This seems to be my week for rambling about training. In the blog I write for my employer, SWOT Management Group, I coughed up these thoughts about whether or not vendors should tier their training and favor their most committed VARs. This post here for TechTarget falls more along the lines of suggesting where you might consider spending your own training budget.

CompTIA reports that in all but two of 14 countries surveyed, wireless and radio frequency technology implementation and service skills will dramatically increase in importance over the next five years. Wireless skills were actually the second most important skill set for future hiring in South Africa (behind security) and France (where it came after Web technologies.) The countries covered by the survey included the aforementioned nations plus … Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

When it comes to specific industries, healthcare managers and IT teams in the education sector were more likely to say wireless would be critically important three years from now.

What does this all mean? For starters, this just plain makes sense in emerging countries, where the investments in data communications infrastructure have been less substantial than in the United States. Why on earth wouldn’t you look to advanced wireless first in some of these countries? Meanwhile, the radio frequency movement, believe it or not, is gaining some momentum from all of the green technology and sustainability efforts going on. One big growth area will be wireless sensors: for home energy management applications, in the so-called smart grid (on your electric meters) and within data centers, where they’ll be used to track energy efficiency.

Here’s some more data on where IT managers surveyed by CompTIA see future potential skills gaps.

Heather Clancy is a channel communications consultant for SWOT Management Group, where she focuses on simplicity and seeing eye to eye. You can e-mail her at hclancy@swotmg.com.

How many high-tech vendors can still claim great channel relationships with some of their original VARs? Ones that have been with them since the very beginning of their channel program. Well, Autodesk just feted seven resellers that each recently celebrated their 25th year of doing business with the 26-year-old software company, which logs $2 billion in 2-D and 3-D design product sales every year. Roughly 85 percent of that amount goes through its roughly 1,768 channel partners.

I spoke with both Steve Blum, vice president of America sales (note, he doesn’t have “just” a channel title) as well as one of the VARs in question, a Premier Solutions Provider called Kelar Corp., for perspective on what has given this relationship staying power.

One of my observations, after speaking with both sides, is that channel marriages aren’t conducive to the “opposites attract” philosophy. If a reseller’s sales objectives are diametrically opposed to that of their vendor partner, that doesn’t make for a great long-term combination. “Besides the fact that Autodesk has a topnotch product, we are very much alike technically,” says Mo Mansouri, president of Kelar Pacific in San Diego. “The ideas that we have go along with what they’re doing.” (Incidentally, while Mansouri hasn’t been with Kelar for the full 25 years, he has been with this relationship for 17 of those years.)

Which is not to say that Autodesk doesn’t encourage its resellers to think for itself. Blum says that the seven companies that were recently recognized — Applied Software Technology, Autodraft, CADD Centers of Florida, IRISCO, Kelar, KETIV Technologies of California, and Robotech CAD Solutions - shared a passion to grow and evolve along with Autodesk’s product line. “These folks have all been able to evolve based on market conditions,” Blum says.

One program that Autodesk put in place for partners to keep ahead has been an education series called Foundations for Success, which encourages its partners to focus on business development activities for their employees as well as ideas for how to run their businesses better from an entrepreneurial standpoint. The latest twist to that initiative, which started Feb. 1, focuses on helping resellers develop first-time sales managers, Blum says.

Autodesk also continues to carefully stage its product releases, working with top-tier vertically oriented solutions partners first when bringing new software to market and then opening it up to other partners over time. In a sense, the first set of VARs are Autodesk’s evangelists in the field, and they are recognized for taking risks within Autodesk’s deal registration program. Volume partners are encouraged to focus on a different set of skills and challenges. “Volume means very different things to me here at Autodesk than it might to another company,” Blum says.

The final equation comes down to commitment on both sides. Autodesk has actually invested, at least in terms of resources, in helping a reseller explore a new practice area, according to Mansouri. “They commit to a dealer if they see potential in your growth. They invest in the partnership,” he says.

How unique is Autodesk? What other vendors are worth the investment? E-mail your thoughts to Heather Clancy, a long-time channel observer and communications strategist for SWOT Management Group.

With most consumers of information technology expected to ratchet up their spending on managed services this year, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) has started a Web site intended to aid VARs and resellers figuring out whether the business model is right for their own company. Some long-time managed services advocates, like my friend Oli Thordarson from Alvaka Networks, a 25-year industry veteran who made the switch a number of years back, are even blogging there!

The site, FocusOnMSP, will feature news and research about managed services, online forums, a managed services vendor directory and case studies. But the big draw will probably be the CompTIA Managed Services ROI Tool, which is a calculator that MSPs can use in helping make sales presentations. Check it out.

