CompTIA Blog

Philanthropic representatives from a dozen leading IT companies met with the CompTIA Educational Foundation as part of its first-ever IT Philanthropy Summit last week during Breakaway. The invitation-only summit provided participants the opportunity to leverage and collaborate with other leaders to make all industry philanthropic programs more effective.The attendees represented AMD, Applied Materials, CDW, Dell, IBM, Intel, iSys, Microsoft, SalesForce.com Foundation, Symantec, VMware and Xerox. ...

What is the most expensive security breach ever? Before you answer, read the rest of this blog (trust me, you’re probably wrong).According to a recent report by the Ponemon Institute, the mean corporate loss to IT security breaches last year was $3.8 million. During the four-week study period, participating companies reported being the subjected to at least 50 known attacks. And these companies reported taking as long as 14 days at a cost of nearly $18,000 per day to remediate a security breach. ...

The current transition of doctors’ offices and hospitals from paper to the digital realm is a key challenge for our industry, but it’s also an opportunity.   How can IT professionals help physicians enter the digital age safely and with the least amount of disruption? CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux discussed healthcare IT in a recent opinion-editorial on the San Antonio Express-News website, pointing out that without reliable, knowledgeable and entrepreneurial ...

The center of the Channel-Lands universe was San Antonio this week as the CompTIA faithful converged on the Texan city for the annual Breakaway conference. Four days of packed education and analyses presentations, community meetings and peer networking seemed to pass too quickly. You can read all about Breakaway on the CompTIA blog – believe me, there’s plenty to read and they’ll be stories coming out of the event for weeks to come. But the world didn’t stop turning while we were all down on the ...

“Know the specialties!” Patti Dodgen, CEO of healthcare systems integrator Hielix, told VARs who attended the Breakaway session: “Building Your HIT Blueprint – Assessing the IT Needs of a Healthcare Provider to Become a Trusted Advisor.” The session was “powered by” CompTIA’s Healthcare IT Community, and each participant received a “Healthcare IT: Workflow Overview” pamphlet that provided critical fundamentals for VARs to learn in thi ...

 The Final Day at MSP University Bootcamp As the MSP University Bootcamp (part of this week's CompTIA Breakaway event) in San Antonio came to a close, healthcare IT took center stage between an interactive panel of practice and technology experts, and a presentation from HP. Complementing both of those sessions was a presentation on developing a motivating sales compensation plans that will help you meet and exceed your business goals. Chris Mertens, Vice President of HP PSG US Healthca ...

Gary Fish founded his company, FishNet Security, 1996 as an integrator of hardware and software security products. In 14 years, he grew the company from $0 to more than $300 million in annual revenue, 400 employees, and more than 25,000 active and inactive customers.  Today, he’s one of the most sought after and influential security solution providers in the industry.In many conversations I have with Fish about his company’s success, he’ll say that growth is not an option – it’s an imperative. W ...

Between managed IT services and the ever-changing needs of business customers, a switch to consultative sales is increasingly important for today’s solution providers. In a highly interactive discussion during CompTIA Breakaway, a packed room of solution providers quizzed the expert panel on transitioning to the new sales philosophy.Joining session moderator Tricia Wurts, President of Wurts & Associates, Inc. were well-known and respected industry veterans: Bob Penland, CTO of TruMethods, LL ...

Increased interest in cloud computing creates more opportunity for solution providers and vendors to be partners, a panel of vendor executives said at CompTIA Breakaway on Wednesday.Executives on the “power panel” from Microsoft, Google, Intel and Cisco spoke to attendees about partnering opportunities, markets poised for growth, and business strategy.Microsoft is seeing a number of businesses looking into IT solutions that weren’t economically feasible for them with an on-premise model but is w ...

Terry Erdle, CompTIA senior vice president, skills certification, and our partners got together for their own Texas hootenanny at Breakaway to touch on some of the new things to expect in the world of CompTIA certification.With unemployment hovering around 10 percent, there are still more than 300,000 IT jobs to be filled in the U.S. Forecasts for IT job growth through 2018 approach 20 percent, with areas such as security, cloud computing, healthcare IT and green IT seeing even faster growth as ...

You voted and the winners of this year’s Best of Breakaway Awards are: Best Product – Software: ConnectWise Best Product – Hardware: CharTec Best Partner Program: Reflexion Networks Inc. Best Channel Strategy: Autotask Best New Product: ClearCenter Best of Show: ConnectWiseFrom our recruitment contest which encouraged partners and vendors to bring the most attendees to Breakaway, MSP University joined the Winner’s Circle.From our PitchIT video contest in which attendees and vendors submitted thr ...

Partnering with other services providers can be a very beneficial process for all companies involved, if mutual projects are properly designed and executed. Collaboration requires not only a commitment from both partners, but the processes and support in place to ensure the relationship (and task) is a success.In today’s opening presentation at the MSP University Bootcamp, Shari Marion-Hoff outlined key statistics and best practices for successful collaborative projects. According to the CEO of ...

Why should IT technicians inside an organization become “User Advocates?”  The answers given by Mike Meyers, president of Total Seminars LLC, were typed in capital letters on one slide: “MONEY, POWER, NERDFAME.”Meyers’ point to the more than 20 IT educators attending his energetic E2C session at Breakaway, called “Becoming a User Advocate,” was that they should motivate their high-school and community college students to break the “classic nerd” stereotypes of being introverted and reclusive.  W ...

Solution providers can capitalize on the green IT market by making a solid economic case to potential clients, touting an increase in brand value and bundling green options with other offerings.That was some of the sales advice given to CompTIA Breakaway attendees by a panel of experts today.“Green IT has to be transformational at some point,” said Jay McBain, Lenovo’s director of small and medium business for the Americas. “But pair it with something today that is transformational – cloud, mana ...

The conventional view that rewards and punishments are the only ways to motivate workers is an overly simplistic – and sometimes flat-out wrong – approach for managers to adopt, keynote speaker Daniel Pink said to CompTIA Breakaway attendees on Tuesday.Pink, author of The New York Times bestseller Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, said that a “carrot and stick” approach oversimplifies people who do work that requires them to be creative and cerebral.“Management is a technology ...