SMB Nation in Seattle

Jeff Middleton prepares his presentation as SMB Nation CEO Harry Brelsford introduces him

The sixth annual SMB Nation conference presided over by business support guru Harry Brelsford started up this morning in Seattle, the major city closest to the elephant of the computing industry, Microsoft. Previous SMB Nation conferences have been held in Indianapolis and in nearby Redmond, the real location of Microsoft world headquarters. This event is a "must do" for many of the small and medium support network of computer administrators and network engineers who are looking to find out the best way to support their clients and get themselves more business in the process. The first keynote presentation was by David Brown of Intel, who focuses on the concerns of businesses and computer support administrators who are interested in finding the cheapest, most energy efficient and easiest to maintain products available. Intel's Core 2 products were discussed as well as innovative new solutions that promise better integration for professional offices and businesses in the marketplace. ONe of their products supports as many as 14 2.5 inch hot-swapable hard drives with up to six server blade components. It was quite impressive, especially as Intel designed it to work with existing software solutions that make it a workable solution practically out of the box. New Orleans's own Jeff Middleton had a talk on "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" of server migration under the just-released 2008 Microsoft SBS (Small Business Server). Suffice it to say that much of what existed before has gone away and many of the best methods used to deploy servers in the marketplace have been replaced by new methods or no longer exist. It's a muddled field right now, but if anyone can figure it out, Jeff Middleton, whose SBSmigration.com stages its own annual conference, will definitely do it. Meanwhile, a great number of other speakers are heading to the conference over the course of the next few days in overcast and moist Seattle.