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist and channel communications consultant with SWOT Management Group. You can reach her at hclancy@swotmg.com.

The exclusive Demo conference held several times each year is usually replete with great Web concepts and technologies that won’t really be relevant for the channel for at least a year down the road. But, behold, this week’s conference boasts at least one major exception in the form of SupportSpace, an online community that (in theory) brings together VARs, resellers and managed service providers focused on providing online tech support.

Yair Grindlinger, the Israeli transplant who is Redwood City, Calif.-based SupportSpace’s CEO, says his goal with the platform is to support a community of tech-support experts who have been certified and vetted according to a set of criteria defined by the community. Mostly, they’ll help you get the word out about your managed services. Providers get ratings within SupportSpace based on prior customers’ experience. People with a problem can search by criteria such as availability, or whether or not someone is online to help them NOW. They can also pick someone based on expertise, price, cases solved, and so forth.

When I spoke with Grindlinger on Monday afternoon while he was prepping for his Demo demo, he said about 200 experts are currently registered (not bad for a company that launched basically a few days ago as I write this), although there are dozens more going through the process. The one thing I’ll give them a big thumbs-down for is that the site only supports Internet Explorer-based support experiences right now. At least that’s the message I got when I tried to engage and play around on the site a bit. Then again, I use a Macintosh, so people like this don’t usually care about me. Nothing new there.

Still, this is a concept that is likely to gain more traction, given the sad state of affairs at most corporate help desks. According to Grindlinger, you’ll see SupportSpace align itself with product vendors, for which it might wind up being a support tool; or with organizations such as Tech Support Guy. The SupportSpace community also has an open source mindset and will encourage companies with online tech support tools to add their applications to the community for experts to use. And, of course, the company wants you — VARs and resellers — to get involved in providing your own services.

I asked Grindlinger to compare his site to OnForce, the marketplace for IT services that has been the subject of much channel controversy and debate since its launch a few years back . The big difference is that OnForce is used to organize on-site engagements of all types. In fact, Grindlinger sees the two marketplaces as complementary. I agree. Likewise, both will continue to inspire loathing among resellers and VARs who fear the commodization of their high-margin services business. Guess we’ll see how both marketplace models play out.

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist and strategic communications consultant with SWOT Management Group. She can be reached at hclancy@swotmg.com.

For as long as I’ve been covering the high-tech channel, product training has been a bone of passionate contention between vendors and VARs.

The latter generally want/need skills building for free (considering all the up-front costs associated with taking on a new product before it actually sells), while the former want to see that a reseller is truly serious about selling their technology through some kind of training investment.

Because I am one of those horrid people who see shades of gray where others see black and white, I empathize with both arguments.

Most solution providers will admit they understand that investing in training is part of their business model. What they are asking for is the following:

• The same access to information that a vendor’s internal support and technical engineers receive
• Training options (online, self-paced) that don’t take personnel out of critical client engagements
• Certification processes that are based on their ability to deploy/integrate/support the product in a real-life situation
• Recognition for their existing investments in comparable products

The reason I got to thinking about all this was an item I saw a few weeks back detailing Hewlett-Packard’s move to contract with Microsoft Learning to offer training to technicians that are part of Onforce, the online services marketplace.

Onforce, which is itself controversial in some channel circles because of the way services professionals can bid on jobs (potentially depressing services margins), represents roughly 10,000 IT services professionals. Many of these folks work for VARs or systems integrators and are using the site to boost utilization rates. Some larger organizations, such as Siemens and CompUSA, use OnForce to fulfill service requests across the United States.

The new relationship will enable OnForce participants to use the marketplace as a resource for training and validation on new Microsoft technologies including Microsoft Vista and the company’s Small Business Specialist designation. HP is sponsoring the program through its education services group.

Now, I don’t mean to mislead you into believing this training is free. But by focusing on making it easier for solution providers to keep up to date AND by keeping it top of mind, both HP and Microsoft have reinforced their brand mindshare with members of the OnForce channel community. It’s a philosophy that other tech vendors would do well to emulate. Not necessarily through OnForce deals, but by stepping back to rethink WHAT skills they really want to see represented in front of customers.

If you’re a solution provider with a great story to tell about skills development, e-mail me at hccollins@mac.com.

Heather Clancy, principal with Jabberwocky Communications, is a business journalist and strategic communications consultant who has covered the high-tech channel for 18 years.

As the MSPAlliance kicked off its fall managed services conference in San Jose, Calif., the organization announced the launch of its vendor accreditation program (VAP) for the managed services industry.

Designed by MSPs as a benchmark for vendors who sell to the MSP community, vendors that earn the VAP seal will have shown that they have positive channel practices, product research and development, financial stability and MSP customer satisfaction.   

