• Shirts and neck ties? Check.
• Suit pants and khakis? Check.
• Dress shoes? Check.
• Casual Attire (jeans, t-shirts, sneakers, etc.)? Check.
• Mobile Devices? Check.

Fifteen minutes at max, all into one very large carry-on. It sounds easy enough, but my packing efficiency didn’t develop overnight. It’s taken almost a year of over-packing, then under packing, and being uncomfortably overdressed or under dressed at  several different events before I learned the in’s and out’s and do’s and dont’s of working and dressing on the road. I learned it the hard way. So to save you some time and spare you some potentially embarrassing moments, here are three tips on how to prepare for technology conference events.

1. Don’t be “that guy”

You never want to be “that guy.” You know, “that guy” that everybody talks about in their hotel room or at dinner. “That guy” who walked into the press conference 10 minutes late and made me get up so he could take the only available seat in the middle of our row. Or “that guy” whose phone went off in the middle of a product announcement. Or “that guy” who had the giant stone-age laptop screen I couldn’t see beyond.

Avoiding this is simple but critical. It’s all about preparation. Put your phone on silent or vibrate. Learn the layout of the conference and where the rooms are so you can arrive a few minutes early and pick out a prime spot. And table space is usually limited, so keep the giant laptops in your hotel room. If you don’t have a mobile device to take notes on, go with pen and paper. I actually prefer this to the tablet because I can take notes quicker. Remember: one of the best parts of these shows is meeting new people, and you’re chances of that are slim if you get the “that guy” label.

2. Dress Accordingly

This one is all about a happy medium. You’re not in the office, but you’re still working. Save the gym shorts and Bill Belichick hoodies for the hotel spa. But you’re also not going to a wedding or to prom. Boutonnieres, white suites, top hats. All of them are deal breakers. I know it sounds obvious but I’ve seen people on both ends of the fashion spectrum.

I’m not going to dive into female fashion. But guys — dress shirt and khakis or suit pants please. If you’re wearing a sport coat, you can even do jeans. A simple necktie if it makes you feel put together, though I usually save the tie for the evening events. Nothing over the top and nothing that makes you look like you just rolled out of bed.

3. Mobile Devices are Key

My rocky relationship with mobile devices has been well documented. But even I have to admit that mobile devices are essential at technology conferences. PR folks are constantly blowing you up with calls and emails about schedule changes and one-on-one meetings. You need to have a smartphone and/or tablet through which you can access your work email at any time. And make sure they’re fully charged AND that you carry your chargers in your computer bag (which you should also have with you) all the time. There’s not worse feeling than running out of battery while you’re recording a conversation. Or going to the wrong location because you didn’t get the email about the room change. These things happen all the time, and we all need to be prepared.

The three above tips don’t cover everything, but it’s a good start to having a productive and fun time a these events. As for the other road essentials? Well, you’re just gonna have to learn them the hard way…

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Indeed, N-able N-central –a remote monitoring and management platform for MSPs — now integrates with NTRglobal’s cloud-based IT service management and help desk platform. According to both companies:

“N-central now includes NTR Cloud unattended remote control functionality as part of its overall service offering. Available now, the powerful remote desktop module allows support technicians to securely connect to and manage a wide range of remote devices in seconds.”

Relationships between RMM software providers and IT service management companies have been accelerating in recent months. N-able also has a tight relationship with NetEnrich, the NOC (network operations center) service provider for VARs and MSPs. Level Platforms recently pushed beyond the RMM market to introduce NOC services. And Continuum (formerly Zenith RMM) continues to promote RMM and NOC services, while pushing into the Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) market with Continuum Vault.

NTRglobal, meanwhile, has gradually sharpened its focus on cloud-based help desk and IT service management solutions for channel partners and end-customers.

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The original idea behind Caringo’s object storage software solution was to leverage the cloud in order to make a storage system that can scale up to handle massive amounts of data, complete with protection and replication. The solution is comprised of three separate software application layers. In CAStor 5.5, Caringo says it has addressed the large data issue for managed service providers and business end users. Each application layer can now store files through a new chunked encoding capability, and each layer can store files of up to four terabytes in size.

