| eNewsletter from ConsultantRegistry.org |
February 2010 Vol 2 Issue 1 |
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| Consultant Registry celebrates its 1st Birthday! That’s right we are 1 year old and already the largest independent security consultant organization. |
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During our first year, we grew to about 400 members, released the Consultant Ready Report, provided the Integrator Listing Service, and brought over 130 Independent Security Consultants to a place to collaborate and find information.
We have a lot more planned for 2010. With your support, we can have a positive impact on our industry and provide even more tools to our members.
Thanks for your support during our first year. We look forward to a strong and impactful 2010, so keep checking the website for even more announcements! |
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| ConsultantReady™ Update |
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In May 2009, we released the first annual ConsultantReady™ Report. 246 industry manufacturers were evaluated under 40 criteria items. The report showed that a majority of the industry's manufacturers did not offer the materials that are important to consultants or that they were inaccessible. Since our first ConsultantReady™ Report in May 2009, ConsultantRegistry has seen a lot of interest from the industry's manufacturers. |
We prepared the following update as the ConsultantReady™ Committee prepares for the 2010 edition. Based on feedback, we have identified some evaluation criteria for review. We expect to add subcategories under each product category to to better compare similar manufacturers. Over 500 manufacturers have been identified for inclusion in the 2010 report (2x the last report!).
Here are some noteworthy stats so far: |
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47 manufacturers have requested to be added or updated since May. |
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4 Manufacturers had double digit improvements on their scorecard. |
| 2010 Grade |
2009 |
Change |
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| 45 |
20 |
+25 |
Lenel (UTC Fire & Security) |
| 39 |
26 |
+13 |
Salient Systems |
| 38 |
21 |
+16 |
Honeywell Video |
| 32 |
13 |
+19 |
March Networks |
* Improvements include development of new materials or access being granted to existing materials
previously inaccessible.
** Double digit improvements are significant because the industry average was 11 out of 63pts. |
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Since May '09, we have seen many companies redesigning their websites to include dedicated consultant resource pages. This effort is usually a substantial effort involving multiple departments coordinating with marketing. |
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Approximately 20 manufacturers have shared with us that they are developing or enhancing consultant support tools due to the ConsultantReady™ Report. |
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ConsultantRegistry.Org will be circulating a survey to all manufacturers from now until March 1st to formally measure their interest and understanding of our market. If you are a manufacturer, please watch your email for a link to participate. |
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| 2010 Initiatives |
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OpenID is a open standard for Single-Sign-On used by over 50,000 websites including some heavy hitters like Google, MySpace, FaceBook and LinkedIn. In support of President Obama's open government memorandum, OpenID has become the center of pilot programs being conducted by the Center for Information Technology (CIT), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). (Link to Story) |
Last month CRO began a pilot project of our own with the commencement of Beta testing of our own OpenID Provider server. Manufacturers can adopt OpenID simply to allow the convenience of single-sign-on access or they can accept a CRO OpenID to prequalify consultants and integrators requesting access to their site.
As an open standard, there are no license fees. The only cost is to the manufacturer is the programming fees to implement the OpenID Client. (Which is much less than the cost CRO bore to implement the OpenID Provider.)
As we reviewed manufacturers' "Consultant-Readiness", we found many manufacturers who had technical information and tools important to consultants which were not publically accessible. Manufacturers were unsure how to balance accessibility, control over intellectual property and the ability to follow up on leads.
Throughout 2010, CRO will introduce OpenID to our industry's manufacturers. This ConsultantRegistry.Org development is the only one of its kind in the security industry and opens the door for manufacturers to give consultants easier access to their secure consultant-only information.
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Most integrators subscribe to bid services which cost $400-$2000 per year. These services are supposed to email them when bid projects are announced. Historically these services are complex and do not deliver as advertised.
Consulting firms travel extensively for their clients and may not have a list of integrators to invite to bid on projects in each geographic location that they are working. |
When this happens consultants rely primarily on the accessibility of public bid notices to attract qualified respondants. If integrators do not immediately see public bid notices, the unfortunate results are a low number of qualified reponses or incomplete proposals.
The CRO Integrator Listing Service was created to help consultants find qualified bidders to invite to view public bid notices. Integrators with a single office can subscribe to the CRO Integrator Listing Service for as little as $80/year. Integrators of Manufacturers and Industry Partners who support CRO receive discounted listing fees. CRO is in negotiations with several manufacturers who will pay an integrator's Listing Fees for achieving quota.
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| Website Updates |
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ConsultantRegistry.Org is constantly updating our website to improve content, messaging and usability. Here are some of the recent changes.
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New Home Page with Tour to better explain CRO |
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Continued improvements throughout site |
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CRO Initiatives Page to better communicate active projects |
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Public Consultant Profiles now accessible without being signed in
* In keeping with our privacy statement |
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Search Engine Optimization Improvements
* Consultant public profiles are submitted to search engines & pages are optimized for SEO |
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