“It is a benchmark system for MSPs to evaluate vendors,” said Charles Weaver, president of the MSPAlliance. “Vendors entering the program must have at least three MSP specific references and it’s basically a seal of approval for those vendors who have a specific interest in selling to the managed services global community,” Weaver added.   

Among those that have received accreditation under the new program are: Intel, SilverBack/Dell, Asigra, Untangle, XRoads Networks, LiveCargo and N-able. 

Red Hat is offering new Linux virtualization training for its partners and customers.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Virtualization course is aimed at getting value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators (SIs) and customers familiar with virtualization and teaching them how it can make them money, spokesman Peter Hnath said. Red Hat has included XenSource virtualization technology in the latest version of its operating system, Enterprise Linux 5.

“Xen is a substantial body of new technology,” Hnath said.

The offering marks a departure for Red Hat, whose past non-certification-based courses have been on “very high-level” topics, Hnath said. Red Hat made the Enterprise Linux Virtualization course at a more intermediate level so it would be more accessible to partners and customers, he added. The intended audience for the course is “Red Hat certified professionals” and “experienced Linux system administrators,” according to a press release.

Red Hat has so far scheduled the two-day, $1,500 course in 13 U.S. locations and plans to announce more within the next two weeks. Attendees must have a Red Hat Certified Technician certification or the equivalent knowledge and skills to participate in the course.

If you work with Red Hat, check out the desktop Linux and Linux server resources at SearchSystemsChannel.com. You can also learn more about desktop virtualization and server virtualization while you’re there.

Here’s some good news if you’re a certified security pro: You’re in the only group of certified IT professionals whose pay scale has gone up this year, Tekrati reports.

A new study by Foote Partners shows that pay for 27 certified IT skills has fallen 2.1% in the past six months. The only one of those 27 areas that has seen an increase is security, where pay is up 1.7%. Meanwhile, pay for non-certified skills has increased by 4.1%.

Edmond Baydian, chief operating officer for Juma Technology in Farmingdale, N.Y., said a survey of his company’s clients shows similar results. He attributes the trend to consolidation among businesses, which places more value on skills in a wide range of areas. Unlike in most IT fields, accreditation in security signifies that you have that broad knowledge, he said.

“Security gives you this application-layer view, and it’s less concerned about the underlying plumbing,” he said. “Security means that you understand the value of multiple protocols over IP.”

The “utmost importance” of security also plays a role, but that is changing because businesses and organizations are starting to turn their IT concerns to other areas, Baydian said. The next big trend will depend on where the government decides to focus new regulations — possibly in Voice over IP (VoIP), thanks to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), Baydian said.

Protecting customers from malware can be like juggling grenades — hectic enough while things are going well, but positively frantic (for a little while) when they’re not. Whatever their positive characteristics, customers tend to get angry at VARs who did (or didn’t do) something that lets a worm, virus or Trojan into their system.

On the theory that a little help is welcome and a lot doesn’t hurt, either , check out SearchSecurityChannel.com’s new AV resources, including the Antivirus Project Guide, then stay up-to-date on antivirus news, strategies and tips aimed at the channel on SearchSecurityChannel.com’s Viruses, Worms, and other Malware topic center.

For the next level of support, try antivirus software vendors and information sites that offer instructor-led and online courses and training to give you and your support engineers some of the AV skills they need, not to mention help explaining to customers what the threats are and what you can do to protect them :

• Panda Software Companies’ Basic Virus Course (online, free with registration)
• Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition Training (onsite, in metro areas, online, cost varies)
• Introduction to Computer Viruses on About.com (online tutorial, free)
• CA’s eTrust Antivirus SPT Training Course (8 hours, load on computer, $800)
• Network Associates Antivirus Software Solutions by CBT Direct (online, price available upon request)

Napoleon Bonaparte — who knew something about how to overcome a persistent threat — said “victory belongs to the most persevering.” The perseverance is up to you, but we can help with the information on tools and techniques you can use to keep up. Let us know how it’s going, and what kind of information you need — from vendors, customers or each other — and we’ll enlist all three in the initiative. Until then, keep juggling.

- Julia Henderson

Microsoft Corp. is revising Windows Vista certification exams to include more information about application support. The additional questions will come in tests to upgrade a Microsoft Certified Desktop Support tag to a Certified IT Professional, in one on troubleshooting applications on a
Vista client, and one on consumer desktop support (specific titles in the story here).

More information will be added on supporting 2007 Microsoft Office System. A Microsoft spokesperson said the company would add the information because it had been left out inadvertently from earlier versions. Those who have taken the beta exams will be notified of the change and the chance to take an additional beta exam free.

The original version of this story appeared on TechTarget sister site SearchWinIT.com.