On its third and final day of its annual industry event, CompTIA’s ChannelCon (formerly Breakaway) featured meetings of several CompTIA member communities and advisory councils. These groups of industry thought leaders help shape the association’s initiatives, programs, education and research.
Many organizations want to offer their workers the BYOD option because of its expediency and efficiency, according to Chris Johnson, chief executive officer, Untangled Solutions.
“But they have no idea what the differences are between what devices they’ve issued and what devices have been brought in,” he said. Johnson’s advice: conduct a thorough review of which devices and applications you’ll allow and how you’ll control and manage them.
Another panelist noted that concerns about cybersecurity aren’t confined to the IT industry.
“There aren’t any boundaries in cyberspace,” said Dr. Ernest McDuffie, who leads the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “Nobody can do it by themself. Cybersecurity work is really a team exercise, people with various intellectual backgrounds and skills sets.”
Other groups that met Monday were the CompTIA Cloud/SaaS, Managed Services, Mobility and Managed Print communities and the Partner, Telecom and Vendor advisory councils.
The ChannelCon Technology Vendor Fair opened Monday with more than 130 exhibitors on hand, representing the full gamut of the IT channel.
“We’re big believers in the channel and we like what CompTIA does for the industry,” said Steve McCutcheon, chief marketing officer for Pax8, a value-added distributor of unified cloud services. The company announced Monday that it will donate $100 to the Creating IT Futures Foundation, CompTIA’s charitable arm, on behalf of each new CompTIA-affiliated channel partner who joins the Pax8 Partner Program and creates its first billable customer account through Dec. 31, 2013.
Network Box USA, a global managed security services provider, was on hand to “recruit new partners and get constructive criticism” to help grow its business because “security is an ever-changing environment,” according to Chad F. Walter, director of channel development.
TelePacific Communications also views ChannelCon as a venue to seek out new partners and to re-connect with current resellers and solution providers they’re already linked with.
“The key to this group is that they are the trusted providers of solutions for their customer,” said Ken Bisnoff, senior vice president, strategic opportunities, the company, a network and communications service provider to more than 40,000 businesses nationwide.
ChannelCon 2013 continues this week with keynote speeches given yesterday by Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of CompTIA, and Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad and former CTO with Best Buy. Also, top industry executives will speak on panels covering the latest trends in telecom, cloud computing and health IT.
