The World According to Mitch

A few minutes ago the SMB 150 were announced.  These are, according to your votes and a panel of expert judges, the 150 most influential people in SMB.  I am pleased to announce that thanks to your votes I was included on that list.

I want to be clear that the fact that I am influential to Small and Mid-sized businesses does not mean that I am any less enterprise focused.  My mission over the past several years has been to take the lessons that I have learned in the Enterprise space and adapt them as the focus of countless presentations and articles for the SMB IT Pro. 

I feel that, especially with the advent of private and public cloud technologies, the chasm between the two is closing, and SMB IT Pros have gradually started to adapt their infrastructures on enterprise best practices.  As they continue to evolve they are, more and more, trying to achieve the Secure, Well-Managed IT Infrastructure in their organizations, including virtualization, failover redundancy, standardized desktop deployment, and managed security.  That my name is included on this list is a testament to the fact that my message has been getting through and I will continue to deliver that message in presentations, articles, and classes.

As I look down the list of awardees I see a lot of familiar names, including a few people I am honored to call friends.  To name them all here would be long and redundant, but to name just a few would do a disservice to the rest.  Although the public votes were denoted on the site (www.smb150.com), I noticed that the final list was simply alphabetical.  I am glad they did this, so that we are all ‘Top 150’ rather than my being #22 on the list (I’m not by the way… I have no idea where I ended up).

I want to thank the folks at the SMB Technology Network and SMB Nation, the two groups behind this list.  I think this list was a great idea, and I look forward to proudly displaying my plaque and logo when I receive them!