IT Certifications – Who Needs Them?
Posted on Thu, Dec 29, 2011
By Howard Podgurski
Business owners often ask me why IT industry certifications are important since any question or problem can be Googled.
Sure you can search engine any question but the problem with information technology is that everything is connected – every component touches and affects every asset on the network and in the cloud. So what is the right question to ask? When you don’t know what assets are being affected, it almost always leads to other problems.
Certifications are important because they provide evidence of valid knowledge and understanding about information technology. When a person or company claims to have certain IT knowledge, the certifications validate the claim and demonstrate expertise. The IT industry has done a very good job of developing tiers of certs and accreditations for verifying specific skills necessary to implement and support today’s complex technologies.
So which certifications are important? It depends on what technologies you utilize, and the target moves as rapidly as the technologies you support.
Even a Microsoft Windows-only network requires support for firewalls, switches, routers, and DNS management, which are part of every network. A tech who has earned only a Microsoft Certified IT Professional certification generally does not have enough skills to reliably support all these devices.
To determine the skills and certification levels needed to support your network, you should perform an audit of every device, operating system, software and services running on your network.
Based on the results of your audit, you can learn more at CompTIA and Tech Republic, two of the IT industry’s largest independent organizations available to help you define the skills and certifications required for supporting your network.