SMB Nation has teamed up once again with the SMB Technology Network to bring the SMB 150 back to the channel for its second year. Sponsored by Blackberry, this year’s SMB 150 will honor the channel’s top 150 professionals later this spring at a Hollywood-themed awards dinner in Los Angeles.  Honorees will also receive public acknowledgement in SMB Nation Magazine, as well as on SMBnation.com and SMBtn.org.

The SMB 150 List acknowledges those professionals or “influencers” who have had the largest impact on the SMB IT channel within the past year. Individuals from vendors, partners, service providers, trade associations, media companies, and other communities serving the channel are all eligible for nomination. Channel organizations may also be nominated. Community members should submit nominations—for either themselves or others—at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/W6SXLZ2.

Last year’s SMB 150 event proved popular with channel members, who nominated over 900 peers from around the world. Awardees ranged from leaders of the most well-known MSPs to rarely acknowledged small business heroes. 

Harry Brelsford, founder and chairman of SMB Nation, hopes

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Today, leading SAN storage solutions provider, Dot Hill Systems Corp., announced that they will be offering one full year of free onsite support for all Dot Hill AssuredSAN systems purchased through authorized resellers.

Vice President of Channel Sales at Dot Hill Systems, Corp., Brad Painter, explained the reasoning behind the new offering in a press release today: “The addition of free onsite support serves as the latest testimony to Dot Hill's highly reliable AssuredSAN storage, which continues to gain momentum in the distribution channel. We want our channel partners and end-user customers to know that 'Assured' is not just the name of our SAN solutions, but also how we want them to feel when they turn to Dot Hill products to manage and protect their critical data assets.”

Dot Hill AssuredSAN systems currently come with a

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Microsoft is currently hosting a 30 To Launch challenge for all mobile app developers. Professionals and hobbyists alike are welcome to come create an app on the Windows Phone platform, which is becoming one of the industry’s fastest-growing on the market.  Developers have 30 days to build a Windows Phone App, starting Jan 31, 2012. Microsoft is offering daily tips and tricks to keep contestants on track for the 30-day deadline. Interested parties can sign-up here.

As part of this challenge, Microsoft is hosting on-site events in Dallas, TX and Philadelphia, PA. Each Wednesday in February, interested parties can join training sessions and meet Windows Phone App developers. Attendees also have the chance to win a Windows Phone device. For a full schedule of the Dallas and Philadelphia offerings and registration links, please see the site here. The first session: “Getting Started with Windows Phone Development” begins tonight at 7:00pm Central and Eastern time.

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Thoughts on Business Continuity from StorageCraft

Words are funny things. We like to think they’re solid, immutable, set in the proverbial stone. But really, they’re more like chameleons. We toss them around, use them, and they soak up new meaning with each new use, changing themselves to match the scene.

A few years ago, Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of Oracle, made a comment  to this effect about a popular IT buzzword:

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements….Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

The same thing seems to be happening to “business continuity.” The phrase is everywhere these days. Everywhere you go, you hear about it, about why you need it. More and more, however, as people adopt the term for their own purposes, its meaning gets muddled. Somewhere along the way, business continuity became just another way of saying backup and disaster recovery.

You can see an example of this in the October 2011 issue of Channel Pro. In an article specifically designed to highlight the difference between the two topics (it’s even called “Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity”), the author says this:

“Backup gets your data back after a mistake, such as deleting the wrong files. Disaster recovery gets your data back after a small disaster, such as a server hard disk crash or the wholesale theft of your servers. Business continuity gets your business back after a big disaster, such as a fire, tornado, or hurricane that destroys not only your data, but also your workplace.”

In other words, the only difference between backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity is

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Today, Austin Texas-based monitoring company, CopperEgg, Corp., announced the addition of support for Windows Azure operating systems in their RevealCloud Pro solution. RevealCloud Pro is a SaaS monitoring program that is designed to provide in-depth server reporting.

Users will be able to receive real-time updates about server loads, potential performance issues and all service deliver components. RevealCloud Pro will support monitoring on the following operating systems: Hyper-V, Linux, Mac OSX, FreeBSD, Windows and Windows Azure. This monitoring system is ideal for providing split-second reports for application service providers. Users can look at customer usage patterns and be alerted to potential service outages. This service can be installed quickly to monitor servers across all platforms, including physical, virtual and the cloud. Users can customize dashboard views and alert thresholds to serve their specific needs.

