Jim Hamilton Posts

At the CompTIA Advancing Women in IT (AWIT) meeting at AMM in San Diego this month, community staff leader Cathy Alper welcomed attendees by announcing “In other CompTIA communities people say they want to join. In AWIT they say they want to get involved.” Get involved they did! I had the pleasure of watching over 50 professionals participate passionately in concrete initiatives designed to encourage and help women of all ages establish fulfilling careers in IT. In addition, the comm ...

Defining a term or industry adequately is hard work. Here’s a perfect example– how do you define “life”? Many have tried; it grows, reproduces, undergoes a complex set of chemical reactions to maintain growth and reproduce, and responds to stimuli. Sound like a thorough explanation? Not so fast— fire does all of these things, but clearly it is not living. Despite the difficulty of defining “life,” we all have a reasonable understanding of what it means when something is alive. Unified Communicat ...

On December 17th, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful heavier than air flight, launching the aviation age and giving the world a glimpse of what was to come. Many aviation pioneers would quickly follow the Wright brothers in a “race” to best the previous record, whether the marker was time in the air, speed, distance or one of the many other categories.Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic on May 20th, 1927. Just a year later, Ame ...

Charles Dickens’ seasonal classic, “A Christmas Carol”, endures not because it blends so well with our own celebrations, but because of the truth it instills in our souls at this hectic and indulgent time of year. Far from the glitz and excess that has come to characterize the Christmas season, the story focuses on one man’s life journey. As those of you familiar with the story know, while he has material wealth beyond imagination, Ebenezer Scrooge is emotionally impoverished and heading to cert ...

Service abuse and warranty fraud (hereafter referred to simply as “warranty fraud”) has been a hot topic in our CompTIA services communities as well as within the industry at large over the past year. And well it should be; recent research by PwC estimates that the cost to the industry is between 3 to 5 percent of revenue. We have all been touched in one way or another by warranty fraud. It’s a pervasive industry problem that, much like shoplifting, can inflate the cost of goods and services to ...

It’s the end of the year, so I’ve been thinking about CompTIA’s IT Security community and plans for 2011. So, what could tubeless toilet paper and things that kill a business possibly have to do with IT Security 2.0? Read on… I recently read that Kimberly-Clark is embarking on the biggest change in toilet paper in 100 years – it’s going tubeless. This simple innovation in a very large but stagnant (no pun intended) market could make a significant impact on our world. In addition to eliminating a ...

At Breakaway 2010, more than 160 IT Service thought-leaders gathered to participate in a large-scale industry SWOT analysis. At issue was how IT services companies could best harness and address their internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats. Areas of discussion included reducing business costs, increasing revenue, furthering market share, driving process efficiency and creating greater customer satisfaction. The results were overwhelmingly comprehensive w ...

 There has been no shortage of examples of high profile online personal data leaks over the last few years. From TJX’s stolen credit card information to AOL’s exposure of consumers’ personal surfing habits, the stakes are high for both consumers and businesses when it comes to protecting our online privacy. Yet at the same time, the connections proved through the Internet and the associated speed of technology development make the World Wide Web the wild west of innov ...

Selecting a vendor partner can be an exasperating process for a small business. When you consider the number of manufacturers and software providers clamoring for your attention, and the potential for wasted unbillable time, one might make the comparison to managing telemarketers. I have one friend who was so tired of repeated calls to his home from carpet cleaning companies that he would tell them “no thanks – we have dirt floors.” While this may be a satisfying response in the heat of the mome ...

In my late teens, I had the opportunity to travel with a friend to visit his family in Greece. The Greeks I met were friendly but curious about my origins and would often ask (translated by my Greek-speaking friend) if I was American. I would smile and respond “no, I’m Canadian.” Most of them would smile politely and move on but, on one occasion, a man stopped dead in his tracks and exclaimed, “Canadian, American: what’s the difference?” After I took the time to explain that Canada and the US we ...