The H-1B visa is one of the most important immigration law options to employ foreign workers on a temporary basis, and because it is viewed as the option for skilled professional positions that require at least a bachelor’s degree (U.S. or foreign equivalent), technology companies typically hire more H-1B workers than any other sector. For experienced immigration practitioners, H-1B petition approvals have generally been considered to be routine, but the Trump administration’s attack on the H-1B visa petition has changed this long-standing perception.
In February 2017, CIO Solutions lost a big account. So big, in fact, that it accounted for 40 percent of the MSP’s revenue. This isn’t a mom and pop shop IT Services provider we’re talking about – the account’s revenue brought in millions of dollars annually. Fast forward to September 2018, and CIO Solutions is gracing the cover of Channel Executive magazine. The company not only rebounded – it completed a successful acquisition and is in a strong position for future growth. We couldn’t fit this side story in the magazine, so instead we’re sharing the lessons learned from loss of a large customer in a web-exclusive feature.
The work my friend and colleague Abby Sorensen put into the IT Channel is paying dividends even after she shifted her focus to the greater software business community. Last week at its RetailNOW event, the Retail Solutions Providers Association’s Women-to-Women (W2W) Committee named her its 2018 Leader Of The Year. Committee Chair and business owner Kelli Stewart, owner/operations manager at Advanced Data Systems, bestowed the honors from the mainstage.
At the top of the New Year, ConnectWise and HTG Peer Groups collaboratively announced that the former was acquiring the latter. Among the HTG associate, member, and greater MSP communities, the news incited a lot of speculation about the future of the HTG empire led by Arlin Sorensen and family. This week, the speculation was put to rest. HTG is now IT Nation Evolve, a new brand that reflects the Arnie Bellini-inspired ConnectWise flavor of channel community building.
Men outnumber women in this industry by something on the order of 8 to 2, and the margin is even wider in the c-suite. By and large, we’re the ones approving salaries, greenlighting recruits, and setting the cultural tones of our companies. That requires us to be involved in solving the pay gap, recruiting more women into the field, and most importantly, driving cultures that demand equal respect across gender lines. None of that will happen if we’re not talking about it.
The lack of women and minorities in the channel is such a complex problem. We can’t keep forgetting about diversifying the channel – it has to be an ongoing conversation about how our industry can find better ways to recruit talented women and minorities and help them advance to leadership positions.
MSPs looking for a way in with CIOs should use integration opportunities as a conversation starter. Simply put, integration is one of the CIO’s biggest headaches: as businesses increase their cloud investments and move forward with digital transformation efforts, they are finding that getting everything to work together is a massive undertaking.
For MSPs, the traditional approach to cybersecurity focuses on defense and prevention, but as cybercriminals get bolder and more sophisticated, that’s no longer enough. What’s needed is a proactive security posture that MSPs can enforce with their clients using these nine best practices.
When MSPs seek out new tools and capabilities to add to their portfolio of managed services, they shouldn’t overlook the opportunity to benefit from the advice of their current vendors. Many, from my experience, still don’t. This is a marketplace small enough that many of us know one another very, very well. Successful vendors inevitably learn the lay of the land and get to know their neighbors, with most participating at the same annual MSP events around the country (which, even before a expo hall cocktail, have collegial atmospheres). Because of this, they usually possess a particularly deep knowledge of who operates out of the same wheelhouse as their own, but also – importantly – those vendors that offer adjacent and complementary solutions that will save MSPs (and their clients) headache down the road.
It may be easier in the short-term for an MSP to standardize on one cloud provider, but a multi-cloud sales strategy is the more lucrative option in the long run.
Doug Grimm sat down with MSPinsights and VARinsights to talk about the biggest tech opportunity for MSPs and VARs.
Educating users is an undeniably effective way to protect them from phishing and other malware, but it takes much more than that to stop attacks. There are many risks to networks that user education can’t reduce—from malicious sites mistakenly categorized as benign to watering-hole attacks that infect trusted sites. To combat these challenges, businesses need well-designed antimalware that protects across a variety of attack vectors and infection stages. That’s where multi-vector protection comes in.
