CompTIA Blog

It could be today, tomorrow or even next year. The best time to make major improvements in your organization is not when sales are down or the creditors are knocking on the door. Successful entrepreneurs watch for positive trends and thoroughly research the latest innovations so they are fully prepared to take advantage of the next big opportunity. They adapt their business model to tackle new challenges and continually watch for better ways to run their operations, expand their customer bases and build the overall value of their organizations.

According to CompTIA’s IT Industry Outlook 2014, IT services and software show the most growth potential for the year. The IT services market represents nearly a quarter (24 percent) of the total IT industry in the U.S. That translates to roughly $240 billion in IT services sales to be had this year in the U.S. alone.

Innovation is a tricky subject. Many of us think about it as the epiphany — the moment of brilliance that is punctuated by “Eureka!” That, of course, is a romantic notion. Innovation is the product of collaboration and usually over periods of time. “We take ideas from other people, from people we’ve learned from, from people we run into in the coffee shop and we stitch them together into new forms and we create something new. That’s where innovation happens,” said author Steven Berlin Johnson in his July 2010 TED Talk, “Where Good Ideas Come From.”

The Senate Tax Extenders Bill, which amends the IRS code and extends various tax provisions related to individuals, businesses and the energy sector, initially passed the Senate Finance Committee with bipartisan support, but failed later to meet the 60-vote cloture requirement by a vote of 53 to 40.

CompTIA is no longer the best-kept secret in town. The association has come up with a new, open-access membership model that enables both individuals and businesses to benefit directly from CompTIA resources, communities and programs at no cost, while simultaneously bringing more exclusivity and value to our dues-paying members.

Welcome to the new CompTIA.org! We’ve rebuilt the site from the ground up and wrapped it in a lightweight, modern design. Once you start clicking around, you’ll find many improvements and new features that were designed to work with your PC, tablet and smartphone to get you to the information you need.

Adding a significant number of new clients to your roster sounds like a positive, but many businesses aren’t built for dramatic expansion without at least some growing pains. Successful hypergrowth takes time, solid procedures and infrastructure improvements, according to “The 5 Secrets of Hyper-Growth,” a CompTIA webinar by Axcient’s Justin Moore. While his approach is nontraditional, it makes perfect sense to for open-minded MSPs.

The CompTIA IT Services and Support Community set out to explore the future of IT Service Delivery over the next three to five years as one of its 2014 initiatives. The first step in this expedition is a recently completed survey of IT service professionals. IT services of the future will seek to continue to delight customers by addressing their needs in a complex and changing IT landscape (91 percent of respondents classified addressing customer needs and challenges as a “must have”).

It is becoming apparent that the new trends in IT are leading to a completely new approach for businesses. In the case of mobility, having a wide range of options for front-end devices is changing the mindset around device management and workflow structure. Smartphones and tablets are transforming the device landscape and driving much of the initial discussion around enterprise mobility. Meanwhile, PCs remain viable options along with smartphones and tablets, and companies must decide how to handle all three.

CertMaster, a comprehensive new neuroscience-based learning tool from CompTIA, has already garnered fans in the IT community, like 43-year-old Sean Byrne, a warehouse and office manager from Ireland. “Once I start the tutorials, I find it hard to stop,” he said. The adaptive training program, designed to help people start or advance their IT careers, was built on research from neurobiology, cognitive psychology and game studies.

The world of business revolves around financial numbers and terms, and learning to understand and interpret them will keep you ahead of the game. Success, for example, is measured on a balance sheet, a profit and loss statement, year-over-year growth, ROI and a host of other terms. It’s imperative you build a functional knowledge of finance and, more importantly, learn to tell the story of your contributions, build business models, and track and report results through numbers.

Marketing yourself can be a challenge, but you do have tools available at your fingertips. Through your online presence, your resume and interview, present yourself as competent and capable. You’re convincing a company that they need you, so tailor everything for the job that you’re applying for. Find ways to connect your credentials to the job at hand and weave in your core competencies and past achievements to suit the new job.

Looking for your next career opportunity can be a full-time job. What if you had multiple people making referrals to you, or referring you to companies that are hiring and helping to get your resume in front of the right contacts? Networking is your best strategy for accelerating your search.

A well-formatted, easy-to-read resume is critical to attract and grab the reader’s attention. In this article, Patricia Martin, business development manager, walks through her recommendations to get your resume not just scanned, but noticed.

This guest blog entry was written by Lester Keizer, CEO of Business Continuity Technologies. Business Continuity Solutions has been in business for over 30 years. We’re one of the oldest technology companies in the Las Vegas area. Over the decades we’ve morphed from a regular technology product sales company to a company selling enterprise-level products to a firm that does strictly managed services in its purest form. The last six months has really been great for our company. We see ...