Yesterday, Fonality, one of North America’s leading business communications companies, announced that former Microsoft executive, David Scult, will be joining their team as CEO. He has a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University and he has been an integral part of companies such as IBM, Radnet, and Microsoft. Mr. Scult was most recently the General Manager of Microsoft’s Office 365 division, where he was tasked with the global distribution of Microsoft products such as SharePoint, Office and Exchange in the Cloud. He will bring over 30 years of experience in the IT field to his new post at Fonality.

At Fonality, Mr. Scult will be responsible for developing product and sales strategy for the upcoming year, as well as overseeing day-to-day operations.  In a press release this morning, Mr. Scult expressed his pleasure at this latest appointment: “I am excited to be entrusted to lead a dynamic organization that is redefining the industry like Fonality,” he said. “[…]As more and more companies begin to understand the value proposition presented by Unified Communications and contact center solutions, I have tremendous confidence that we are poised for explosive growth. I’m looking forward to working closely with the entire Fonality team to continue helping today’s small and mid-size businesses reduce costs and improve productivity with the communications tools that are right for them.”

Fonality Board Member and General Partner at Azure Capital Partners, Paul Weinstein was

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The mergers in the MSP space continue to be on the move in the first few week of 2012..outsourceIT Corp announced yesterday that it has merged with cloud services provider GoBeyondIT. As a large regional based MSP providing outsourced IT services to the SMB market, outSourceIT, has corporate offices in the Washington DC/Baltimore area and Winston-Salem, N.C.

The combined company will now have various locations spanning the mid-Atlantic and South Eastern parts of the country, with offices as far north as Philadelphia, PA and as far south as Charlotte, NC. The headquarters will remain in La Plata, MD (DC Metro Area) with the major support center hubs remaining in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Baltimore, MD.

As a result of the merger the combined companies have created one of the largest privately held Managed/Cloud Service Providers (MSP/CSP) in the United States. The combined entities’ revenue is currently greater than $15 million with approximately 70 employees. The company is expecting to continue to see strong growth throughout 2012.

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Tigerpaw Software today said that it has added a new Customer Referral Program, which is set on building out the word-of-mouth success that the company has been expereincing. The program is designed to allow customers to recommend Tigerpaw software to a colleague, and when that referral becomes a Tigerpaw customer; earn a referral bonus.

Touted by Tigerpaw as being as easy as 1-2-3, the referral program is structured as follows:

1) Refer a friend or colleague by registering the referral online at: http://my.tigerpawsoftware.com/partners/refprogram_leadform.asp.

2) Receive a confirmation email that the referral is eligible for the program.

3) Select either a cash reward or product credit (once the eligible referral makes a purchase) 
Tigerpaw Software has a diverse and growing network of customers and partners with leading organizations, and understands the need to grow both individual and corporate relationships with the power of referral connections.

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If you’re still filing expense reports with paper receipts, then it’s time to enter the 21st century.  Armed with smartphones, modern day small business travelers have honed in on the latest technology to make sure travel dollars are spent wisely, and recuperated easily.

In part two of this series, Thomas Marks (pictured right), Product Marketing Director for TripIt for Business and Concur Breeze, discusses how to tame the 800lb gorilla of expense reporting with modern, integrated technology.

In a recent survey by online travel and expense provider Concur, principals and employees of companies with 1-100 employees shared their thoughts about filling out and filing expense reports.

Among the many questions, respondents were asked: “What would you rather do, if it meant that you never had to compile or submit an expense report?”

One respondent said they’d rather have a root canal if they were relieved of the burdensome task of filling out expense reports!

Additionally, small businesses said they’d rather do the following than deal with expenses:

•    Take out the garbage
•    Train a new employee
•    Come in an hour early
•    Clean the bathroom
•    Cut out my lunch hour
•    Give up a day of my vacation time

The future is now

Rather than resort to such drastic measures, many small businesses are tuning to

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Yesterday, The SEO Marketplace announced the start of a new service aimed at helping businesses of all sizes increase their online presence, particularly in the search engine realm.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is an increasingly important tool for businesses to employ to gain local exposure. The SEO Marketplace has built a site that acts as a go-between for top seo companies and businesses to foster a relationship.

Businesses looking for SEOs and SEO Service providers are able to fill out an application at The SEO Marketplace. Business owners will then receivea variety of no-obligation quotes from the top seo companies in the country. In addition, they will be able to interview the potential seo companies before making any decisions. Businesses will not get sales calls unless requested.

