May 15, 2008

A conversation with Numara Software

One of the interesting things about my job is that I get to talk to many people from a lot of different companies. Some of these conversations will turn into Test Center reviews; many won't. It dawned on me that I was being selfish in not sharing more of the conversations with readers, so I've made a nearly-mid-year resolution to do a lot more blogging based on the conversations I have. One of my recent conversations with with Numara Software, a company that focuses on help desk software for the SMB market. They define SMB pretty broadly, saying that it... more

TAGS: SMB Applications, SMB Vendor Strategy, SMB business

May 09, 2008

Critical SMB Tools: what could you not work without?

I've seen a lot of products and services in the last couple of weeks, and it's started me thinking about the tools that make a real difference in the way I work -- the tools I would really have trouble doing without. Not surprisingly, most of my critical tools deal with managing information and publishing articles -- and doing both of them from wherever I happen to be. Let me give some examples: Xobni I use Outlook to keep up with my multiple e-mail account from my laptop computer. Xobni, a free plug-in for Outlook, helps me when I'm looking... more

TAGS: None

May 08, 2008

Load Balancing SMB IT

On Tuesday, I had an interesting telephone interview with Kevin Mahon, CEO of KEMP Technologies. I have to admit that I don't usually think of load balancers as SMB product, but KEMP has been making a business in SMB load balancing for several years, now. In talking with Kevin, I started to understand a bit of why SMB IT folks look at load balancers, and why the balanced SMB isn't such a strange idea, after all. First, Kevin says that there have been changes to the profile of "average" KEMP customers. In the group of first customers, most were very... more

TAGS: SMB Applications, SMB Networking

May 05, 2008

After Interop...

So I'm back in the office and thinking about what I saw and heard at Interop. What do I think you should be thinking about?   1. Splunk I've just begun really looking at this data-center correlation, indexing, and search tool, but I'm already excited about the possibilities. If you're trying to figure out how to get a handle on the data your IT processes generate, you should check out the free version of Splunk. It's a great tool, and the company has built a strong community to help you figure out how to use Splunk in your operations. I... more

TAGS: SMB Business Trends, SMB Security, SMB VoIP