Smb Community Podcast By Karl W. Palachuk

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 interview. She brought me up to speed on the new AVG program and the revenue opportunities for MSPs. This service is provided on an as-needed basis with month-to-month payments. Includes anti-virus, content filtering, and remote IT services. We also went into deployment options, installation, their dashboard, how new users are added to the system, and more.   Download the Interview with Jessica Turner from AVG. For more information on AVG Cloud Care, visit www.avg.com/cloudcare. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.     Side story:

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 performance of Continuum worked during Hurricane Sandy’s visit to New York and New Jersey. The result was pretty impressive. The combination of Continuum and Datto made response to the disaster fast and easy. In addition to “Continuum Vault” for disaster recovery, the performance of the cloud-based NOC was excellent. Ray mentioned that during the disaster, about 3,000 virtual servers were spun up in the cloud – many of them in advance of the hurricane just to make sure that companies would have no downtime. Download the Interview with Joe and Ray from Continuum here. For more information about Continuum, visit www.continuu

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 a bit about the lessons from Hurricane Sandy and the power of cloud services during a disaster. Hurricane Sandy was a real test for how MSPs will react to disasters in the age of cloud-based management and disaster recovery. Dan is proud of the performance of their NOC during the hurricane, and he’s confident that they will perform just as well in the next disaster. Download the Interview with Dan Wensley from Level Platforms here. For more information on Level Platforms, visit www.levelplatforms.com. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.Connect

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 organizations and individuals worldwide may submit nominations to the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. The Stevie Awards are given out by the American Business Association. We talked about her role mentoring women in business and specifically women in IT. Nancy deals with pretty much everything in CompTIA that deals with partners: Communications, education, and a lot more. Their goal is to be vendor neutral while providing education and opportunities for VARs and MSPs. Download the Interview with Nancy Hammervik from CompTIA here. For more information on CompTIA, visit www.comptia.org. For more information on IT N

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 partners for his product are those that focus their business around disaster recovery. And of course I made him answer some questions about their partner program. Download the Interview with Alan McDonald from Xilocore here. For more information on Quosal, visit www.xilocore.com. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.

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 “possibility engine” in LabTech that triggers quotes from Quosal. From little things like the need for RAM, all the way up to creating an automated proposal for replacing an entire server, the LabTech/Quosal combination can help you find opportunities among your clients that you might otherwise miss. Quosal was written as an open application, so it works nicely with Autotask and other products in addition to ConnectWise. And with the LabTech integration it is very obvious that other RMM tools will want to develop a competing product as well. Download the Interview with Kent McNall from Quosal here. For more information

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 comments about the music at the event. Download the Interview with Ian Watkins – ConnectWise user from the UK. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.

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 quick interview but very interesting. Download the Interview with Geoff Parker from PacketTrap here. For more information on PacketTrap, visit www.packettrap.com. For more information on LabTech, visit www.labtechsoftware.com. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.

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. These activities include facilitating user groups and working with social media. One person on this team is Holly Soule. I mention the Pinterest pages she manages. You can see a taste of this at http://pinterest.com/connectwise/look-learn/. When we took the picture, the first shot didn’t capture Erinn’s hot shoes, so we had to redo this. Download the Interview with Erinn Davis from ConnectWise, Labtech, and Quosal here. For more information on LabTech, visit www.labtechsoftware.com. For more information on Quosal, visit www.quosal.com. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on Conn

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 Candy apps will live on your cell phone/mobile device and be a direct communication system between vendors and their channel partners. Jay gives us a great deal of detail on channel relations and how ChannelEyes is working to improve those relations. Download the Interview with Jay McBain from ChannelEyes here. For more information on ChannelEyes, everyone should visit www.channeleyes.com. For vendors to view the mobile app, visit www.channelcandy.com. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.

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/ssae-16-type-2-reports.html) Their channel program has no minimums and no quotas. They will help train you to sell their solutions, so they can help you with both sales and technical support. Download the Interview with Kim Mann from Integral here.   For more information on Integral, visit www.integralsg.com.   For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.

