Posts From: Bob Austin

Seems all we are hearing about is “The Cloud”. As a diehard fan of the TV series Lost I fully expect them to rename the black smoke monster to something like the Cloud Monster to get in tune with today’s hype. Seems lately that references to the Cloud had made it on the front page of just about every IT magazine and while the cloud does offer a tremendous potential to institute enormous cost savings by effective management of apps, it is still seems to me to be the far off. That was until yesterday when both Cisco and Google announced their new products and services…Now, things are starting to come into focus.

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Cisco announced on January 20th, 2010 the first significant changes to their cornerstone certification, the Cisco's Certified Network Professional (CCNP). Microsoft last year retired their predominant certification, the Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE) replacing it with entire new certification architecture. The Open Group (http://www.opengroup.org/certification/), a vendor neutral training and certification entity, announced significant changes to their IT Architect and IT Specialist programs. The list goes on as many more IT product vendors and IT organizations are changing the way they train and certify their members.

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It’s been too long since I blogged about IT learning, the amount of “real” work needed to be done so far in 2010 has been greater than normal (whatever that is). While this is good, it got me to thinking about IT training resourcing. We hear it all over the place, 2010 will be better than 2009. How the economy is rebounding and growth is coming back. But how do we in the IT Learning business prepare? Where should we be preparing and when should execute our plans?

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It’s 2010 and as is tradition we start the new year off with New Year’s resolutions. While you may argue that it’s insane to make unrealistic resolutions in January just because we did it last year, but its fun. If you don’t think so, ignore this blog entry. If you do, then here are my Ten for 2010.

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Last week I had the opportunity to attend InformationWeek/Dark Reading virtual symposium IT Security the Next Decade. What an eye opener! This session outlined the most dangerous IT threats of the next ten years and what you can do today to protect today’s enterprises. While the threats are many, what was even more enlightening was the increased levels of specialized training that will be required to meet these threats.

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We are closing in fast to the end of 2009 which usually means one thing with regards to corporate IT training spend: Use it or lose it. It seems quite a few corporate IT learning budgets are set up where in order to get money for 2010, you need to spend all the money you had set aside for 2009. While we may have seen double digit declines in overall training spend, the use it or lose it premise still applies.

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With less fanfare and celebration than with Vista, Microsoft released the Window 7 operating system in late October. This replaces the operating system that 90% of the world uses today. Just for the record, I am a Mac user at home, Windows XP for work…I am BOTH a Mac and PC. One offers a superior environment for creative work; the other offers a robust platform for our business applications. While it may seem like only yesterday Microsoft released Vista and slightly less than yesterday when we began bashing it, the release of another version of Windows is big and with it comes game-changing features. Being that this is an IT Learning blog, let’s explore how Windows 7 changes the learning landscape.

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Tradition holds that when new construction takes place the first stone laid is the ceremonial “cornerstone”. It acts as much as a symbolic attribute of the structure as it does in actually supporting it. This cornerstone serves as a guide for how laborers should continue construction. We see cornerstone guiding lots of industries. For example, the 4 cornerstones or marketing are “Price, Product, Place and Position” or the two cornerstone of Java programming are “coupling and cohesion”. There is even a “Cornerstone of Internet Freedom” which outlines the legal structure of user-generated internet content.

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The demand for skilled engineers causes enterprises to invest in IT Training. While we hear a lot about the size of the overall IT marketplace, most of the attention is paid towards the cost of hardware and software requirements and not training. We know that IT training represents a portion of the overall market, but how much?

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The overall business of IT training is huge and moves fast. Any of us that have spent any time in the industry knows that. When it comes to educating the end-user, there is certainly no lack of books, webinars, white papers, and conferences that end-users can participate in to help stay current. But, when it comes to the task of keeping the IT Training professional current, I find there is a need for useful information; and hence the reason for this blog.

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