If you have the technical aspects of your business under control, but are still struggling with those operational challenges such as a five-year business plan or a thorough marketing timeline, there is help out there. Two IT industry organizations, ASCII and CompTIA, are offering regional events focused on those business-planning tasks.

Tim Becerra, executive VP for business development at Posiflex, talks with Business Solutions magazine President Jim Roddy for an exclusive interview on the benefits of outsourcing product repairs to your vendor.

Jeff Yelton, president of ScanSource POS & Barcoding, talks about the channel and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (i.e. federal stimulus package) in an exclusive interview with Business Solutions magazine President Jim Roddy.

John Black, president of Catalyst Telecom, talks about reseller efficiency in an exclusive interview with Business Solutions magazine President Jim Roddy.

Marc Rachiele, the director of vendor management and marketing for Ingram Micro's Data Collection/Point Of Sale Division, talks about federal stimulus package VAR opportunities with Business Solutions magazine President Jim Roddy.

Marc Rachiele, the director of vendor management and marketing for Ingram Micro's Data Collection/Point Of Sale Division, talks about VAR strategies for 2010 with Business Solutions magazine President Jim Roddy.

At CompTIA Breakaway, Business Solutions met with Tom Fitzpatrick and Lance Berg from Kaspersky Lab. The duo highlighted the benefits of partnering with Kaspersky. The following video explains the benefits of the Kaspersky product, the software vendor's partner program (the product is distributed via the channel only, VARs get high margins, the product isn't over-distributed, there are new spifs every month, and the company is new to the U.S. market so VARs have a differentiator). Additionally, partners get 60-day free financing through distributors.

Cloud computing, including Software as a Service (SaaS), is here to stay and continues to become a larger piece of the IT budgets of small businesses, as well as global organizations.