Putting a Value on IT Certifications - Part 3 "Certified Rockstar"

Finding and Creating Your Value

The true value of your IT certification comes from what YOU do to create the value. You can put your certifications to good use and be a complete rockstar, or you can get certified and do nothing but flaunt around your signature block, resume and office's wall of pride.  Please, use it for good and be the rockstar. Do it to prove to yourself and others, that YOU ARE THE EXPERT, and not just a name with a list of acronyms at the end.  In short, be intelligent, don't be arrogant.

I've had several people ask me if I am going to be looking for a new job now that I have all these Microsoft Certifications.  The answer?  No. I still have A LOT of work to do!  Sure, I can go anywhere and get a significant salary increase, but why leave this place hanging when I can do so much more to help with my newly acquired knowledge!  First on my list, start identifying what needs to be fixed.

Identifying the Problems

We constantly have our binoculars out scanning the horizon for new technologies and thinking of ways to implement them to help our students, faculty and staff. On the other hand, we also need to make sure we put the binoculars down once and a while and see what is happening in our own environment.

Here are a few items that have come up that need to be tackled ASAP. Fixing these issues will definitely increase our value as a University.

Lack of Datacenter Redundancy

As an Enterprise Administrator, my professional life is contained within my datacenters, its applications and hardware and how it meets customer demands.  That being said, it had better run and run well or I won't have a personal life.

One thing our datacenter was lacking was application and hardware redundancy, we had SAN replication going on between sites and Domain Controller replication going, but other high demand applications were lacking in redundancy.  Our website, SQL databases, and Exchange Servers were stand alone systems.  Each of them are in very high demand, so rebooting them anytime before 2:00 AM is out of the question unless it is an absolute emergency.

Lack of Technical Knowledge Held by Students, Faculty and Staff

When I started as a student at the University, we had two Information Technology related Associate Degree programs, one in Network Administration and the other in Web Design.  About seven years ago, they were removed entirely.

Since the removal of pretty much our only technology directed fields, our office, in particular, has had to hire technicians with very little computer experience.  We are getting student technicians that are on track to graduate with Biology, English, and Wellness degrees.  Training them, pretty much from the ground up, is an ongoing occurrence.

Many of our technicians are all freshly out of High School, with little experience, that causes a problem when we have a more complex issue arise with a customer computer.  Who do we send, who's been here the longest? Do we escalate it up the chain to our most experienced server admin, who hasn't done technician duties for ages?  Our Faculty and Staff need to be serviced by quality work.  We also need to provide all of our students, faculty and staff with a proper technical learning environment.

Something needs to be done to ensure everyone knows what they are doing when it comes to technology and how to do it the right way.

Applying the Certifications to Resolve the Problems

Improving Datacenter Operations

Being certified has given me the confidence to really dig in and try to make our Datacenter optimized.  It used to be a mess, but has now been totally revamped and virtualized.  Having the advanced and expert knowledge of our infrastructure and the software we support has allowed me to add redundancy across the board.  This includes implementing Exchange 2010 DAGs, DFS replication,  Load Balanced Web Farm and SQL Clusters across two sites.

By implementing failover clusters, load balanced services, SQL Clusters, Client Access Arrays, and Database Availability Groups we have significantly improved and optimized our Datacenter availability at our two sites.

Training the Students, Faculty and Staff

Microsoft IT Academy - I'm currently working on a proposal to enroll our University in the Microsoft IT Academy program. This will help our Faculty and Staff with their professional development, and also provide the opportunity to start having more technology related classes at the university.

Let me tell you a secret, being a teacher has always been a dream of mine. Although I am not yet a Microsoft Certified Trainer, it is one of my goals to attain within the next 12 months.  Transferring knowledge to students and seeing them succeed in the end will help me both fulfill and continue my career goals and fulfill one of my personal dreams.

The plan: Enroll --> train our Faculty and Staff --> train our students.  It could be that simple, logistically. In reality, not so simple.
The obstacles: Staffing and $$$. I'm the only certified person able to teach Microsoft classes. Since we no longer have any technology classes, we have only one faculty member, not certified, that teaches MS Office. Will there be any demand for the classes or will it be a waste of time? Who is going to pay for it all?

One day my hope is to get over 90% of our Students, Faculty and Staff, Microsoft certified. The end result is intended to be a more technology converged personnel.

It is time to get the ball rolling.

In the End

Value your work, your employees and your image as a professional. Train and Certify your team, as often as you can.  Keep your professionals up-to-date on all technology aspects and you will keep your customers happy.

Imagine the possibilities attainable with your business, university or other environment that has a certified staff.  If you present yourself, your business, and your work, as being completed by experts and professionals, your end product will be held with the utmost value.

In the end, you will be the certified rockstar.

See Also:

Putting a Value on IT Certifications - Part 1

Putting a Value on IT Certifications - Part 2