SMB Nation Fall: Taking My IT Support Business to the Next Level

It's official, I will be at SMB Nation's fall conference in Las Vegas.

• SMB Nation Fall Content

The following blog posts are an outline of the planned discussion:

• A little SBS History Lesson. What SBS Has Been, Is, and Always Will Be 
• SMB Solution Sets Going Forward 
• One Little Feature Where In-House/On-Premises Kills Cloud 
• The SMB Market - The Astute Small Business Owner 
• The SMB Market - IT Commodity or IT Contact?
• Small Business Owners Take Risks - Huge Life Changing Risks

Believe me when I say that we have been going through a lot of soul searching in the last six to nine months. We MVPs were just as much in the dark about the goings on around SBS and the product group's directions as all y'all out there.

As of today we see a lot of opportunity for us in the current SMB IT environment for those that have honed their skillset and are continually working on them.

We see an even larger opportunity for the IT Support Shop that provides a consistent On-Premises IT Solution experience for their clients. Let's talk about that.

Let's talk about the real-world experience of Cloud, Hybrid, and On-Premises IT Solutions for our clients. While our client's preferences at this time are for On-Premises we do have a number of clients that are Hybrid and a few that are almost completely in the Cloud.

The goal for the session will be to have a fairly solid understanding of what our client's options are, what our options are as the IT Solution Provider, and to have a big to medium picture road map in place for us going forward.

• On-Premises, Hybrid, and Cloud Solutions
• What are they and how do they work for our clients and us?
• Vehicles to specialize
• Training, Certification, More
• Business Plan
• 1 Year, 3 Years, 5 Years
• Where do I want my clients to be in 5 years?
• Where do I want to be in 5 years?

With all of the angst over the changes, the Cloud being pushed really hard, and uncertainty all around we need some hope. And hope is what we intend to bring about in this session.

Thanks for reading! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer