CompTIA Blog

Of all the solution providers I have had the pleasure of speaking with over many years in the IT channel; relatively few have ever claimed to specialize in one specific vertical market. Even those considered retail VARs often build additional practices focused on hospitality or other complementary industries. After all, diversification is a great hedge for any business, allowing them to shift resources when economic conditions or other challenges affect one particular market harder than other bu ...

During CompTIA’s 2014 Council Planning Meeting in Miami last week, the Partner Advisory Council (PAC) shared three key issues. Cloud infrastructure’s impact on the data center and OEMs, and of course the impact on the product and service businesses of our partners. The impact of hosted apps and OSs on legacy premise environments. The consumerization of IT and its impact on resources, especially in the area of transforming existing product sales champions to trusted business architec ...

This guest blog was written by Larry Walsh of Channelnomics. A vendor saying that solution providers need to engage in selling solutions is nothing new. But when the channel marketing heads of SAP’s Business One program talk about solution-selling, the conversation is more about building customer personas and solving common business needs. Sona Venkat, vice president of SAP marketing, and Alain McHugh, director of SAP Business One marketing, are looking at solution selling through the chan ...

CompTIA’s Advisory Councils held their 2014 Council Planning Meeting in Miami last week. I attended this meeting, and while the beautiful weather outside was certainly a perk, it was the conversation inside that made the trip most enjoyable and inspiring. We kicked off the meetings with a round table discussion led by CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux. Participating were the chairs and vice chairs of our Vendor, Partner and Telecom Advisory Councils, all senior channel executives w ...

CompTIA recently hosted a webinar focused on workforce initiatives that are working. The thinking here is to look at what is not being done, instead of analyzing the successes and whether or not those successes can be scalable.

Last spring, we reported on a New York Court of Appeals decision that required non-resident sellers offering products through a New York-based website to collect New York sales taxes on sales made into the state. That decision will stand, as the U.S. Supreme Court has denied review of the case.  According to the initial state court decision, out-of-state sellers are required to collect New York sales tax even though the seller has no presence in New York, except for listing products and se ...

CompTIA’s “Eleventh Annual Information Security Trends” study found that companies are not fully addressing a critical component to IT security: IT security skill levels within IT departments and IT security education for the entire workforce.

Many like to consider Canada and the U.S. as a single entity when it comes to economics and trade, as well as a number of other lifestyle and business considerations. After all, the two countries share similar lineages and inhabit the same continent. Of course, those who have spent time in Canada understand that it has its own strong political and economic identity, not to mention distinct provinces and territories, each with its own unique challenges and opportunities. It’s a beautiful co ...

Last week, in Congress, the patent reform debate kicked into high gear with the movement of several bills aimed at curbing abusive patent litigation. In the House Judiciary Committee, “the Innovation Act” (HR 3309), which was introduced by Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) last month, went through the markup process on Wednesday. The final strong bi-partisan vote of 33 to 5 sent the bill to the House floor. During markup, Goodlatte’s own manager’s amendmen ...

You can argue that some of the ideas behind cloud computing aren’t new. Different models such as client-server computing or time sharing have used some of the same concepts. But the cloud model is unique and disruptive, and we have recently witnessed a strong acceleration of this trend toward maturity. In our latest edition of “Trends in Cloud Computing,” we show that today’s cloud has quickly evolved from a hopelessly overused buzzword into a permanent new technology mod ...

On Wednesday, November 20, CompTIA hosted a webinar focused on workforce initiatives that are working. The thinking here is to look at what is not being done, instead of analyzing the successes and whether or not those successes can be scalable. We were fortunate to have three excellent speakers: Angel Pinero, senior vice president at ASI System Integration (and a CompTIA member); Heather Kenyon, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum (a TechVoice partner organization); and Eric Lar ...

After last week’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on “Challenges and Opportunities in the 5 GHz Spectrum Band,” we have a much better sense of what the future holds for this proceeding. The FCC has heard from dozens of stakeholders on this issue through public comments and meetings and is expected to issue the first set of new rules for the 5 GHz spectrum band sometime early next year. There seemed to be a consensus on some of the less controversial aspects of this ...

Over the past few years, hackers and other cyber-miscreants have managed to create a never-ending list of ways to attack both private and commercial networks and computer infrastructure. Their activities not only slow down systems and disrupt critical operations, but often lead to more serious crimes such as identity theft and corporate espionage. By all indications, the threats are multiplying and becoming much more difficult to neutralize or remove. Of course, those unknowns create more opport ...

Its commercial, multimedia-rich nature means that IT is essential to everything from the running of live events to broadcasting them around the world. For those who love working with technology and want to combine this with a passion for sport, IT could be your dream career.

Negotiating a raise is a fundamental skill for any successful career. The trick is to anchor the request for a raise in information gathering and questions – never outright demands.