CompTIA Blog

The channel is evolving to meet economic challenges and rapid changes in technology, but are women being squeezed out of the industry? According to the latest research, that would seem to be the case.  CompTIA is taking some steps to reverse the trend and appointed two influential professionals to chair the council that will put it into action. Other newsworthy IT channel issues involve the switch to notebooks for business use, with the movement away from desktop PCs, and an announcement that sh ...

The Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will hold hearings next week on the spending practices under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for Broadband deployment. Witnesses have not been announced, but we expect representatives from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to be present, as well as recipients of the broadband deployment grants.This hearing may set the tone for the public policy discussion legislators will have in the coming months on issues ...

Cybersecurity continues to be an important issue on Capitol Hill.  Last week, Senate Majority Leader Reid introduced the Cyber Security and American Cyber Competitiveness Act of 2011.  Among the goals of the bill are to “safeguard critical infrastructure, including the electric grid, military assets, the financial sector and telecommunications networks. It urges incentives for the private sector to assess the risk of cyber terrorism and take action to prevent it and promote investments in the Am ...

CompTIA reached the next milestone in the development of a managed services credential with the successful completion of our Subject Matter Experts (SME) Workshop. For those of you unfamiliar with the topic, we're developing a credential that evaluates managed service providers and identifies those businesses that follow generally accepted standards or practices. This credential will set the bar for quality managed service provider organizations and act as a market differentiator for those compa ...

Much like cloud computing and managed services, healthcare IT has become an attractive practice for many IT service providers. Attention is on the rise due to the passing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which provided incentives for the implementation of health information technology. In turn, the tech community is responding to meet the demand. IT providers with experience supporting physicians’ offices, clinics and hospitals are using these incentives to f ...

Right now we have a proposal out to a small hotel for a wireless network. It doesn’t highlight our products or all of our industry certifications. Instead, the proposal focuses on how this company will see its Guest Satisfaction Survey scores increase, how its reviews on TripAdvisor will improve and why guests will make return visits— after experiencing fast and reliable Internet access during their stay. We supplemented these details with some recent survey information that shows how highly hot ...

The Chicago area snow storm is causing network outages for our phone, website and email. If you need help in the meantime, post to this blog or send us a direct message via Facebook or Twitter. Thanks for your patience.

Following up on the State of the Union address last week which focused on innovation, competitiveness and “winning the future”, the White House yesterday announced the Startup America Initiative.  Its mission, through a public/private partnership, is to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship across the nation.  Key components are: An SBA matching fund program that will commit $1 billion to an impact investment fund for growth companies located in underserved communities and $1 billion to an ear ...

A look at the week of January 31, 2011, in public advocacy for the IT channel Last week, technology played a key role in President Obama’s State of the Union address.  Senate Democrats reignited the debate over cybersecurity by introducing a cybersecurity placeholder bill.  The Senate bill repealing the 1099 tax provision in the healthcare law has reached a critical number of co-sponsors. Obama Plays Up Tech's Value in State of the Union —Technology heavily underpinned ...

With the New Year, we’re embarking on several new certification exams. Development is currently underway on two security exams (a new version of CompTIA Security+ and CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner), CompTIA Storage+ powered by SNIA, and credentials around healthcare IT. We all know how huge security is for the industry. CompTIA Security+ is the fastest growing exam in our history and continues to see growing demand from both the public and private sectors. (There are almost 160, ...

Today’s business world is all about connections – those essential relationships that help drive growth and profitability among successful companies. Consider the underpinnings of the technology market, with its tight ties between manufacturers, suppliers, distributors and ultimately customers. Those partnerships are a must to success.One of the most critical relationships in our industry is that between vendors and IT channel partners. Perhaps nothing is more emblematic of that relationship than ...

This year promises to be our best. With a great team and a refreshed and engaged Board of Directors, we are ready to provide visionary leadership and to serve as a trusted resource and catalyst for change. We'll provide an exceptional member and customer experience by delivering excellent educational programs, serving as a passionate advocate, and always being IT neutral and transparent.In 2011, we'll be focusing our efforts even more into four areas described by a new acronym: ECAP.ECAP stands ...

Some prominent industry executives have jumped into new organizations and roles the past few weeks and, based on the vacancies created by these defections, additional switches could be on the way. This news is a great sign for solution providers, as several vendors looking to enhance their IT channel programs entice the skilled (and admired) leaders from competitors and other technology companies. With expanded roles and the ability to revamp partnership plans for their new employers, it will be ...

As high-bandwidth wireless networks are becoming more prevalent, Web video is increasingly being used as a medium for communication. Content providers are utilizing video as part of their messaging, and user-generated content sites such as YouTube and SmugMug are important components of the social marketplace. Because of the importance of video to the direction of the Internet, Google’s announcement that they would be dropping H.264 support from future releases of the Chrome browser has been hea ...

If it’s January, it must be time to talk predictions, trends and, let’s face it, guesstimates. Professionals and armchair prognosticators alike will share their outlook for the upcoming year, covering just about every topic under the sun. Top ten trends lists abound. From the Super Bowl to the Oscars and the S&P 500 to the next snowmageddon, people love to make and read about predictions.The tech space is especially fun for predictions, but also challenging due to the rapid pace of innovatio ...