CompTIA Annual Meeting Reveals 2013 Initiatives

CompTIA, the non-profit association for the IT industry, held its Annual Member Meeting last week. So what are the key 2013 initiatives? Clearly, doing business in an increasingly mobile world — where technology users demand anywhere, anytime, any device support — is front of mind. But that’s not all. Here’s what you may have missed.

The three-day conference included meetings on advancing women in the IT community, managed print services (MPSs), and cloud/software as a service (SaaS). Speakers included various professionals in the IT channel, discussing issues affecting the channel, trends shaping the IT industry, and the direction for new initiatives and programs from CompTIA. The organization also spoke in depth about the accessibility of its programs.

CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux led the accessibility discussion, covering new initiatives that focused on program accessibility. The availability of new e-learning training programs in cloud computing, mobile technologies and IT security for IT channel businesses, which CompTIA released earlier this week, was also discussed. These programs will be available on April 1 and additional courses will be available in the upcoming months.

CompTIA Skills Certification Executive Vice President Terry Erdle revealed initiatives for content tools, products for mobile platforms, and other innovations to address the need to fill the pipeline with more skilled and certified IT work. “There are IT jobs available today and the number is growing,” Erdle said. “But that message does not get out enough. We’re not putting enough people into the IT workforce.”

CompTIA has rebranded its popular Breakaway conference as CompTIA ChannelCon (July 29-31, Orlando, Fla.). Breakaway had been on The VAR Guy’s Top 100 Channel Partner Events list. ChannelCon replaces it.

To learn more about the organization, visit its website.