Seriously, the 48 members of the CompTIA ambassador program are charged with advocacy and engagement. They will be assigned as mentors, feedback collectors and shapers of new CompTIA programs. The program is being led by Stuart Selbst, founder and president of Stuart Selbst Consulting, and Mike Semel, vice president and chief operating officer of XiloCore.

The ambassadors were picked from the ranks of the CompTIA membership, and they include executives from high-tech product vendors, technology solution providers, software companies, distributors and what CompTIA calls affiliate partners (aka many of the firms that provide a variety of channel consulting services).

According to Eaton, statistics show that there are something like 450,000 jobs open right now in the IT industry, but there aren’t enough qualified people to fill them. Kind of runs counter to the statistics you read about unemployment, doesn’t it?

One example of CompTIA’s work in this regard is its partnership with the Chicago Academy, a charter school. The foundation made a donation of $150,000 earlier this year that Eaton says will be focused on two different areas: using technology to engage students in the teaching process and teaching skills for careers where IT knowledge is crucial, including options like fashion design. “We are trying to pull them away from a life where 50 percent of high school students [in this community] aren’t graduating,” Eaton says. Two other organizations that have been recent beneficiaries of CompTIA funding are the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind and the Fast Forward Community Technology Center in Columbia, S.C.

Eaton is still defining his priorities, but one thing is already clear: CompTIA’s foundation will continue to emphasize community impact over donating to specific individuals. It also is strongly encouraging members to donate of their services and talents, which will be matched by CompTIA in the form of in-kind services and a limited pool of cash grants equally from $250,000 to $300,000.

The templates, which were developed in conjunction by the CompTIA Managed IT Services Executive Forum and the Institute for Partner Education & Development, are focused on:

• Setting pricing levels
• On-boarding new customers for on-premise offerings
• Creating service level agreements
• Developing and packaging new managed services

You can find the templates in the Member Resource Center.

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The first is sorta reflective and is meant to gauge how IT solution providers have dealt with the economic downturn, “Weathering the Recession: How Solution Providers Coped.” The survey, which is free to CompTIA members, was conducted in conjunction with ChannelForce.

Most of them (72 percent) spent just as much face time with customer prospects as they did before the recession, but 65 percent cut back on their use of sales and marketing campaigns.

There was a shift by some to create more predictable recurring maintenance, subscription and managed services revenue streams. I was also thrilled to hear that many IT solution providers avoided layoffs (only 23 percent were forced to reduce staffing).

The not-so-great news is that many managed service providers, VARs and resellers are not all that optimistic about a big turnaround anytime soon. (No percentages were given here, so these seems like maybe some qualitative commentary that was gathered during the survey process.)

This last data point sort of contradicts the latest CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index, which suggested that about 60 percent of IT firms expect their revenue for the second half of 2010 to either “significantly” or “moderately” exceed revenue for the first half. The index WAS off slightly for June, compared with the March quarter. Here’s a general observations from Tim Herbert, who is vice president of research for CompTIA:

“IT industry executives remain relatively confident about the tech sector and about their firm’s prospects, but concerns over the health of the U.S. economy persists. In some ways, the results point to a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ mentality, where positive news and momentum are followed by unexpected bad news and a renewed sense of negativity about economic conditions.”

Guess you could say people are still very spooked, and the smaller the firm, the bigger the spooked factor.

The index reflects opinions about the U.S. economy, opinions from within the IT industry, and opinions about one’s own employer. The latest surveyed covered 306 U.S. information technology companies, and it was conducted in mid-June.

The research reports that more than one-half of the 400 legal participants surveyed by CompTIA plan to increase their spending on information techology this year. I was expecting to hear alot about the need for e-discovery solutions (more on that in a sec), but the needs of the surveyed legal eagles are decidedly more basic: The top priority for the survey respondents hinges on technology that will help law firms grow their business. (It was the top priority cited by 73 percent of respondents.) Technology to find new revenue (50 percent) and technology to help cut costs (48 percent) were other top priorities.

Specialty technologies of interest to the legal profession include disaster recovery, data storage records management, e-discovery, case management and ligation support. Only 30 percent of the respondents professed to be familiar with the concept of cloud computing.

