Monday Morning Impact – August 9

CompTIA: Majority of Job Seekers Consider Changing Careers

A majority of active job seekers have explored new employment options in a different career field, according to a new report from CompTIA, the nonprofit IT association based in suburban Chicago.

Among current job seekers (approximately 28% of the workforce), 60% said they have looked at new opportunities in a different career field in the past three months. That compares with the 63% of job seekers who have searched for jobs within their current or most recent career field. The findings are nearly consistent across gender, age, education, and race/ethnicity, according to the association.

“The data confirms the historic shifts occurring in the labor market,” said Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of CompTIA. “We must view this as an opportunity to reset outdated thinking in areas such as skills-based training and hiring. It is imperative we further expand talent pipelines and career pathway opportunities to meet employer needs, especially in the critical area of digital skills.”

The findings generally align with employer hiring activity, with large occupation categories such as hospitality, customer service, retail and healthcare topping the list. The middle tier includes job seekers exploring positions in fields such as IT, professional services, skilled trades, and general business positions. Year to date U.S. employers posted more than 25 million job advertisements seeking to fill openings across every industry sector and job type.

One-half of survey respondents said they have previously made a significant career change and moved into a new career field. Just over half (52%) said the change had an overall positive impact on their career, while just 4% reported a negative outcome.

The survey also identifies potential hurdles to a career change. About 40% of job seekers worry that new job options may not be sufficiently better than their existing job. Location is also a factor – whether it’s a perceived lack of attractive jobs options in a current locale or a reluctance to relocate to change jobs. The time and expense of training for a new job is another potential hurdle.

The “Job Seeker Trends” report is based on a quantitative research study of nearly 1,500 adults in the U.S. labor force.

Channel Impact^®
An active job market provides solid opportunity for both employers and employees.

ConnectWise and SentinelOne Forge Distribution Alliance

ConnectWise and SentinelOne, a cybersecurity platform company, announced a strategic technology partnership to support the distribution of security solutions. While these products were previously only available with the security operations center (SOC) services as Fortify Endpoint, channel partners can now source through ConnectWise. The companies are also attempting to develop unique integrations within the ConnectWise platform.

Channel partners can provide the offerings with or without the SOC services and customize the offerings to each individual end user. Those who purchase directly from ConnectWise will also receive onboarding and front-line support directly from the company and will have access to the ConnectWise Partner Program and other resources.

SentinelOne Control, which is the current core of ConnectWise’s Fortify Endpoint solution, offers prevention, detection, and response, as well as added security suite features like device control and endpoint firewall control. It also adds full remote shell execution to ease IT support and provide additional levels of granular control for managing endpoints.

SentinelOne Complete contains the Deep Visibility Threat Hunting module for advanced forensic mapping, visibility, and nuanced response capabilities for security professionals. When TSPs and managed security providers (MSPs) have a security incident, they have access to deeper analysis and data useful for threat hunting at the machine level. By identifying hardware level cyberattacks – or rootkits – TSPs can hunt for advanced persistent threats (APTs) typically being executed by advanced threat actors and take instant remediation action.

“TSPs and MSPs are realizing that the stakes have never been higher in cybersecurity as ransomware, cyberattacks and other emerging threats are increasingly causing major business catastrophes,” said Jason Magee, CEO of ConnectWise. “We’re proud to team up with SentinelOne and offer both of these EDR products available directly to our partners. Arming our partners with these critical cybersecurity tools is of the utmost importance.”

Partners who have purchased SentinelOne but decide they need additional assistance, they can purchase SOC services for continual threat monitoring and response, a fully staffed team of security experts and cutting-edge security intelligence.

Channel Impact^®
Legacy antivirus has proven to be ineffective against ransomware and the evolving threat landscape. Many partners need to raise their game in the security space.

CloudBlue Updates Partner Program for Faster Time-To-Market

CloudBlue of Irvine, California has launched the latest version of its Go-To-Market (GTM) Fast-Track program to accelerate the time-to-market by up to 50% for global solution providers.

“Who is your ideal customer? When are they buying? What are they buying? These are core questions that have been difficult to answer in the past,” said Tarik Faouzi, senior vice president of CloudBlue. “Today, I am pleased to announce that our program offers these important insights and more at the click of a button.”

By successfully digitizing the GTM process, CloudBlue believes it has reduced the costs for IP owners, while accelerating the time-to-revenue by up to 50% for cloud service providers with targeted campaign sprints.

“Improved strategy, channel mapping, business development, multi-vendor value proposition execution, and value-proposition led sales enablement are all delivered through the GTM Fast-Track program”, said Aleksander Cvetkovski, director, GTM & Acceleration Services. “

Thirteen new partners have joined ‘version 2.0’ of the program.

Channel Impact^®
The intended effect is to scale and accelerate the end-to-end GTM launch for intellectual property (IP) owners and cloud service providers.