There's a lot of innovation happening in the POS (point of sale) world today. Customers are asking for mobile solutions for their employees, mobile marketing apps for customers, online marketplaces, digital signage, integrated video surveillance.  Continue Reading..

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.  Continue Reading..

Few markets have been as rewarding to POS VARs as the hospitality vertical. In our Feb. 2010 issue of Business Solutions, I interviewed Todd Baker, Sr. of 24x7 Hospitality Technology, who shared some of the ways his company was finding success selling to restaurant chains.  Continue Reading..

About a month ago, I recorded a video blog on the rising interest in iPads from your customers. More interesting than anything I had to say were the comments from readers. It's clear that, due to customers asking for such solutions so often, many of you have already been forced to devise strategies to either offer -- or steer your customers away from -- mobile POS (point of sale) solutions.  Continue Reading..

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).  Continue Reading..

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...  Continue Reading..

In my conversations with POS (point of sale) dealers, I often hear about struggles to increase revenue. I've noticed that many of these people aren't doing everything they could to change their situation. I'm not going to pretend that what follows is easy or that you won't be forced to dedicate hard work and time to get the boost to revenue you're hoping for.  Continue Reading..

If you've been a reader of Business Solutions magazine for the past six years or so, you may have noticed that my articles tend to focus on technologies like POS (point of sale), payment processing, data collection, and video surveillance.  Continue Reading..

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...  Continue Reading..

Last week, NETGEAR announced its new R6300 802.11ac WiFi router. According to the manufacturer, this is the industry's first 802.11ac dual band gigabit WiFi router enabling 5th generation WiFi (5G WiFi) at gigabit speeds. Indeed, 802.11ac is expected to deliver speeds three times faster than 802.11n (maxing out at 1300 Mbps on 5GHz ).  Continue Reading..