As cloud storage becomes more affordable, organizations of all sizes are exploring new ways to meet their increased storage demands and streamline operations. This steady decline in cost and improvements in security have made cloud storage a viable alternative to traditional on-premises storage options.
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) that specialize in vertical markets offer an in-depth understanding and knowledge of the systems and processes for each type of business or organization. With solid expertise gained in a vertical sector, MSPs can differentiate from the competition as market experts who can provide clients the guidance and solutions that align to their specific industry needs.
Avast Business provides easy-to-manage, enterprise-grade security and network management solutions for SMBs and IT service providers. Backed by the largest, most globally dispersed threat detection network, the Avast Business security portfolio makes securing, managing, and monitoring complex, ever-changing IT environments easy and affordable.
CloudBerry Lab™ is a vendor for CloudBerry Backup, a leading cross-platform cloud backup and disaster recovery solution integrated with major public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, and almost every S3-compatible or OpenStack based cloud storage service.
Shif4 Payments is a leading national provider of touch-screen point of sale (POS) systems and payment processing services. As pioneers of the "as a service" model, Shif4 Payments offers an unprecedented "free" POS program that allows the company's sales partners to offer a full-featured POS system with no up-front costs.
HTG is an international consulting, coaching and peer group organization that cultivates success by igniting personal, leadership, business and legacy transformation. Members navigate their journey with world-class HTG consultants and facilitators who value sharing wisdom, providing accountability and building meaningful relationships, Igniting Transformation™ every step of the way. HTG invites you to explore the program that suits you best, and apply today to begin experiencing The HTG Way.
Taylor Business Group is an executive coaching and peer group firm that focuses on IT Solution Providers and Copier Dealers. Founded in 2001, Taylor has brought efficiencies and higher profits to IT Solution Providers through a focused effort in delivering best practices to the Service Provider and Copier Dealer's service, sales and administrative functions.
The ASCII Group is a vibrant community of independent MSPs, VARS and solution providers in North America. The organization offers members leveraged purchasing programs, education and training, knowledge sharing among peers, discounts on business services, and more. Founded in 1984 by Alan Weinberger, ASCII is the oldest and largest group of independent IT solution providers, integrators and VARS in the world.
The Schrödinger’s backup is such a backup, that was not yet tested for a recovery. Having a full backup is essential for making sure you can recover everything, especially if you have a widespread system failure, compromised data, or even an employee error that leads to loss of a substantial part of your information. While traditional full backup methods used to be the only option for having a complete copy of your data, synthetic full backup is providing a new alternative.
If you care at all about the security of your data, you already know that you need a backup strategy in place. Cyber attacks, technology failures, and human error (especially human error) can all lead to loss of important information that can put you at risk. However, not all backup strategies are equal. To keep your data backed up and secure, follow these three tips.
In the last year, phishing was involved in 93% of successful security breaches. But we shouldn’t point the finger at human error alone. Today’s phishing attacks can be pretty convincing. And, ultimately, we’re all in this together. What your clients really need is a solution that empowers end users to be a strong line of defense. They need cybersecurity awareness training.
They say recognizing a problem is the first step in solving it. Whereas in the past many small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) didn’t believe they had a cybersecurity problem, today many executives in those businesses know that hackers will focus their attention on and exploit them. Particularly if they don’t have adequate cybersecurity defenses in place. The rampant growth in ransomware and increasing volume and velocity of cyber-attacks has meant the “it won’t happen to me” mentality is at last being left behind.
“With 7.5 million new malware variants introduced each month,” organizations need to prepare for an all-out war on cyberattacks. Cyber threats are attacking users from multiple angles—or “vectors.” And what’s worse, their attacks can hit in multiple stages. As an MSP, you must leverage solutions that keep users and devices infectionfree across all endpoints. Unfortunately, two-thirds of MSPs are short on qualified IT professionals who can help them ramp up their security offerings. Thankfully, Webroot multi- vector protection can help.
