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February 21 2008 – put a date in your diary

February 27 2008 is a big date for Microsoft: that’s when SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 are released. What’s more, it’s the date when Microsoft’s training strategy really begins to make sense for today’s IT professional.

There hasn’t been as significant a launch of a group of products since 1990, when Microsoft had the brainwave of putting Word, Excel and PowerPoint into one box and calling it Office.

The reason for launching these new server products together is that they form part of the same ecosystem – essentially Microsoft is delivering a wide range of enterprise capabilities at the same time.

Although this is a multi product launch, Hyper-V will not be included with Windows Server 2008, it will ship up to 180 days after launch. SQL 2008 will not be released to manufacturing in time for the official launch.

 

It’s also the date that Microsoft’s infrastructure training and certification strategy catches up with its training and certification for developers. To explain: when the MCSE was introduced, it was a large, but manageable, certification. It was a big, fixed track, where you had to take the whole programme – at a cost of around £5000. It mostly made sense at the time, but technology has moved on considerably since then – there’s much more of it, and it’s all much more complex. The notion that you could take one certification track and learn everything is plainly absurd – even if you could remember all of that information, you’re looking at a worse-case scenario of 57 days’ training at a pretty substantial cost, probably around £10,000 or so. That’s a big ouch, whether you’re buying just for yourself or whether you are looking to train a dozen IT pros.

Of course, the nature of the role has change: 6 or 7 years ago, a single individual on the IT team may have had responsibility for file and print – as well as e-mail and security. That model increasingly doesn’t work, with individuals needing to be specialists in their field, backed with generalist skills in other areas.

While the MCSE originally worked, as time went on it tried to be all things to all people. You had to cover every topic, whether you needed it as part of your job or not – for example, learning how to design an active directory structure, which quite honestly not everyone needs to do. With this lack of flexibility and not being linked to job roles, the MCSE was becoming irrelevant and unaffordable.

Clearly the monster had to change, and Microsoft has been busy changing it. The good news is that Microsoft’s new approach to certification makes much, much more sense.

First, IT pros start with a technology specialisation (such as Windows Server Active Directory) – which is fair enough, because the role will be about technology at some point, and usually a specific feature or technology. This is now a certification in its own right. The next step is to add training that’s specific to a job role – how you use a product – for example, Server or Enterprise administrator. You can’t take the second step first – you need the technology specialist training before the role-specific stuff.

At that point, you’ve become (assuming you pass the exams) a certificated IT professional – in those topics. This new route takes far fewer training days, and represents far less cost – and delivers learning that’s much more relevant. (There is, of course, also a comparable route for IT developers – again aligned to a product and role/skill.)

And that will be good enough for most people, but at the top of the tree, Microsoft has placed a real top-level certification for superheroes. The Microsoft Certified Architect is an invitation-only, high-level certification that delivers the kind of respect that other mortals can only dream of.

Microsoft’s been putting this training structure in place for some time – and the reason that February 21 is important is that, once these new products are launched, the products finally catch up with the education roadmap. MCSEs everywhere, who sweated blood to gain those four letters, have a series of certifications to which they can upgrade, for a reasonable price, within sensible timescales.