SMB Community Podcast: Business Advice for Small MSP Owners

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.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 Specialist" team that focuses completely on MSP products and issues. You can contact the MSP team at … [email protected] or call 855-210-1101.

Download the Interview with Anne Stobaugh and Dal Gemmell from Symantec here.

For more information on Symantec, visit www.symatec.com.

For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com.

For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 success with product integration. One of the coolest things he demonstrated in his keynote was the ability for Labtech to find problems and connect to Quosal so Quosal and automatically generate a sales opportunity in ConnectWise with a draft sales quote. At that point the sales team can fine-tune the quote, collaborate with the tech department, and get the quote out to the client.

And of course Arnie loves the partnership ConnectWise shares with HTG – the Heartland Technology Group. He looks at HTG as the group that's going to push innovation in the IT support business.

. . . And there's a lot more covered in this 12 minute interview.

Download the Interview with Arnie Bellini from ConnectWise here.

For more information on IT Nation, visit TheITNation.com.

For more information on ConnectWise, visit ConnectWise.com.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 relationship with the HTG groups who were present at IT Nation.

Download the Interview with Steve Noel from Axcient here.

For more information on Axcient, visit http://www.axcient.com.

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For more information on IT Nation, visit TheITNation.com.

For more information on ConnectWise, visit ConnectWise.com.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.