As you may be aware, the 2012 SMB Influencer program is in full swing for its second year running. Similar to last year, we have the privilege of sponsoring the initiative and working with Anita Campbell and Ramon Ray to remain active in the small and medium business community. The nomination and voting period for the top 100 SMB influencers of 2012 is now over (and the winners have been announced!), but the real fun is about to begin with the awards gala being held in New York City on October 17th.

The event serves to honor the SMB champions for their contributions to the community, but also represents a fantastic networking opportunity. This year it’s being held in the Javits Center (Hall 1A) from 5:30pm to 9pm. Check out the details below and grab your ticket today:

October 17, 2012 at 5:30pm
Javits Center, Hall 1A, New York City

Our own Bryan Lee, Sr. Director in our B2B & IT channel sales group at Research In Motion® (RIM®), will be helping with the awards and discussing mobility in business at the gala. I’ll be there too to capture all of the action, so stay tuned on the Inside BlackBerry® for Business Blog to see a recap after the event!

BlackBerry Solutions for Small Businesses

The SMB community holds so much enthusiasm and energy, and we love to be involved to help mobilize workers and keep business owners completely connected wherever they may be. It can be challenging to keep track of all of the details and to manage and unify mobile devices within a small organization. We’ve got a few great tools that can help:

BlackBerry smartphones and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets

When it comes to the device in your hand, it’s important that you have access to information, contacts, email, BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), and a ton of fantastic business apps that can help keep you on top of your work and available to colleagues and customers. When your smartphone works together with your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, BlackBerry devices become the ultimate productivity and communications tool at work and at home.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express

There comes a point in time during the growth of a business where it’s important to begin unifying and managing the mobile devices being used for work. For businesses using BlackBerry® 5, BlackBerry® 6, and BlackBerry® 7 OS smartphones, BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Express is a fantastic (and free) option for connecting devices to your mail server, utilizing security controls, remotely protecting devices, and much more.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion

Many small businesses use a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy to help cut costs. When you have a mix of BlackBerry, iOS, and Android™ devices at work in your business, managing all of them doesn’t need to be a challenge. BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion allows you to extend to these smartphones and tablets the security and management capabilities that RIM has offered for years. Deploying BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is also a step towards the upcoming BlackBerry® Enterprise Service 10, which will provide a complete and unified solution for enterprise mobility management. Find more BlackBerry solutions for SMBs here.

See you in New York!

Check out the wrap up of last year’s event to learn more. Register at www.smbinfluencer.com for this year’s event, and we’ll see you on the 17th.

Does your BlackBerry smartphone or BlackBerry PlayBook tablet help you in your small business? Share in the comments below.