Over the course of many years I have seen multiple questions crop up regarding certification and training, with a general lack of understanding of what to do to get it. Most of the time the queries have been honorable, and by this I mean genuinely wanting to go about getting trained and certified the correct way, and not via braindumps. I'll address the former in this article.
Let's start at the beginning. Why would you want to be trained and/or certified?
From a personal view, there are a number of reasons to get trained and ultimately certified. Working in a technical field will see you need to prove yourself, and whilein the past you might've got around just having experience, getting trained in today's day and age is more important. Want to see proof? Go check out a job website where companies are now specifying specific experience in a particular area of IT, along with the certificate to accompany this.
Training by a Symantec partner, or Symantec themselves allows you to get access to the product in a lab environment, along with trainers who are experts in their respective fields, and for some of us, gives a first-hand look at the software/hardware the course deals with. This is crucial...break what you're working on, and it gets quickly reconfigured. Less exposure in a production environment where you've got to make a critical change and are not sure at all whether or not you have a back door available to you in order to roll back changes. For some vendors, training goes hand-in-hand with being able to write an exam. Without the official training, if you go write and pass the exam, it won't get recognised.
The certification looks good on your CV, and distinguishes you from your next competitor in the job market, or gets used as a KPI for your end-of-year review to prove you know what you're dealing with in your area of expertise. As I mentioned above, many companies now require proof of certification in order to be considered for a job. And as such, it is equally as important to keep up-to-date with your certification in order to ensure it doesn't lapse.
From a company perspective, especially a service/solutions provider, it becomes incredibly important to have certified staff. And this can mean both technical and sales (presales and actual account management sales). In an RFQ (Request for Quote)/RFP (Request for Proposal) scenario (mainly seen in government business) as this is the difference between winning and losing business. I've seen it where companies haven't been able to meet certain thresholds and have lost big business, and the further impact this has on their business. They're seen as not being compliant and might get passed up for further business until this impression has been changed. Having certified staff also allows the service provider to tap into other benefits such as bigger discounts, better deal protection and larger developement funds being given to a company, so there is definite benefit to doing all you can to get the certification you require.
Some barriers to getting training and certification would be lack of budget in a company, but if planned properly, or justified correctly, you are able to get around that. Another would be where it isn't seen as relevant, and this is where you would need to push your agenda in order to change the idea that it isn't worth it.
Just an aside: I've also seen many questions on these forums (as well as others) where people go straight to wanting braindumps or questions from the exams. All good to ask these (and you won't get any help on these forums if the person posting is worth their salt), until the time you sit in a similar situation and cannot respond to the issues staring you in the face. Simply put, it's not worth it, don't go the braindump route.
Proper training through Symantec or a partner, and you can feel proud with that official certificate at the end of your journey.
Part 2 will deal with ways and means to get your training, but I look forward to any responses or questions you might have.