Back when Pertino was first getting started, my co-founders and I were sitting around sharing our visions and aspirations for the company when a common theme emerged – create a technology that helps "democratize" IT for the over 50 million SMBs around the world. We called this ideal "big IT for SMBs" and last week we moved two steps closer to realizing it with the public launch of the Pertino cloud network service and the appointment of J.P. Allen to our newly-formed executive advisory board.

J.P. Allen is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the School of Management, University of San Francisco and was a former faculty member at Purdue University and the University of Cambridge. He was the first Department Chair of USF’s Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship department. JP’s education and research work is dedicated to understanding how business is being transformed by digital technology. His current research focuses on new internet-based business practices, using open source platforms, ‘web 2.0′ style content communities, software-as-a-service, and virtual infrastructure (such as ‘cloud computing’). He is one sharp cookie and I hope you will enjoy his blog post Democratizing SMB Networking: Why I’m excited about Pertino.