Technology Certification: Stamp Of Approval

Most companies' IS staffs benefit greatly from certification. But training courses can be costly, and some view them as marketing ploys.

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By Emily Kay
Issue date: April 15, 1996

Charlie Blackford, the client-server manager at Depository Trust Co. in New York, wants his IS staff to be formally certified by client-server vendors so they'll be skilled enough to develop, deploy, and support the kinds of projects the financial institution requires. "Certification represents a level of accomplishm ent that training alone doesn't provide," he says.

Blackford isn't the only one touting the benefits of certification. Many users and industry experts say organizations that hire certified IS workers have a leg up when implementing client-server architectures.

Companies that certify their IT workers operate more sophisticated client-server environments, obtain higher levels of productivity from their IS staffers, and suffer less network downtime, according to Amy Osetek, software services analyst with Dataquest Inc., a market research firm in Westboro, Mass.

Most vendors certify IS professionals to work exclusively on their products. For example, Novell bestows Certified NetWare Engineer (CNE) status on networking professionals who pass the NetWare certification test. Microsoft awards a Certified Systems Engineer certificate; and Lotus has a Certified Lotus Professionals program.

Even some hardware companies are diploma-happy: Compaq gives out a certificate called Acc redited Systems Engineer. Most IS workers earn their certificates by passing exams administered by independent testing organizations, such as Sylvan Prometric in Columbia, Md.

Seven in 10 IS workers take vendor-sponsored training courses before earning their certificates, says Rebecca Segal, director of services industry consulting with International Data Corp., a research firm in Framingham, Mass. Two in 10 are self-taught, while the balance take courses from third parties or colleges.

Eric Stockburger, database manager at Carolina Medicorp Inc., a $325 million operator of hospitals and doctors' offices in Winston-Salem, N.C., says vendor certification is a major plus, largely because it boosts a company's confidence in the IS staff.

Stockburger should know: His company operates a mixed client-server environment with 12 servers, including IBM ES/9000 mainframes and RS/6000s, Digital VAXs, and Hewlett-Packard 9000s. The company, which has a number of certified workers, runs both Wi ndows NT and NetWare over a token-ring networking environment.

But is an IS worker with a certificate more productive than one without? "[Certification] is not important," says Carol Osborne, IS director at Standard Telephone Co., a 300-employee local and long-distance telephone supplier in Cornelia, Ga. Standard Telephone will pay to retrain mainframe programmers to develop client-server applications, but it won't pay to certify them on specific client-server products or technologies.

Standard Telephone's first client-server application, due to be launched next month, will facilitate the routing of 911 emergency phone calls to county dispatchers. The system will ensure that a caller's street address pops up on a dispatcher's Pentium PC, which will be connected to a server over NetWare 4.0.

Cost Factor
Steve Hasenfratz, data management supervisor with Union Electric Co., a $2.1 billion utility in St. Louis, would like to certify company IS workers, but he can't always find the money in his budget. "There's some validity to the certification process in that you've been exposed to a lot of material from the vendor," says Hasenfratz. "If time and money were no object, I would opt for it."

To be sure, this kind of formal education is expensive. It costs $9,500 to train and certify an IS worker in client-server skills, according to IDC. Costs include training, testing and study materials, lost work time, and travel expenses.

Then there's the increased salaries that are often demanded by newly certified employees. In addition, exam fees cost close to $100 per person, and workers must be re-certified regularly, notes Dataquest's Osetek.

Union Electric employs four application developers, one database administrator, and one Unix administrator, who are responsible for a power plant maintenance application that tracks outages. The system, in production since July, runs on a Sun Microsystems SparcServer 1000 and Sybase System 10 r elational database management system linked over the TCP/IP networking protocol to 150 Pentium PCs running Windows 3.1.

Hasenfratz spent $1,500 for each developer to attend a five-day Sybase course. "You're more apt not to [pay for certification] when you can get by with training to a less-detailed depth," says Hasenfratz. The real "certificate" comes from on-the-job experience, he adds.

