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As a small business owner, you understand through your first-hand challenges how difficult it is to accomplish specific goals because of a limited budget. Other challenges may stem from a lack of expertise in a specific and vital area. Specifically, building and IT infrastructure present challenges that small business owners in previous years and decades were stymied by. However, modern solutions to these challenges are available to today's small business owners through cloud-based services. Understanding the primary cloud-based solutions available to your small business may help you to make smarter decisions going forward.

SMB Group’s 2017 U.S. Small and Medium Business Digital Transformation Study reveals that today’s small and medium businesses (SMBs) have tuned into the digital revolution. As noted in Pulse Check: SMBs and Digital Transformation, roughly three-quarters of SMB (including small (1-99 employee), medium (100-999 employee) and upper midmarket (1,000-2,500 employee) businesses) decision-makers agree/strongly agree that digital technology is impacting their businesses and industries.

I’ve found this format to be surprisingly well-received and effective. It’s my quick hitters that quickly summarizes a few topics circulating around the SMB Nation MSP community.

Karl’s “Hear Ye, Here Ye!” Community Meeting
Longtime SMB Nation fan Karl Palachuk is at it again. He’s holding an innovative live community meeting that uses the power of video presence to create a greater sense of intimacy (the platform is based on Zoom which I recently experienced first hand via Steve Taylor’s MSP Webinars).

Sometimes the idea looks great on paper but doesn’t really work out when you try to configure it. And often, the only way to be sure is to break out the good old scientific method and try.  So I tried. And it didn’t work, so I’m putting here in case you get a similar wild idea in near future.

The goal was to start with a primary VNET in Azure for some VMs. This network was going to act as a collection point for data coming in from a number of remote physical sites all over the world. In addition, some machines on the primary network would need to send configuration data to the remote sites. Ultimately, we were looking at a classic hub

Toni Bowers

SMB Tech 

Companies of all sizes often have difficulty understanding the importance of developing trust and engaging employees in their organizations. CEOs will sign off on a serverless API because someone has shown them that it can save cloud computing costs, but the value of employee engagement, employee collaboration and trust often goes uncalculated.

Just a short note to invite you to join me in a complimentary 5-session online conference during February 2018. I'm supporting my good friends Peter Jensen, Marie Wiese, Jim Hamilton (Yay!), Julian Lee and Marc Gordon. Discover more about this complimentary conference here. I consider this a startup/start over topic as we should all be educating, transforming and reinventing ourselves – continuously!

Jon Gold By Jon Gold
Senior Writer, Network World

Thanks to the Mirai botnet attacks, few people in the world of tech need a reminder that IoT devices remain a serious threat to enterprise networks. Still, more than a year after the botnet made headlines worldwide, IoT security remains mostly an idea, rather than a reality.

With new CEO Scott Wagner assuming office January 1st at GoDaddy, one of the first “differences” is Danica Patrick’s return back to power with a couple twists. GoDaddy will sponsor her historic racing finale with primary sponsorships in both the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500. The two marquee auto races, being dubbed the “Danica Double,”

When launching your startup, it is likely that the thought of how to best get exposure and a loyal following for it is at the front of your mind. And even better if you can do so while also building up your brand identity and its ability to be recognized and remembered by consumers, right? With the right elements, your website can make this happen for your startup. Use your website as a powerful tool to develop your brand and its ability to connect with and engage consumers.

Hang on fast for a fat opportunity you might have overlooked. It concerns a new approach to health care and pain relief with just a bit of pleasure sprinkled in. I’m discussing the medical and recreational cannabis industries. I discovered this opportunity via research over the course of 2016/2017 in the Seattle area.

High School Jokes Aside…
Once you get the White Elephant out of the room (high school and college jokes), you’ll quakily discover that the cannabis industry is deadly serious. In my research, it resembles the local pharmacy dispensary business. You have similar legal compliance and supply chain issues.

Chee Tung Leong , CONTRIBUTOR

Shutterstock

You may have already noticed it.

Subtle changes in your office space allowing you to concentrate more. Your boss being that little bit more concerned about your professional growth. Maybe it's also gotten just that bit easier to get your application for time off approved.

The way that you run your business will have evolved over time. From the early days when there may just be you working for your business, to the current day when you may have a number of employees, your business processes will have changed with the increase and possible variation of workload; but are you working effectively? One way to boost your company’s bottom line is to review your working practices, procedures and environment, and take action on your findings.