CAStor 5.5 users can also create storage status reports via Net-SNMP — a reporting solution that, according to Caringo, offers the broadest range of integration into the system monitoring tools that its business customers are using today. 5.5 also includes an improved content layer that now includes a watchdog feature. The content router will now automatically restarted an failed or non-responsive services and give IT administrators the ability to create more graphical reports that include store CPU load, network bandwidth utilization and system availability.

We first got word that Caringo was working on CAStor 5.5 back in July 2011. At the time, the company said that MSPs using RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) in their data centers were not protected against very serious data loss threats because the possibility of RAID failure increases as storage volumes grow. The solution, according to Caringo Director of Technical Management Mike Nelson, is replication, even when it comes to large files. And that’s what Caringo is offering with CAStor 5.5.

“With support for large file sizes, detailed reporting and increased automatic serviceability, organizations now have a way to store any amount of unstructured data and get an instant and granular view of the complete Caringo object storage platform whether it is a hundred terabytes or a hundred petabytes,” Caringo CEO Mark Goros said in a prepared statement.

Caringo says its CAStor 5.5 solution makes unstructured data storage more manageable than ever before.

Caringo already has a slew of system integrators and MSPs leverage CAStor through the Caringo Partner Program, and the storage software provider hopes its newest release will only add to the list.

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Here’s a taste of what the MSPmentor Job Board has to offer this week.

• Service Desk Technician in Nashville, Tenn.
• IT Consultant Level II-III in Denver, Colo.
• System Engineer in Tallahassee, Fla.
• IT Account Manager in New York, N.Y.

The MSPmentor Job Board is free to anyone who would like to post a job or career opportunity — as long as the opportunity is within the managed services, cloud services or IT channel market.

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1. Hello Again, Microsoft: Some vocal MSPs have complained about Microsoft’s channel partner program for the Office 365 cloud suite, which doesn’t allow partners to set pricing or manage end-customer billing. Despite those concerns, more than 40 percent of survey participants say they’re involved with Microsoft Office 365.

2. Networking Up: Roughly 83 percent of MSPmentor 100 survey participants are involved in MSP-oriented organizations, associations and peer groups — led by ConnectWise User Groups (39.7 percent), CompTIA (33.7 percent) and the MSPAlliance (31.3 percent). Figures exceed 100 percent because some MSPs belong to multiple groups.

3. Monthly Recurring Revenues: Some surprises here… but it’s too soon to disclose the final analysis. Bottom line: Top MSPs — from all regions — did healthy business in 2011.

4. Global Reach: Twenty-five percent of survey participants were from outside North America. MSPmentor has deep-dive information on EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and AANZ (Asia, Australia and New Zealand). So you’ll see a boatload of info about those regions when the MSPmentor 100 report debuts in February. But we’re still a bit light on Central and South America participation. In particular, we’d love to hear from more MSPs in Brazil before the survey ends on Dec. 23.

5. Business Automation: More than 80 percent of survey participants are using PSA (professional services automation) software and RMM (remote monitoring and management) software to more closely track customer engagements, trouble tickets, customer equipment and more.

6. Gone Vertical: Nearly 65 percent of survey participants have a vertical market focus, led by health care (42.1 percent), legal (37.1 percent) and banking/financial services (32.1 percent).

7. Cloud Ain’t Killing MSPs: Too much data for me to share here. But I think we’ve got proof/evidence that MSPs are successfully profiting from the cloud, where appropriate, instead of worrying about the cloud.

Thanks to those who’ve completed the MSPmentor 100 survey. It remains open to all MSPs worldwide until 11:59 p.m. ET/8:59 p.m. PT on Friday, December 23. Complete results and honorees will be revealed in February.