Still, there's a powerful argument in favor of going all the way. Companies that support certification operate more advanced client-server environments, employ more productive IS workers, and realize payback on their certification investments in less than nine months, IDC says. Companies that don't support certification spend nearly $14,000 more dealing with network downtime and PC support costs than businesses that encourage certification.

"Successful client-server implementation cannot be achieved without organizational readiness, of which training and certification are k ey," says IDC's Segal.

That argument does not convince the skeptics. "It's always seemed like a method-in Novell's case-of selling Novell training courses and some products, so I've never looked for a CNE," says Craig Fisher, systems manager with Intercept, a 140-employee division of Aon Insurance Corp. in Schaumburg, Ill. Intercept serves as a telephone query center for car buyers with questions about dealer inventories. "Experience has always been more important than certification," adds Fisher.

Even proponents of certification caution against relying heavily on programs that are too vendor-specific. Many programs fall short in the client-server arena because they lack multivendor applications training. "It's great to have Microsoft, Novell, and Banyan certification," says Segal. "But IS people work in a multivendor world."

To make up for the lack of cross-discipline client-server certificates, IBM has come up with a way to stamp techno logy workers as client-server architects. IBM's Client-Server Integration Specialist Certification program, launched in September, emphasizes a multivendor, team approach to training. To date, 50 IS workers have earned the certificate, with 150 more signed up to take the test, according to Chris Straughan, certification program manager at IBM's client-server sales and service organization in White Plains, N.Y.

Focus On Technology
The IBM program centers on technologies, not specific vendors' products. There are 15 areas of business and technical coverage, including graphical user interface design, application and middleware development, and database concepts. Students pay $360 for two exams before earning their certificates.

Depository Trust's Blackford plans to send six of his IS staffers to the IBM program. "We chose the IBM program because it focuses on client-server integration rather than a vendor-specific client-server solution," says Blackford. It assures that tho se certified "are more than just programmers, that they understand what the client-server integration process is all about."

Depository Trust, a 3,000-employee firm that serves as a securities-trading clearinghouse for members of the New York Stock Exchange, runs a three-tier architecture that links members' Windows and Windows NT clients to a network of IBM RS/6000 servers over TCP/IP. The servers are connected over IBM Enterprise System Connectivity networking technology to two IBM ES/9000 mainframes where the business logic and data reside.

Passing a multidisciplinary course such as that offered by IBM is more indicative of skills than answering the true-or-false questions of other programs, claims Richard Conklin, marketing director with Client/Server Technologies Inc., a 14-person consulting firm in Atlanta.

"It's much more appropriate for client-server skills" than a CNE, he says. The only other vendor offering a cross-disciplinary approach to client-server training is HP, according to Gene Raphaelian, VP of industry service with Gartner Group Inc., an IT advisory firm in Stamford, Conn.

HP, which educates-but does not certify-professionals, provides training in two- and three-tier client-server design, including courses in front-end GUIs, database access tools, and systems administration. HP's ClientServer JumpStart costs $4,500 per employee for classes that take four weeks.

While the certification debate roils, there's little argument that proficient client-server workers are at a premium. Indeed, experts say that's one of the prime reasons client-server projects fail.

Client/Server Technologies' Conklin tells the tale of a software company, which he declines to identify, that floundered after it tried to reconfigure some of its mainframe tools into client-server products.

By the time the company threw in the towel and called Conklin to help assess the skill level of IS staff, the company had wasted a year's development ti me-plus a critical competitive edge.

Conklin lays blame on the software company's lack of certified client-server IS professionals. "There was a tremendous problem with skills," says Conklin. "They spent a lot of money to get nowhere."

With client-server technologies continuing to evolve at a rapid pace, it seems wise for most companies to spend the money and time on skills certification. If nothing else, they'll gain a heightened confidence in their IS staffs.

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