CompTIA Channel Training: Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Pre-Event Workshop

The Cloud Computing Fundamentals workshop allows solution providers to take advantage of the substantial business opportunities in delivering cloud solutions to customers, and helps them recognize the differences from selling traditional software licenses. Attendees learn how to develop a successful cloud services practice by leveraging best practices for marketing and selling cloud solutions and managing ongoing customer relationships.

Module 1: Transforming Your Business to the Cloud – Executive Overview
The executive overview provides a summary of the training required to help solution providers transform their business to the cloud. This module provides high-level information, including market opportunities, a glossary of terms, customer demand, key aspects to transforming a traditional solution provider business, potential business challenges, and overcoming obstacles.

Module 2: Marketing
This overview helps solution providers understand the implications of cloud computing on their marketing strategy and helps them align marketing goals, tactics, and investments with a new cloud services sales model. Attendees explore a variety of marketing approaches to cloud solutions, discuss messaging, learn how to target new buyers, review tactics, and walk away with a marketing readiness checklist.

Module 3: Sales Execution
The sales execution module helps solution providers gain a better understanding of how to build a successful cloud business practice and to recognize the differences from selling traditional software licenses. This session provides the foundation needed to make decisions on the best approach to sales in the cloud environment, and covers best practices from experienced cloud solution providers.

Module 4: Services Delivery
The services delivery module helps solution providers understand how to align their cloud service offerings, needs, and price points; as well as develop insights into staffing, pricing, and organizational considerations. Specifically, this module focuses on service team structure, the services lifecycle, on-going services opportunities, developing operating services and the implementation process, and long-term client relationships.

Module 5: Operations Management
The operations management module helps solution providers recognize the operational elements of their business that require modification when building a cloud business. The fundamental topics include: Deal economics, cash/revenue flow, creating effective sales compensations plans, and establishing operating metrics.

CompTIA Executive Committee Meeting
Invitation only

Breakaway Welcome and Opening Keynote

State of the Industry
Presented by Todd Thibodeaux, President & CEO, CompTIA

Business Keynote
Presented by Steven Berlin Johnson

Where Good Ideas Come From

From Darwin to YouTube, Johnson asks the questions, what kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines.

Cutting through the Fog of the Cloud

Join a panel of industry-leading tech journalists as they cut through the hype that can fog a solution providers vision of cloud computing. As editors and writers with their eyes trained daily on the barometer of IT business, these panelists have the 360˚ perspective and objectivity to tell the whole story on cloud – and tell it straight. Attendees will hear:

• Hear how the cloud appears to the C-suite
• How factors like increasing mobility can stretch the cloud to a vapor-thin layer
• How stringent security requirements can obscure the once clear promise of the cloud
• How the user expectations in the healthcare industry bring the cloud down to earth

And how channel education and training are the compass for navigating through the cloud to the IT stratosphere

Moderator: Bob Dirkes, Director, Account Services, Tech Image

Panelists:

• Caron Carlson, Editor, FierceCIO
• Greg Gillespie, Editor-in-Chief, Health Data Management
• Joe McKendrick, Contributing Editor to Forbes, Database Trends & Applications and ZD Net
• Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer, CIO/IT Strategy Media Group
  Larry Walsh, Channel, Security, and IT Services Prognosticator, Channelnomics

Keynote Book Club

Join the Breakaway keynote speaker for an interactive discussion on where good ideas come from.

CompTIA Quick Start to Entering a New Vertical Market

CompTIA MSP Partners Trustmark Workshop

Breakaway attendees receive a $100 discount on the MSP Partners Trustmark.

All Breakaway attendees have the opportunity to earn the MSP Partners Trustmark  onsite at Breakaway for $99 ($199 value). The MSP Partners Trustmark is the industries best practices seal of approval around Managed Services. This credential qualifies and differentiates those solution providers who offer on-premise IT services via a managed services business model. This workshop gives solution providers a comprehensive overview of the benefits offered by the credential. Attendees review the components of the control framework and discuss the related best practices.

Earning the Trustmark at Breakaway is simple! Follow these steps:

1. Register for Breakaway today
2. Register and attend the 30-minute pre-Breakaway Trustmark Webinar on July 17 at 1 PM CT
3. Bring documentation required in the MSP Partners Trustmark control framework to Breakaway
4. Attend this MSP Partners Trustmark workshop at Breakaway on July 31 from 1:15 – 2:30 PM
5. You pay just $99 for your Trustmark voucher onsite at Breakaway

Presenter: Miles Jobgen, Sr. Manager, Member Communities Programs, CompTIA

Mobility Channel Training Course: Maximizing Your Mobile Management Solutions

The mobile revolution in the workplace may have started because we love our phones and tablets, but it continues because business leaders recognize the potential for increased productivity and improved connections with customers. Attend this interactive workshop to examine different opportunities in the mobile space and investigate a framework for establishing a mobile strategy. You’ll also consider the concept of mobile management and examine the stages of the mobile device lifecycle.

