The Business Solutions Network

When we last spoke with IT Authorities, which describes itself as a pure managed services provider, it had already grown by 377% during the previous three years. Like you, we’re always curious to find out how sustainable that kind of growth is, and what are some things the really successful solutions and services providers are doing that you may not be doing — but could be. I caught up with Jason Caras, co-CEO of IT Authorities, to get those answers.

If you've been following our blog or paying attention to any channel trends, you've not doubt heard about BYOD (bring your own device). If you're just hearing about this topic, here's a quick BYOD overview.

One business struggle I observed from multiple business owners attending the HTG Peer Group 2012 event last week in Dallas was the challenge of hiring and keeping good employees — especially salespeople.

Over the past couple of days, I had the opportunity to attend the HTG 2012 Summit, an MSP (managed services provider)-focused peer group event in Dallas, Texas. This was my first HTG event. I was inspired to attend after hearing feedback about this group through conversations with multiple channel companies over the past six months.

I recently spoke with several managed services vendors, and I asked them this question: "What's the #1 recurring revenue opportunity that solutions providers miss?" I learned a lot of good information from their answers, but the one answer they all had in common surprised me: BYOD (bring your own device).

Back in March, I discussed VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) in a video blog post called "Should VDI Be Your Next Big Move?" In my previous post I touched upon the projected growth for this technology (ABI Research projects it's going to grow from $500 million in 2009 to $5 billion by 2016) as well as the controversy around the technology (check out OS33's article:  5 Reasons Why VDI Falls Short on Delivering the Full Benefits of Cloud Computing)

Over the past couple of days at Ingram Micro’s 2012 SMB Invitation event, I’ve had the privilege of talking with a lot of VARs and MSPs that have one thing in common: they’re focused primarily (and sometimes exclusively) on the SMB market. There are so many great stats about this market that it’s no surprise a VAR would want to focus on it. At the top of the list of reasons VARs like SMBs is the fact that these smaller businesses have many of the same IT needs as their larger counterparts, but they often lack the human and financial resources to achieve their goals. VARs are the perfect types of companies to become these SMBs’ outsourced IT departments.

In the May issue of Business Solutions magazine, Jamie Brenzel, CEO of KineticD, discusses cloud pitfalls VARs and MSPs should watch out for in, "Do You Make These Cloud Security Mistakes?" Brenzel offers practical advice on topics such as choosing between public cloud and private cloud offerings, and he also gets into the importance of protecting your customers' data from the point it leaves their facility to the point it gets to a SAS 70-audited data center.