"Step out of your comfort zone": SMBiT Professionals Conference kicks off in Melbourne

[Updated at 12.30pm AEDT, October 28] "We only have to lean on our members if we have questions – community is what this is all about," said Wayne Small, CEO of SMBiT Professionals today in Melbourne, kicking off the member group’s ninth conference.

IT partners from around the country have converged on the event, where in Small's words, they "can be vulnerable". Today, one attendee shared the severe impact business difficulties had previously had on his mental health and family relationships.

“We don't want to admit that we don't know everything, but this is a safe environment,” Small told attendees. “We can share the types of problems that we're having, because you know what, the guy at the table is probably having the same problems.”

“That's the power of community that we have within SMBiT Professionals and that's something I remain immensely proud of to this very day.”

Small acknowledged it had been a tough year economically for many partners. Business accounting acumen was a common thread in several sessions today and the pre-conference business workshop was sold out.

With cybersecurity risks and AI usage continuing to loom large, partners were encouraged to step out of their comfort zones. “We have to step up, we have to evolve,” one speaker said. “We need to be ahead of those clients. We need to be going out and having proactive discussions with our clients about how are we using AI in business.”

“The comfort zone is going to move away a lot faster.”

This year’s event was backed by events sponsors Bluechip Infotech, ConnectWise, DC INFRA, Dijital Team, Dolphin Electrics, FIFTEEN, HaloPSA, Hosted Network, Inception Marketing, inforcer, Manage Protect, N-able, NetVault, NinjaOne, Pax8, Sophos, ThreatLocker and Vanta.

“Forgotten how to do consulting”

Some of the comments heard by CRN included:

- The industry is “too addicted” to monthly recurring revenue and has forgotten how to “do consulting”, according to one attendee

- The room was packed to hear Australian Cyber Network chair Jason Murrell explain how MSPs can use the SMB1001 certification.

- There was a 50%/50% split between MSPs between actively delivering essential eight to customers and those still working out how to deliver it. “That’s a reason to engage with your local SMBiT Professionals chapter,” one SMBiT member pointed out.

- MSPs are asking how to secure Copilot, but that’s not the right way to think about it, according to one speaker. “Copilot lives on top of services like Identity, Entra ID, data loss prevention, InTune policies, information protection….The layers underneath are as important as the top level layer,” they said.

- Not knowing your business numbers, difficulty having hard conversations with clients about security or prices and hard conversations with employees – non-IT skills were a common thread connecting some sessions.

- On stage, Workd of Workflow's Nick Beaugeard created a security event log analyser with help from OpenAI. This was one of several explanations of how MSPs can use GenAI to save time.

- SMBiT Professionals needs “new blood”. With some small business IT professionals retiring or merging their businesses, it called on members to help find new, young? SMB IT professionals to join the group.

- Breaking into certain systems is “child’s play” using AI. Attendees saw a technical demonstration of this.

- “Most of us here are still thinking it’s 2010 types of skill sets we need, and that's the problem. It's not actually the people. We’re bringing the wrong skills to the wrong people in the first place,” argued one speaker.

CRN Australia travelled to the SMBiT Professionals Conference as a guest of SMBiT Professionals.