CompTIA Blog

Members of CompTIA’s IT Security Special Interest Group met to identify industry needs and explore potential initiatives during CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting Thursday morning.  Group chair Fernando Quintero, Vice President, Channel Sales – The Americas, McAfee, led a discussion on the group’s mission, format, objectives and initiatives.The group, consisting of IT industry professionals from a variety of disciplines from healthcare to education, began by reviewing a draft IT Security Code of Et ...

The morning session of the Small Business Owners Community meeting, at the CompTIA Annual Members Meeting in Chicago, concluded with two members stepping forward to highlight the development of the programs they are leading. Each of the initiatives the group is working on was listed as a priority in previous meetings, and significant advances are coming from the collaborative efforts of each project team.Norbert Doeberlein, President and CEO of Netzbahn is leading the discussion on the MicroVAR, ...

The Small Business Owners Community had the opportunity to learn more about the government services available to support their company growth and projects. While most people are aware of the loans supported by the United States Small Business Administration (SBA), Carole Harris of the Illinois office pointed out they actually provide other services to support small business. The three areas that the SBA focuses on include: 1.  Counseling and training The SBA works with an allian ...

“Are you sure that’s your final answer?” If you ask Steve Ernst, the first part of that sentence – “are you sure?” -- is every bit as important as the answer itself. Individuals who are confident in their answers and knowledge can retain that information longer, according to Ernst, Vice President, Client Services, Knowledge Factor. The company focuses on measuring both knowledge and confidence in its learning software, he said at a CompTIA Colloquium sessi ...

The results of the latest CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index suggest that the majority of tech companies are optimistic about future business conditions and the outlook for their own firms. The survey found that 48 percent of companies in the study expect to increase investments in research and development and other new revenue generating initiatives, while nearly a third plan to increase staff.The CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence is likely to continue its upward trend as sixty ...

Want to know what the next generation wants in a tech career? The best info can be gleaned face to face. To that end, CompTIA board members, CompTIA Educational Foundation board members and CompTIA staff met with 15 students from the Chicago  Academy for Advanced Technology over lunch. IT leaders got to know the students on a direct basis as they gave them advice on how to land a career in IT and as the students told them what they hope for the  future. The students discussed their ...

You know the saying “it’s all over but the shouting”? That’s probably a good characterization of where we are now with health care reform. It’s been passed. It’s been signed. And as it loosens it’s myopic mental hold on DC politics, the hard realities for US businesses of all sizes will start to take shape. In the IT industry, and for solution providers in particular there are going to be a new set of challenges. With the institution any new bill of this size and complexity will come a myriad of ...

An often quoted Albert Einstein definition for insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Based on this definition, most of us must be one card short of a full deck.  Our tendency in business is to play it safe and follow the pack; yet, none of us goes into business with the goal of being average.History teaches us that those who break from the pack and discover new ways of doing business reap the rewards. Take the development of the latest generation ...

In many ways I’m a very logical and practical guy. I try to plan my day in a logical and practical order.  It doesn’t always work out that way of course, but that’s OK - life is chaotic. I still try. I like to do things that make sense and that, for the most part, have some intrinsic value. When I was providing IT services to customers, it made a lot of sense (to me at least) to first sit down with my potential customers (sometimes for days) and figure out what they needed before I ever tried to ...

I have to admit I’m one of the few people who have been a devotee of the tablet PC interface since almost the beginning. I had one of the first Compaq units that was powered by the software-based Transmeta CPU. It was small and light, had a bunch of accessories, was really slow to boot and couldn’t handle more than a few apps at a time. I used a Fujitsu model for a period of time too. It had a larger screen, faster processor and had decent battery life. Then in the middle of a member conference ...

Many technology businesses grow without ever putting a business plan together.  Even though they know the value of building a business plan they never seem to have the time to put one together. So why go through the trouble of building a business plan? To answer that question, let’s examine the topic of business valuation that I discussed in my last article. The factors used to examine the price someone would be willing to pay for a technology business includes, as expected, an analysis of core ...

The raging debate on healthcare in the United States set the stage for another momentous event this week; a conference call with members of the CompTIA Healthcare IT Community. No matter which side of the discussion you subscribe to, I think it’s safe to say a momentous change in our healthcare system will occur over the next few years - including mass deployment of new technology solutions. With Federal stimulus programs already in place to implement a national electronic health records ( ...

MSP Partners has just published its 2010 IPED managed services research and education courses and the emerging industry trends are truly compelling! The findings I will be discussing in this article are based on research conducted in December 2009 and January 2010. This extensive survey included thousands of solution providers and resulted in findings to a 97% confidence level. The top four trends identified are:1.    The managed services market mirrored the overall IT market in performance, but ...

I’ve been involved in many discussions on IT security applications over the years, but today’s conference call with the IT Security Special Interest Group truly hit home on the business issues many channel providers face.  Many VARs and MSPs offer security applications to their clients, but could use help developing this expertise and in transitioning from a reactive focus on security to a proactive approach. During the call, Fernando Quintero, VP of Channel Operations for McA ...

CompTIA’s president and CEO, Todd Thibodeaux, shares the vision behind the recent reorganization of CompTIA’s public policy department. Listen here: CompTIA_Public_Policy[podcast]http://www.comptia.org/media/CompTIA_Public_Policy.mp3[/podcast]