SMB Community Podcast

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...

As the IT Nation show was winding down, I talked to some guys from Continuum. Joe Consolmagno is a Technical Account Manager for the Mid Atlantic Region. Raymond Vrabel is Director of Technical Account Management. Continuum was at IT Nation to talk to partners about how they integrate with a variety software programs. In addition, they introduce a variety of products. I asked Joe about the perform...

I always like catching up with Dan Wensley from Level Platforms. Dan makes a point of starting out this interview with a ringing endorsement of the IT Nation conference. Level Platforms recently added helpdesk and NOC support for MSPs. The phones are answered in North America – primarily in Ottawa, Ontario. The key to success is the integration with clients' existing RMM solution. We talked quite...

My friend Nancy Hammervik is the Senior Vice President, Industry Relations at CompTIA. On November 9th she was awarded a Bronze Stevie Award as "Female Innovator of the Year – Government or Non-Profit – 11 to 2,500 Employees." The Stevie Awards were created to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and business people worldwide. All or...

Alan McDonald is President and CTO of Xilocore. Xilocore is a "business continuity and disaster recovery" company focused value added resellers. The develop entire disaster preparedness plans that can be added to managed service offerings. In addition to simply having a business continuity plan, Alan talks about testing recovery systems on a regular basis. He notes that the most successful partner...

While at IT Nation last weekend, I grabbed Kent McNall, CEO of Quosal for a quick interview. This "killer combo" of products is one of the most impressive things I saw over the weekend. Quosal was one of the highlighted products in Arnie Bellini's keynote speech. Kent gave us some of the details about how Quosal connects the LabTech RMM to the ConnectWise PSA. We talked in some depth about the "po...

One of the fun people I don't get to see enough is Ian Watkins from the UK. He has been using ConnectWise for seven years. I caught up with Ian as he was in line to get into one of the breakout sessions. So we recorded this podcast in the hallway. He gives us his perspective on the data protection issues for companies in the UK and European Union. We also talked about other vendors — and some comm...

While hanging out in the PacketTrap booth, the talk turned to an interesting product combination that surprised me. Geoff Parker from PacketTrap tells me that a number of partners came by the booth and mentioned that they use these tools together. Hmmm . . . aren't they both RMM tools? Well, yes, but they each have some outstanding features that makes them even better in combination. This is a qui...

Interview with Erinn Davis, Community Manager for ConnectWise, Labtech, and Quosal Erinn Davis is one of the hardest working people I ran into at IT Nation. We grabbed an empty boardroom to talk about these three products and her role connecting with the community. The "Community Team" currently has 12 people. They manage all partner-facing activities at ConnectWise, Labtech, and Quosal....

ChannelEyes is now in its second year and Jay McBain was on the floor at IT Nation to talk to vendors about connecting with partners. According to Jay, most MSPs work with an average of eight vendors, and yet they are overwhelmed with the information flooding from vendors to partners. Jay explains the mobile "Channel Candy" apps that ChannelEyes makes available for vendors to develop. Channel Cand...

Kim's cloud display was very clever. In fact, it caught my eye and I had to take a picture. Then, of course, I turned on the microphone to ask what they do. Integral is a "full IT solution provider." They were recruiting partners to resell their managed service offerings, including cloud services and hosting/colo services. SSAE 16 SOC2 Audit Compliant. (See http://www.ssae16.org/ssae-16-reporting/...

I dropped by the Symantec booth at IT Nation and had some fun horsing around with Anne Stobaugh and Dal Gemmell. They brought me up to speed with some of the latest programs at Syamantec. Anne made a point that Symantec is trying to be very MSP friendly. They offer a monthly subscription buying program AND promised that you don't have to worry about Symantec contacting end users! The monthly progr...

Karl with Jenna from Spam Soap Jenna Chase is always in a good mood, and she really enjoyed the IT Nation vendor floor this year. We caught up with her on the last day. Spam Soap is a cloud based email and security provider. Which means cloud-based spam filtering, archiving, encryption, and hosted Exchange services. Of course they'll filter any email you need filtering, so you don't have to be hos...

One of the vendors that seems to make every show is eFolder (www.eFolder.net). I talked to Booth Dude Tel Hulsy about the eFolder product and what they're up to. eFolder Crew at IT Nation Ted's big push is the eFolder/AppAssure combination that allows client systems to be imaged to the eFolder cloud. This gives them on-site data recovery plus cloud-based recovery options. We also talked a bit abou...

ConnectWise Goes Way Beyond PSA I had a chance to sit down with Arnie and David Bellini near the end of IT Nation and get some insights into what they're doing and where the company is going. Arnie Bellini is the CEO of ConnectWise and David is the COO. Arnie Bellini, Karl Palachuk, David Bellini As Arnie describes ConnectWise, their mission is to help you run your business better by bringing all...

One of my old friends Steve Noel talked to me about his role at Axcient and what the company's up to these days. Steve is a Techno Sales Engineer at Axcient. Steve Noel Axcient is a 100% Channel focused backup and BDR solution. Steven doesn't describe their solution as "BDR" but he says, "We eliminate downtime." Whether your systems are physical, virtual, or some combination of things, Axcient can...

I sat down with Larry Walsh, CEO of The 2112 Group at IT Nation. The 2112 Group is an analyst firm that supports vendors in the solution provider community. They provide "leadership and best practices" for solution providers. Larry Walsh – The 2112 Group On the topic of having vendors selling direct versus selling through the channel, Larry says that this has always been true. He explains how you...