Sessions

Welcome to SMB Summit™ 2007!

At SMB Summit™, you'll have access to over 33 pre-conference workshops, concurrent sessions, roundtables, vendor solutions sessions and an interactive exhibit floor featuring leading technology companies. In addition, you'll experience thought-provoking keynote addresses by some of the world's most renowned technology and education leaders.

Real-World Solutions for SMB Consultants, Solution Providers and Resellers
Over 33 Concurrent Sessions.

Download the agenda schedule and conference map.

Track 1: Business Track
Rising to the New Challenges of Business Leadership
The Business Track is for the business owner who is responsible to keeping the company on track, growing revenue, increasing margins and planning the strategy for tomorrows change and challenges.  Partners must make smart choices and now when to invest, when to change, while sustaining the business fundamentals.

Track 2: Technology Track
Knowing which Technologies and Products are worth investing in
The Technology Track is for the lead IT person in the partner organization responsible for insuring that the services or practices are running at top efficiency. The business owner often looks to the lead technical director for advice and guidance for making the right choice about which technologies and solutions to invest in and when. 

Track 3: Solutions Track
The Next Generation of Strategic Business Technologies
The Solutions Track will introduce you to vendors, products, solutions that can drive more revenue and profitability in your business by filling holes and showing customers you are a strategic partner with breadth and depth.  Knowing who to partner with, what solutions will satisfy customer pains and have acceptable margins is not an easy task.  Partners will discover business-driven best practices for deploying each solution with the greatest value, the least risk, and the strongest alignment for the best SMB strategy.

Sessions

The 2007 Office System for Small Business: Era of Software + Services
Session 2B: Technology Track - March 15 - 10:45 - 12:00pm
Stay ahead of all the big changes that are coming in software and services! Come see how Microsoft is building an integrated solution for small businesses taking software + services and delivering one integrated experience. We will show the latest features in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, and Office Accounting. Get ready to save time, organize your workload, manage information, stay connected, and collaborate better.

Another Crossroads: Business and Crime in the Twenty First Century
Session 4C: Solutions Track - March 15 - 3:00 - 4:15pm
For centuries, merchants were at their most vulnerable when outside the
walls of their establishment. The images of brigands at the crossroads,
train robbers and pirates are iconic in all of our memories. But that
was then, and this is now. Money is no longer coined in precious metal
and carried in a strongbox. Money has become entirely symbolic.

Today's businessman faces his greatest danger whenever he connects to
the ultimate crossroads, the Internet. Join David Perry from Trend
Micro as he outlines the new and evolving threats facing businessmen
today, and a whole range of strategies for figthing them.

Break-Out & Grow!!!
Session 5A: Business Track - March 16 - 9:00 - 10:15am
If your business is not growing fast enough, you are facing a high potential growth phase, your profits are shrinking or you have leveled or stalled out; this fast paced workshop has been designed for you. The purpose of this content rich event is to assist organizations develop the right strategies and align specific tactics to accelerate their growth and ensure the execution of the agreed to business planning process.

- Learn to build accountability into your management style and management team.
- Learn to focus and operationalize strategy and goal achievement.
- Facing the Truth About What It Will Take to Break-Out
- Making Continuous, Clear, Effective and Timely Decisions

Cisco Unified Communications in SMB
Session 5B: Technology Track - March 16 - 9:00 - 10:15am
This session will outline Cisco’s vision and technology strategy for Unified Communications. Come and hear directly from Cisco’s Unified Communications leadership about our roadmap and priorities for bringing together business communications infrastructure and the user experience. If your organization is considering its strategy for messaging, telephony/voip, and collaboration, this session will provide you with Cisco’s approach to addressing these critical organizational needs and improve the modern organizations ability to communicate and collaborate. Cisco will be demonstrating how their leading Unified Communications solutions combined with Microsoft’s business applications can further strengthen your value proposition as a solutions provider. This is a solution that SMB customers need and one you, as a strategic partner, should be delivering today!

