In the process of writing my blog post, “ Sizing up Small-to-Medium Business (SMB) “, I initiated a lively discussion on LinkedIn’s SMB IT Forum .

My thanks to the following people for participating in one of the longer discussions I have seen or been involved in on LinkedIn:

• Amy Babinchak , IT Business Owner , Author, Advisor, Professor, and blogger at ThirdTier.net and at Small Business Tech Notes

• Jere Terrill , Owner, My Computer Mechanic, Inc .

• Leon McCaskill , Owner, InfiNet Inc.

• Peter Brown , Managing Director of Pensive ; Board Chairman and President of OASIS
• Rebecca Edgerton Wright , PWEA Lead Developer/Architect at IBM PartnerWorld

• Sanjeev Aggarwal , Founder & Partner, SMB Group, Inc.

• Scott Wilson , Principal Consultant at Indigo Moon Systems

• Tom Daly , Practice Principal, W5

Here are some take-aways from this discussion: [Read more...]

As we enter 2010, and we here at SMB Research begin to focus on the technology advisory needs of the small and small-to-medium business, it is worth taking a fresh look at “small business”, and “SMB” (or “SME”) – and, indeed, what these terms even mean.

The confusion around these terms have been addressed before elsewhere before, most notably by Anita Campbell Editor in Chief of the terrific Small Business Trends website, but by others as well. (You will find below references to several other discussions about the challenge of defining SMB and small business.) [Read more...]