Business

Selling the Security & Compliance Journey

Selling the Digital Transformation Journey: Security & Compliance

When I talk to customers about their Digital Transformation Journey, I always like to give them the "10,000 foot view" so to speak. I suggest that we explore two different angles or "big pictures"  in order to paint an image that customers can then imagine themselves into. The first picture...
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The Importance of Clear Communication

The Importance of Clear Communication

I regularly advocate for aggressive change in small-sized organizations. In many ways, this is one place where smaller sized businesses have an advantage over mega-corporations. The larger the company, generally the longer it takes for them to adopt (and adapt to) new technology. There are exceptions to every rule of...
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Why Not Set Up a Retention Policy Today?

Why Don’t You Have a Retention Policy In Place Yet?

Most SMBs I consult with have never configured a retention policy, or indeed, they are not even aware of the retention capabilities in Microsoft 365. In general, Information Governance is one of those areas that simply does not get the attention that it deserves, especially in the small business market. But...
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The three opportunities for MSP's moving forward

The three opportunities for MSP’s moving forward

The writing has been on the wall a while now; with a mass exodus to cloud services such as Microsoft 365 from traditional on-premises infrastructure, it was only a matter of time before those selling MSP services had to either evolve or die off. And with recent high-profile attacks against...
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Monitoring identity, cloud apps and email at different service tiers

Today I want to give you two ideas that you can take to your customers as new offerings. Some of you may already be doing some form of this, but based on my recent survey results, identity protection and monitoring in the cloud is still an area that is wanting...
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Your customers are coming to me…

I wanted to bring up an interesting trend that I have been seeing in my website's contact form. I still get plenty of messages from IT Pros, independent consultants and Managed Services Providers. But, in recent months, I have also been seeing an increasing number of SMB customers coming to...
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Why aren’t you charging your customers to take care of Microsoft 365?

This is a simple question. The way I see it, there are many opportunities to provide Managed Services for SMB customers with regard to their Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Yet to this day, hardly anyone is doing it. Why? I suspect some folks have difficulty connecting all the dots and putting...
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Cloud vs. On-prem and the future of Managed Services

Is the on-prem model (e.g. legacy AD with file shares, Windows Server-based apps, etc.) 'better' in some cases than SaaS alternatives like Microsoft 365, GSuite, Ping, Okta, Salesforce, DropBox, or whatever? In the SMB space, I really struggle to advocate for on-prem anymore, and I mean REALLY struggle. And that's...
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Managed Services Providers Are Doing IT All Wrong

As a Microsoft MVP and frequent community contributor, I have been invited to participate as a “subject matter expert” in several groups and online communities. Since I also work for an IT Managed Services Provider, some of these invites have brought me into peer groups comprised of folks who own...
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Helping IT Consultants Succeed in the Microsoft Cloud

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