The Business Solutions Network

One of the hottest trends we've covered over the past year is the mobile device explosion. More specifically, we've talked about BYOD (bring your own device), the reality that your customers' employees are bringing their laptops and smartphones to work and using these devices both for personal and business purposes. This opens up a whole can of worms, starting with security issues and extending to your data backups.

I just completed my write-up for our BDR (backup and disaster recovery) product test, which we'll share in the March issue of Business Solutions magazine. There were a couple of surprises that emerged from the test. One in particular was the Apple laptop/desktop backup test. The testers, Eric Brown, CEO, and Kevin Danis, technical manager, at Remote Technology Management (RTM), shared their personal experiences with this challenge. "We only have a couple of customers that use Apple computers, and we've only ever been able to back up their data by creating a workaround that's cumbersome at best," says Brown.

One of the conversations I have on a regular basis with VARs and MSPs entails finding out the secrets behind their double-digit growth -- especially in this difficult economy. This week I spoke with David DeCamillis, director of business development at Platte River Networks (PRN), a Denver-based IT solutions provider that's been in business since 2002 and started selling managed services less than five years ago. During my initial interview with DeCamillis, he shared with me several key changes his company made over the past couple of years, including bringing PRN's helpdesk support in-house and improving the MSP's customer response time -- all without charging its customers more money and adding only one new employee.

Attend any BDR (backup and disaster recovery) webinar or training session, and you'd swear tape backup was about a week away from extinction. Statistics are cited about how tape is a leading culprit of data corruption. Plus, when you consider the fact that solid state storage is gaining traction in the enterprise, it seems even more believable that tape really could be on its way out.

Here's a sneak peek into the testing that's currently underway on seven hybrid backup solutions, which will be featured in the March 2013 issue of Business Solutions magazine. I spoke with our tester, Eric Brown, CEO of Remote Technology Management, this week, and he shared some interesting feedback . "After testing StorageCraft and seeing how well their product performed and how much flexibility they offer regarding off-site backups, I could see where it would make sense for an MSP to rent storage space from a cloud data center and start reselling their own cloud services. Right now, we're considering using StorageCraft for some of our clients' laptops, unless one of the other software-based BDR vendors turns out to have a superior product." At the time of my call with Brown, he had yet to test Asigra, CharTec, KineticD, and Unitrends.

One of the most common themes I see in the channel centers around a VAR's decision to become a managed services provider (MSP). So many see the value in it, but less than half actually take action to make that transition. And, of those who do, only a minority become successful. A few months ago, I wrote an article about underpricing being the #1 culprit plaguing many VARs-turned-MSPs. I recently came across one other problem many new MSPs face, which Steve Rutkovitz, CEO of Choice Technologies, summarizes as effective communications. "With managed services, there is a lot more communication required to be successful compared to what's required to be a break-fix VAR," he says. "In the past, IT skills were the big differentiator among channel competitors. Going forward, the VARs and MSPs that communicate more effectively will be the big winners."

I recently came across a study conducted by Avere and Gatepoint Research that highlights cloud trends based on feedback from 100 executives at companies throughout the country ranging in size from SMB to enterprise.

Last week, we featured the results of our RMM (remote monitoring and management) product reviews in our Networking Newsletter and Storage and Managed Services Newsletter. Both newsletters performed better than all of our 2012 Networking and Managed Services newsletters. This has been an exciting confirmation from you, our readers, who first told us in last year's survey that the one change you wanted us to make was adding product reviews to our editorial. As always, we're glad we listened.