CompTIA Blog

Whether 2013 brought you record-setting success or presented significant challenges to your business, or ended up somewhere in between, it’s time to reflect on past results and kick off the strategy for the next twelve months. Most IT companies have probably already assessed the past year’s outcomes and made some adjustments to their operations and business practices. But just because January 1 has already come and gone, it doesn’t mean every change companies need to make to be ...

IT industry entrepreneurs can understand their clients’ business challenges better than their own and typically work faster to resolve any emergency or major concern – as long as they get paid. Of course, that’s common regardless of the industry or geographic region solution providers operate in. Many business owners follow the philosophy that 100 percent of their attention must be focused on their customers and can fail to set aside time to properly plan for future growth and ...

This guest blog entry was contributed by Tim Jemal, CEO of Jemal Public Affairs. The U.S. Department of Labor recently announced that it will award approximately $100 million in grant funding, divided among 30 to 40 recipients, to support education and training in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) industries. The grant funding comes from user fees paid by employers to hire workers in the H-1B visa category. According to the Seattle Times, since 2001, nearly $1 billion from H1-B fe ...

Like many of you, I’ve been reflecting during the holidays upon the year that passed, taking stock of what I’m grateful for and re-watching some classic holiday movies. In one, the main character goes through trying circumstances, almost dies, and is reminded that life is all about relationships and family. Nope, not It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m talking about another great holiday film; Die Hard. Yep, Die Hard. Besides being the greatest action movie ever made, it’s ...

TechVoice spoke with Erik Grimmelmann, executive director of the New York Technology Council (NYTECH), to learn how a small, young and rapidly growing technology council navigates its way through today’s challenging policy and regulatory environment. What are some of the advocacy efforts you’ve been involved in? Our involvement in advocacy is relatively new. We’re a young tech council; just four years old. In the past, we’ve attended several of the TechVoice D.C. Fly-Ins ...

Target disclosed earlier today that it experienced a major security breach that could compromise upwards of 40 million credit card and debit card accounts. Between November 27 and December 15, cybercriminals appear to have broken through the data protection measures in the company’s point-of-sale systems across the entire retail chain; with the exception of its online catalog operations. With access to Target customers’ PIN information, thieves could withdraw money from customers&rsq ...

The age-old question of whether the glass is half empty or half full does not have a simple answer this year when it comes to the federal tech policy agenda. On the half-empty side, in 2013 we experienced a 16-day shutdown of the federal government, a near miss of the most recent debt-ceiling deadline and the fewest bills ever signed into law during a Congressional session. Congress’ approval rating is below 10 percent and the president is not fairing much better. With the center of both p ...

CompTIA asked IT professionals what the CompTIA A+ certification did for them. Stories and situations differed, but each said earning the vendor-neutral, foundational IT credential took them where they wanted to go.

We rebuilt our help pages from the ground up to offer a more user-friendly online help area for candidates and certified professionals. The result is much less complex.

This October, after months of workshops and meetings all over the country, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a preliminary framework for voluntary cybersecurity standards for owners and operators of critical infrastructure. As you may recall, this framework was created following an executive order from President Obama in February 2012. A link to the preliminary framework can be found here.  NIST has been a forthright and open leader in this process and in t ...

Students at El Dorado High School, a CompTIA Academy Partner in El Paso, TX, are launching their young careers with CompTIA certifications and other IT credentials – backed by the support of peers and parents, as well as lots of out-of-class, hands-on learning.

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 ...