Scott Johnson, CEO of CopperEgg, spoke a bit on the addition of Windows Azure support on the RevealCloud Pro system: “RevealCloud Pro is quickly gaining traction with our customers deploying and managing services in the cloud, virtual environments and data centers. The addition of server monitoring for Windows Azure addresses the needs of developers building services on the Azure platform as well as hybrid environments, who are looking for a robust server monitoring solution that is quickly deployed, easy to use and provides instant insight into server health.”

CopperEgg’s RevealCloud currently comes in

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The Intel Corporation announced the promotion of two executives to the role of senior vice president yesterday. Intel’s board of directors selected Richard Taylor and Mooly Eden for their outstanding performance at the company.

Richard Taylor will be taking on the position of Senior Vice President and Director of Human Resources. At this position, Mr. Taylor will be responsible for overseeing all HR programs and policies for all of Intel’s global operations. He joined Intel Europe in 1986, and he’s been in Human Resources for Intel since 1999.

Mr. Eden has been promoted to the position of Senior Vice President of Intel Israel. He will be in charge of the operations and strategic planning for Intel Israel’s manufacturing facility and development centers. Mr. Eden has been at Intel for 30 years, during which time he has been an intergral part of Intel’s microprocessing design sector. He helped develop Intel’s Centrino Processor Technology and Intel’s Pentium Processor with MMX Technology.

For more news from Intel, please see their news site

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Today, a leading technology management and consulting firm, Quest has announced that it will be partnering with Desktone, Inc. a leading provider of Desktops-as-a-Service. This partnership will allow Quest to offer full-featured and cost-effective desktops on-demand to their customer’s devices.

Quest, a NetApp Service Proivder Partner, is able to work closely with Desktone, Inc. as a result of the DaaS provider’s recent collaboration with NetApp in August of 2011. Quest currently provides solutions and technology consulting to a wide range of enterprises, from the SMB to the Fortune 500 company. Quest is excited to be able to offer turnkey virtual desktops and servers to their customers. Tim Burke, CEO of Quest, explained in a press release today:

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Yesterday, Quest Software, Inc., a leading software manufacturing company released their vWorkspace 7.5, a solution aimed at providing cost-effective desktop virtualization to all sizes of company. The solution is especially optimized for companies that are currently using Microsoft Hyper-V.

The latest vWorkspace platform offers direct Hyper-V integration, as well as quick and easy provisioning and desktop virtualization load balancing capabilities. vWorkspace has introduced their “Instant Provisioning” Technology, which allows most virtual desktops to be up and running in seconds. Direct support for Hyper-V and a free Hyper-V server are also included. Users can use local storage (DAS) as opposed to allocating funds to SAN storage. Two-factor authentication support is available to ensure the security of users’ information.  Projections from Quest’s cost and performance analysis are rating this solution at a 33% cost savings per user.

Jon Roll, VP of Product Management and User Workspace Management at Quest Software, is pleased with the new solution: “Quest vWorkspace 7.5 introduces a game-changing set of features and advances to enable companies of all sizes to adopt desktop virtualization by taking advantage of one of the lowest cost solutions available,” he said in a press release yesterday. “In fact, our research tells us that vWorkspace 7.5 could save organizations as much as 33 percent of their VDI CapEx cost per user compared to competing products. Combine that strong value proposition with automated Desktop Cloud management, WAN support for Lync/Communicator and automation around Session Host/Terminal Server deployment and you have a compelling, industry-leading offering.”

For more information about the Quest vWorkspace 7.5 solution, please see the site here. Quest has also released a video showcasing the new vWorkspace 7.5 in action here. 

More Information about Quest Software, Inc.

Contact Quest Software, Inc.
Jennifer Bernas
949-754-8241
jennifer.bernas(at)quest(dot)com

See the Press Release Here

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Harrybbb will be in beautiful Portland, OR this week for the Cloud Intelligence Conference! Stop by to say hello and network with your fellow peers!

The Cloud Intelligence Conference is a one-day crash course in all things Cloud. Attendees come away with best practices, new techniques and a better understanding of this rapidly evolving technology. This year, the famous Buck Woody, Senior Technical Specialist for Microsoft, will be one of the keynote speakers!

The conference runs from 8:00am to 5:30 pm on Thursday, February 2, 2012. The Cloud Intelligence Conference Staff are currently offering a special discount to SMB Nation Tribal Members. Sign up here with the code SMB249 to save on pass price! We look forward to seeing you there!

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Date: Thursday, February 2, 2012

Time: 10:00-11:00am PST

Speakers:

• Harry Brelsford
• Jeff Wald
  
• Eric Castro
  

The web is changing the way everyone does business.  The use of search engines and websites has changed how you market your business, but have you used a labor platform?  If some of the largest service buyers are using platforms to manage their service, should you create a free account and get additional revenue?

Register Here!

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