This acquisition advances Datapipe’s strategy to help our enterprise clients architect, deploy and manage multi-cloud hybrid IT solutions.”

Earlier today, Florida-based SaaS provider, AppRiver, LLC, released its Global Security Report for 2014. This report covers the top malware and spam trends in the world from last year, as well as the numbers of malware trapped by the company.

To begin, AppRiver reported that it trapped 893 million messages with viruses in the attachments, as well as 30.5 billion spam messages in 2014. The amount of messages with viruses in the attachments was nearly double what the company saw in 2013. Also interesting is that, for the first time, 69% of the spam messages AppRiver saw last year originated in Europe and North America. All in all, there were 761 unique cyber breaches during the past year that led to theft or compromise of 83,176,279 individual records.