(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Training and certification have long gone hand in hand across all industry sectors, but particularly within the IT industry. For years, tech giants like Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco have been offering certification programs for their products and services.
So it only makes sense that the emergence of cloud computing technology would prompt companies to introduce certification programs of their own to address the needs of cloud computing professionals.
3Tera (www.3tera.com) has done just that with the launch of its new educational and certification programs.
The company is initially offering two certification programs, Certified Cloud Operator and Certified Cloud Architect, with plans to introduce other programs in the future.
The new cloud computing training and certification programs are accessible to IT professionals who are either evaluating or using the company’s AppLogic cloud computing platform.
According to Bert Armijo, senior vice president of marketing and product management at 3Tera, the decision to offer cloud certification was driven by the overwhelming demand of new customers that required a “little more support and training”.
“We saw a demand for people to achieve certification, so in the last few months we’ve beefed up the training materials and added some certification exams,” says Armijo. “It’s all really around accelerating time-to-market and providing confidence in the folks that are hiring and working with.”
The Certified Cloud Operator program is targeted toward service providers, enterprises operations professionals and systems integrators, who are responsible for the deployment and operation of cloud services.
The program, which typically has a 4 to 1 student to instructor ratio, covers the process of installing, configuring and maintaining the computing fabric used for building cloud computing services.
The content of the course focuses mainly on hardware requirements, service configuration, hardware failure troubleshooting, provisioning of customers, and configuration of virtual private data centers.
The Certified Cloud Architect program, on the other hand, is intended for system architects, IT operations professionals, application developers and systems engineers who are responsible for the design, integration, provisioning, deployment and management of distributed applications.
Participants in this course, which has about a 6 to 1 student to instructor ratio, will learn the architectural concepts of the AppLogic cloud computing platform, step-by-step procedures for deploying, operating and managing applications in the cloud, best practices for security, testing and scaling applications, and how to architect for business continuity.
“With the cloud operators, what we want students to take away is the confidence and knowledge to build a first-class cloud for their company,” says Armijo. “In the cloud architect program, it’s a little different. We want people to see what’s possible in the cloud. “
Both certification programs have a registration fee of $2,000 per student, which includes course resources, which they can keep for up to 30 days after the course for studying purposes.
Certification is awarded to students upon successful completion of the training coursework and a two-hour online exam.
The first certification classes began late last year. So far, there has been a total of 23 graduates of the two programs, including employees from Cari.Net, ScaleUp Technologies, and Layered Tech.
These recently certified graduates have already seen positive results in using cloud computing technologies. Armijo says that the number of support issues from these certified partners has dropped by five times when compared to pre-program, not to mention the “tremendous growth” their business has seen.
3Tera plans to add additional benefits for certified partners, which will only provide more incentive for individuals to enroll in these programs.
“We are adding a level to our service provider partner program that will recognize those partners that have certified operators and give them a special designation when referring customers from our website, so there will be some additional marketing benefits from this,” says Armijo.
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