All CompTIA members are encouraged to participate in one or more of the nine CompTIA communities, sharing ideas and providing feedback on the initiatives that are the most interesting to members and their businesses. The lesser-known — but just as critical — advisory councils (Partner, Vendor and Telecom) are literally the think tanks of the association, though they’ve taken on many other responsibilities in the past few years. Each group is made up of senior channel executives who have made a strong commitment to CompTIA and its mission of education, certification, advocacy and philanthropy. Members are appointed to council positions based on their accomplishments in a particular business or technology discipline as well as their ability to advance the benevolent goals of the association.
CompTIA advisory councils are member-led, with two co-chairs and a vice chair for each group’s collaborative efforts. The individual council’s activities sometimes overlap, but each has its own respective audience and objectives. For example, the idea to develop a Partner Roadmap is of interest to many CompTIA communities and councils. That multifaceted project would create an assessment tool to suggest and customize CompTIA content based on any gaps in an applicant’s skill-set or business knowledge.
Council members also identify and help build the framework for many of the association’s educational programs and research studies. There are many to cite, however two of the most popular include channel account manager (CAM) training and a research study on the role of distribution in the cloud.
Advisory Council Agendas for AMM
Each council will meet at the CompTIA Annual Member Meeting in San Diego April 1 to 3 and will have its own specific agenda, directed by an experienced team of channel-savvy professionals:
The Partner Advisory Council: With years of solution provider experience, co-chairs Paul Cronin, senior vice president of Atrion, and Bruce Enright, chief executive officer of Tallgrass Technologies, and vice chair Lester Keizer, of Business Continuity Technologies, are all in tune with this group’s lofty objectives. At AMM, they plan to advance several key discussion areas, including the infrastructure cloud’s impact on data center OEMs and the impact hosted apps and OSes are having on legacy premise environments. The council intends to produce a couple of related white papers by the end of 2014.
The Telecom Advisory Council: As respected industry advocates, co-chairs Jeff Ponts, executive vice president of DataTel Solutions Inc., and Scott Levy, vice president of D&M Enterprise, along with vice chair Mike Saxby, president of Communications Management Services (CMS), are all focused on growth. One of this group’s objectives at AMM is to advance telecom training programs for MSPs and IT solution providers. The Telecom Advisory Council’s focus is three-fold: address the opportunities from adding these services to providers’ line cards; improve knowledge about the products, services and landscape in the telecom industry; and show members how to convert their businesses to a telecom and IT converged model.
The Vendor Advisory Council: Always ahead of the curve, co-chairs Mike Haines, director of Worldwide SMB Channel Incentive Strategy and Design for Microsoft, and Frank Raimondi, the worldwide alliance program manager for Intel, along with Michael Swailes, director of WW Services Partner Organization, are driving an aggressive agenda at AMM. One of their initiatives involves refining the framework for new CompTIA education-related to channel dynamics. This training program will cover everything from the history of the channel to a comprehensive understanding of how the indirect model works — what employees of an IT vendor or distributor organization have to know to succeed. The council will also discuss the addition of a service-delivery-outcome measurement to the Cloud Trustmark during their AMM meeting.
While meeting attendance is limited to current council members, each group actively discusses its individual goals before gathering for a Joint Council Meeting. In that session, the councils will share information with their counterparts in the other councils and receive feedback on their collective efforts. A full roster of CompTIA council members will be published onsite at AMM. Be sure to say hello and let them know what channel challenges they should consider for future discussions and initiatives. Council members represent your needs, so please feel free to reach out and start a discussion. Of course, the channel profits from their commitment and advocacy of the channel, so be sure to thank them for all they do to help!