Capitalizing on the Security and Disaster Recovery Opportunity
Session 2C: Solutions Track - March 15 - 10:45 - 12:00pm
Every day, your small and mid-sized business customers rely on Microsoft® Windows-based technology to support their business goals and daily operations. As their technology needs increase, so do their risks—not to mention IT costs and complexities. Conditions like these make it harder than ever to protect and manage their Windows environment. Like many small and mid-sized companies, their IT staff and resources are limited. Symantec offers a straightforward blueprint for acquiring, deploying, and managing solutions that protect their data, systems, and applications. In addition, we have an array of partner benefits that Symantec offers to help you build your business.

Exchange 2007: Consulting Beyond Small Messaging in SMB
Session 9B: Technology Track - March 17 - 9:00 - 10:15am
Exchange 2007 marks the most significant overhaul to communications in SMB in over a decade. This session will give you a brief overview of the changes and elaborate on the opportunities, strategies and course of action to prepare you to advise your clients on coming global messaging evolution. With email becoming more critical to the small business corporate infrastructure, combined with large investments in modernizing phone and PBX systems, this is perhaps the most exciting and profitable convergence of opportunities for the savvy SMB consultant!

Good Form Consulting
Evening Session B2: Technology Track - March 16 - 8:30 - 9:30pm
A Round-Up of Best Practices for Organizing and Running an Efficient and Profitable SMB Consulting Practice
Proper procedures and consistency are key elements in growth, reproducible success, higher profits, and more personal time with your family!
In this session, you'll see one consultant's perspective on building a successful practice. We begin with a review of the current market environment for SMB consultants. After that, we cover a variety of topics ranging from employee management to creating successful procedures. We'll cover personal and professional development as well as a bit on sales and marketing. We'll describe procedures at KPEnterprises and lead a discussion of other successful practices shared by audience members. While there are some technical topics, this is primarily a business-related discussion. We will cover the how and why of technical procedures, but not dig into the details.

The Forms
If there's one thing KPEnterprises does to be successful, it's develop forms and procedures. We'll show you some of our "best practices" with regard to using standardized forms for everything from network migration to weeding out your clients once a year. Don't miss the unique opportunity to see how one successful SMB consultant has built his practice. Plan to Thrive. Because you can't thrive without a plan.

Growing Your SMB Business - A Panel of Partners Who Are at the Top of Their Game
Session 10A: Business Track - March 17 - 10:45 - 12:00pm
Are you ready to grow your SMB business and want to avoid all the mistakes that other partners have made? This session consists of a panel of partners who have made it big and are ready to share their mistakes, best practices, and knowledge with you. They are a group of partners that have between them, several thousand SMB customers and are adding new services and increasing profits every day.

Hiring the Best, Not the Best Available
Session 6A: Business Track - March 16 - 10:45 - 12:00pm
"Why is the life span of a VP of Sales less that 18 months?"
This session has been designed to help the partner increase the effectiveness of the most difficult aspect of building an organization-hiring and retaining top talent.

Attendees will learn:
- How to build an ideal salesperson profile
- The 3 characteristics of a hunter
- The top 5 mistakes people make in hiring
- To take the emotion out of hiring
- How to use an interviewing scorecard and case study
- How build a new employee ìon-boarding plan and on-going sales training plans

The session will cover building an effective recruiting process, coaching effectively for results and "getting the one your want" and the use of psychological sales assessment profiling tools. Attendeeís will receiving a complete interviewing kit.

How to Cut Costs and Increase Profitability by Leveraging Virtual Assets and Resources
Session 4A: Business Track - March 15 - 3:00 - 4:15pm
Clinton Gatewood and Erick Simpson will conduct a session focused on identifying the traits of successful proactive Service Providers.
Attend this session and learn:
- How small MSP’s emulate much larger organizations in terms of efficiencies, processes and profits
- Effective methods to gain access to the knowledge and resources required to reap the benefits of a much larger organization
- How to leverage partnering relationships to increase your core competencies and scale your services to your Clients.

How to Effectively Position Managed Services
Session 5C: Solutions Track - March 16 - 9:00 - 10:15am
In this interactive session we will examine how to effectively position managed services to both your customers and employees. We will demonstrate how IT Solution Providers have successfully adopted and transitioned their business to an annuity based services model while simultaneously increasing project work and overall peripheral sales.

ISA Server - Tips and Tricks, Best Practices for Building a Security Practice
Evening Session B1: Technology Track - March 15 - 8:00 - 9:30pm
When Microsoft offered a free upgrade from ISA 2000 to ISA 2004 to owners of SBS 2003 Premium it was one of those opportunity moments when all small IT consultants could differentiate themselves in the marketplace. This session will give you a brief overview of ISA configurations you should be rolling out to your clients. We’ll quickly touch on 3 areas of opportunity: Secure Wireless, better than DMZ, and Filtering and Reporting.

Key Business Productivity Indicators that Your Business Needs and How to Implement Them
Session 9A: Business Track - March 17 - 9:00 - 10:15am
In this session you will learn about the key business indicators used to manage and optimize an infrastructure focused IT consulting business. We will discuss:
- Which indicators to monitor
- What they mean to your business
- How to measure them
- How to automate data collection
- Range of values for a healthy business

The presenters will use examples from their own businesses and best practices from industry groups to help you get the insight you need to maximize your consulting practice profitability.

Marketing Ideas That Work
Session 2A: Business Track - March 15 - 10:45 - 12:00pm
Arlin Sorensen and others from HTS will share a series of sales and marketing ideas that leverage vendor and distributor programs allowing your company to attack the market.  The presentation will showcase a variety of campaigns and events that HTS has utilized followed by a mini customer evidence case study featuring one of the resulting sales that occurred as a result of successful execution.  The goal of this session is to provide ideas you can take back and put to use in your market next week.  Details will be provided on how to take advantage of the marketing investments that key vendor partners like Microsoft and HP have invested in and provide to their partner community, many at no cost.

Mergers and Acquisitions - Learn from Partners Who Have Done It Successfully
Session 3A: Business Track - March 15 - 1:00 - 2:15pm
This panel of seasoned IT veterans has been there and done that when it comes to M&A.  These companies have acquired, merged and grown their companies through a strategy of identifying the right company, determining whether a merger or acquisition is the right end result, and executing the deal.  The discussion will also feature thoughts around valuation, things to avoid, issues after the deal is done and many other helpful topics that can help you avoid the landmines and identify the opportunities.

The Microsoft Business and Technology Assessment Toolkit V3 - How Partners Are Using It to Generate Real Revenue and Profit
Session 9C: Solutions Track - March 17 - 9:00 - 10:45am
This session will detail how to leverage a resource that is helping partners grow their businesses like never before, the Microsoft Business and Technology Assessment Toolkit. (Version 3 of the Toolkit just released at the end of January 2007). Based on the best practices of Microsoft Partners, this valuable toolkit offers a step-by-step guide to identifying your customer’s business goals and technology requirements so you can create a plan that addresses immediate gaps and maps out a plan for future needs. New templates enable assessments covering Business, Technology, Vista, Office, Mobility, Messaging and SWOT analysis.

This seminar will break the toolkit down for you and demonstrate key new features for Version 3 in order to give you a jump on how to use the tool to enhance your sales. Partners are having a field day with this toolkit, offering customers business assessments through demand generation, following up with proposals that are two times larger than previous proposals and sealing the deal with Microsoft Financing. If you are not doing business and technology assessments, you are leaving money on the table for another, more strategic, partner to take.

Read Article: Microsoft's Updated SBS Toolkits Help Partners Land Deals

MS CRM 3.0 – Expanding Your Service Set to Include CRM and Business Intelligence Solutions
Session 10C: Solutions Track - March 17 - 10:45 - 12:00pm
Become an invaluable business asset to your customers by providing them with new levels of customer intelligence using Microsoft Dynamics CRM version 3.0. Microsoft CRM creates a centralized repository of customer data that gives every customer-facing employee the information they need to truly impress customers. With Microsoft CRM and its tight integration with Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Outlook, and Windows SharePoint Services you can provide transparency and efficiency to the marketing, sales, and service processes every successful business depends on.

Network Storage – What You Need to Know and How to Profit with an All-in-One Storage System
Session 11B: Technology Track - March 17 - 1:00 - 2:15pm
SMB customers today have major pain points around data protection and recovery. IT departments need to resolve storage and backup issues, network storage is now an affordable answer. Learn how network storage technologies are strategic to smaller firms and the money saving benefits it provides. Discover how an all-in-one network storage solution with support for NAS, iSCSI SAN, and Fibre Channel SAN is the best SMB solution. Understand how to build a solid network backup strategy and solution using disk, tape and software technologies.

The Power of a Peer Group - How Joining a Peer Group Will Change Your Life!
Session 8A: Business Track - March 16 - 3:00 - 4:15pm
Arlin Sorensen from HTS will be sharing experiences around the value of peer groups and peer sharing.  HTS has created three peer groups that meet on a quarterly basis to share best practices and serve as a virtual board of directors for one other.  The session will focus on how peer groups can be a competitive advantage by creating an atmosphere of accountability and an environment where business owners and decision makers can leverage the experience and perspective of peers from other markets providing feedback and direction.  If you are curious about what a peer group is or what it can mean to your business you will want to join this session.

Recent press coverage on Peer Groups.

Proven Ways to Draw Customers and Attract Attention
Session 11A: Business Track - March 17 - 1:00 - 2:15pm
Growing a business from start up to several million dollars of sales each year offers lots of opportunities to learn what works—and what doesn’t.  Stuart Crawford brings you the inside track on how to separate you and your business from the mainstream.  See why attracting the best possible clients should be a top priority.  To get this caliber of business, you need to project an image that attracts potential customers and clients rather than repels them.  Become aware of how to use this image in your networking to create relationships with businesses that serve your same market—up, down and sideways.  You want to be the person everyone remembers and calls first. You will get three strategies to effectively close more business.

Reach Outside Your Boundaries
Evening Session A2: Business Track - March 16 - 8:00 - 9:30pm
What are the factors of your success? Money, product or service offering and a catchy trade name? No! For the entrepreneur the factors of success come from eight areas all within your control. Many of them will require the IT professional to stretch beyond the confines of what they know. However, the same walls that protect you stop you. Reach outside your boundaries and begin the journey to a successful, fulfilling business.

SBS Cougar (Beta 2) Home Server, Centro, Longhorn Server Overview and Positioning for SMB Partners
Session 7B: Technology Track - March 16 - 1:00 - 2:15pm
Microsoft is busy with several upcoming products in the SMB space. The Microsoft SBS Product  team will  help simplify what you should know about the upcoming releases of the next version of SBS (Cougar), Home Server, Centro and Longhorn Server.  Get in sync with the next wave of Server products, and make sure you know what you need to know when you need to know it so you can staff up and train up!

Small Business, Big Life
Session 7A: Business Track - March 16 - 1:00 - 2:15pm
The purpose of a business is to give you more life, not to suck the life out of you. Yet the reality is that most business owners face demanding time challenges and try to fit in “life” when they have a moment.  Louis Barajas, author and nationally recognized expert in financial planning and business consulting will show you how to re-think and re-structure your business to allow you to bring back balance to your personal life. Louis will demonstrate two successful consulting tools that will help you gain more control of your businesses and more control of your personal life, no matter how big or how small your business is today.

Stop to Ask for Directions? NO WAY! Use the Roadmap Instead
The journey to higher profitability and managed services can be difficult, lengthy and expensive. Change your sales people? Manage your sales process differently? Learn to sell and deliver solutions? Restructure your financial business model? Managed services? Execute a better marketing plan? Recurring revenue? Restructuring your vendor relationships? Who has the time or money to figure out where to start? The CompTIA Solution Provider Roadmap is a web-based portal that supports business model transformation by providing robust, flexible change management tools and end user support resources. With the Roadmap IT channel business owners and managers can assess their current business, build plans for growth and engage proven resources to support priority areas of the transformation. The Roadmap can be viewed at http://roadmap.comptia.org.

