CompTIA’s Telecom Advisory Council Holds First Formal Meeting

CompTIA’s Telecom Advisory Council met for the first time today at the association’s Annual Member Meeting, happening this week at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. The meeting saw the new council in the initial stages of defining its goals; CompTIA director of communities Kate Hunt said a key goal of the meeting was to find one issue the TAC wanted to start collaborating on.

During the open discussion that followed, TAC vice chair Mike Saxby, principal at Allied Tech Solutions, said he sees the group not so much as a telecom council but rather a convergence council. TAC co-chair Jeff Ponts, executive vice president of DataTel Solutions, Inc., agreed, stating that customers are driving the industry toward convergence, but that convergence serves as “the carrot and the stick” to MSPs and VARs. Michael Paynter, CEO of Tier3 Technologies, clarified this point, saying his company has been going to great lengths to try to get agents interested in selling value-added solutions and not seeing much success.

The council generally agreed that people accustomed to selling big box technology on a commission aren’t comfortable going to a business model built on monthly billing. It also listed some pain points for agents selling value-added solutions; one member of the council pointed out that “VoIP turns everyone in a company into network technicians.” Another described a “scorched earth” phenomenon, where an agent has one bad experience and loses a client and thereafter refuses to consider dealing with convergence. Laura Bernstein, president of CRA Telecom, Inc., insisted the barrier to entry here isn’t as high as you’d think, but an agent has to be open to the market going into it. The council also concluded that CompTIA provides the perfect vendor-neutral zone for people to come in and learn about telecom solutions.

The council then broke up into three teams for facilitated brainstorming sessions discussing three topics; lifecycle and account control (team one), market penetration and differentiation standards (team two), and creation and adoption across the industry (team three). Team one, led by TAC co-chair Scott Levy, vice president of enterprise development at AOTMP, observed that telecom is like a street fight; with every company claiming their product is better, cheaper and faster, which leads to a lack of needs assessment. Levy said telecom needs to go from being seen as tactical to strategic; so telecom is seen as a strategic asset, not a way to save money. What is needed, then, team one stated, is evolution and assessment guides and communication tools that offer solutions versus products.

Team two, led by Saxby, broke down the make-up of the entire telecom market, then stated that the council needs to define its audience, specify what market opportunities exist for them, create a roadmap for them, and then determine next steps. Team three, led by Ponts, recommended different conversion roadmaps for agents, MSPs and VARs, and, in particular, vendor certification support that determines what their best practices are and seeks to level the playing field.

The overall conclusion of the group was that a roadmap or roadmaps are needed here; that there are so many players in the telecom industry beyond Verizon and AT&T that it needs standards. The council also added that it can’t leave the customer out of such considerations; that telecom needs to know how the end-user wants to be interacted with.

Click here to learn more about the newly formed TAC and here to meet its members.