SMB Community Podcast

Spam Soap's "Click Protect" Scans Attachments When they Download Len Dimiceli from Spam Soap talked to me at Autotask Community Live in Phoenix about the latest and greatest news from Spam Soap. The latest service from Spam Soap is called Click Protect. Click Protect scans attachments. But more than that, it always scans the attachment before it's opened. So if an attachment's reputation...

Continuum Bundles Everything – And Lets You Test Drive at a Low Price With No Obligation Continuum (formerly Zenith) was the original RMM solution with NOC back end included. Today they have a very large variety of offerings, including Level 1 and Level 2 tech support on the desktop. They have a new Mobile Device Management program, their Vault BDR, and a "Tech Advantage" program that al...

Karen Guarino from Reflexion – Spam Filtering, HIPAA Training, and Automated Email Encryption for HIPAA Compliance Karen Guarino is the Channel Support Manager at Reflexion. She talked to us at the Autotask Community Live event about the latest and greatest campaigns from Reflexion. Of course Reflexion does spam filtering, but they have added some cool services that allow partners to more easily s...

Steve Noel: Management by Exception Interface takes continuity to the next level I caught up with Steve "The Dude" Noel, Technical Sales Engineer with Axcient at the Autotask Community Live event. Axcient's big push right now is on their "Management by Exception" Interface for their business continuity solution. With this tool, you can get alerts if a good backup is not receive...

Ken Edwards: Adding Streams of Income … and More My friend Ken Edwards is a busy member of the community, an SMB 150 award winner, and an Autotask user. Ken owns Maverick Mesa Computers in Glendale, AZ. He also owns a few other small businesses unrelated to I.T. service delivery. Here he gives us some ideas about how to set up "automated" businesses that sell products without him having...

Mark Moreno: Success with the "Mom and Pop" Mid-Market My friend Mark Moreno is an active member of the SMB community, an SMB 150 award winner, and an Autotask user. He owns C&M Support Services & Consulting, Inc. in Elkhart, IN. He has built a great business based on a specific kind of client, which he calls the "Mom and Pop" mid-market. This is an interesting hybrid m...

John Phillips: Synnex has an entire Small Business Team I talked to John Phillips from SMB Connect at Synnex while I was as Autotask Community Live. Synnex SMB Connect John was at AT Live to educate folks about a special sales group at Synnex focused completely on the SMB space. The group has 44 sales people, credit programs, and exclusive vendor rebates for participants of the program. See detail...

Michael Siggins from ChannelPro SMB At the Autotask Community Live conference, I caught up with Michael Siggins, Publisher of ChannelProSMB. They loved the event and the sense of community. Michael highlighted for us the upcoming ChannelPro SMB Forum in New Jersey September 10th. Channel Pro Forum will be a jam-packed, one-day affair with great content, great food and great networking opportunitie...

Travis Austin: PumpUpTheAuto.com One of the first and best Autotask experts is Mr. Travis Austin. Travis has developed programs for getting information in and out of Autotask. Now he specializes in helping companies get the most from their Autotask investment. Austin's new venture is called PumpUpTheAuto.com . Of course Travis was at Autotask Community Live in Phoenix last week. We caught up and t...

Richard Tubb – Effective Business Networking: How to Network Online and Offline Richard Tubb is well known for the Tubblog at http://www.tubblog.co.uk/ . Richard is a former Managed Service Provider and now a successful coach for I.T. Consultants. Richard has worked in the IT industry for more than 15 years, working at large corporations such as Ernst & Young and the NHS, as well as being the...

John Armato – Think Inside the Box John Armato is a Senior Vice President & Senior Partner, and Creative Strategist for Fleishman-Hillard International Communications. John helps companies set strategy, shape messages, and develop programs to inspire people, sell products, solve problems, promote causes, and avert crises. He has won dozens of awards and worked with more than 100 clients, inclu...

Rayanne Buchianico Rayanne Buchianico is an Accountant and MSP Business Consultant. At the SMB Online Conference in June, she'll be talking about Understanding Your Financials: Three Mandatory Monthly Reports and What They Are Telling You. We talked last week about how you can use QuickBooks and your financials. She gave some great information – which is why she has TWO presentations at the SMB On...

