SMB Community Podcast

Kevin McGibben – CEO of LogicMonitor – met up with me at the ConnectWise IT Nation conference in Orlando Friday. LogicMonitor is a "pure SaaS based IT infrastructure monitoring service." We talked about what that means and why it is NOT an RMM tool. LogicMonitor discovers and analyzes everything at the hardware level and up through virtual environments and hosted services. As a SaaS model, there i...

I caught up with Jason Samples from PacketTrap at the ConnectWise IT Nation conference in Orlando. My first question was "What are you doing here?" PacketTrap has both a PSA and an RMM tool. Their RMM tool is an "agent/agent-less hybrid" that integrates fully with other PSA systems – including ConnectWise. So they are having good luck talking to their clients and prospects on the vendor floor. Jas...

Final Report from SMB Nation Fall 2012. Our final interview from SMB Nation's Fall conference is with Tom Poole, Founder and CEO of Cloud Nation. Cloud Nation is an SMB Nation family brand. Cloud Nation has created a three-pronged program for helping MSPs make it to the cloud. Their goal is to provide a system so that SMB Consultants can jump into cloud offerings very quickly — confident that they...

Report from SMB Nation Fall 2012. Mike Bayless Near the end of this year's SMB Nation, I caught up with Mike Bayless from America's Tech Support in Sacramento. Mike says that networking with other MSP partners is the biggest benefit to attending. "The majority of what happens here for me is either at the exhibitor booths, or the vendor booths, or in the hallways and at parties." Mike is very clear...

Report from SMB Nation Fall 2012. I was wandering past the Datto booth at SMB Nation and stopped to chat with Shannon Kohn, the Director of Marketing and Channel Relations. She invited me to watch them blow things up. We recorded a brief podcast. Download the Interview with Shannon Kohn here. Find out more about Datto at www.dattobackup.com . After that, they did in fact destroy a machine. Here's...

Report from SMB Nation Fall 2012. I had a good chat with Regina Ciardiello, Editor of SMB Nation magazine while I was in Las Vegas. Regina wrote the Daily Gazette "newsletter" for the event. In addition to the plug for next year's SMB Nation conference, Regina gave us some information about SMB Nation staff member Jeremiah Ilges. Jeremiah suffers from aplastic anemia and needs a bone marrow transp...

Interview with Jon Sastre One of the best interviews I had at SMB Nation was with Jon Sastre, one of the IAMCP leaders at the state, national, and international levels. Jon is also a very successful managed service provider, value added reseller, and system integrator. Jon's company is Conquest Technology Services of Southern Florida. They are the Microsoft Partner of the Year for Lync. Download t...

One of the reasons I love working with my brother Manuel is that he is AMAZING at defining and implementing successful processes. Earlier this year he started a new coaching program geared specifically toward Managed Service Providers. Manuel was the President of my MSP (KPEnterprises) for three years. After that he took a position as the outsourced Chief Operating Officer for an MSP in Florida. H...

Rob Patterson talked to me at SMB Nation about his very successful IT Pro group in New York City – the New York Small Business Server Group. He revealed to us the secrets of holding a meeting, plus the Pre-meeting meeting and the Post-meeting meeting. There's no B.S. here: Rob is one of the great user group leaders out there. His success is possible because he has a large group of people who jump...

One of the fun things at this year's SMB Nation event was the whole "Back to the Future" theme. In addition to the lovely Claudia Wells (see previous podcast ), StorageCraft and Intel paid to bring the Time Machine to the conference hall. Since he was there all weekend, I grabbed the opportunity to talk to the current owner, Mark Shields. Download the interview with Mark Shields now. You can find...

I caught up with Jeff Middleton at SMB Nation over the weekend. We covered several topics, including: – Update on the SBS Migration / IT Pro Experts conference (the annual conference that is held from time to time) – SMB Community Roadshow, sponsored by Microsoft and HP – The future (and past) of Small Business Server – The new IT Pro Experts brand: www.itproexperts.com – SBS Migrations going forw...

As I said on my Facebook page, two of my favorite people in the world have been honored as the SBSers of the year: Rayanne Buchianico and Bob Nitrio. This award is officially the Jim Locke Memorial Community Award and is sponsored by SMB Nation and the SMB Technology Network (SMBTN). Both of these folks happen to be user group leaders, so we talked a bit about that. But we also talked about commun...