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“There have been two big trends around BYOD within the last 18 months,” said Januszko, whose primary role as of late has been to extend ProfitLine’s offering to include mobile device management (MDM). “In late 2009 everyone was buying iPhones and Android was coming out. Companies wanted to convert employees to company-owned devices but they wanted to give employees a choice.”

This, by both Januszko’s and Glass’ estimation, was an epic failure. Employees were adamant about using their own devices. So enterprises took an alternative route: they decided to either let employees purchase their own phone and and pay for their own service, or purchase one of the two for their employees and then give them a fixed stipend to cover monthly expenses. This also failed because not enough employees were buying in.

The result of that trial and error period is what Januszko and Glass call a “hybrid model.” Enterprises aren’t giving employees phones, but they are letting employees connect their own phones to the enterprise network. And that was how BYOD was born. Of course there are other kinks in the system that still need to be worked out, like security.

“What about security?” Glass asked. “Can companies do a selective wipe or a full wipe of devices? What about policies and waivers that enterprises can have employees sign? Companies want to  be able to wipe the phone if they feel the data is being compromised.” And companies can do this as long as they clearly state their right to wipe devices in a pre-signed waiver form. A wipe can mean wiping only company data (selective wipe) or wiping all data (full wipe) from the device, including personal data, and some employees aren’t willing to take that risk.

What about SMBs?

ProfitLine exclusively serves the enterprise market, as do many MDM providers. But there are definitely SMBs whose employees are using their own devices to connect to their business networks. So why aren’t more companies addressing their needs?

“People with fairly small environments can comfortably manage devices on their own,” Glass explained. “But some companies have gotten to a certain size and complexity in terms of the number of carriers they have to support and regions they operate in where it becomes very time-consuming and expensive and you need a lot of expertise in-house. So larger companies are realizing that managing their own devices is not efficient.”

Several research firms like Gartner Inc. and Forrester Research have pinpointed the cutoff line for managing your own devices at about 1,500 before the complexity becomes too overwhelming. That’s when companies like ProfitLine come in. ProfitLine handles the procurement and fulfillment of mobile device requests, negotiates carrier contracts and offers a 24/7 call center and help desk support service. “It’s a complete telecom environment service for the larger enterprise,” Januszko said.

Future of BYOD

Januszko said the technology and support around BYOD, particularly when it comes to MDM, is moving “very fast” and tech vendors are responding to the needs of BYOD. The one area that needs improvement? Corporate unawareness.

“Corporate unawareness of devices connected to their networks needs to change,” said Glass, who noted that many companies do not know how many devices they’re handling. “You need to know that in order to control them.”

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But let’s back up for a second — what exactly is ALM? Think of it as a combo of business management and software engineering. Having an ALM solution means you have a system in place to see all of your applications through governance, development and maintenance. This means your monitoring everything from reporting, to workflow to application modeling.

Now let’s dig into the details of Tasktop’s announcement, beginning with the Sync 2.0 release.

Tasktop Sync 2.0 is designed to make life easier for IT administrators through the use of Open Services for Lifecycle Management (OSLC). According to Tasktop, OSLC allows admins to extend its integration support by what it calls “change management artifact linking.”

I’ll let Tasktop CEO Mik Kersten explain…

“Tasktop has spearheaded a new approach to connecting stakeholders in the application lifecycle, making it possible to capture an organization’s ALM architecture in a single tool and deliver real-time connectivity and traceability across a wide variety of open source, commercial and legacy ALM systems,” Kersten said in a blog post he wrote to explain the new capabilities of Tasktop Sync 2.0. The company built Sync 2.0 on its Eclipse Mylyn ALM framework to give customers real-time synchronization and automatic conflict resolution capabilities as well as support for over two dozen different ALM tools.

Tasktop didn’t stop with the Sync 2.0 release. In fact, the company added on to the announcement by partnering with Micro Focus roughly a week later to develop the Tasktop Borland StarTeam Connector for Tasktop Dev and Tasktop Sync. The new Connector gives Tasktop clients access to Micro Focus’ Borland StarTeam change management assets directly from their Eclipse and/or Visual Studio desktop solutions. Tasktop has been set up for such a move since it introduced its Agile Planner for Eclipse at Agile 2010. The company also already integrates the Eclipse Mylyn’s task list and connectors into the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE.

