What You Missed at CompTIA’s Annual Membership Meeting

CompTIA’s 2016 Annual Membership Meeting (AMM) wrapped last week in Chicago. Before it slips from memory, The VAR Guy thought it would be informative to provide a post-show wrap on what happened there and why it matters to you.

First up: an interview with CompTIA Senior Vice President Nancy Hammervik. Hammervik oversees industry relations for the trade association. She’s an old friend of The VAR Guy and sat for an interview on the fifth anniversary of the day she joined the organization. Suffice to say she had plenty to share.

During our interview, Hammervik was keen to discuss the new best practices initiative launched at AMM, CompTIA Channel Standards. The program was created to help CompTIA members improve the quality of their operations while enabling CompTIA to broaden its horizons. In a nutshell, the Standards are a “library of principles and best practices for improving the relevance, quality and consistency of service delivery within the IT industry,” according to the association.

The Channel Standards initiative was borne out of a similar albeit more intensive effort known as “Trustmarks.” Trustmarks are essentially benchmark and best practice guidelines that CompTIA hoped would be adapted by the world’s solution provider community. In all, CompTIA sold roughly 1,000 Trustmark packages, 600 of which were realized by individual companies. This includes top MSPs such as To Solution Inc.

To achieve greater impact, the association decided to slim-down the Trustmarks, which were developed in conjunction with CompTIA members and subject matter experts. The new Channel Standards are designed to help businesses and IT pros “establish specific performance requirements for continual process improvement” within their companies. This includes developing process excellence in financial management, disaster recovery, risk management, marketing, etc.

Designed for existing solution provider companies and new cloud services providers alike, the new Channel Standards are rolling out now. First up: The IT Solution Provider Standard, which provides guidance delivered in the form of written documentation, a workbook and training.

While not a replacement for the original Trustmarks, Hammervik said CompTIA will put more emphasis on Channel Standards going forward. Unlike the Trustmarks, Channel Standards are free to CompTIA members, which will undoubtedly appeal to more companies.

The effort to engage more companies is consistent with CompTIA’s embrace of an “open access” membership model. Two years ago, the association worked with roughly 2,000 corporate members, which translated into 35,000 individuals industrywide. Thinking bigger, the company created a “registered” level, which provides basic benefits to IT pros at no cost. Since then, the organization has begun attracting 500 new registered users every week, pushing its total affiliation beyond 75,000 worldwide.

More recently, the association established an end-user commission to determine if technology consumers would be interested in joining or affiliating with a trade association created for technology sellers. The reason is simple: Everyone from consumers to working professionals to educators and regulators depend on technology to achieve their aims. But getting technology to work as desired isn’t easy. By working together, CompTIA believes these different constituencies will increase the quality of the innovation that the tech industry creates, the number of people who work in it and the viability of the companies that compete within it.
“We’re putting a lot of effort into building CompTIA’s relevance in the industry. We’re trying to get the word out and not be ‘the best kept secret in the industry,’” says Hammervik. “We have a big focus on marketing and social media, and are leveraging the voice of our members more.”

Another area where Hammervik is focused is the Internet of Things, which CompTIA research analysts conclude will yield three opportunities in the near term.

They are:

•     Selling IoT products and installing them
•     Monitoring and managing IoT systems
•     Putting the data they produce to use to effect better business outcomes

“There’s not a tremendous amount of execution on the Internet of Things right now, but we want to be ahead of it. This means tutorials, webinars, research, market sizing, etc. We want to be ready for where the industry goes next,” says Hammervik.

CompTIA has a number of partnerships and committees focused on creating thought leadership around key technology trends, and later this year it plans on unveiling a new workforce initiative designed to stimulate interest in information and communications technology (ICT) among America’s youth. It’s called “The World of IT.” The driving force behind the effort is to create a pipeline of technology enthusiasts who can go on to fill the nearly 1 million open jobs in the industry and beyond.

“Whether young people want to be a pilot, run a restaurant or work in the industry, we need people with greater technology skills,” says Hammervik.

From Hammerivik, we’ll now turn to some other things that happened at AMM.

Legalize IT

In addition to the Channel Standards, CompTIA made one other important announcement at AMM. This was the unveiling of new legal services for CompTIA members.

CompTIA has partnered with the InfoTech Law Advocates Legal Help Desk (ITLA) to provide help with day-to-day legal matters. The help desk is staffed by attorneys with experience in business and regulatory issues affecting technology companies. Its services are available to CompTIA members for between $49 and $99 and include discounts for annual risk assessment services, annual report services and annual entity compliance services.

Disrupt IT

If you missed David Robertson, professor at the Wharton School of Business and host of the Innovation Navigation radio talk show, deliver a keynote at AMM, then you missed an important business message. About building. With Legos. That’s right. In all its infinite wisdom, CompTIA thought a business professor who is obsessed with Legos could help solution providers find their mojo.

Damn if it wasn’t right.

Robertson talked about the rise and fall and subsequent rise of the Lego Group, the ubiquitous Danish toy company behind the primary-colored plastic bricks that can be fashioned into architectural wonders or artistic marvels.

Disruptive innovation, Robertson told the CompTIA audience, is a powerful force in business. But it must be looked at from multiple points of view, including products, pricing plans, business processes, routes to market and more. Without a comprehensive strategy for embracing disruptive innovations, companies can find themselves adrift with one-hit-wonders.

Protect IT

One of the more interesting opinions expressed at AMM came from CompTIA board member and managed service provider (MSP) Vince Tinnirello, CEO of Anchor Network Solutions, Inc.

A longtime MSP, Tinnirello is an outspoken member within the solution provider community. He’s also a colorful figure, too. Pushups on stage? Yep, he went there.

In a session on security, he lamented that end customers, particularly smaller ones, aren’t worried about cybersecurity to the extent that they should be. When they hear about security, they think of only foreign agents working in Russia, North Korea or China. They simply don’t believe anyone working there will be interested in hacking them here. Nor do they fear that their trusted employees will abscond with company secrets or unwittingly pull the plug on sensitive network installations.

“Selling fear,” he said, “is simply not working.”

His words struck a chord among CompTIA members who similarly worry about customer security but struggle with buyer intransigence. How can you overcome this? We’re going to work with some security experts and report back to you.

Realize IT

At AMM, The VAR Guy and I were proud to host a panel discussion with top industry experts including Datto CEO Austin McChord. The topic was admittedly wonky: “From Service Delivery to Solution Delivery.”

When it came time to close the panel, which was packed, according to CompTIA solution provider of the year John Tippett, McChord answered a question that has long puzzled many in the community: Isn’t it a paradox to advise MSPs and VARs to narrow their focus in the name of differentiation and broaden their capabilities in the name of complete solutions that require greater breadth?

McChord said no. You can sell complete solutions and narrow your business focus. Take big data, he said. It doesn’t have to be business intelligence; you choose the pieces. “The beauty of the MSP ecosystem is that you get to choose a different route [for your company,]” said McChord.

In fact, he believes the cloud is perfect for doing both. His company, for example uses more than 100 SaaS applications. And yet it narrowly focuses on delivering the best in disaster recovery and recovery available.

Missed us at AMM? Then look for us at the next big CompTIA event ChannelCon 2016.