My Quest to “Get Certified”

Prologue

Well finally, I have given into the trend of collecting Information Technologies (IT) and products certifications. Having previously established and managed training and certification programs for several companies, I have never felt compelled to feed into the IT certification industry, which produces paper tigers by the hundreds.

In my experience, IT clients usually have a good nose for recognizing who is faking the experience with a technology. It is the IT services providers (resellers, system integrators and recruiters) who insist on certifications in order to corroborate to their clients that the people they are sending are well qualified to do the job. Are they really?

In the last few years, most of my network storage work has come directly from IT clients. Recently, I am receiving a much higher interest from system integrators, resellers and recruiters, who are attracted by my technical pre-sales and storage architect background, due in part to the increasing IT spending environment. With larger budgets available to IT clients, they are once again starting to follow the strategy of “one tree to bark on” and “one neck to choke” instead of “extending the runway as much as possible.”

The Goal

So, I have decided to pursue the certifications in order to satisfy the request most often from recruiters and data storage distribution channel – get some certifications listed on your resume.

My goal is to have the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Storage Networking Certified Professional (SNCP) Level 2 certification completed by the end of July 2004. SNIA, in its great "vendor trade association" wisdom, decided to change the certification tracks effective June 30, 2004.

The Hiccup

Would you believe that SNIA decided to retire the SNCP certification tracks effective June 30, 2004? Looking at the SNCP Transition Policy posted at SNIA website, the new tracks just appear to be another money grab attempt by its training and certification partner to squeeze more money out of the existing certificate holders and new candidates.

• There will be no credential or certificate awarded for passing the Level 2 and Level 3 exams after June 30, 2004.


• Those who have passed the Level 2 or Level 3 exam in 2003 and 2004 can receive the new credentials if they also pass the SNIA Storage Network Foundations exam by December 31, 2004.

The Story

I intend to use these blogs to document and share the resources and information I collect along with my progress toward becoming SNIA SNCP certified. If you would like to share your experiences and/or have suggestions and resources, please drop me a note.