5/30/2001 -- I recently upgraded my MCSE certification to Windows 2000, and many of those on my staff are doing the same. However, only one of our clients is seriously working on a deployment at the moment, and in a couple of other cases we have some specially-built laptops with Win2K Professional as needed. That leaves us supporting a lot of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and Server, and there is little prospect of this changing by the end of the year.

Yet look at the timing of Microsoft’s MCP program. NT 4.0 exams were no longer offered after February (remember, it was originally December 2000, but was extended because of the demands on the testing centers), and MCSEs have only the end of this year to complete their upgrade exam. As a manager planning the professional development of my staff, this is really starting to hurt -- I am being forced to educate staff in Win2K much faster than I would like so that they can retain their MCSE certification.

Like with most organizations, there is a limited amount of time and dollars allowed for education per employee, so I can either choose to blow my budget (a courageous move in these uncertain times!) or, instead, focus on MCSE education -- time I could be using to get them trained in other relevant technologies such as Oracle, SQL Server, Citrix MetaFrame, Linux or vendor server hardware. I don’t deny that I need a base of skilled Win2K professionals as it becomes more prevalent, but I don’t need my entire team skilled on Win2K right now! For most of my team it will probably be Windows 2002 where they finally get their hands dirty with in a production deployment.

I also have some younger, less experienced folk in my team who are moving from a desktop support and deployment role into server-based project work. They would be perfect candidates for NT 4.0 MCSE certification, and they could use the certification to measure the skills they had learned along the way. It is true that the NT 4.0 courses are still being taught, albeit on a drastically reduced timetable, but I really believe that by having people know upfront that they will have to (as is our department policy) pass a certification exam on the course topic afterwards, it ensures they concentrate on learning the material. I know BrainBench and others are still offering NT 4.0 certification, but my preference is for certification exams offered by Microsoft.

From the participants themselves, there also seems to be a degree of anger and resentment towards Microsoft at the hoops they are being forced to jump through to keep their MCSE. This isn’t just my guys – I notice the "Certified Mail"section in the June issue of MCP Magazine is flooded with angry people who aren’t happy about the MCSE re-certification process. I don’t think most people would begrudge having to do an upgrade exam, but it seems the majority have to do four exams (Win2K upgrade exam, design elective plus two further electives), which assumes that they pass the upgrade exam at their only attempt, otherwise they need to complete the entire seven exams in the Win2K stream.

For those of you unhappy about re-certifying at all, I understand the frustration, but I would caution you before you let this anger make your decision about whether or not you'll recertify. I’m not trying to push you either way, but you owe it to yourself and your future to consider the likely benefits and costs in keeping your certification current. Unless you plan on changing career direction in the short term, in time you are going to need to know this material anyway (and probably a great deal more, in truth) to be able to do your job when working with Win2K. Yes, the pace Microsoft set is pushing it, but in this case at least, having to prepare for and take the exams is more of an inconvenience than anything else -- you will use what you learn eventually.

Just for something different, I’ll be talking the LPI Linux Level 1 exams in the coming month (yes, I will be covering these exams for CertCities.com), so I’m looking at this as an opportunity to revise my general Unix skills plus as a structured way to improve my Linux skills. As you’ve probably heard, Windows NT/2000 and Linux are the only operating systems increasing their market share at the moment. I’m not pretending that the certification alone is going to mean anything much (especially to the hardened Linux crowd!), but I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty and learning something new – and isn’t that why we started in this business anyway?

Is your organization facing the same situation? Post your thoughts on this column below!