Top 20 Best Practices for IT Business
Session 3C: Solutions Track - March 15 - 1:00 - 2:15pm
Is your organization running like a well-oiled machine? Do you know the status of every project, every ticket, every open task or to-do? Do you know which techs have free time, what's billable today, which client is most profitable, what prospects are about to close?

If you want to learn how thousands of solution providers are getting more work done and increasing profits without adding staff, then this session is a must-attend event for you.

During this workshop, Autotask CEO Bob Godgart will share the lessons learned from helping to automate the business processes of small to medium size VARs, Systems Integrators, MSPs, IT consultants and other IT solution providers. This session will take a walk through the entire customer lifecycle and show you how to weed out inefficiencies and use best practices to operate more profitably.

Learn Top 20 best practices to increase profits, improve service and better manager your business, including:
- Improve customer service
- Increase productivity
- Streamline workflow
- Cut waste out of processes
- Capture billable hours
- Bill faster and more accurately

Virtualization - What You Need to Know to Optimize Configuration, Deployment and Management - and Make Money on Services!
Session 10B: Technology Track - March 17 - 10:45 - 12:00pm
This session focuses on the use of virtualization technologies, specifically Virtual Server 2005 R2, and how to deploy, configure and manage virtualized solutions.   Disaster Recovery, upgrade scenarios, test environments, and support for legacy applications are among some of the ways to use virtualization.  Not only will we discuss how to build the technical solutions, but also how to offer them to your customers as services that they will want to buy from you!

Why Custom Software Development Can Help Your Business
Session 8B: Technology Track - March 16 - 3:00 - 4:15pm
Development? No way. No it my shop. Have you ever heard yourself say that? Come to this session to learn why you should change your mind. Having the ability to provide your clients with custom programming solutions, whether done by your team or a partner, is how you take care of your customers before they become someone else's. In this session you'll see example of how just a little custom code can enhance your IT solutions. You'll see examples showing Windows PowerShell and Exchange 2007, ClickOnce, and Visual Studio Tools 2005 for Office 2007.

Windows Mobile 5.0 - Deploying and Supporting Mobile Phones for SMB
Session 8C: Solutions Track - March 16 - 3:00 - 4:15pm
Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 provides security and usability improvements for mobile access to Exchange data from Windows Mobile and other compatible devices. This session discusses and demonstrates these new mobility enhancements, including direct push, configuring device password settings, remotely wiping a device, as well as other mobile enhancements added in Exchange 2003 SP2. The focus of the discussion is on security, deployment, and management of these features.

Windows SharePoint Services Version 3.0 and 40 New Templates - How You Can Profit
Session 6B: Technology Track - March 16 - 10:45 - 12:00pm
How can you make sure that your business stays relevant when the technology is getting simpler, customers are better informed, and seemingly everyone wants to be a managed services provider? And how can partners make the leap from networking VAR to true strategic partner? Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0, and 40 new application templates, help organizations of all sizes to collaborate and communicate across organizational and geographic boundaries. Join Microsoft and a top partner to learn how they’ve built a profitable, growing WSS offering for clients that deepens client relationships and generates higher profits.

Windows Vista—The Business Value to You and Your Customers
Session 3B: Technology Track - March 15 - 1:00 - 2:15pm
Your customers might think that staying on Windows XP might be good enough, but is it really the best way to go? Windows Vista offers some major security, productivity and management enhancements that will benefit both your customers and your business. It really comes down to ROI and the opportunities it creates versus the status quo. The new business opportunities that Windows Vista brings will allow you to add new streams of revenue and transform your business to a solutions and services, high margin, growth business. See how you can build a business around deployment, security, management, training etc. for Windows Vista.

More sessions are in the works, check back soon!!

DON'T MISS THE EXCITING EXPOSITION!

• Over 30 Technology-Related Exhibitors!
• Roundtables Featuring Best Practice Solutions
• and So Much More!

We look forward to bringing you the most beneficial hands-on learning event you will experience in 2007!

Download the agenda schedule and conference map.

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