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Step back and hear me out on this one.

While not a direct hit with the Managed Services Provider (MSP) small and medium business (SMB) space, it’s a technology story at its core: curbside pick-up.

First my journey. I recently started using curbside pick-up at a local grocery store “HEB” in the Austin, TX area. I am sold and will minimize my in-store visits moving forward. Here are a couple take aways.

Accuracy. The customer experience for online ordering has been awesome. The “stuff” I wanna buy is easy to find online. Also – there is an order history so I can simply repeat the last order (like copy-and-paste) and then make simple modifications.

Recently SMB Nation teamed with Ostra and Security Studio to have a non-salesy, open conversation about the challenges Small and Medium Business (SMB) Managed Services Providers (MSPs) face in providing robust cybersecurity solutions. Beyond the technical realm, there is a loneliness feeling that many MSPs feel alone. We hit that head on in the 30-min webcast.

Topics include:

Former Microsoft executive Caroline Goles at a recent industry conference hosted by Pax8 in Denver. Highlights from the interview include:

• Partner relations and cloud technology.
• Career progression and industry experience.
• Aligning sales and marketing strategies for partnership success.
• Partner needs and marketing services.

As folks including clients and MSPs focus more on the “spend-side” including expenses, QuoteWerks is more relevant than EVER.

We recently cornered Brian Laufer, long-time partner at QuoteWerks for a business models update.

High-level points in the interview include:

• Sales quoting and proposal solutions with a focus on supply chain trends
• Using data science to analyze vendor information
• Supply chain issues in the IT industry during COVID-19
• The benefits of using a service to manage procurement for MSPs

We caught up with a busy Jeffrey Goldstein - Managing Director at Queue Associates recently at the Ingram Micro Global Cloud and Innovation Summit in Las Vegas. Goldstein's technology practice (focused on Microsoft Dynamics) recently celebrated its 30th Anniversary. Catch the conversation about his global footprint that includes Europe and Asia! Learn more about this rock star and his company HERE. 

Wait! What? It’s already the second half of 2023?!?! Not only is that true but the first half went very fast. So its time for my predictions before 2024 sneaks up on us (YIKES). These are in no particular order and I’d love your feedback (just hit reply to this newsletter).The categories are Economic Anxiety, Marketplaces, MSPs and AI, Events and Cybersecurity.

The pandemic delayed Pax8 conference has launched with a bang. For a first-time event, it has an impressive 1,100+ attendees and insightful keynotes plus breakout labs.

Let’s start with Jay McBain’s 6 Trends To Watch. A couple of highlights are:

Today customers have seven (7) partners that they work with compared to

Just over a week ago, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was placed in FDIC receivership and essentially failed. The long-time financial institution is best known for financing technology startups and providing banking services to Venture Capitalist (VCs). MSPs can take a deep breath and exhale their anxiety for now. Read on.

I recently attended the famed South-by-Southwest (SxSW) conference in Austin and one of the tracks I participated on was the startup track. SxSW is known as a startup conference amongst other offerings. And as SVB was failing in real-time during the conference, you can imagine it was the buzz, as seen in the pic of a Sunday afternoon venture capital panel.

Data breaches cost US organizations on average 4.35 million in 2022 which is a rise of 2.6% from 2021.    With most breaches involving human elements, organizations should be running to provide employees cyber security awareness training.  With ransomware on the rise and employees working from many locations’ security awareness should be top of mind.  

Harry Brelsford of SMB Nation sits down with Rod Mathews, who was recently announced as Axcient’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Mathews brings almost 30 years of technology industry experience to Axcient and is a seasoned IT industry veteran with a deep understanding of the data protection space and the Managed Service Provider community.  Mathews mentioned he was excited to join the Axcient team and build on their track record of growth.  Watch the full interview and learn about Axcient’s plans for the future. 

Watch Interview Here

Malware has evolved into a booming business for cybercrime organizations.  With the latest evolution of Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) which is a term use to describe the unlawful leasing of software and hardware for the purpose of conducting cyber -attacks.  Although,  MaSs typically targets low to medium vulnerabilities, ransomware is estimated to cost the world over $1bn yearly.

We never know for sure what lies ahead, however, one thing we know is that many do not plan for the future.  Harry Brelsford of SMB Nation sits down with Danny and David Brown of Twins Talk It Up about how leaders, business owners, members of the C suite, all have legacies that they are building for the next generation. During this episode they talk about great legacies, bad legacies, and five simple exercises you could do to help build your legacy when you think about the next generation.