Peter Messmer, Founder of The SEO Marketplace, offered this explanation of his services in a press release yesterday: “Our free SEO quoting service helps businesses cut through the often difficult-to-navigate industry of professional SEO. Businesses want to bring in more traffic to their websites, which in turn increases sales and leads, and SEO is one of the most effective ways to do it. However, there are many different SEO firms and choosing one is difficult.”

There are approximately 1 billion searches

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Date: Thursday, January 12, 2012

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PST

Speakers:

• Tom Poole, CEO of SMB Nation
  
• Jeff Bloom, Avaya Channel Account Manager
  
• John Gaillard, Catalyst Telecom VP of Sales
  

Ready to start swimming in new opportunities? Avaya and Catalyst Telecom can show you how. There’s enough new revenue among your current customers to have you Rolling in the Green.  

Join us to see how simple it is to make more “green” with Avaya and Catalyst Telecom.

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Rebit Inc., which is known for its “ridiculously simple” backup software for consumers, professionals and small businesses, said today that it is now offering Rebit Pro, a professional-grade data protection for PCs and market-leading features for laptops.

Currently available via the company’s network of authorized partners, Rebit Pro is the first hybrid cloud backup solution to deliver continuous and automatic backup, full system recovery capability, and seamless cloud integration, leveraging a single backup engine and user interface. Requiring no dedicated processes or schedules, the primary backup is made to a local USB drive or NAS, and the cloud provides an additional layer of redundancy for disaster recovery. If a user’s PC is stolen, has a hard disk failure, or is disabled from a virus or malware attack, Rebit Pro enables the full system (data, applications, and system software and settings) to be restored from a user-selected point-in-time recovery point.

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N-able Technologies said today that it exceeded its operating plan in 2011, reporting record-high performance, growth and satisfaction ratings from its global partner base.

The company’s year-end 2011 sales report notes the number of SMBs currently under management by its MSP partners using the N-able N-central platform has increased from 22,000 end-users to more than 59,000 – an increase of nearly 200 percent since January 2010. The report also notes the number of devices being managed on a worldwide basis by N-able partners using N-central has grown in excess of 235 percent.

(At right): Gavin Garbutt, CEO, N-able Technologies

“The exponential growth across N-able’s partner base is unrivaled and clearly demonstrates the success and ongoing leadership our partners hold within the IT industry,” Gavin Garbutt, CEO, N-able Technologies, said in a press release. “As a company, N-able performed ahead of plan and brought to market industry-leading offerings across our technology, MSP freemium programs, technical support and sales and marketing enablement resources to help our partners rapidly expand their share of wallet with existing customers and earn new business in 2011.” 

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independenceIT, a cloud workspace solutions provider, today announced that it has been awarded THINKstrategies’ “Best of Saas Showplace Award.”  The “Best of SaaS Showplace Award”, or BoSS Award, recognizes solutions that promote measureable business benefits such as faster operations, customer service, increased sales and higher profitability.

To be eligible for the BoSS Award, companies must be incorporated and have an active SaaS solution (not in beta,) they must be able to provide proof of performance for numerous user’s organizations and they must be able to provide a contact for their user organizations to back up business benefits received from using the applicant’s solution. Applicants must also have been registered as either a SaaS provider or an Enabling Technology Supplier on the Cloud Computing Showplace, a site that promotes networking between Cloud providers, enterprise level decision-makers and investors.

Managing Director of THINKstrategies, Jeffrey M. Kaplan explained why they chose independenceIT:

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Even though this year’s CES isn’t set to officially begin until tomorrow,  Lenovo is already gearing up by announcing a digital experience for its customers across multiple devices, be it PCs, tablets, smartphones or Smart TVs. Lenovo unveiled its “Personal Cloud” vision, marking the transformation of the company from a “personal computer” manufacturer to a “personal cloud solution” provider that integrates hardware, software and cloud computing together. The Company's direction is evident in a variety of new products, including the IdeaTab S2, Smartphone S2 and K91 smart TV.

(At right): As part of a new product trio, Lenovo introduced at CES its IdeaTab S2.

Thinner than its predecessors, the IdeaTab S2 10-inch is one-third of an inch thin and, at 1.1lbs, is one of the lightest 10-inch tablets available today. IdeaTab S2 features the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8960 dual core CPU and Android 4.0 operating systems to offer a better multimedia experience. Running Lenovo Mondrian UI, the user-friendly IdeaTab S2 10” displays customized content and includes easy access to the Lenovo App Shop and the Android Market for thousands of useful apps, such as Amazon Kindle, ooVoo, Angry bird and mSpot. Its detachable design, combined with a light keyboard dock, can deliver 20 hours of battery life, which is great for both entertainment and productivity.

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