CompTIA Blog

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 ...

Last week, the Senate unanimously approved an amendment adding legislation supported by TechVoice – the “Innovation Credit Act of 2013” – to the tax extenders bill currently being debated in the Senate. This is an important milestone for TechVoice. Adding this TechVoice-supported legislation to the extenders bill is a major step on the road to its eventual enactment into law. Next up, the extenders bill, which now includes the startup R&D tax credit, will be voted on ...

There was a little friendly competition going on in the Mobility Community meeting at CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting at the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego, Calif., this week. The meeting featured the “Rumble in the Mobile Jungle” (the community has hosted such a debate twice before, including at ChannelCon last year; click here to read all about it). This rumble was moderated by Ryan Morris with Ryan Morris with Morris Management Partners, who also served as host of the rumb ...

A shift in the IT customer and IT businesses themselves were the themes of two Power Talk sessions held this week at CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting at the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego. The theme of the first was “Power Talk: The New IT Decision Maker,” hosted by Carolyn April, director, industry analysis, market research for CompTIA. The four panelists were Paul Cronin, senior vice president and director with Atrion Networking; Leonard DiMiceli, general manager and channel ...

When IT-Ready Program officials approached Medica about offering post-graduation apprenticeships to adults entering the information technology field, the company’s senior IT leaders were receptive to the notion. After all, Medica already had an internship program in place for high school students, so its employees were accustomed to working with individuals who didn’t have a lot of past IT job experience, said David McPhaul, IT Services manager at Medica. “We saw this as a ...

IT channel companies in search of the next big disruptive force need look no further than their mirror, a longtime industry observer opined Wednesday at the 2014 CompTIA Annual Member Meeting. “You are the disruptor,” Chris Gonsalves, vice president, editorial, for The 2112 Group,  told an audience of IT channel partners, vendors and distributors. “If you’re not making someone uncomfortable, you’re just trudging along in the status quo,” he continued. &ld ...

The dynamics of creativity demand passion from individuals and teams to produce brilliant work, a top-selling author told attendees today at the 2014 CompTIA Annual Member Meeting. “Don’t short circuit the creative process just to get something done,” author Todd Henry told his audience. Rather, he encouraged them to be both “productively passionate” and “fiercely curious.” Henry led the interactive keynote session on “Passion, Collaboration a ...

Managed services providers (MSPs) must routinely and regularly examine their customer contracts and pricing strategies if they intend to maximize profitability. That message was delivered Wednesday by several industry experts during a meeting of the CompTIA Managed Services Community. The session was part of the CompTIA Annual Member Meeting taking place this week in San Diego. “I think as an industry we leave a ton of money on the table,” said Frank Picarello chief operating officer ...

The vast majority of companies in North America measure their customer satisfaction performance — nearly 90 percent of all businesses, according to one recent survey. Yet just half of those companies take their customer satisfaction data and share it with their employees. Even fewer — a mere 8 percent — close the loop with customers to let them know how the company has responded to their feedback. The lack of action on customer feedback can result in missed opportunities for mo ...