As a longtime supporter of the IT Nation, we at ExchangeDefender value the ConnectWise IT Nation for much more than potential business sales: For us it is about product and solution development. Every year we sit down with our partners and lay out our roadmap and let our partners help us prioritize our agenda. Is a feature nice to have, completely critical or irrelevant? Would the clients pay for it, would it save management and deployment time or help upsell other solutions? More importantly, how many of your peers feel the same way? Majority of feature requests sound good on paper but can be biased by how well the request is sold – what really matters in a solution is how well it fits overall and how many people can make it a success. Last year, we asked these questions and the two most demanded items were affordable email archiving and hosting.

It is no secret that the IT Solution Providers are being challenged by large vendors who are giving away consumer email solutions marketed for business. Positioning a high end enterprise solution in small business is going to fail, particularly when the prospect doesn’t understand or appreciate all the features. We knew how to build an affordable archiving product, all we needed to know is which features would be appreciated and which ones could be used as an upsell.

Find the Educational Videos You Need Quickly

You already know that the ConnectWise University contains a wealth of educational tools and resources for partners. One of the best ways to learn more about ConnectWise is through the hundreds of videos that are available that provide best practices, step by step instructions and in-depth coverage of features and functionality.

Now, in an effort to make it easier for partners to find videos – the ConnectWise Video Library is born! The new Video Library enables you to search all videos by keyword or by selecting a topic of interest by category.

Recently, we announced all the ConnectWise videos have been converted to the .mp4 format to make them easily accessible and playable on mobile devices (like iPhones and iPads). With the addition of the video library, partners are able to reap the benefits of easily finding the ConnectWise videos that they need and play them anywhere, anytime!

Here’s a quick look at the ConnectWise Video Library:

If there is anything we have learned from the most recent recession, it’s that the market for IT services has become even more competitive. These days – just lowering your price or offering “better/faster” services is no longer enough to successfully add to your customer base.

Now that the hype cycle has shifted away from Managed Services and onto the Cloud, we can take a closer look at the MSP space and the opportunities it holds for solution providers.

Since we have seen a maturity in MSP tools (RMM and PSA) available to solution providers, we have also seen the channel evolve toward accepting managed services as a viable business model with tangible benefits like recurring revenue, proactive product sales and fewer truck rolls. The challenge that MSPs are facing today is the adoption rate of the end-user market.

The Year in Review: the Top 10 Moments of 2011 for ConnectWise

As we look ahead to 2012, we took a look at some of the high points of 2011 for ConnectWise. Here are our Top 10 Moments of 2011, in no particular order:

1) ConnectWise introduces 24/7 Partner Support Read More

2) Attendees say ConnectWise IT Nation 2011 Biggest and Best Yet Read More

3) ConnectWise Introduces new Partner Kits with business tools, resources Read More

4) ConnectWise Rolls out Chat, Remote Control for enhanced help desk support and service ticketing Read More

5) ConnectWise Capital creates the perfect end-to-end suite for IT Solution Providers with investment in Quosal Read More

What is Hybrid Cloud Backup? 
In the realm of data backup, a company has a local appliance that acts as a NAS (Network-Attached Storage) unit, backing up data locally, while also pushing data off-site to data centers owned and managed by a third party vendor. These machines apply data deduplication, compression and file conversion technologies that help reduce storage space in the cloud, keep local bandwidth consumption at a minimum and optimize the backup process to make data recovery as efficient as possible.

End-User Benefits
Disaster Recovery
The Hybrid Cloud structure lends the most benefit to disaster recovery efforts by leveraging the best of both the private and public cloud. By having a local backup unit, recovering lost or corrupted data occurs quickly over the company’s local network if a server crashed. Conversely, by having data backed up off-site, recovery can still occur if the local device is destroyed.

Security Benefits
Housing local hardware allows for a higher level of security than pushing all data directly into the cloud.
• All data in-house is protected by your firewalls and security protocols.
• Redundant copies of your data are secured off-site in dedicated data centers.
• Greater piece of mind over strictly pushing data over the web or only housing it locally.

If you are like most CEOs or managers of small to medium-sized businesses, chances are that you wear a few different hats (that’s probably an understatement for most).  Maybe that includes directing your sales force, or perhaps you still are the company’s primary sales person.  As a leader, you owe it to your sales force to give them strategic direction and make sure they have crystal-clear sales goals and you still have direction to give them about sales processes.

At ConnectWise, we have created Partner Kits as resources exclusively for our ConnectWise Partners.  These kits dive deep into different functional areas and give you information need to grow your business.  You’ll find expert information specific to the IT industry, and tools & instructions on how to accomplish those in ConnectWise.

The Sales Kit is full of information for everyone in your Sales organization.  As a CEO or business owner, here are a few resources you should pay particular attention to:

Any Partner who attended IT Nation 2011 will tell you it was a huge hit, but how big was it really? Successful projects can and should be measured, so to help us all understand the sheer size of the event we’ve crunched the numbers!

Take a look at the list below to get a unique view at what it took to make this year’s conference a success.   There is a clear focus on providing plenty of opportunities to grow and of course having a great time:

1,600 attendees
1,000 pairs of owly sunglasses
512 photos shared
500 mardi gras beads worn
475 ice cream bars eaten
427 gallons of coffee consumed
148 flashmob volunteer dancers
144 tournament golfers
92 breakout sessions
62 event sponsors
8 partner’s choice awards
5 town hall meetings
4 pickup trucks
2 T-shirt cannons
1 unforgettable experience!