Smb Community Podcast By Karl W. Palachuk

Check out Nov 4th's Odd Tuesdays episode where Karl talks with Results Software's Mike Honig about their expanded CRM system. And our Oddballs segment in this episode features Small Business MVP Amy Babinchak discussing the importance of MSPs building and developing vendor relationships. You can find the Nov 4th's episode here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I just got back from the big ChannelPro SMB Forum in Philadelphia. For more information on next year's events, visit http://events.channelpronetwork.com/. At the event, I talked to a number of vendors. Here is present some quick shout-outs from Datto, Buffalo Tech, Excel Micro, Lenovo, and StorageCraft. Most importantly, I had a chance to hang out with Dave Seibert and sit on a cloud panel with him. Dave is the mastermind behind the big SMB TechFest that happens about four times a year in Anaheim, CA. Here I talk to Dave about the next event – November 21-22, 2014. For more info, visit www.smbtechfest.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I had a good visit with Rob T. Rae from Datto at the GFI Max 2014 conference this week. Later in the day, Datto was awarded both Best in Show and Best Exhibitor Interaction awards. Datto is a backup and disaster recovery company with about 400 employees worldwide. They're big in Canada, Europe, as well as the U.S. One big point for Rob was that they're focusing on a lot more than continuity. How does the MSP make money without talking disasters? Most restores are from people – not natural disasters. So they talk about robust and speedy recovery from human mistakes. Datto is strictly a hybrid solution – both onsite and in the cloud. The local device is as important as the cloud. The local is a quick, easy way to restore. The cloud provides additional continuity security when there is a local disaster. How is cloud storage affected by the U.S. Patriot Act, as well as laws in other countries? More importantly, can you get documentation of the chain of custody for your data? For more info, visit Dattobackup.co

In the July 1st episode of Odd Tuesdays, Karl talks to Phil Elder and Susan Bradley from the SMBKitchen Project. The pair talk about the managed services educational programs they are involved in and offer the chance for a lucky Odd Tuesdays' listener to win a year-long membership to the SMBKitchen ASP Project. The episode also features Third Tier's Amy Babinchak in the show's reoccurring Oddballs segment. Amy talks about when to hire and how to train administrative and tech staff for your managed services business. The episode also updates listeners on Karl's recently announced Roadshow Down Undertour, covers some Tech News, and gives a highlight of upcoming technology events around the country. You can find the July 1st Odd Tuesdays episode here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

April 15th's episode of Odd Tuesdays, Ted Hulsy, VP of Marketing at eFolder joins Karl to talk about sync and security for MSPs and VARs. Rayanne Buchianico, from ABC Solutions also features in the episode in our Oddballs segment. Rayanne continues her QuickBooks tips series with today's tips surrounding the variety of preferences you can take advantage of in making QuickBooks much more user friendly with daily entries, particularly for managed service providers. You can find the April 1 Odd Tuesdays episode here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

3D Printing – An Interview with Alan Ware Sacramento has a great organization called Hacker Lab – part hacker space, part maker space, and part co-working space. I joined last year and plan to cover a number of subjects related to the things they do there. This includes programming, Arduino, robotics, 3D printing, and more. This is an interview with Alan M. Ware, B.S.M.E. Alan is a 3D design and manufacturing engineer. He teaches the 3D Printing class at Hacker Lab. I took the class and then asked him for a quick interview. Recorded February 2014 I also recorded some videos. One is already posted. The other one needs some production. The first video is here: http://youtu.be/ncLrcYIbOeA Hacker Lab is open to everyone. It's a great place to learn and to prototype your ideas. Find out more at http://www.hackerlab.org. Hacker Lab is located at 1715 I Street, Sacramento, CA. Alan also mentioned "The Design Spot" at the Arcade public library – 2443 Marconi Ave., Sacramento, CA. They have computers w

Odd Tuesdays was launched this week by Host Karl Palachuk and Producer Monica Caraway. The Podcast is geared for I.T. Consultants and features what's new in tech management and best practices for running an I.T. business. The Podcast airs on the first and third Tuesdays of each month and features a variety of Vendor & MSP consultant interviews and advice segments. In the first episode, SMB Nation's Harry Brelsford joins the show to discuss all that 2014 has in store for the SMB Nation community. He also mentions their Emerging Technology Tour, of which Karl is participating in. Lars Andersson, from Cloud Nine, joins the show as well to talk about how instrumental SMB Nation has been to his business. Karl also updates the audience on the many live presentations he will be giving around the country this year. More information can be found at whereintheworldiskarl.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for ad

Posted: Karl's State of the Nation Address for IT Consultants In case you couldn't listen live, we recorded the "State of the Nation" address. Recorded January 15, 2014 Notes from Karl Palachuk on the year gone by and the year ahead. Karl Palachuk Announces Odd Tuesdays Karl's Fifth Annual State of the Nation Address for I.T. Consultants 30 minutes. Key contents: – Windows 9 timeline announced – Announcement of new podcast series: Odd Tuesdays – The year 2013 in review – The effects of the recession on the business ahead – Thoughts on 2014 – Upcoming appearances and events Links mentioned in this podcast: SMB Books: www.SMBBooks.com Small Biz Thoughts: www.smallbizthoughts.com SMB Tech Fest: www.smbtechfest.com SMB Nation Emerging Technology Tour: http://tour.smbnation.com Great Little Seminars: www.GreatLittleSeminar.com SMB Online Conference: www.SMBOnlineConference.com SMB Nation Preday: www.smbpreday.com Odd Tuesdays Podcast: www.OddTuesdays.com – Download the Karl Palachuk's State

Online or In Person: Partner Training with Third Tier I ran into Dave Seibert at the recent ChannelPro SMB Forum in New Jersey. He brought me up to speed on the SMB Tech Fest events he produces. The Sixth SMB Tech Fest will be October 19th in Irvine. Details are online at www.smbtechfest.com. The October 19th event will be presented by members of Third Tier, including Amy Babinchak herself! See the event schedule at http://smbtechfest.com/events.html. Presentations include: Vision of the Future – Presenter: Amy Babinchak Hyper-V Configurations for SMB with Replication – Presenter: Boon Tee Hyper-V Configurations for SMB with Clustering – Presenter: Phil Elder The state of SMB Security – Presenter: Susan Bradley Plus a panel discussion! The very reasonable price includes breakfast and lunch! Location: Brandman University (Irvine Campus) 16355 Laguna Canyon Road Irvine CA 92618 About SMB Tech Fest SMB TechFest is a combination of business & technical training. Each venue date has a unique combinat

SaaS Marketplace Allows MSPs to Find Business Cloud Services to Resell Today SaaSMAX Corp. announced the official commercial release of their new SaaSMAX marketplace platform. A few days ago I recorded a short podcast with SaaSMAX Founder and CEO Dina Moskowitz about this announcement and the Saas Marketplace in general. Basically, SaaSMAX brings together channel resellers and app vendors, increasing revenues for both. It's like a one-stop shop for partners who are looking for services they can sell (resell) to create recurring monthly revenue sources. The commercial launch kicked off with the unveiling of the new SaaS marketplace at CompTIA's ChannelCon, with WiseSaaS search functionality that now permits site visitors to immediately start searching and discovering trusted business cloud software solutions that match their needs. Moreover, SaaSMAX provides Resellers with permission-only on-demand access to many SaaS Vendors' reseller and affiliate programs and their related incentives. As you'll hear i

Stacey Powell: Take Your Finances to the Gym! Stacey Powell owns two businesses to help companies be more successful by managing their finances more effectively. At Creating Answers (http://www.creatinganswers.com/), Stacey works with business owners to stop once a month and take a closer look at their numbers. Meanwhile, over at The Finance Gym (http://thefinancegym.com/), she works with small groups of business owners in a sort of master mind format. The Finance Gym bootcamps are a great way for small businesses to get feedback in real time from other small business owners. Stacey tells us how these groups help business owners feel more comfortable with their numbers and become more profitable. Stacey will be one of the featured speakers on the SMB Online Conference next week. Her topic there is Five Magic Tricks to Make Your Numbers Jump Up and Speak to You. Her presentation is on Wednesday, June 26th. Tune us in! More info for Stacey Powell: Web Site: www.creatinganswers.com Web Site: www.th