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 program is a buy-what-you-need model and great for cash flow. A few products are available in this program either on-premise or in the Cloud, including End Point Protection and Backup Exec. Dal focuses on that Endpoint Protection piece and says Symantec is totally supporting Windows 8 devices at this time. As he says, “In this business, if you don’t adapt quickly to change, you’re not going to be in business for very long.” Symantec is also a big supporter of HTG. They support some groups directly and try to have a tight relationship. Their goal her is to stay tuned to what MSPs are looking for. Symantec has an “MSP Spec

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 hosted with them. Download the Interview with Jenna Chase from Spam Soap. For more information on Spam Soap, visit http://spamsoap.com or Call 866-772-6688.   For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.    

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 about the explosion of data on client sites and how that affects backups. Ted explained a bit about eFolder’s de-duplication feature. Other topics included . . . – Why public cloud? – How does the availability of bandwidth affect recovery? – Running clients in the virtual environment in the cloud – The “eFolder Continuity Cloud” Download the Interview with Ted Hulsy from eFolder. For more information on eFolder, visit www.eFolder.net. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.

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 of your “Silos of Chaos” into a common interface. Now, in addition to the features built into ConnectWise, they are building strong alliances with other products in order to take integration to a higher level. Two of the coolest things I saw at the keynote were the “Marketplace” and the “Partner Kits.” You can check out the Marketplace at www.connectwise.com/marketplace. They list all of their all integration partners – about 400 in all. The Partner kits are available at www.connectwise.com/partnerkits and include quick-start kits for sales, helpdesk, human resources, and more. Arnie is justifiably proud of their

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 back up your stuff. Steve gives us a few notes on the new people who working at Axcient development. He promises that they have a lot of new developments in the funnel. Axcient is on a 6-week development cycle, so he expects some big changes very soon. Because the appliances are in constant communication with Axcient, they can increase functionality and update systems remotely and automatically. And of course quality assurance is very important in this process. Steve also gave us some information on their integration strategies for LabTech, ConnectWise, and other products. In addition, they have a strong relation

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 differentiate yourself so the vendors’ practices become irrelevant. On the question of how vendors can help get the right information to solution providers, he says “The channel is awash in content.” So he is not worried about whether solution providers will have access to information. But he argues that solution providers need to figure out what their business model is going forward. Once they do that, they can get the information they need from their vendors. Download the Interview with Larry Walsh here.  (17 MB) For more information . . . ChannelNomics.com ChannelNomics on Twitter and Facebook lmwalsh2112 on Tw

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 is no on-premise tool. And because they deploy to any location at once, you can monitor everything from database performance in hosted environments all the way down to hardware at your colo facility. The price is also very good . . . and very much in line with standard Managed Services pricing. Everything can be based on pure usage for you while you parcel out monitoring across all your clients. There is one master portal that you can customize. Kevin McGibben of LogicMonitor In case you want to take a closer look and see if this is something you can integrate into your managed service business, LogicMonitor is hap

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. Jason Samples from PacketTrap PacketTrap offers trials for their tools. Jason recommends that you start with the RMM side. Once you’re comfortable with that, then they invite you to look at the PSA. They have a number of online training videos and we’re planning to do a webinar together in the next month. Download the Interview with Jason Samples from PacketTrap here. You can find out more about PacketTrap at www.packettrap.com. – – – – – For more information on IT Nation, visit TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit ConnectWise.com.

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’re selling top-notch, reliable services. The program is good for both existing MSPs without a cloud offering and folks who are knew to the business altogether. Tom Poole Cloud Nation Components include: – Sales and marketing support – Education and certification – Platform (actual cloud offerings) Download the Interview with Tom Poole here. The timetable for the release of Cloud Nation is: – November 1st – You can sign up at http://cloudnation.co – December 1st – Educational component goes live – January 1, 2013 – The entire operation goes live   Past Podcasts We recorded two other podcasts with Tom. The first wa