Amazon Web Services Has a New Certification Testing Partner
Last week here on GoCertify we traced the evolution of a single company, Credly, into the colossus of the IT certification digital badging sector. There's a similarly monopolistic situation in the IT certification testing realm, but one that's more established and probably less surprising. Pearson VUE added another notch to its metaphorical gunfighter's belt this week when it announced a multi-year deal to become the official certification exam facilitator for Amazon Web Services. AWS certifications have almost literally caught fire in recent years, exploding to the forefront of certification salary surveys and becoming a highly sought-after mark of distinction among hiring managers sorting through the resumes of cloud computing professionals. Pearson VUE, which operates a network 5,000 testing centers in 180 countries worldwide, manages certification testing for a plethora of high-profile IT clients, including CompTIA, (ISC)2, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, IBM, Dell EMC, and others.
IT Certification Council Honors ISACA with Innovation Award
This one slipped past us a couple of weeks back, but it's worthy of mentioning here. The IT Certification Council, an industry group that promotes certifications and supports a number of cooperative efforts among leading IT certification and testing providers, announced cybersecurity and governance association ISACA as the 2019 winner of the annual ITCC Innovation Award. Sheri Buergey, Senior Manager for Organizational Change, Learning and Development with ISACA, accepted the award at the ITCC Spring Member Meeting in Orlando, Fla. ISACA was honored for a new and "innovative approach to journey mapping," which allowed them to "quickly solve problems, as well as turn future strategy into a narrative that the entire organization and partners could get behind." The Innovation Award is given annually in recognition of programs or initiatives that positively impact a company or organization, or make a difference in the IT certification industry.
Incoming ISACA CEO Posts Message to Members
Speaking of ISACA, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and manages a widely respected and popular certification program, incoming CEO David Samuelson took to the ISACA Now Blog on Monday to thank supporters and well-wishers and talk briefly about his vision for the future of ISACA. Samuelson said he's been particularly impressed with the depth of feeling among ISACA members, opening his missive with the following words: "As I begin my time as ISACA's new chief executive officer, having just completed my first week in the role, one thing continues to impress me – the passion our professional community feels for ISACA. It is immediately apparent how meaningful ISACA is to our individual members' careers, as well as to the organizations we serve in IT audit, governance, risk and security." Samuelson replaces former CEO Matthew Loeb, who resigned last year in November after a four-year tenure.
ITIL 4 Launch Opens New Era of ITIL
The globally popular IT Service Management (ITSM) framework ITIL has entered the next phase of its evolution with the worldwide release, at the end of February, of ITIL 4. ITIL, originally an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, was developed by U.K. government officials in the 1980s to standardize IT management practices. In 2013, British business process outsourcing firm Capita and the U.K. Cabinet Office create AXELOS, a joint venture to manage the future of ITIL. ITIL 4 represents the first major overhaul of ITIL since 2007. As described in a new article posted at CertMag.com, the official website of Certification Magazine, the process of revising and updating ITIL, first announced in November 2017, involved input from more than 2,800 global experts drawn from a variety of industries. As noted by the article's author, AXELOS product ambassador Akshay Anand, a key goal of the overhaul was to improve ITIL certification: "One of the core principles we have adopted in the update program is to make ITIL 4 lean – to only include necessary information in core guidance, and to simplify the certification structure and learning journey."
CompTIA: You Don't Need a Degree to Work In IT
There's an ongoing debate in the IT realm as to whether tech workers are best positioned to succeed by getting a university or college degree in computer science. One of the latest arguments to emerge popped through last week at the IT Career News blog of tech industry association CompTIA. Writing under the provocative headline "IT Job Myths Busted: Not Everyone Has a Computer Science Degree," blogger Eileen Ristau Tauchman says that you don't need a computer science degree to succeed in IT – or any degree at all. As Tauchman puts it, "There are IT pros who have computer science degrees, but others have business degrees, communications degrees or no degree at all! A large portion of IT jobs don't require a four-year degree or even a two-year degree." If you're a career switcher or student pondering a career in tech, it's worth hopping over to digest and weigh her arguments before giving serious thought to a degree program.
That's all for this edition of Certification Watch. Please keep your certification news and tips coming to the GoCertify News Editor.
Privacy Policy Update
We have updated our Privacy Policy to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)