The Certified Novell Engineer conundrum

NetworkWorldFusion has an interesting question/answer in regards to wether someone should get certified in Open enterprise Server or if they should take the Certified Novell Engineer track. In escence Novell isn't sure themselves which tracks someone should focus on other than the fact they are offering up different options for someone to follow.

The author asks Novell's director of Press Relations for his opinion and he says "We haven't determined yet what we'll do regarding creation of an OES certification. We want to see how customers are deploying it before making our decision." Yep, Novell doesn't know yet.

Interesting.

Loads of Linux Links: Certification / Training

Loads of Linux Links: Certification / Training I was going through some stories when I stumbled upon this link fest from sourceforge. The main link page can be found here. From there enjoy yourslef and have fun learning what it out there that is focused on Linux

Has tech employment turned a corner?

CNET News.com is carrying a story focused on employment trends in the tech industry. As I've posted in the past, for certain sectors within IT there has been mimi hiring booms going on and for others they are still in slumps. The good news is that overall, it seems that the IT industry has been turning the corner. The first paragraph says it all: "the country's high-tech industry shed 25,300 jobs in 2004, to 5.6 million. By comparison, 333,000 tech industry jobs were lost in 2003 and 612,000 in 2002, according to the trade group."

For anyone involved with Linux the next several years should see growing demand for their skill sets as teh various flavors of Linux start replacing Unix in the server market. There have also been a couple reports coming out of Camp Redmond of their concern over Linux making a run at dominating the server market. Redmond does have serious concerns over competition from Linux for the all important business marketplace for servers. I think it'll still be a while before Linux will compete with Microsoft for the desktop and some important things to watch will be how do businesses react to upgrading to a new version of Windows.

Microsoft is trying to time a forced upgrade to a new version of Windows to lock in customers for the next several years before businesses start to look at alternatives. Keep in mind that Windows 2000 will see their end of support come later this summer time and many bussinesses will hold onto their older copies of Windows as long as possible.

The next several years we will see several products die off and several other products brought to life. A couple good examples are the Firefox browser which has brought back the browser wars. Lotus Notes also has a distinct possibility of being cut adrift by IBM as IBM starts to focus more on their Linux products and seem to be umwilling to turn Lotus Notes into an Open Source product. These are jsut a couple of example of changes which are taking place in the IT industry. Fun things to look forward to.

Rise of tech job posts could bode well

CNet is carrying a story looking at the job postings on teh Dice.com web site. Basically they are saying the postings have increased 22% in teh first three months of this year. If I remember right there was a similar rise, maybe not to the same extent during the first three months of last year only to see things settle back down due to the uncertainty tied to the presidential elections.

It will be interesting to see if this hiring binge will be able to maintain itself throughout the rest of the year.

Rise of tech job posts could bode well

CNet is carrying a story looking at the job postings on teh Dice.com web site. Basically they are saying the postings have increased 22% in teh first three months of this year. If I remember right there was a similar rise, maybe not to the same extent during the first three months of last year only to see things settle back down due to the uncertainty tied to the presidential elections.

It will be interesting to see if this hiring binge will be able to maintain itself throughout the rest of the year.

Blogthings - What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Blogthings - What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Your Linguistic Profile:

80% General American English

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

5% Midwestern

0% Yankee

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Tech industry slashing jobs again ??

CNET News.com has a story looking at the tech industry employment for the past couple of months. Reading through the story it appears that most of the cuts are as a result of industry consolidation rather than people taking a breather in their tech buying. With the economy picking up steam the pace at which people buy tech products should continue for the next year or two depending on how the economy improves.

I think that the consolidation that various tech industries have gone through should better prepare them for the next several years. If this is the case then companies should go back onto the hiring trend relatively soon. LinuxPipeline carries another story about IT hiring trends. Several points they bring out are longer-term concerns over outsourcing and automation are things to pay attention to. One thing they point out is that companies are focusing on hiring people who can prove they have the experience either through a degree or through certifications. The people who have been jack of all trades seems to be the ones getting squeezed out.

Another point the article makes is this is the first stretch of a couple months that IT hiring has been able to sustain. It seems that "companies are 'spending more on IT talent to tackle IT projects' that had been shelved or delayed for several years." This is a good sign that with an improving economy and competition to provide better services there will be greater demand for IT workers on a longer term basis.