CCIE - Why bother? There are plenty of individuals around the world, working in the same environments as CCIEs, who make a comfortable living as holders of other certifications that are were less difficult to obtain. CCNP, CCDP, CCIP, and other Cisco certifications provide career advancement and the respect of peers, so why embark on a study routine that will probably take months to complete, that place extra demands on you (and your family) and does not end until you have passed what is arguably the toughest practical exam in the IT industry?

The reasons are many and varied, but one of the commonest is the fact that CCIE certification is recognised worlwide by people, organisations, companies, and vendors throughout the communications field. It carries a great deal of kudos and is the closest a networking engineer can get to a guarantee of employment. Sadly, even CCIEs have to lower their sights when the market is depressed but at least they are at the front of the queue when jobs are few. As economies change the salaries for CCIEs vary but they remain consistantly higher than any other similar certification.

Some people now argue that the CCIE certification program is past its peak and that there are simply too many CCIEs now, but the program is evolving and changing year by year, and some CCIEs fail to recertify, retire, or move on to other things. Cisco Systems Inc. have ensured that the syllabus for both written and practical CCIE exams is updated to reflect the changes in technology. There will always be a demand for skilled and experienced internetworking engineers. Check the Cisco web site for details of the number and type of CCIEs in each country. There are still very few Security, Voice, and ISP CCIEs.

So how does one go about obtaining CCIE status? Amounts will vary according to your experience and ability, but generally speaking preparing for the CCIE lab exam involves months of daily study and practice, so be sure you can commit yourself to the task. Talk it over with your partner and family and be sure you have their support.

Those who want to take MCP exam need to complete your Microsoft second shot registration before May 31.

Microsoft’s exam retake promotion ends June 30, but MCP exam takers who want to participate in the program have until the end of May to register into the program and register for an exam.

The program had been extended from its original expiration date of Jan. 30, 2008.

Also known as the “Exam Second-Shot,” the program provides MCP and Microsoft Dynamics test takers with an opportunity to take an exam the second time, upon failure on the first try. Participants must register into the program in order to receive a retake voucher; testers also need to take the exam prior to May 31 in order to take advantage of the retake, which candidates must then complete by June 30.

The retake is available through Prometric testing centers worldwide and can be applied to any MCP or Microsoft Dynamics exam. Click here for more information.

Cisco has announced a new certification — the Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) — intended to recognize professionals with extensive experience in networking design.

The CCDE will facilitate such professionals designing networks built around the business requirements of an organization. Although no prerequisite certs are required, seven years of networking experience is recommended, and passing both a qualification and practical exam is mandatory.

The certification was developed in response to customer demand for a certification centered not only on network implementation but design strategy as well.

David Bump, certification portfolio manager at Cisco, said it’s natural that highly skilled individuals would want to evolve their skills and align more to their company’s business goals and be recognized for it.

“We have a lot of 10-year veterans out there who are looking for that next step in their career,” Bump said. “The network design role is more on the front end of the network operations team, so much so that they’re moving out of that [team] and closer to the business strategy. Before they were in operations and engineering, but now they’re going into the planning and security issues of design, as well as looking at performance optimization issues.”

With design expertise that covers voice, data, storage and video, CCDEs will have the ability to design a neutral, adaptable, optimized and cost-efficient network.

The CCDE isn’t just meant to expand the expertise and knowledge of network designers. Bump explained it’s also a way to recognize the critical role network designers play in an organization. Cisco’s goal is to make this role both more marketable for both employers and job-seekers.

“It’s important to enable these individuals to be identified in the marketplace and for them to have a professional development path recognizing the hard work they do in design and architecture.”

CCNA certification requirements:

In June 2007, Cisco has announced changes to the CCNA certification and exams. Cisco has now introduced ICND1 (640-822), ICND2 (640-816), and CCNA (640-802) exams. The 640-802 exam will be the single exam option for becoming CCNA. Alternatively, passing ICND1 and ICND2 will provide you the CCNA certification. However, passing ICND1 will provide a separate certification named Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician (CCENT).

