Certification - November 2008 - (Page 58)

INSIDE CERTIFICATION SNIA: helping Pros Enter the Growing Storage Marketplace RICK BAUER The amount of digital information created and replicated each year is growing at astounding rates, boasting a tenfold jump in the past five years alone. And it’s showing no signs of slowing down. As a result, the challenge of managing, protecting and securing this data also has risen exponentially. Organizations continue to look for specialists who can manage networked storage effectively and can design and deploy storage networking solutions using a variety of tools, products and methodologies. According to a March white paper by the International Data Corp. (IDC), titled “The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe,” more than 1 million new storage professionals will be needed by 2012. For an IT network or system administrator making the move to storage administrator — either in job title or in responsibility change — the process of acquiring and validating skills in this practice can seem daunting. Should he go for a vendor-specific or a vendorneutral certification? Most network storage hardware and software vendors have a certification track, allowing a professional who utilizes their equipment to validate and credential skills, stay abreast of new developments and understand more fully the capabilities and functionality of these products. A key advantage in a vendorsponsored certification is that an IT professional learns what he or she needs to know on the products currently being used. These are helpful certifications, but storage networking is more than a single product or set of tools. It’s often about routing, switching, deploying disk and tape devices, and resolving challenges between interoperating and often competing technologies. In addition, backup and security strategies, as well as the management, provisioning and securing of storage for an organization, must be addressed in a comprehensive manner — which requires broader knowledge. Often, however, a new storage administrator is given the task and responsibility of managing the organization’s storage without a clear road map for developing this breadth of knowledge. Because of this challenge, in 2004, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) created a vendor-neutral certification program to ensure storage networking professionals could validate their skills over the complete range of knowledge areas. To date, more than 3,000 IT profes- As the amount of digital information created each year grows, the challenge of managing and protecting this data also rises. For this reason, the International Data Corp. predicts more than 1 million new storage professionals will be needed by 2012. 58 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE November 2008 http://www.snia.org/home http://www.snia.org/home http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/diverse-exploding-digital-universe.pdf http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/diverse-exploding-digital-universe.pdf

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Certification - November 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Tech Careers Dear Techie Virtual Village Data Stream Academic Connection Troubleshooting What We Like Look Ahead The Gender Gap: IT Lacks a Woman’s Touch IT for Free: Volunteering Today Interface Technical Architect: Learning, Growing, Innovating Inside Certification Endtag Ad Index

Certification - November 2008

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