Foote Partners, which was founded in 1997, compiled the list, and Indiatimes Infotech published it.  The certifications aren’t organized in any particular order or fashion, so there’s probably no need to attempt to tackle ones that seem difficult or irrelevant to your industry before the others.

As for what the certifications are, VMware Certified Professional, Certified Information Systems Auditor, and GIAC Security Audit Essentials were the first to be named.

Next came Certified Information Security Manager, Check Point Certified Security Expert, and Check Point Certified Security Administrator.

Finally, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, Certified Wireless Security Professional, GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst, and Cisco Certified Network Professional wrapped up the list.

Hopefully these suggestions will help you get ahead in the workplace (or find an entirely new, better workplace).  Again, though, just keep in mind that not every IT certification will be an asset of equal value in every situation.

Tiemann writes:

“Lately, I have seen an increasingly important and new implication even beyond what Corey Doctorow has said about free when it comes to software: when the cost of acquisition goes to zero, the cost of retirement (aka “exit cost”) cannot be ignored.”

Tiemann goes on to suggest that the cost of exit for open source software is lower than proprietary software. That can sometimes be true. But open source is no panacea for exit costs. Open standards, while no panacea either, are orders of magnitude more helpful at reducing exit costs than open source by itself.

Let’s say I’m using an open source administration and management product, or an open source content management system and want to migrate to an alternative. How easy will that migration be? Compare with migrating in either direction from GlassFish Application Server to Apache Geronimo. The latter will be easier because both products are standards compliant with the JEE specifications. It goes without saying that open source isn’t a necessary condition to being standards compliant. I’d argue that the cost of exit for standards based software, open source or proprietary, is on average, equal or lower than the cost of exit of open source software around which there are no overarching standards.  I don’t have hard data to prove this point.  However, I do know that CIOs making middleware purchase decisions are keenly interested in reducing vendor lock-in through open standards.

I’m not alone in disagreeing with Tiemann’s views on software exit costs. Open source business intelligence vendor Pentaho’s James Dixon writes in response to Tiemann:

“…true that it might sometimes be easier to get your data out of an open system but most proprietary vendors have migration tools to help move data into their system from a competitors – and of course pre-sales engineers to help out.”

Again, while standards aren’t guarantees of seamless migrations and lower exit costs, standards do however ease the burden. If only open standards were given the same spotlight that open source receives.

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