Manuel Palachuk My brother Manuel is an author, business coach, and outsourced CIO. He worked at KPEnterprises for six years, half of it as President. In this presentation he talks about the five tools that can transform your company overnight. He has over 25 years of business, management, and training experience in the computer and electronics industries. He is an expert of process, systems, and...

Brian Sharp Brian Sharp is a great motivational speaker/trainer. He runs a company that helps small business owners learn to use speaking and presenting as a means to expand their company and make sales. His company is called Go Big – http://www.gobigcompany.com/ . As you'll hear in this interview, Brian does not like the "pitch fest" approach to motivational training, which is very popu...

Strategies for a Post-SBS World "June 30th isn't that far away." Kevin Beares is the Community Lead for the Windows Server and System Group at Microsoft. Kevin is in charge of driving community interaction for the SMB space. I caught up with Kevin at SMB Nation Spring at the Microsoft Conference Center. Kevin gets props for putting himself on stage and letting the entire crowd put their...

Better Sales Through Better Education Chip Reaves from Bigger Brains is going to be one of the featured speakers at the 2013 SMB Online Conference. We did a press release recently on Chip's appearance. See the press release here: SMB Online Conference Press Room . In this podcast Chip talks about some research he'll be presenting in his June presentation. Here's a very good tidbit: When asked what...

At the SMB Nation Spring Conference, I talked to Laura Shafer, Director or Product Marketing at StorageCraft. StorageCraft and their ShadowProtect product are very well known. Now StorageCraft has a new cloud-based disaster recovery program called StorageCraft Cloud Services. This product was in beta during "Super Storm Sandy" and performed admirably. Now it is in general release. For more informa...

This week Chip Reaves from Bigger Brains announced a great new offering for managed service providers. I talked to him about Bigger Brains and the new offering – Computer College. Chip is the founder of Computer Troubleshooters in the U.S. (It was originally an Australian company.) Computer Troubleshooters grew to 480 locations in 33 countries. After selling off his interest in that franchise, Chi...

I had a great talk with Michael Siggins, Publisher of ChannelProSMB. Among other things, he brought me up to speed on their big live event scheduled for April 10th: Channel Pro SMB Forum. This day-long educational event will be in beautiful Long Beach, CA. The weather is expected to be perfect! Channel Pro Forum will be a jam-packed, one-day affair with great content, great food and great networki...

For several years now, I have presented my "State of the Nation" address for small business IT consultants. I never pretend that I'm unbiased. But most of my writing is pretty matter of fact. And most of my interviewing is intended to coax information out of other people. But once a year I dust off the soapbox and give a 45 minute "State of the Nation" address. This year, I talked about . . . High...

After months of preparation, Cloud Nation ( www.cloudnation.co ) was launched last week. I interviewed Tom Poole, President of Cloud Nation about the launch. First, I dropped in to www.cloudnation.co and signed up for the install-access 30 day trial. So I was logged into the system while interviewing Tom. The site has two sides. Betty the Business Woman represents small businesses. Folks who enter...

A few people have been talking about the new HIPAA training from Reflexion . In my brain, Reflexion = Spam Filtering. So how do you get from there to HIPAA training and certification? So I called Scott Barlow, VP of Sales and Marketing at Reflexion. HIPAA Training from Reflexion Scott ended up giving me a great education on HIPAA requirements, the one important "Business Associate Agreement" you n...

I ran into Arlin in Orlando a few weeks ago, but we never connected for a podcast. So we made a point of connecting my phone a few days ago. Arlin Sorensen of HTG Heartland Technology Groups (HTG) have been a major force in the SMB space for many years. HTG programs have traditionally been face to face peer groups. Right now there are about 250 companies in the face to face groups. But now there a...

One of my favorite resources in the SMB community is Robert Crane – Directory of the Computer Information Agency. You can find him at CIAOPS.com . I refer to Robert as a resource because he really is "the man to know" with regard to SharePoint. That includes the SharePoint services shipped with Small Business Server 2003, 2008, 2011, the free version from Microsoft, or the full-price product now a...

AVG Announces Cloud Care As I was wandering the floor at IT Nation, Jessica Turner from AVG stopped me to give me some information about the new AVG program: Cloud Care. Then Austen Clark wandered up to hand me to AVG marketing goodies. I assumed he was an AVG employee, but he's a very happy client of theirs and volunteered to hand things out. So I snapped this picture: Jessica agreed to an interv...