CompTIA’s Joint Industry Advisory Council Meeting Brings Together Realigned Councils

CompTIA’s Joint Industry Advisory Council leaders came together for a spring working group meeting at the Westin Dallas-Fort Worth Airport Hotel, March 13 to 15. The purpose of the meeting was to understand new, emerging technology ecosystems; educate and drive collaboration with business and emerging technology players on new and alternative routes to market; identify and develop industry best practice standards; and stay informed on CompTIA’s policy and advocacy efforts.

CompTIA’s industry advisory councils were recently realigned to reflect the dynamic changes occurring across the tech sector. “Today’s marketplace features a greater variety of providers of technology solutions, and more options than ever for customers to satisfy their technology needs,” said Annette Taber, CompTIA’s vice president for industry outreach. “The changes we’ve made in the structure of our advisory groups reflect this market reality. By expanding our engagement into new corners of the industry, we’re better positioned to serve our members and the broader technology community with the resources and support to help companies grow and thrive.”

The following councils were in attendance in Dallas: Business Applications Advisory Council (BAAC), Channel Advisory Board (CAB), Drone Advisory Council (DRAC) and the Smart Cities Advisory Councils (SCAC).

Drone Advisory Council

During the Drone Advisory Council breakout session, the DRAC discussed barriers to adoption, including the lack of industry best practice standards; lack of national and state policy alignment; and the lack of any type of channel or go-to-market strategy for drone service providers. Additionally, it believes governing agencies like the FAA and the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority need more focus around the legal and ethical issues of pilots, as well as the actual demonstration of flying skills and rules of enforcement.

There is a serious gap in professional training and data standards for this growing workforce. Today there are 70,000 FAA Part 107 licensed commercial drone pilots in the U.S., and yet roughly 700,000 drones are registered by the FAA. Many of these hobbyists are setting up shop doing commercial work without the license. Additionally, the lack of enterprise capital, the lack of ROI use-cases, and lack of timeliness by the FAA to approve flight plans and cases beyond visual line of sight are holding back growth. Accelerators include budget advocates across the enterprise sharing compelling ROI models for each of the vertical market applications. This technology has a positive impact on the real estate, insurance, agriculture, construction and inspection verticals, with demonstrated value on how the technology will reduce costs and at the same time improve ability to display, monitor, track, measure and analyze trends, as well as mitigate dirty, dangerous and dull jobs.

Smart Cities Advisory Council

During the Smart Cities Advisory Council breakout session, the SCAC discussed barriers to adoption such as a lack of best practice standards and budget; limited workforce to implement technologies; minimal insight into government decision-making and sales cycles; fragmented ecosystems including culture clashes between technologists and government officials; and lack of ROI models. On the positive side, the council believes that education, advocacy, funding and grants for pilot implementations, along with ROI use-cases, is what it will take to drive increased adoption. This year, it wants to create a smart cities pilot implementation playbook, including templates and roadmaps to plan for a smart city pilot. This would be geared to city CIOs and then the broader ecosystem. It also wants to create industry best practice standards, commission a research project that focuses more on smart city implementation, and, finally, draw attention to and showcase successful cities. Longer term goals include a business case for implementation including a budget matrix, and the creation of a government advisory council and the creation of a nationwide city CIO contest.

Business Applications Advisory Council

During the Business Applications Advisory Council break out session, the BAAC discussed that SaaS is growing disparate from traditional IT and the increase in line-of-business decision-making is exposing a lack of skilled resources for consultative solution selling in the IT channel. New routes to market such as direct, app exchanges, marketplaces and channel are causing complexity in partnerships, business models and pricing. And with end-clients now using technology to differentiate themselves via social, mobile, analytics and cloud, the BAAC finds an expanded need for micro-verticalization. The good news is that these new app buyers are tech savvy and eager to expand their technology experience. Within the mobile app world, internet speed and 5G access makes for higher expectations when it comes to time to market for app developers. The consumerization of technology, the ADD economy and the Amazon Experience all act as accelerators for this market. The goal of the BAAC is to better understand the buying patterns and personas of vertical market buyers, then define, develop and train MSPs on the SaaS sales and implementation process as a way to increase trust between the SaaS and IT community and engage a new route to market.

Channel Advisory Board

During the Channel Advisory Board breakout session, the CAB discussed how the buyer’s journey has changed, with tech-savvy customers buying direct and vendors finding difficulty working with partners on their go-to-market strategies. Other challenges identified were that solution providers lack the consultative vertical market specialization needed and newly identified trusted advisors (CPAs, digital marketers) are now considered competitors. It was agreed that driving a positive end-user experience requires specialization and vertical expertise that companies must obtain by hiring from the industry or partnering with others. The critical focus was on the soft skills necessary to discuss and communicate business outcomes. The goal of the council is to provide a framework for all types of partners to help define their value-add and to connect them with other partners via a vendor-neutral CompTIA platform that expands their geographic coverage, scope of work and overall skillset through collaboration.