CompTIA Blog

Software engineer Joseph Cole took advantage of the partnership between Western Governors University and CompTIA to earn IT certifications while completing his bachelor’s degree in IT – all without going into debt. And if he was enrolling today, Cole would be the perfect candidate for a new WGU scholarship for CompTIA certification holders.

Nellie Scott is at the top of her game with Lenovo, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of personal computers. She serves as director of sales support & enablement, supporting the sellers and companies that sell Lenovo products and services. As someone who has advanced her career without a four-year degree, she's living proof you can beat the odds.

Society and technology are evolving faster than our ability to adapt. That point was strongly emphasized by Bob Humphreys in his presentation that helped kick off the recent CompTIA IT Services and Support Community meeting in Woodbridge, Ontario, just north of Toronto. The leader of Demand Programs and Digital Strategy for IBM Canada underscored how technology has become the most important external force that impacts today’s businesses. Back in the day, most businesses used IT for process ...

As a wireless internet service provider (WISP) in a rural, sawmill region of Oregon, IV Data Center is the last frontier when it comes to serving areas other ISPs can’t or won’t serve. We help bridge the digital divide for the most underserved customers in the country. Our company, also known as Illinois Valley Data Center, serves Josephine County, Ore., which consistently ranks as the second poorest county in the state. The small lumber mill region has seen its industry decimated o ...

Recently, CompTIA filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal for new net neutrality rules. CompTIA believes that transparency, no-blocking and nondiscrimination rules are essential to protect and promote the interests of small businesses operating online. Without such rules, broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) could charge any business operating online for access, or prioritized access, to an ISP’s customers. Small busines ...

At the CompTIA Advancing Women in IT (AWIT) meeting at AMM in San Diego this month, community staff leader Cathy Alper welcomed attendees by announcing “In other CompTIA communities people say they want to join. In AWIT they say they want to get involved.” Get involved they did! I had the pleasure of watching over 50 professionals participate passionately in concrete initiatives designed to encourage and help women of all ages establish fulfilling careers in IT. In addition, the comm ...

Building a solid foundation with your channel partners will help your business go down countless avenues in the future. For a vendor, finding the right channels to sell cloud services can play a key role in expanding business and reaching new, untapped markets. Local markets and others formerly out-of-reach for a cloud provider can open up with the right partnership. But the prospect of forging partner relationships can be intimidating. PartnerPath has created a helpful three-step process that d ...

Last week, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade held a hearing titled “Trolling for a Solution: Ending Abusive Patent Demand Letters.” The hearing focused on the regulation of demand letters sent in bad faith to businesses by patent trolls or patent assertion entities (PAEs). There has been an upswing in the number of issued demand letters, which many times are vague, misleading and deceptive. The recipients, who are often smal ...

As you dust off your bookshelves and open the windows for a fresh breath of spring air, don’t forget the cobwebs trailing into your professional life. It’s time to give your resume a clean sweep.

What value does your company add? It’s a perennial business question, one that channel firms face each and every day in interactions with customers, vendors and other partners. In this era of cloud computing and ongoing business model upheaval, everyone is looking for a way to stand out, especially to the customer. If you can’t answer the fundamental question – Why do we matter? – your business is at a disadvantage. The managed services model is one example of a channel b ...

Nineteen-year IT professional Emad Ahmed struggled for years to figure out how he could continue his education while balancing work, life and home, and found a solution through an online program that gave him the flexibility to complete a bachelor’s degree and move on quickly to a master’s.

Parked just south of the Capital Beltway, the LAYC Career Academy is an innovative charter school serving Washington D.C.’s disconnected youth. They offer GED training for those who need it, college credits for high school graduates, and direct pathways to careers in health care and IT. The self-paced curriculum lets students plot their own path to A+ certification.

There’s no denying it: cloud is growing. IBM just announced an aggressive expansion of its cloud services, and TheInfoPro’s “Wave 5 Cloud Computing Study” predicts a 36 percent compound annual growth rate for cloud into 2016, according to Forbes. Moreover, 69 percent of enterprises with cloud budgets in 2013 are expecting to increase them in 2014. These expanding market projections also mean expanding budgets for cloud computing, so if you’re not in the game already ...

Pat Martin, a national account manager at SmartSource, spends her days with her two dogs — her “big babies,” she calls them — developing business relationships for her company and recruiting IT staff from the comfort of her own home. Martin’s two-pronged role gives her plenty of satisfaction. She’s been at it for about three years now, after a mutual contact put her in touch with the owners of Illinois-based SmartSource Inc. “It was just love,” Mar ...

Earlier this year, CompTIA’s 2014 Outlook predicted that cloud wars would intensify, with public cloud providers fighting on price and differentiation and private cloud systems fighting to get a foothold. After just one quarter, that prediction holds true; several companies have announced new ways they are pushing this model into new territory. Late March was a game changer, as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all held events to share updates to their cloud offerings. As expected, price was a ...