CompTIA Blog

“Books will soon be obsolete in schools.”This may sound like a breathless pronouncement made by an over-caffeinated education tech blogger, but the prediction dates back to 1913 and is attributed to Thomas Edison, who believed motion pictures would replace textbooks as the single source of authority in public education.While motion pictures did not provide a death knell to the textbook, video did emerge as a powerful resource for learners looking to acquire new information. In much the same way, ...

With the national community college graduation rate dropping by 25 percent, businesses, government and schools are teaming up to form new education models to get students ready for a career. Primary is a focus on "STEM" (science, technology, engineering and math) education and preparing students for jobs in these fields. Experts have determined that they can't tackle the problem at solely the community college level, but all along the schooling pathway, from preschool to age 20. Making Jobs a C ...

A colleague of mine recently told me, “If it isn't in writing, it doesn’t exist.” This holds true when advocating on Capitol Hill. It’s always helpful to have a one-pager or a leave-behind of some kind to give to Hill staff that sums up what you covered in your meeting. In this spirit, I have worked with colleagues internal and external to CompTIA to put together such a document, titled “CompTIA Workforce Priorities,” that we can share with Hill staff during our advocacy visits. You can see it h ...

Regardless of their industry experience and knowledge of the topic, it’s not easy for channel executives to navigate the world of cloud services. The business prospects for and obstacles facing the industry here are as vast as the number of solutions available. While the delivery model and basic value propositions are fairly straightforward, deciding what types of cloud services to offer and which suppliers to choose can be a dizzying exercise for most solution providers. For example, should the ...

The training industry has entered the "Age of Personal Learning," where individuals expect to take control of their own personal learning experiences and organizations will have to adjust to meet those expectations, a training industry executive told attendees at CompTIA Colloquium this week. "They want it now and if you don't give it to them they will find it somewhere else," said Doug Howard, chief executive officer and founder, TrainingIndustry.com, a market intelligence firm that studies t ...

During the second of three General Sessions held at CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting, happening this week at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, the audience got a “Gut Check” in the form of a panel moderated by Carolyn April, director of industry analysis at CompTIA. The panel was comprised of Scott Barlow, vice president of sales and marketing at Reflexion Networks; Eric Long, CEO of Information Technology Solutions; Quy Nguyen, CEO of Allyance Communications; and Angela Trillhaase, a busi ...

CompTIA’s Partner, Telecom and Vendor Advisory Councils held a joint meeting yesterday morning at the association’s Annual Member Meeting, happening this week at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. The meeting featured a presentation by Bharath Natarajan, director of product marketing, TDCloud and software services at Tech Data Corporation, on “the Role of Distribution in a Cloud-Centric World.”To set the tone for his remarks, Natarajan began with a series of slides sourced from other autho ...

How is mobility changing the business workflow at companies? During a meeting of CompTIA’s newest member community, the Mobility Community, at the association’s Annual Member Meeting, happening this week at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, Seth Robinson, director of technology analysis and market research at CompTIA, discussed how Pepsi handed out iPhones to 4500 hourly employees that checked on soda machines as part of a pilot project.The Pepsi employees used their phones to check in at ...

To better learn, we need to rethink how we organize information and how we teach that information. Reuben Tozman, chief learning officer, edCetra Training, delved into how people will learn in the future during the CompTIA Colloquium conference this week in Chicago. Traditionally teaching has moved from one teacher to one student, to one teacher to many students. But with the Web, one student can have many teachers through videos, white papers, ebooks, blogs etc. The web allows learning to b ...

On the surface, the jobs of sports agent and IT solution provider may appear to have little in common. But the two professions share many traits that lead to business success, according to noted agent, author and speaker Molly Fletcher.Fletcher, who heads up her own sports agency business, MWF Enterprises, LLC, delivered the keynote address Wednesday at CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting in Chicago.Fletcher shared a series of anecdotes and stories from her career, from how she got her start in spor ...

The training industry has entered “the Age of Personal Learning,” in which individuals expect to take control of their own personal learning experiences and organizations will have to adjust to meet those expectations – this according to Doug Howard, chief executive officer and founder of TrainingIndustry.com, a market intelligence firm that studies the global training industry.“They want it now and if you don’t give it to them they will find it somewhere else,” Howard said.Howard delivered his ...

CompTIA’s Cloud/SaaS Community met today at the association’s Annual Member Meeting, and one of the biggest topics discussed was the forthcoming Cloud Trustmark+.According to the briefing provided in the meeting, the target of this Trustmark is public SaaS solution vendors with cloud go-to-market. The channel value proposition here is to protect resellers and their customers by ensuring cloud vendors meet a certain level of technical performance. The projected scope of the Trustmark, so far, is ...

Three technology innovators who helped make wireless computing and database management possible and a pioneer in franchising for the computer reseller market are the newest members of the IT Hall of Fame.Victor Hayes, the “Father of Wi-Fi,” dBASE designer C. Wayne Ratliff and Jim Ciccarelli, who helped transform the IT reseller franchise model, were inducted into the IT Hall of Fame today in a ceremony held at CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting.The IT Hall of Fame recognizes individuals who have ma ...

CompTIA’s IT Services and Support Community is investigating the feasibility of creating an industry-wide clearinghouse to validate and track technical certifications held by IT service technicians. Tuesday’s community meeting was part of CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting.“The clearinghouse would allow potential clients and customers to validate a technician’s qualifications, including training, certifications and specialties, so the client can be sure that they are getting what they are paying fo ...

In a world where smart customers expect and demand more from their suppliers, a strong and vibrant services component is essential for long-term growth and success. IT services executives attending CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting heard that message Tuesday during a meeting of the CompTIA IT Services and Support Community.“Service is ‘the’ business to be in for the next several decades,” said James Alexander, founder of Alexander Consulting and author of several books on successful service operat ...