CompTIA Blog

What do the Cheshire Cat, Sun Tzu (author of The Art of War) and Humpty Dumpty have in common?  Each one had advice for resellers seeking to stand out in today’s crowded IT field.  Their words of wisdom were delivered by Bill Brandt, managing partner, SWOT Management Group, and Bob Dirkes, director of account services and media coach at Tech Image, during a breakout session at CompTIA’s Breakaway Wednesday morning in San Antonio.  The presentation – “Differentiating Your Elevator Sales Pitch: Ma ...

With incentives up to $44,000 for physicians that implement EMR (electronic medical records) in a “meaningful way,” the Federal stimulus program has created quite a buzz in the IT channel since its passage. The ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009), which provides additional Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement for physicians that implement the records technology in their practice, creates new opportunities to solution providers to discuss business process improvement. ...

A look at the week of August 9, 2010, in public advocacy for the IT channel This week, the FCC asked for public comments on its plan assume a larger role in the cybersecurity arena in an effort to protect our nation’s broadband infrastructure. Health-insurers, meanwhile, are diversifying their offerings and entering the healthcare IT arena. The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to fund Web services.  NFIB found that economic optimism has declined. FCC Moves to Forge a Role in C ...

Overheard at the Education to Careers (E2C) Summit today at CompTIA Breakaway in the San Antonio Hill Country…Alan Rowland, CompTIA’s business development manager for education, spied Danny Perry in the audience and asked him to come to the front of the room.  Perry’s organization – Tech Corps Texas – is helping “students to complete their education and to compete in the global workforce.”  The program aims to reach middle and high schoolers with structured IT learning programs at an early age.  ...

For Ian Pennell, one of the highest compliments a solution provider can receive from a small business client is, “I don’t know how you did it, but everything… just works.”“That’s like the Holy Grail,” he said. “In the end, the small business just wants it to work.”Pennell, senior vice president of Cisco’s small business technology group, talked to CompTIA Breakaway attendees about how to sell IT solutions to small businesses in a keynote speech on Tuesday.An increasing number of small business o ...

CompTIA will invest nearly $1 million over the next three years in new educational programs for the IT channel, CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux said today.“I want to see every CompTIA member as ‘best in class’, ” Thibodeaux said at the CompTIA Breakaway 2010 opening keynote session.CompTIA is looking to aggregate valuable content and knowledge from fields including healthcare IT, sales and marketing, financial management, and cloud computing. The not-for-profit association is looking t ...

The CEO track at MSP University’s San Antonio meeting kicked off with a discussion on leadership development with Lee Ellis, founder and president of Leadership Freedom. The retired U.S. Air Force Colonel (pilot and a Vietnam P.O.W) shared lessons he learned from years of management and consulting, as well as solid advice for the IT executives in attendanced at the breakout session at CompTIA Breakaway.Leaders must assess their individual abilities to direct and inspire others, understanding bot ...

It’s been a few years since “Managed Services” was introduced to the IT channel in mass, with several experts suggesting that product sales needed to vanish for the new business model to be successful. Despite that claim, many providers discovered that their customers still wanted them to help select and deliver their technology. The reality is, many VARs had been successful in becoming the true trusted advisor to their clients and walking away from an area where they need support just doesn’t m ...

How can solution providers position themselves as specific market vertical experts?   One of the many peer-to-peer discussion groups at CompTIA Breakaway investigated this question.“If you position yourself as the subject matter expert, the opportunity for you is going to take off,” said Stuart Selbst, president and CEO of Stuart Selbst Consulting.Solution providers asked questions and shared tips about hosting educational marketing events like “lunch and learns,” as well as utilizing local medi ...

The Breakaway Technology Vendor Fair officially opens today at 3:15 p.m.  We’ve been reporting the news to be announced there for the last week, and we’ll keep doing so all this week.  Check out below some of the announcements being made at Breakaway and decide which new tools might be a good fit for your business.Spiceworks Inc. (Booth #1114) released a new version of its free IT management software with features specifically designed to help MSPs better service their client networks. Some of t ...

As I sat in the Industry Panel discussion – the first big general session at Breakaway 2010 – I heard two discussions: the evolving implementation of technology solutions as hybrid clouds and the need for solution providers to devise and implement better structured businesses.The analyst panelists were in near universal agreement that technology is progressively moving toward cloud services, but debated the extent to which and when the cloud will consume all of traditional IT products. Ryan Morr ...

Service providers don’t need to drop all their on-premise solutions in favor of new cloud-based options, but they do need to position themselves to start investigating cloud computing opportunities, an IT industry research panel said at CompTIA Breakaway today.“2011 is the year to experiment and figure this out and look into the different offerings,” said Darren Bibby, program director at IDC, to an audience of primarily solution providers.Customers likely will continue to use a hybrid of on-pre ...

Breakaway brings you the best of tools for VARs and MSPs, but there’s also a whole track of sessions dedicated to the certification audience.  Hear about the new academic version of the CompTIA Authorized Partner Program (CAPP), an introduction to the Getting America Back to Work initiative, plus updates from Academic Advisory Council members. Technology educators need access to the most current information to keep their skills sharp. CompTIA has launched several online resources for educators.  ...

Breakaway brings you the best of tools for VARs and MSPs, but there’s also a whole track of sessions dedicated to the certification audience.  Hear about the new academic version of the CompTIA Authorized Partner Program (CAPP), an introduction to the Getting America Back to Work initiative, plus updates from Academic Advisory Council members. Technology educators need access to the most current information to keep their skills sharp. CompTIA has launched several online resources for educators.  ...

Breakaway has begun.  The golfers teed off this morning for the Creating Futures Charity Golf Classic.  Catch the photos of the golfers heading to the tees. More than 1,000 IT channel leaders are expected this week at JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa.  It’s gorgeous here, folks.  If you’re not here, you’re missing out.  I’ll post photos of the beautiful scenery later today just to show you what you’re missing.  But really, jump in your car or hop on a plane and head over.Bey ...