I’m frustrated and confused today. And, feeling sorry for many VARs in the mobile printing game. As part of our planning for an upcoming 4-inch rugged mobile label printers product review, I had calls with 11 companies that manufacturer such printers. What I found was that the majority of manufacturers think that their latest printers aren’t the greatest in the field.  Continue Reading..

For some time now, I’ve been advising IT integrators to add IP video surveillance technologies to their line cards. After all, you own the relationship with your customer, IP networking is old hat to you, and (more often than not nowadays) IP solutions require integration with the systems you’ve already put in place.  Continue Reading..

After covering the IT industry for 12+ years, it's rare that I'm surprised by news announcements, industry studies, or other IT events. That said, it does happen, and here's a recent example that I'd like to share. A study by analyst group Gartner projects the SMB market to surpass the $1 trillion mark in IT spending by 2015, representing 44% of the total IT spend worldwide. With so many hot vertical markets (e.g.  Continue Reading..

Today's answer to the above headline is "I don't know." However, by the time our May issue rolls around, I'll know. You see, I've been up to my eyeballs working on this upcoming product review for Business Solutions. So far, it's shaping up to become what I think will be a very valuable comparison.  Continue Reading..

Today, I began assembling the editorial for an upcoming issue of Business Solutions. We did a call for thought leadership where we asked industry experts to weigh in on the biggest topics for key verticals. When it came to retail, a common theme referenced was the "-as-a-Service" business model. Not surprising, really.  Continue Reading..

Apparently my previous blog article "Don't Let Apple Cripple Your BDR Business," which describes MSP Remote Technology Management's (RTM's) experience backing up Apple laptops and desktops hit a raw nerve with some of our readers. I received several emails from MSPs that believe there are several viable solutions available for tackling this problem. Following are a couple of highlights from the responses:  Continue Reading..

One of the hottest trends we've covered over the past year is the mobile device explosion. More specifically, we've talked about BYOD (bring your own device), the reality that your customers' employees are bringing their laptops and smartphones to work and using these devices both for personal and business purposes. This opens up a whole can of worms, starting with security issues and extending to your data backups.  Continue Reading..

One of the hottest topics at the recently-held RSPA INSPIRE conference was the services model. Understand, I'm not talking about offering services to your customers. Rather, I'm referring to combining your offerings (hardware, software, security, support, payment processing, remote monitoring, etc.) into bundles for which you can charge your customers a monthly fee. Let's call it POS-as-a-Service (or P-a-a-S?).  Continue Reading..

During a recent security-related conference, one of the speakers said to the audience that if they couldn't "speak IT" they wouldn't last very long in today's sales conversations. So true, however, I'm not sure if many IT integrators really understand how strong their position is -- or could be.  Continue Reading..

I just completed my write-up for our BDR (backup and disaster recovery) product test, which we'll share in the March issue of Business Solutions magazine. There were a couple of surprises that emerged from the test. One in particular was the Apple laptop/desktop backup test. The testers, Eric Brown, CEO, and Kevin Danis, technical manager, at Remote Technology Management (RTM), shared their personal experiences with this...  Continue Reading..