Bob Biddle Posts

Staff training is a key component to any successful business. But when budgets are tight, margins are razor thin, and sales are flat; where does the small business owner turn? Even in these challenging economic times, business owners need to make sure their team has access to relevant instructional content. CompTIA recognizes this need and is making every effort to assemble a comprehensive library of training materials from some of the leading industry experts—and all readily available in the Me ...

Healthcare technology (HIT) encompasses everything from EMR, EHR, ARRA, NIST, ONC, HIPAA, EDC, and CRM to FCC, IRS, CDC, meaningful use and more.  It goes on and on. When you add in the standard VAR vocabulary —3G, UPS, LAN/WAN, IP, HTTP, HTML, and ISP—it quickly becomes a virtual alphabet soup where you almost need a secret decoder ring just to begin to understand it all. Once you begin to comprehend the HIT market opportunity, you quickly see that it’s more than a vert ...

I have had the opportunity to speak with many leading, solution providers, security vendors and more over the coming months and one thing is clear—there is a definite need for training programs across the channel. Not just any training program will do; programs that are focused on developing and nurturing better partners are truly needed, including those that cover multiple facets of a company’s business. It only makes sense that the best channel partners are running their business with optimal ...

There is more to following best practices than just using common sense.If you ran a restaurant, you’d certainly follow best practices pertaining to the cleanliness of your food prep areas - as the last thing you want is for the Health Department to close you down!If you ran a brokerage house, you’d certainly follow best practices pertaining to trades, disclosures, and more - as the last thing you want is for the SEC to close you down!If you ran an accounting firm you’d certainly follow best prac ...

The Healthcare IT market opportunity is significant and not without its challenges.  It represents one of the fastest growing sectors of the US economy and is expected to be a $50 billion plus market by 2014.What solution provider/VAR would not want to be a part of a potential $50 billion market in the coming years? Jumping in to the HIT (healthcare IT) space can indeed prove challenging, given the hand that regulation plays in this space.When key acronyms like ARRA (American Recovery and Reinve ...

I was at the RSA Conference in San Francisco last week and was amazed to see the seemingly infinite number of vendors in the security space. Of course, all the usual companies were there, like McAfee, Symantec, Microsoft, CA, Cisco, Trend Micro, Kaspersky, Sophos and ESET, with  nonstop demonstrations and, of course, tchotchkes.  You can always use another t-shirt or keychain, right?I had the opportunity to interact with a wide range of folks while walking the show floor, working the booth, atte ...

There has been a lot of talk lately about the cloud….pick up just about any tech journal, business publication, or even the newspaper (online or even the old print format!) and there are articles and analysis discussing everything moving to “the cloud.”  What does that really mean?  Is the end of the desktop/laptop, as we know it today, coming sooner than we thought?  Is it all about being connected 24/7 so that no applications reside locally anymore? Accordin ...

It is hard to believe that a full decade has gone by from a time when fear, angst, and anxiety across many aspects of the channel was focused on the “what ifs” of Y2K. You would be hard pressed to pick up any publication and not see something about the Y2K situation. Here it is ten years later and, yes we survived Y2K, but there is a similar media storm these days about security as more vendors, channel partners, and end-users turn to the “cloud” for everything from storage/back up to financial ...

Pick up any technical journal, read any relevant blog, talk to any industry pundit and you can’t help but notice that there’s a lot of confusion in the cloud marketplace today.Vendors are telling customers that everything’s moving to “the cloud.” It’s better, faster, stronger, cheaper, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s the best solution for every IT problem, regardless of industry, and why would you even think of using anything else? Oh, and everybody’s using it. If hype is ...