Honoring and empowering small businesses nationwide

This week Microsoft Office 365 with Small Business Tour partners Windows Intune, Microsoft SMB, Brandify, Microsoft Stores, and T-Mobile joined the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the entire Obama Administration, in wishing a very happy National Small Business Week to the more than 28 million American small businesses, their employees and the people they serve! National Small Business Week is a public-private partnership to honor small businesses from communities across America.

The beginning of our celebration started with an Opening Networking Reception Sunday hosted by Alex Fong Senior Director, US SMB Alliance and Influencer Programs and Marie Johns SBA Deputy Administrator.

Small businesses all over the country continue to thrive, driving the national recovery and creating an American economy built to last. At the event, we continued to celebrate small business' accomplishments by giving attendees a place to touch down, connect, network and relax in our Accelerator Room. Here people enjoyed refreshments, an espresso cart, and the ability to learn about our products.

For the past three years, SBA has worked hard to ensure there's access to opportunity.  These small business owners who filtered through our room were thrilled to learn about the diversity of products we had to help, from online reputation management with Brandify, business productivity tools from Office 365, security and management from Windows Intune, our latest hardware offerings from the Microsoft Store, and the newest mobility offerings from T-Mobile. The one word we repeatedly heard from attendees was how these solutions are affordable for small businesses.

We would like to highlight the vibrant SBA award winners for 2012: SBA Small Business Person of the Year Victoria Tifft; National Subcontractor of the Year Misty Mayes; Phoenix Award winners for Outstanding Disaster Recovery; the SBA's first video contest winners and the 94 other award winners from across the United States!

On Tuesday following the social media forum we sponsored a social media tweetup discussion. SBA's Associate Administrator Michael Chodos and Deputy Administrator Marie Johns kicked off on what it means to be a consumer in the 21st century and ways to take advantage of opportunities online.

Microsoft SMB's US Group Manager Carl Timm Group then facilitated a social media discussion with Matt Millen, Vice President, Small and Medium Business Sales, T-Mobile; Rieva Lesonsky, CEO GrowBiz & SmallBizDaily.com; Neal Kimball, CEO, The Kimball Companies; Kelly Manning, Senior Director, SBDC Network Colorado; Cuahtemoc Rodreguez, President, ColdFoot; Brian Moran, Executive Director of Sales Development, Wall Street Journal; Michael Chodos, Associate Administrator, SBA Office of Entrepreneurial Development Michael Simmons, CEO and co-founder of Empact (http://iempact.com) where they discussed the digital life of at their business which was info graphed real-time is now the new Facebook Cover photo for Microsoft SMB.

President Obama believes supporting small business is an important part of keeping our economic recovery moving in the right direction and creating a robust, resilient economy built to last. At Microsoft we are devoted to providing products that are affordable for your small business.

To show our gratitude we are giving away one year of Windows Intune, our cloud based security and management product  sign up or click to chat to learn more about this offer.

You can also Try Office 365 for 30 days or click to chat with one of our knowledgeable agents.  Don't forget about  monitoring your small business reputation with Brandify for free.