CompTIA Blog

At one point in her long IT career, Nellie Scott’s superiors didn’t want to train her female staff because they thought women were more likely to leave the company, particularly as they approached motherhood.  Scott, now a manager at Lenovo, gave a winning argument back, ending with, “What if you don’t train them and they stay?” That line finally got her superiors on the ball with training her entire staff.How to get more women in IT and how women in the industry can use different resources to s ...

Steve Potts, director accountable for Growth at Transmentum Ltd., based in Nottingham, U.K., assured me the Dutch have a sense of humor.  But he still doesn’t advise tech vendors to use jokes when trying to break into the Dutch market.“You see, we salespeople paint word pictures.  And while many Dutch business people speak excellent English, they just don’t have the same frame of reference,” Potts explained.I ran into Potts in the hallway after he served on a panel discussion during the “Busines ...

The concept of vendors syndicating content to channel partners is not new.  But integrating the syndicated content into marketing automation is an idea starting to take hold.“Channel partners have been using vendor content for three main purposes: training and education for staff and customers, leveraging powerful product brands and sometimes just because they don’t have the experience and time to market their own services,” said Tony Serino, president and founder of Serino Channel Services.Tony ...

Maybe you’re looking at five years to grow your company organically to where you want it to be.  But five years is a long time in the IT industry.  Instead, you’re looking at mergers and acquisitions to get bigger quicker.During Breakaway today, presenters Samuel Attias, managing partner, Technology Capital Investors, and Rick Murphy, managing partner, Cogent Growth Partners, gave attendees an insider’s perspective on what really goes on behind the curtain when buyers are considering purchasing ...

IT channel companies coping with a changing marketplace marked by cloud computing, mobility and recurring revenue models don’t need to go it alone. Instead, they can rely more heavily on their distributor partners for support.“We owe it to you to help you change and transform your business, and we have the capabilities to do that,” Joe Quaglia, senior vice president, U.S. marketing, Tech Data Corp., said Wednesday during the Distributor Power Panel session at Breakaway 2012.Distributors can “ins ...

In a world where bring you own device, cloud computing and mobility are rapidly changing the corporate technology landscape, a pricing expert who understands how to make money in this environment is the most important person an IT solution provider can have on staff.That message was delivered Wednesday by executives from four notable companies during the Breakaway 2012 Channel Chief Power Panel. Speakers shared their insights on how technology service and solution providers and survive and thriv ...

The skies over Las Vegas were appropriately overcast Tuesday morning as the media/analyst panel discussion “Cutting through the Fog of the Cloud” commenced at CompTIA’s Breakaway 2012.Rain in Vegas is an anomaly any time of year, but showers in late July are especially rare.  An occasional sun shower is not out of the ordinary during the summer in the valley.  But given the desert conditions and the blaring sun that regularly delivers temps above 100 degrees, the raindrops typically sizzle and d ...

The continued convergence of traditional IT and telecom services is creating new business and partnership opportunities for companies in both sectors. But challenges abound for those firms that are ill-prepared. Those messages were shared Tuesday at Breakaway 2012 during a session on the current and future state of telecom agent and IT VAR partnerships.The topic was covered from two perspectives: joint research from Channel Partners and CompTIA; and the real world experiences of firms in the IT ...

Breakaway 2012 officially opened in Vegas this morning with an update on CompTIA’s activities on behalf of the IT industry, a unique perspective on how innovation occurs and two compelling, real-life stories on the positive impact of technology. CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux opened the morning session with a look at where the association is headed in four core areas – education, certification, advocacy and philanthropy. Much of what CompTIA will do in the coming months ...

Cloud computing isn’t the death knell for IT channel companies, but it is creating a whole new set up challenges for firms offering manager IT services to their customers.“We’ve been using the cloud for a long time,” Rex Frank, founder and president of Sea-Level Operations, a Covington, Wash.-based firm focused specifically on the IT managed services industry, said during a panel discussion of the CompTIA MSP Partners Community Monday at Breakaway 2012.“I don’t think the cloud is going to make u ...

Building solid relationships with customers, partners and prospects and being responsive to their needs are critical factors in moving a small IT services business into a firm that’s expanding and growing. Panelists delivered that message here Monday during a meeting of the CompTIA Small Business Owners Community.“It’s definitely relationships,” said Steve Murphy, IT director for Caltrol, a Las Vegas-based provider of industrial process automation services, when asked about the biggest factor in ...

Working in Western Australia more than a decade ago, Michael Boughton was more committed to working on the land than LAN. A family man in his early 30s, Boughton was working as a farm technician, harvesting crops and maintaining 5,000 head of sheep. That changed when his boss handed him an old, secondhand computer. In no time, a new hobby was born, eventually spilling into classes, part-time and full-time work. "I saw that you didn't have to be a guru to work in the computer industry, espec ...

2012 is rumored as the tipping point for cloud. For the last four to five years, we have heard that cloud (Internet-delivered solutions) is about to go mainstream, however, this year it is not the hype, but real user benefits that are driving adoption.What do I mean by this? Well people are not going out looking for cloud-based solutions (“I want some cloud”), instead they are looking for a solution to a real problem. Some users are unknowingly using a cloud-based solution (either in their busin ...

The IT channel’s premier education event is less than a week away and the industry’s top product and solution vendors are excited to showcase their new products and mingle with their channel peers at the ARIA Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.More than 125 IT firms are expected to be present at the Technology Vendor Fair during Breakaway 2012, set for July 30 through August 2. Several of the IT companies have begun to preview their plans for the event. They include:•ChannelCloud will spotlight its ...

There’s one key reason that VoIP solutions of the past were slow to gain traction in many markets: they were often presented as a simple and cost-effective replacement systems for traditional phone service. While the traditional early adopters and some of those implementing new service were willing to make the leap, there wasn’t a real value proposition for others to make a switch. If current phone services were working well, few businesses were willing to experiment with something as critical a ...