CompTIA Blog

Last week I attended two events at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry. The first, held on Thursday 12th May, was the CRN Partner Connect Exhibition – which many of you may know better by its previous name, the UK Channel Expo. The event saw hundreds of vendors, distributors and resellers get together for an expo, networking and educational presentations.The evening saw vendors, distributors and resellers get together with CompTIA UK for a drinks reception and meal in the G Casino, part of the Ricoh Are ...

While today’s the day many people are especially careful to avoid black cats, walking under ladders or spilling salt, for the rest of us, it’s just another Friday. Okay, I admit to being a little superstitious, but I am also a firm believer that we make our own luck in life and our careers. When someone works hard and focuses on accomplishing a goal, their fortunes tend to be positive. Whether that is luck or old fashioned effort is your call. The news this week concerns the fortune of the IT ...

While today’s the day many people are especially careful to avoid black cats, walking under ladders or spilling salt, for the rest of us, it’s just another Friday. Okay, I admit to being a little superstitious, but I am also a firm believer that we make our own luck in life and our careers. When someone works hard and focuses on accomplishing a goal, their fortunes tend to be positive. Whether that is luck or old fashioned effort is your call. The news this week concerns the fortune of the IT wo ...

The short Day 3 at Interop featured sessions sponsored by InformationWeek Analytics. The first session focused on trends in mobility and mobile security. The stance on mobility was consistent with other sessions throughout the week: more mobile devices are coming, and employees will continue to bring these devices into the workplace. One of the concepts presented was similar to a concept from the cloud security session: individual security is a good starting point for corporate security. Another ...

This week the IRS issued final regulations to implement the three-percent federal income tax withholding requirement on government contract payments.  Enacted into law in 2006, this provision requires all federal, state and local government entities and instrumentalities to withhold three percent of payments made for goods and services.  Initially set to go into effect in 2010, legislative extensions had pushed the effective date to January 1, 2012.  And, in an unexpected twist, the IRS regulati ...

Last month we wrote that the Office of National Coordinator at the Department of Health and Human Services had announced its “Federal Health IT Strategic Plan: 2011-2015,” which was last updated in 2008. The plan focuses on implementing key healthcare IT policies over the next five years through coordination between government agencies, the private sector, and the public. The plan outlines five goals: Achieve adoption and information exchange through meaningful use of healthcare I ...

Dell’s Enterprise Expert Center in MontPellier, France, became the first European site to achieve CompTIA ASC Gold status. In doing so it has seen customer satisfaction levels increase 10 percent.As European hub for technical enquiries from enterprise computing customers, the Montpellier center was already considered a leading light for the global computing giant for its high levels of technical competence among staff and customer satisfaction.Customer Services Director Jean-Pierre Berone, howev ...

Day 2 at Interop started with the same theme that was so prevalent during Day 1: cloud. However, the panel that discussed cloud in the keynote session focused on some of the more recent issues surrounding cloud, specifically the outage at Amazon and the security breach at Sony. The panel, which included members from Avaya, Terremark and Rackspace, definitely did not feel that these events left a black mark on cloud, but they did highlight the need for further attentiveness by cloud users and ope ...

A look at the week of May 9 in public advocacy for the IT channelThis week, a federal program meant to standardize private sector IT could be holding up the federal transition to cloud computing. Officials have decided that the Department of Energy should be given authority to order utilities to take action in the case of a cyber emergency. H-1B visas are on decline due to a lackluster economic recovery in the U.S. and more opportunities in workers’ home countries. Security Remains the Biggest H ...

Interop is taking place this week, providing a venue for IT companies to gather and discuss the latest products and trends within the industry. The day started with keynotes, and from the very beginning the message was clear: everyone wants to talk about the cloud. Dave Donatelli of HP led things off, and although his talk was more sales pitch than keynote, the products he presented were clearly positioned as products that would fit into a cloud solution and allow HP to pursue its goal of holist ...

Legislation remains pending in both the House and Senate that would re-authorize the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program.  Both programs are set to expire on May 31st.   The Senate legislation would extend the program through 2019, while the House legislation would extend through 2014.Even though the core of this legislation is bi-partisan, dealing with proposed amendments has bogged down action, especially in the Senate, wh ...

SBA Advocacy recently released an important report, “An Examination of the 2001 IRS Tax Gap Estimates’ Effects on Small Businesses.”  The “tax gap” is the difference between the tax that is collected and the tax that should be collected.   In the current budgetary climate, this term is becoming more important. In 2007, the IRS released a report on the estimated 2001 tax gap.  That report found over a third ($109B out of $290B) of the estimated non-collected tax gap was due to underreporting of b ...

Ever since the dot-com bubble burst at the beginning of the last decade, the IT industry has been waging an uphill battle to attract the talent it needs to meet its ever growing workforce demands. Somewhere along the way, as words like outsourcing and off-shoring became permanently derogatory terms in our vocabulary, pursuing an IT career lost its “cool” factor. The reasons I commonly hear from kids and their parents are “why would I want to be in IT?” or “Aren’t all those jobs for programmers ...

Even after all these years, Sam Morris still cringes when he hears it. The brutally honest student expression can determine whether or not that student succeeds or fails miserably in the 21st century global economy.He’s talking about those dreaded words: “Why bother? I’m never going to use this anyway.”Morris, a K-12 and college math teacher of nearly two decades, is working to erase that defeatist line from student lexicon. Last month, he was hired by CompTIA member Lenovo in part to help the l ...

Ever since the dot-com bubble burst at the beginning of the last decade, the IT industry has been waging an uphill battle to attract the talent it needs to meet its ever growing workforce demands. Somewhere along the way, as words like outsourcing and off-shoring became permanently derogatory terms in our vocabulary, pursuing an IT career lost its "cool" factor.The reasons I commonly hear from kids and their parents are "why would I want to be in IT?" or "Aren't all those jobs for programmers be ...