If you recall, Kersten described Tasktop’s long-term strategy in early August 2011 in saying “there’s now a lot of diversity in the ALM space among vendors. It’s a disaster when all of your tools are disconnected.” This, according to Kersten, is the problem that Tasktop is trying to solve both by developing new solutions and developing new partnerships with companies like Hewlett-Packard (HP), and now Micro Focus.

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The latest listings include:

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It makes sense, and it seems easy, but here are a few things to think about with each cloud vendor you evaluate:

1. Are they Channel only? If not, then there are some real differences here that you need to consider.  For instance, does this cloud vendor have access to my customer list when I sign up my customers for their service? If so, do I trust a company that competes with me to have that access? Most RMM and PSA solutions are not chasing your customer base directly, but that is not necessarily true of other cloud vendors.  Make sure you are protected if you go down this road.

2. Do they allow you to private label the solution?  Imagine you have spent too much time over the last five years moving your business from reseller to MSP.  One of the core values of that move is that you are selling your own brand now, not the vendors.  Therefore, adding cloud solutions that are vendor branded is a step backward.

3. Have you thoroughly tested your new tech support team?  Remember, this is not an in house solution that you can “fix” yourself.  Ask for access to the cloud vendor tech support, and try it out.  If the vendor is not answering the phone quickly and providing quality support for your solution, determine whether that will be acceptable when you have a problem at a customer site.

4. Is the company focused on your success?  As a cloud vendor, I can tell you first hand that Intronis is absolutely focused on our partner’s success, and our commitment to a philosophy we refer to as MPG (Manhours per GB) is at the heart of that commitment. Every aspect of what we do is measured against our ability to save our MSP customer’s time and lower the MPG spent to backup and successfully restore your customer’s data. Our development teams are focused on it, our tech support team is measured weekly against it, and we built our Customer Success team (onboarding) to help lower it. If your cloud vendor cannot site at least five ways they are focused on your success without pausing to think, then you are turning over one of your customer deliverables to a company that is not focused on your success. That may be a bad move.

Additional Thoughts

Remember, when you choose to deploy a cloud solution, you get to leverage efficiencies, lower costs, and narrow focus on documented deliverables that should improve your customer experience.  The downside is that you lose a certain amount of control of your deliverables and your data as a result.  That trade off can be fantastic for your business, but make sure you are not giving up too much in the deal. Additionally, always make sure to pick vendors who succeed when you succeed, and have built their deliverables and solutions with your success in mind.

Ted Roller is VP of channel development at Intronis. Find out more about Intronis’ partner program. Guest blogs such as this one are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.

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Employees using personal devices for work is becoming a more popular trend in the enterprise space. But that’s also putting more pressure on the companies to support and secure all of the new devices introduced to their network. What Zenprise is trying to do is introduce a solution that allows employees to continue using their own device for work AND help companies support and protect those devices more easily.

To that end, Zenprise’s Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Tool Kit addresses four needs:

1. Rogue Device Assessment to find unmanaged devices inside a corporation’s network and the frequency with which the device connects to that network.
2. Enterprise Mobility Executive Checklist that gives organizations best practice guidelines to launch a BYOG program. It also includes a list for enterprises to consider when deploying, securing and managing a mobile enterprise program.
3. Zenprise Mobile Enterprise Security Framework that is designed to be a framework for assessing monitoring, controlling and protecting all mobile devices, applications, networks and data.
4. Zenprise Security Whitepaper to lead enterprises through mobile data leakage prevention (DLP) and through securing all employee devices as they enter an organization’s network.

We expect to hear more developments from Zenprise in late 2011 and early 2012, as the company recently raised $30 million. Zenprise plans to use the money for upcoming research and development (R&D) initiatives.

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