Need to Manage Amazon Web Services? ElasticTask Gets The Job Done One of the cool things I noticed about the Autotask Community Live event is that many partners are developing products and services that plug into Autotask. In all cases, these partners solved a problem internally and then turned that program into a product that can be used by others. One of the coolest I saw was ElasticTask. ElasticTask helps you make sense of your Amazon Web Services billing, converts it automatically into Autotask, QuickBooks, and other programs, and even creates the related products you need for AT invoices. I talked to Lubbi Ernjakovic about the specifics. If you sell AWS , I think you'll find this very interesting. This product is worth a look if: – You sell/resell AWS and have multiple child accounts – You have several AWS accounts – You want estimated bills from your AWS service – You want a centralized dashboard for managing AWS accounts, child accounts – You need monitoring of AWS services – You want automatic ti

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 has gone bad, it will not open. There is no additional charge for this feature. Existing partners will need to turn on the feature. New partners will receive it turned on automatically. Len gives us some details of the Spam Soap partner program, sign-up costs, etc. He also talks about the nature of partners at the Autotask conference versus some of the other conferences out there. For more information on Spam Soap, visit www.spamsoap.com. – Download the Interview with Len Dimiceli from Spam Soap here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use

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 allows you to send project work to their team. They also have a new "Marketing Advantage" program, which Matt describes in this podcast. I talked to Matt at the Continuum booth at Autotask Community Live. I asked him about their Starter package. He gives some good details here. Basically, you have a small buy-in with no long term contract, and you get just about every product they offer. They basic RMM agent includes a variety of add-on software as well, including anti-virus and anti-malware software all for one low price. For more information on Continuum, visit www.continuum.net. – Download

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 serve their medical/HIPAA clients. In addition to spam filtering, Reflexion offers training on a few topics. The one I've been involved in is their HIPAA certification training. In addition to that, Reflexion has a cool email encryption service that scans outbound emails and encrypts them if they meet certain criteria. For example, if it detects a Social Security (not allowed to be emailed under the HIPAA HiTech Act), it automatically encrypts the email. For more information on Reflexion, visit www.reflexion.net. For more information on Reflextion training programs, visit www.reflexiontraining.net. – D

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 received within a specified time period. On other fronts, Steve mentioned that Axcient is beginning to see more activity in the mid-market space in addition to the "S" side of SMB. (It is interesting that he's the second person we interviewed that is seeing traction into the mid-market.) You can find out more at www.axcient.com or contact Steve directly at snoel@axcient.com. – Download the Interview with Steve Noel from Axcient here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 to deliver services or manage the sales of a product. His big key to success is finding little niche products that fill an existing need. Ken is also a speaker at the SMB Online Conference next week. His topic is: Topic: Where Facebook Meets Business. Ken Edwards has been servicing the computer networking needs for small businesses for over 25 years. Beginning as an aviation tech in the Marine Corp, he progressed through servicing restaurant systems to handling the computer needs of general small business. He really cut his teeth in networking in the mid-90s as a Novell CNE, and then became a Microsoft Networkin

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 market that operates just like any other small business when it comes to buying an decision-making. But they spend at the level of enterprise companies. Mark Moreno Mark gives us a quick intro to the topic here, but he will have a much more detailed presentation at the SMB Online Conference next week. Mark's topic at the conference is Serving Larger Clients – The Mid-Market: An Opportunity You Do Not Want to Miss. Mark's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/christsitguy View the Press Release about Mark's Appearance at the SMB Online Conference. See the press release here: SMB Online Conference Press Room. The

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 details at www.synnex.com/smbconnect. You can find out more about the program at that site or email smbconnect@synnex.com, or call them at: 855-899-0050. John even has his direct number and cell phone on the SMB Connect web site. That's pretty accessible! In this interview John also talks the reseller program, the refurbished product service, licensing, and more. One of the cool tools is Renew Solve – a free tool for tracking license renewals that sends reminder messages to clients – from YOU and not from the vendor. – Download the Interview with John Phillips from Synnex here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz co

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 opportunities. Sessions include: o Adapting Your Business to the Cloud o Winning Sales and Marketing Strategies for MSPs o Where the Money Is in Mobility o Today's Hottest Trends in Hardware o CompTIA Training: MSP Partners Trustmark And of course you, I will be there on a panel. The event is FREE. For more info and to register, please go to www.ChannelProForum.com. – Download the Interview with Michael Siggins here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.