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The data was gleaned out of a survey conducted by CompTIA back in the fourth quarter of last year, canvassing approximately 650 IT professionals and 271 attorneys. Almost 90 percent of the attorneys indicated that they believe law firms will engage in e-discovery processes more frequently. Common triggers include:

• Employee misconduct investigations
• Security breaches (external)
• Lawsuits
• Intentional internal security breaches
• Unintentional internal security breaches

From an opportunity standpoint, technology solution providers should be interested to know that only about half of organizations actually have a formal e-discovery process or solution today. Another quarter of them are handling things informally, and the rest don’t have a policy.

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My guess, for example, is that this is one reason why Cisco moved this week to formalize how partners collaborate together on accounts with its new Global Partner Network program (due to kick in during its next fiscal year). There will be two distinct roles supported: that of Host and that of Agent. The Host solution provider in given accounts will have to orchestrate all the other subcontractors or agents, plus deal with transaction details and other adminis-trivia that comes up around billing and such. In order to be a success full host, you need to be a successful Project Manager.

Many top solution providers point to their investment in certifications from the Project Management Institute as instrumental. CompTIA is also in the game, and the organization has just updated its CompTIA Project+ exam. The certification covers everything from initiation of a project to change control to closure. There are 100 questions on the exam, focused on the things I just mentioned, covering both the business management and technical management aspects involved with any projects. Here’s some perspective from Terry Erdle, senior vice president of skills certification for CompTIA.

“Project management routinely appears on lists of the most ‘in-demand’ skills employers require today because organizations are under great pressure to show real return-on-investment (ROI) when implementing new projects. …The first step to achieving good ROI is professional project planning and implementation, led by a project manager equipped with the right combination of people skills, organizational leadership and technical savvy.”

CompTIA recommends at least 12 months experience in leading projects for exam candidates. The current exam will be retired on March 31, 2011.

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According to the latest Annual Microsoft SMB/Partner Insight Report, 63 percent of technology solution providers specialized on smaller companies expect their customers to spend more on information technology during 2010, which is dramatically higher than the 29 percent who said the same thing in 2009. The survey, which was fielded among about 500 Microsoft Small Business Specialist partners, found that these partners anticipate that IT spending will rise an average of 16 percent over year-ago levels.

Priority investments being reported by this group of technology solution providers include virtualization and other consolidation technologies and services, software as a service applications, customer relationship management software, and technologies to help support mobile workers. For example, those surveyed said they expected a 20 percent increase in the number of their customers that use cloud solutions.

Birger Steen, vice president of Small and Medium Business & Distribution for the Worldwide Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners Group at Microsoft, says that whereas last year the Small Business Specialists said their customers were mainly conserved with savings as much money on their IT as possible, SMBs seem willing to invest again in applications and technologies that could help their business grow.

One of the most compelling data points in the survey: Almost three-quarters of those surveyed expect their customers to need to support more remote workers, which was up from 54 percent in 2009.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across the United States are increasingly relying on new information technology (IT) solutions to strengthen their operational, marketing and customer engagement activities, according to a new study released today by CompTIA <http://www.comptia.org/> , the leading trade association for the global IT industry.

The Microsoft survey dovetails with new data from CompTIA’s Second Annual SMB Technology Adoption Trends study, which was fielded among about 400 SMBs with 10 to 499 employees during February 2010. Approximately 71 percent of the survey respondents said they would be willing to pay a premium for technology solutions that have a demonstrable return on investment (ROI) for their business.

The CompTIA survey also showed virtualization and mobility as key trends. For example, close to 40 percent of the SMBs say they plan to adopt server virtualization in the next 12 months. Almost half (45 percent said that enabling remote employees would likewise be a priority.

Another cool data point for you open source advocates out there: Nearly 20 percent of the surveyed businesses say they will begin using open source software in the 12 months.

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Under the agreement, CompTIA will used the LPI Level One (LPIC-1) certification exam series as the basis for its CompTIA Linux+ certification. Those completing the courses and tests successfully will be recognized with a CompTIA Linux+ Powered by LPI certification AND a LPIC-1 certification.

Apparently, according to independent research cited by CompTIA, despite the global recession, the number of Linux jobs grew about 5 percent in 2009. What’s more, there was a 10 percent salary premium available for IT professionals with enterprise Linux skills.

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Under the new program, solution providers can sign up for a recurring $20 per month credit card charge (which will also save them $10 on the year). The idea is to entice more smaller organizations that might want access to CompTIA research and education.

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