Module 1: The Mobility Market
This module opens with an examination of key findings from CompTIA’s mobility research. What’s driving the rapid adoption of mobility in the enterprise? What are the benefits? And what are some of the primary concerns or challenges? Building on these discoveries about the current and future state of mobility, this module explores how different organizations use mobility to enhance business productivity and streamline operations. Participants will have opportunities to discuss with industry peers their ideas and plans for using mobility in ways that impact the bottom line.

Channel Chief Power Panel

Moderator: Joe Panettieri, Executive VP & Co-Founder, Nine Lives Media Inc.

Panelists:

• Ken Archer, Americas Vice President, Channels and Alliances for the Technology Services Business, Hewlett-Packard
• Raja Sundaram, VP, Worldwide Services Partner Organization, Cisco

CompTIA Quick Start to Unified Communications

Do you have a solid plan for delivering UC solutions to your customers? If not, this presentation walks you through the requirements for getting a unified communications practice off the ground. Learn the actionable steps and best practices developed by experienced industry professionals. Session attendees also receive the CompTIA Quick Start Guide to Unified Communications.

Mobility Channel Training Course: Maximizing Your Mobile Management Solutions

Module #2: Developing Mobile Management Solutions for Customers
Managing enterprise mobility is more than just tracking devices. While device management gets the most attention, a large number of tasks are often included under that umbrella -- expense management, application management, and policy creation and enforcement, to name just a few. This module introduces a framework for addressing all areas of mobility management, then presents the tools available for managing them. Participants walk away from this module with a plan for crafting their own mobility service offerings based on their team’s skill sets and their clients’ mobility needs.

Breakaway Lunch with Distributor Power Panel

The Role of Distribution in the New Channel

Join us for a candid conversation with leading distributors on their evolving role in the channel. No longer simply providers of financial services and transactional support, distributors are taking on a key role as strategic partner. This panel of execs provides a modern viewpoint on their place in the channel ecosystem and advice for partners on leveraging their distributor relationships.

Moderator: Beth Vanni, Vice President, Partner-Path

Panelists:

• Tim FitzGerald, VP, Cloud Solutions, Avnet Technology Solutions
• Joe Quaglia, Senior Vice President, U.S. Marketing, Tech Data Corporation
• Bob Stegner, Senior Vice President, Marketing, North America, Synnex
• Brian Wiser, Senior Vice President, Specialty Solutions Division, Ingram Micro

CompTIA Quick Start to Operational Efficiency

The business of being an IT solution provider has evolved significantly over the past 10 years. Unfortunately, one trend that continues is the steady decline of basic operating margins available in the process of selling and supporting technology products. In fact, research published by CompTIA shows that average margin levels for solution providers have declined by a factor of 4 in virtually every technology category. This session provides insights into the most common “margin leaks” solution providers struggle with and how can those leaks be addressed. It also covers how to assess your business operation to determine whether you’re experiencing margin leaks, and what strategic changes are needed in the coming years to remain financially viable. Session attendees also receive the CompTIA Quick Start Guide to Operational Efficiency.

Mobility Channel Training Course: Maximizing Your Mobile Management Solutions
                                                     
Module 3: Building Mobile Application Solutions
Most industry observers agree that interest in mobile app development is exploding. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge for solution providers. During this module, participants discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the hire, acquire, or partner options for application development, as well as explore different development approaches. Participants walk away from this module with plans for leveraging their roles as trusted advisors by focusing on some of the techniques used in articulating business requirements for mobile app initiatives.

Social Strategies for the Managed Services Provider

Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Enough already!? Sometimes it seems like we can’t escape the continued drum beat of social media hype. But, while the case for social media as an essential sales and marketing tool has been made numerous times, less attention has been paid to how social technologies and platforms have the potential for transforming other areas of your business.

During this workshop participants explore how “social” is not just about media anymore. Using a case-based approach, attendees investigate how other MSPs have leveraged social technologies to optimize core business processes, examine different types of social technologies and tools, and discuss strategies for utilizing social technologies within your business as well as your customers’ businesses. Attendees will receive the CompTIA Quick Start Guide to Social Media for Marketing, the CompTIA Quick Start Guide to Social Strategies for Business Use, and the CompTIA 10-Week Guide to Social Strategies for the Managed Services Provider.

Module 1: What is Social Business?
This module introduces the concept of a social business and discusses how it differs from social media.

CompTIA Quick Start to Healthcare IT