I talked to Bob Godgart from ChannelEyes ( www.channeleyes.com ) about what's new with their cool channel partner tools. The coolest new product – Channel Candy – is an app that allows vendors to create a branded partner app for smart phones. This will allow you to track the information and updates from your vendors. There will be some common controls from one vendor to another, but vendors will b...

Report from SMB Nation Fall 2012. I caught up with Jessica DeVita – one of my favorite people in the IT space. Jessica is an IT consultant, technical wiz, advocate for education in the IT community, Microsoft MVP and a really great person. Her web site is www.theubergeekgirl.com . Recently, Jessica was on the cover of ChannelPro magazine and had an article in there about Women in IT. We talked to...

Report from SMB Nation Fall 2012. Highly Reliable Systems Provides a New Approach to Backup Hardware Many people don't like tape backups. But most hard drive-based backups have their own problems. I talked to Darren McBride about the "Highly Reliable" systems and what makes them different. Their story is interesting and compelling. Until this conversation, I wasn't sure about the exact need they f...

The theme of this year's SMB Nation is "Back to the Future." Basically, it's wrapped around all the cool new things we have . . . and understanding them in light of the fact that SBS Server end of life is upon us. So Harry Brelsford and Chris Bangs over at SMB Nation got ahold of the guy who owns the DeLorean from the movie (Mark Shields). Yes: This guy still drives this car. Then they got ahold o...

This article was originally posted June 23, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. SMB Community Podcast: Chatting with Jeannine Edwards and Erinn Davis Fifteen minutes of information and commentary. – – – – – I caught up with Jeannine Edwards (ConnectWise) and Erinn Davis (LabTech Software) and had a great discussion about what's new, the community, IT Nation, and what they see for the SMB Community...

This article was originally posted June 16, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Freeday Friday Report: Three Conferences in Eight Days This is a very different Freeday Friday podcast . . . and the last one we'll produce. – – – – – My report on IT Pro Conference in New Orleans. "Trusted Identity" and what it means in the big picture. A few comments on delegation of trust and what that mean...

This article was originally posted June 15, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Thomas Dawkins Introduces Microsoft Technical Communities While attending the Microsoft TechEd North America conference last week, I literally ran into Thomas Dawkins just wandering the floor. Thomas is a senior IT Pro Audience Marketing Manager at Microsoft. He is responsible for relationships with IT Pro Groups and Us...

This article was originally posted June 15, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Len DiCostanzo Reports on Autotask Community Live 2012 June 2012 – Orlando, FL – A buncha people gathered in Orlando for the Autotask Community Live conference. This is, of course, a very product-specific conference. Many of the panels were run by users. The coolest thing about that is that 83% of the attendees were fir...

This article was originally posted June 15, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Mark Moreno Gives a Mid-Market Perspective on some SMB Events One of my favorite people in the SMB/MSP space is Mark Moreno from C & M Support Services. I think I first met Mark at the IT Pro Conference in New Orleans five years ago. But I also see him at SMB Nation and several other events. In the last ten days I r...

This article was originally posted June 15, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Six Podcast Reports from New Orleans IT Pro Conference June 2012 – New Orleans – Jeff Middleton's IT Pro Conference was a great success last week. Two days of panels and discussions on the theme "Trusted Identity: Faith in a Technology World" were very well received. About 150 attendees spent the time in a con...

This article was originally posted May 18, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Reports from the SMB 150 Banquet 2012 May 16th – Los Angeles – SMB Nation put on a nice banquet to celebrate the 2nd Annual SMB 150 Influencers. This was a great event. To be honest, this event started for me about lunchtime as I met with a series of great people that I don't get to see very often. Download the SMB 150 r...

This article was originally posted May 18, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Freeday Friday May Podcast Posted – US / UK Edition This program was recorded and is posted here . How to Convert 700 Clients to Managed Services Without Dropping Any The US/UK Edition of Freeday Friday featured a kickoff question of whether it's possible to covert a traditionally break/fix business into managed services...

This article was originally posted May 18, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Freeday Friday May Podcast Posted – Oceanic Edition This program was recorded and is posted here . Customizing Cloud Services for Medical and Other Verticals The "Down Under" edition of Freeday Friday featured a kickoff question about building a cloud package for the medical industry. In particular, how do we deal with a...