Thank you, Calvin, for a SPARK of inspiration
Thursday, September 13th, 2007 posted by luxWe recently named our partner program SPARK. We decided to give it a name as Vembu StoreGrid Service Provider Edition Partner Program was becoming quite a mouthful!
Why SPARK?
Of course, while we could have named it anything we wanted, it would be nice to have an acronym of sorts. We’ve placed our bets on Service Providers leading the way towards the boom in online backups amongst SMBs - what we call Service Provider Assisted Remote Backups ! But SPARB just didn’t sound right.
Here’s where Calvin & Hobbes come in. One of my strongest memories of the comic is the club they form - G.R.O.S.S.
G.R.O.S.S. is short for Get Rid Of Slimy girlS (Disclaimer: I am not and never will be a member of G.R.O.S.S.)
Coming back to S.P.A.R.B….taking Calvin’s example, we simply made Backups bacKups - and SPARK (Service Provider Assisted Remote bacKups) was born! Click here to know more about SPARK!
If you’ve read them before, you’ll probably agree that Calvin & Hobbes is one of those endearing comic strips that has the capacity to span generations- my sons regularly read it and right now, they love G.R.O.S.S. ; wait till they grow up - I anticipate a trend reversal!
Backup Services are No. 2 on SMBs list, says VAR Business Magazine
Monday, September 3rd, 2007 posted by lux
The September issue of VAR Business has an interesting article on the “Top 5 Tech Segments SMBs Will Spend Money On”. While the first segment mentioned is Network Security, Backup & Archiving ranks number 2. Online Backup Services are especially mentioned and the article says:
Online backup services is also an area where resellers are starting to see increased interest in the SMB market, and vendors are now better enabling resellers to offer such services as part of their managed services portfolios—opportunities that can help them lock into recurring revenue streams.
We recommend that you read the article; however, if you’re strapped for time, here’s a summary…
The “Top 5 Tech Segments SMBs Will Spend Money On” are:
- Network Security
- Archiving & Backup
- Client/Desktop Security
- Network Infrastructure
- Accounting / Supply Chain Solutions
Over half the SMBs polled said they expected to spend more on IT in the coming year. They are expected to spend US$ 13,000 (average per SMB) on IT in the coming year.
Also from the article:
62 percent of small businesses polled strongly agreed with the statement “technology is something that can create a genuine competitive advantage for my company.” That’s incentive for solution providers to show their small-business customers how technology translates to a competitive advantage, several resellers said.
