The Industry Direction

[Phoenix]

The Direction of the IT Industry
a short article by Phoenix

I have noticed over the past few months alot of newcommers here, not only to the forum, but to the IT industry in general, I have prepared this short little article to highlight some of my observations over the past few years, and hopfully assist you in better preparing your certification roadmap, and career path in IT.

Let me start off by telling you a little about myself, for those that don't know me. I am 22 years old and have worked in IT since I was 14, my certs include 2 MCSEs, a CCNP and CCDP, A+, Security+ and a various other certifications.

Unfortunatly I was on the tail end of the NT4 MCSE boom and the CCNA boom, what I mean by this is that by the time I had obtained them, the industry had disregarded thier worth due to the huge uptake of the certs thus lowering thier usefulness significantly, you may or may not already notice an MCSE is a pretty standard base requirement for the majority of support work around the world, which is funny considering the abilities an MCSE is supposed to possess.

Hiring Practices
During my years in the industry I have noticed it move from a degree orientated hiring scheme, to a certification based hiring scheme, to an experiance based hiring scheme, It has currently settled somewhere in the middle where it belongs, this doenst make it that easy for newcommers though, its a bit of a catch 22 situation, no work without experiance, no experiance without work there are opertunities to get your foot in the door soley on certs, especially with the rarer and harder to find certs (they wont however, always be rare and hard to find).

The Industries Direction
The IT industry has gone through quite an changing time over the last few years, with the dot com fizzle and the rise and fall of various major players, but a few things have set the wheels in motion for the next few years, namely the microsoft antitrust case, and the 'rise of terrorism' as mr bush would put it. This has led to the rise of F/OSS (Free / Open Source Software) becoming ever more mainstream, and Security becoming a bigger issue, already we are seeing major shifts in server operating system trends, along with security budget increases year after year

What does this have to do with you?
Well alot if you plan on having a steady future in IT, determining trends early on allow us to adapt to these new technologies before the 'herd' giving us the time to aquire experiance and knowledge before the 'herd' this pretty much puts us one up on the competition when new technology
becomes 'the' technology. Specialist areas will always attract only a few,and they will have steady jobs as long as the technology holds, but for
those of us who inhabit the 'generalist' spectrum of the IT field, we need to adapt with that field, and Open Source and Security are the two key areas of growth in the next few years.

Already more and more certs are becoming available in these fields, but it may be a while before they are latched onto by the masses, this gives the early adopters more chance at early positions, and more experiance when things start moving

The Players
here is a quick run down of the 'must have' certs of the next few years, these are just predictions

MCSE:Security
Windows will remain a major player in the OS field for the forseable future, so MCSEs will always be required, having that security specialisation will give you an edge on the competition in paranoid organisations (see: most)

CCSP
Ciscos Security certification will no doubt be a de facto standard in the near future, not only does it cover neutral security concepts, design skills and knowledge, it also prepares you for a wide range of cisco (see: market leader) security equipment

RHCE
Red Hat enterprise linux is staking its claim, and its growing every year, as it grows, so will the requirement for skilled and qualified people to work with it, remember, most enterprises love to have vendor qualified staff onsite.

SuSE Certification
New off the block, but since its aquisition by novell SuSE is behing pushed harder than Red Hat, and with the backing its getting now things should only get better for this distribution

Security+
It's an entry level cert compared to the other behemoths in this list, but its a great starting block in the security field, and it counts toward the MCSE:Security so you cant go far wrong with it

CISSP
Industry standard security certification, looked on by governments to signify a base understanding of security concerns and requirements in enterprise and government systems, the CCSP has recently reached a par level with it since it was certified by the NSA/CNSS as meeting the 4011 training standards

Checkpoint Certifications
as one of the leading firewalls across the globe, the check point certifications are already becoming hot commodities and may well be required by most companies who utilize checkpoint firewalls. (see: CCSA, CCSE, CCSE+, CCSPA, CCMSE, CCMSE+VSX)


Conclusion
There are many other certs, many will come and go, others will stick around, I have primarily listed the key security and linux certs on par with the industies current direction, other key areas of growth include VoIP and Wireless, its upto you individualy to assess your area, find out what you feel is emerging, and take the opertunity before its required,remember, dont just do a load of certs, gain certs to further your career,and expand your knowledge, and above all have fun, its a crappy industry to be in if your not having fun

Sorry for the rambling and poor english, its 4am here.
if anyone wants to spellcheck it and throw it up as an article by me thats cool, dont have smtp here atm so cant email :/

[SiFor]

Thanks for contibuting this Ryan, once the forum has moved to VB there is a new article section that this can be published to.

[AJ]

Very interesting Ryan, thanks. I enjoyed reading that.

[nugget]

Thanks for the insight Phoenix. Very helpful at the moment as I'm seriously thinking of changing track to linux certs.

[tripwire45]

once the forum has moved to VB there is a new article section that this can be published to.

Cool!!!

[Reders]

Well done Ryan, a very interesting read.

[wizard]

Very good read.

[michael78]

Spot on Analysis Phoenix. I think one of the major players over the coming years will be Linux. It's so underused by the general industry but I think that may well change over the next 3-5 years.

[sbarks]

Hi

agree 100%, hence why im looking at MCSE security



steve

[Firthy2002]

I intend to get into network security in a big way because of the trends you mentioned.