CompTIA Creates Executive IT Certificate Program

By Ed Tittel August 21, 2012 12:40 AM

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Executive Certificate Program from CompTIA addresses Cloud Computing, Healthcare IT, and other hot IT topics. CompTIA knows that a well-informed boss makes a much better advocate (and salesman) for technology and service offerings. To help IT Pros “manage up” in their organizations, CompTIA is now offering training for business and technology execs in the areas of cloud computing, data recovery and business continuity, healthcare IT, IT security, mobility, social computing strategies, and unified communications.

Be sure to tell your boss!

On July 30, 2012, CompTIA opened its Breakaway 2012 conference, designed to provide education and information to IT channel partners and players at the ARIA Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. This made the event a natural showcase for a new executive training program designed to help business and technology executives understand, appreciate, and exploit business opportunities related to a number of key technology areas, including:

Cloud Computing (both Foundations and Intermediate levels are available), to help organizations make the most of cloud computing software, services, platforms, and infrastructure
Data Recovery and Business Continuity, to enable organizations to remain available and online even in the face of system or network failures, service interruptions, or natural disasters
Healthcare IT, to permit organizations to participate in one of the fastest-growing markets for IT software, systems, and services
IT Security, to help protect information technology – an increasingly critical component for most organizations’ abilities to conduct business
Mobility, to enable users to employ smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices to interact with IT software, systems, and services
Social strategies, to explain appropriate and effective business uses for social networking tools and platforms
Unified communications, to permit organizations to use and leverage e-mail, voicemail, Web-based services, and more, both consistently and coherently

Lest readers mistake a certificate for a certification, I’ll explain that this training is NOT a certification, because while it does require those who wish to earn a certificate to attend a training class, it does not use an examination targeted to task and job analyses to meet specific skills and knowledge requirements to assess trainees’ command of the concepts, activities, and skills taught in such classes.

That said, these classes do include “assessments” that are designed to make sure that attendees have a basic grasp of the materials presented, and earning the certificate does require a passing score on the assessment, as well as attending a specific one-day class. But really, this kind of offering is valuable primarily because it provides a way to bring upper management into the ranks of those who know, understand, and appreciate the specific IT niches that these certificates cover.

Thus, it can help IT “sell” its executives on adoption and deployment of key tools and technologies, and ensure that IT is “preaching to the choir” when it comes to selling them on the value and business opportunities with customers that related tools and platforms can offer.

Interested readers should point their execs to the training classes and certificate info linked in the preceding list of topics available. Who knows? One of your execs might catch fire, and give you the chance to spearhead a foray into new lines of technical business activity. Stranger things have happened!

Ed Tittel

Ed Tittel is a 30-year-plus veteran of the computing industry, who’s worked as a programmer, a technical manager, a classroom instructor, a network consultant and a technical evangelist for companies that include Burroughs, Schlumberger, Novell, IBM/Tivoli and NetQoS. He has written and blogged for numerous publications, including Tom's Hardware, and is the author of over 140 computing books with a special emphasis on information security, Web markup languages and development tools, and Windows operating systems.

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