Certification Magazine - January 2008 - (Page 39)

INSIDE CERTIFICATION continued from page 25 your expertise in the technology, and stake your claim to the sector of the market that suits your skills the best. Then, attend a couple of manufacturers’ product training classes, so you can appreciate the amazing features and functionalities being built into today’s enterprise-class WLAN products. Market leaders Aruba Networks and AirMagnet are just two of the manufacturers that recommend you earn your CWNA or CWSP before entering their training and certification programs. Cisco employs more CWNAs, CWSPs and CWNEs than any other WLAN manufacturer. What does that say about the value of technology training and certification? Whether you self-study or attend a four- to fiveday class to prepare you for the only vendor-neutral WLAN certification on the market, when you earn your CWNA or your CWSP, you’ll understand all the manufacturer’s products, so you can talk the talk and walk the walk intelligently about any product. Should you dare to take the road to CWNE, you choose to join an elite group of experts in the wireless market. And, last, but not least, when you earn your CWNA or CWSP, you make yourself more valuable to yourself, your employer and your customers. CertMag’s 2007 Salary Survey showed again, for the fourth year in a row, that CWNA and CWSP certifications bring value to your career. In 2004, CertMag’s Salary Survey reported CWNAs earning $70,000 a year on average. In 2005, the survey reported CWNAs earning $69,000, a slight slip, but the following year, CWNAs rallied to $74,000. And, the 2007 Salary Survey reported CWNAs earning $78,000 on average. These certifications are proving to hold real value for IT pros, and their value is clearly growing. If you want to run headlong into a career in the fastgrowing enterprise WLAN industry, learn networking. Then, learn wireless technologies in the CWNP program, and then apply your expertise to the best products in the WLAN market. 8 INTERFACE continued from page 33 “When you help your clients become more agile, everything about your own culture must scream agility, as well,” Manthey said. “Our ability to be agile is about how quickly we embrace change. Every IT project, at some level, is about change management. The work we do forces people to abandon things that are less efficient and move to things that are more efficient.” Yet, Manthey said she also thinks many organizations try to change too quickly. “Rapid change is threatening because people tie their identities to their jobs,” she said. “Iterative development is one of the ways we help organizations change slowly. Each iteration is generally small. We try to make each iteration easily digestible, so it doesn’t threaten the people who are most affected by the change.” Getting people to change is also about helping change opinions and viewpoints, because if people can see a change’s importance, it is easier to change behavior. “In projects for clients, change management is a critical yet often overlooked piece of project delivery,” Manthey said. “Our employees must all understand how to think about change and have the empathy to understand how change will affect the end user or stakeholder right from the start.” This means emphasizing the importance of the organic, interdependent relationship between the whole and its parts in looking at a given organization. “Our architects take a holistic view of a client’s enterprise architecture when developing a project recommendation,” Manthey said. “We aren’t in the business of thinking inside a silo to develop a solution. Our solutions are scalable and adaptable so that as a client’s technology environment changes, they can add to existing infrastructure without rework. Our approach is simple: Analyze the existing environment, understand the requirements of the project and develop an architecture recommendation that allows scalable growth within the existing environment.” 8 Kevin Sandlin is the chief executive officer and primary business and marketing manager for Planet3 Wireless. Sandlin has 12 years of high-tech marketing, management, business and product development experience. He can be reached at editor@certmag.com. Ben Bradley is a journalist who writes about the intersection of technology and business. He can be reached at editor@ certmag.com. January 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 39

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - January 2008

Certification - January 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Making the IT Leap: How to Move Into the Industry Inside Certification Phoning It In: Telecommuting Systems and Networks Engineer Interface Band of Brothers: Why You Should Join an IT Association Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - January 2008

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