CompTIA Blog

When virtually everyone claims to sell and support similar services in specific industries, how can businesses set themselves apart from the crowd? Differentiation can be difficult, often requiring significant investments to tailor product offerings and ramp up successful marketing campaigns. That can be a risky venture for any small business, especially where commoditization is already negatively affecting profit margins. While the low price method is one way to differentiate a company’s ...

The “Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA),” S. 743, has passed the Senate, and an identical House version, H.R. 684, is now pending in the House Judiciary Committee. This legislation would require businesses to collect and remit state sales taxes on sales of goods and services made into other states. This poses certain problems. For example, say a computer services company is headquartered in Virginia, but services clients in Maryland, Illinois and California.  Even if the Virginia bu ...

This guest blog entry was contributed by Tim Jemal, CEO of Jemal Public Affairs. Last week, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law repealing a $120 million retroactive income tax increase on about 2,500 small business owners and investors. CompTIA, TechVoice and the Orange County Tech Alliance joined with a coalition of trade associations and businesses to oppose the unjust levy on investors who followed a 1993 California law providing a 50 percent cut in capital gains taxes on certain in- ...

The Securities and Exchange Commission has re-opened the comment period through November 4 for regulations issued under “the JOBS Act” concerning crowdfunding. Since its release of amendments to Regulation D, Form D and Rule 156 on July 24, concern has been growing in the startup community that the SEC rules go against the spirit of the JOBS Act by requiring additional compliance steps not envisioned in the law. More specifically, the SEC’s rules implementing removal of the ban ...

Just as it is in the rest of society, the IT channel has its own bell curve representing a breadth of personalities and business innovations. At one end are the early adopters; those who jump at every opportunity to experiment with the latest technologies and processes in their businesses, to help their customers, or both. Whether their interest for innovation comes from client necessity or their own curiosity, their cutting edge capabilities become a factor of differentiation that gives them a ...

As major trends like cloud computing, mobility and Big Data continue to dominate technology headlines and channel discussions; there are a number of interesting developments taking place at other levels of the technology universe. Improvements to the most basic building blocks of IT have enabled today’s trends, and tomorrow’s trends will be fueled by the pioneering improvements currently underway: Computing: The end of Moore’s Law has been predicted for at least a decade, but m ...

This morning we awoke to the stark reality that our lawmakers and the president have failed to reach a deal, even in the short-term, to fund the federal government. The first shuttering of government doors in 17 years could go on for several days, if not to the next significant inflection point on the calendar – a vote on raising the debt ceiling, which should come between October 17 and November 1. The fact that the government will continue to pay our military, and that there are separat ...

Today CompTIA releases CompTIA Cloud+, a new high-stakes certification exam for IT professionals working in environments that increasingly use cloud computing and virtualization technologies. The exam is ideal for those with at least two to three years of work experience in IT networking, network storage or data center administration—specialties that have seen rapid change due to cloud’s wide adoption as a competitive IT solution.

Given the rapid rate of change and the addition of new players in the cloud market, it’s rare that organizations will understand the entire scope of knowledge that they need to cut through the sales pitches and successfully deploy the cloud solution that is right for them. To address this problem, CompTIA worked with cloud subject matter experts to develop the CompTIA Cloud+ certification exam.

We’ve written in the past about legislation that would require all businesses marketing goods or services to collect sales tax on behalf of each state into which the business sells products or services. Our main concern has always been the additional compliance burden this would place on all business, disproportionately affecting small businesses. Late last week, House Judiciary Committee (HJC) Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) set out his seven “Basic Principles on Remote ...

The panelists of the CompTIA webinar “How to Use Social Media for Professional Gain” have used social media to launch businesses, build personal and corporate brands, forge new partnerships and, for one, land a life coach for free.

IT services was a much different animal just a decade ago. The traditional break/fix model was predominant, with typical providers spending a vast majority of their time travelling between customer sites making repairs and performing regular maintenance and downloading software updates. Most issues weren’t even reported until system performance was severely affected or it went completely offline and someone decided to make a call. Those delays often lead to significant lapses in productivi ...

CompTIA will retire the Printing and Document Imaging (PDI+) exam on Jan. 31, 2014. Vouchers for the exam are good until Jan. 31, 2014, the final day to take the exam. Anyone who has earned the CompTIA PDI+ certification will be certified for life.

Continuing efforts to gather support for S. 193, “the Startup Innovation Credit Act of 2013,” we’re urging tech SMBs and entrepreneurs to participate in the TechVoice “Tweet Support for Startups” on October 30. All TechVoice members, as well as their member companies, will be encouraged to tweet their senators and Senate staff to ask for support and co-sponsorship of the legislation. Because the companion bill has not yet been introduced in the House, Tweet Day will ...

Several hundred Tech Data partners showed up to connect, share and learn at the hardware and software distributor’s Channel Link Partner Conference on September 17 to 19 at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel in Anaheim, CA. But they weren’t there to share for sharing’s sake. This community has some valid reasons for coming together. Here are just a few of them:  Changes are afoot everywhere. Tech Data and its key vendors and partners are actively working to redefine themselves in ...