D&H Enters Into Agreement With SMB Nation

D&H, the Harrisburg, Pa.-based distributor with a huge share in the small business solution provider marketplace, has entered into an agreement to provide pricing promotions and specialized services for the 54,000 solution provider-members of SMB Nation.

D&H said it intends to work with its vendor partners to create exclusive programs for SMB Nation members that purchase products from the distributor. That means more affordable vendor branded offerings for the SMB Nation community of solution providers that often use second tier or their own private label technology products.

SMB Nation, which focused initially on Microsoft's small business server product with books and information from SMB expert Harry Brelsford, now offers a wide range of technical information, services and events aimed at the general small business focused solution provider.

The average SMB Nation tribe member is a one-to-five-person consultancy with about three dozen customers and the owner earns on average $101,000.

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Brelsford, the CEO of SMB Nation, said the deal is aimed at encouraging SMB Nation members to use D&H as their preferred distributor. "We think they are good people," Brelsford said. "We both come from the S in SMB. We built our companies out of garages. D&H is not that far removed from that homespun story even though they are 93 years old."

Brelsford said he will be meeting with D&H over the next several weeks to hammer out specific promotions and services around the deal.

D&H Co-President Dan Schwab said he views the deal as an endorsement of the distributor's programs and services aimed at helping small business solution providers be successful.

"This is an example of one plus one equals three," said Schwab. "They are doing training at our events. There is a lot of cross-pollinazation and technology promotions. We both have the same thing at heart: the success of the small business solution provider."

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D&H is already playing a role at SMB Nation conferences and Brelsford is presenting a seminar titled, "Server, Storage, Healthcare - Driving SMB Upgrades In 2011" at D&H's Mid-Atlantic Fall Technology Show on Nov. 2 in Harrisburg, Pa.

Brelsford said he sees the deal as the kind of "bold" thinking that small business solution providers should be doing themselves to grow their own business.

"Our tribal members are going to looka lot different coming out of this recession than they did going into it," he said. "We are taking bold moves to better serve our SMB Nation members. You have got to be thinking strategically at how to grow."

Brelsford said it is extremely difficult to grow organically picking up additional customers in the midst of the current "long tail" of the recession.

"The new normal for the computer guy or gal like myself is staying even," he said. "That'd okay. That's a win that shows the strength of the SMB technology sector."

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Brelsford said two companies he sees with innovative offerings in the small business market are Microsoft and Intel.

Microsoft is prepping the next release of Microsoft Small Business Server: Small Business Server 7, which supports up to 75 client licenses, and Aurora, which supports up to 25 client licenses.

Intel is in the midst of pilot testing its hybrid cloud offering, a subscription-based model offering server software on a pay as you go basis.

Brelsford said he sees the majority of small businesses not moving entirely to the cloud, but rather using a hybrid model.

"The reality is that computing is not all about the cloud despite what you read in the paper," he said. "It's kind of like Washington politics. At the end of the day it is not about the Tea Party or the liberals, it is about the moderates. We use the cloud for hosted Exchange e-mail or in our case NetSuite, but you still need on premise solutions for authentication, security, printing and data storage."