You can choose either of the two paths for becoming CCNA:

* Single Exam Option > Pass Exam 640-802 > CCNA
* Two-Exam Option > Pass 640-822 (ICND1) > CCENT > Pass 640-816 (ICND2) > CCNA

If you would like to know more about the CCNA certification please visit: CCNA certification exam page.

Benefits of CCNA certification

• CCNA certification demonstrates that Cisco, the leading developer and provider of network technologies has recognized you as an expert in designing, installing, operating and troubleshooting medium-size routed and switched networks.

• This certification paves your way to the more advanced Cisco certifications.

• CCNA certification can make you more valuable to your company and help you get more salary and preference in promotions.

• CCNA certified professionals can get appropriate jobs and respectable position in the Networking industry.

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All of Test-key exam has been updated to Avril, 2008. Find now your latest IT certification exam.

Now you can have a second chance to pass your Microsoft certification exam!

Due to popular demand, the Second Shot offer has been extended through June 30, 2008! For a limited time, you can take advantage of this free offer—a second shot at any IT professional, developer, project manager, or Microsoft Dynamics certification exam. Just register for this offer before your first exam, and you will get two chances to pass. But this offer won’t last forever.

Register for the Microsoft Second Shot offer and take your first exam no later than May 31, 2008. If you do not pass on your first try, receive a free Second Shot at passing the exam through June 30, 2008.

There is no limit per person: If you register for this offer, you receive one free retake for each exam that you pay for and do not pass.

To take advantage of this offer:

• Step 1: Register for Second Shot on the Microsoft Web site, and receive an exam voucher number.
• Step 2: Schedule and pay for your initial exam through the Prometric Web site, call center,* or test center. You must have the voucher number available prior to registering.
• Step 3: Take the exam.
• Step 4: If you do not pass the exam, wait one day and then register for your free retake exam through the Prometric Web site, call center,* or test center. Just use the same voucher number.
• Step 5: Take your free Second Shot!

Which exams do the Second Shot offer apply to?
The Second Shot offer applies to any Microsoft Learning IT professional, developer, project manager, or Microsoft Dynamics exam.

Register now for this special offer…

We are glad to present you our new blog of IT certification exam tips.

About Test-key:

With years’ experience in IT certification exam training, Test-key has become premier source premier source for IT certification exam training. We are keeping following the official IT certification exams to ensure that our products are always up-to-date. Supported by our local and foreign IT engineers and experts, we can now offer the most similar question to the actual exam as well as the most accurate answers.

We open this blog to share with you all latest information and news about IT certification, in order to help you to prepare your IT exam. With this blog, you can share your opinions and ideas with us. We pay attention to what you think and your feedback on our service. Feel free to leave your comments here or ask your questions.

Microsoft is getting ready to introduce simulation questions, or performance-based testing, to more of its exams.

The company currently has five exams with a performance-based testing (PBT) component, with the sixth expected to hit the market within the next three months. Following that, many more PBT exams are expected to be introduced during the next 15 to 18 months. “We see [performance-based testing] as a major part of our program and reinforced in the exams that we release to the market,” said Rob Linsky, group product manager for IT pro and developer certification at Microsoft.

“In a performance-based testing environment, you actually have to use the technology to demonstrate your skills; you can’t get by with reading and memorizing something,” Linsky said. “It actually discovers and validates real skills.”

PBTs mean an improvement in exam security, as well. Traditional exam items such as multiple-choice, matching, drag and drop, true/false and listing often are stolen and pirated to people who resell that information. But a performance-based testing environment makes it almost impossible to do that. “You might be able to pirate a question, but at the end of the day, in order to get the question right on a performance-based exam, you still have to show that you can perform the task by using the technology,” Linsky said.

Linsky feels that forcing candidates to actually perform tasks is a much more relevant way to measure skills.

Reliability is one of the variables that Microsoft considers when analyzing the performance of its exams. “Microsoft has an in-house analyst who’s constantly reviewing our performance. And our traditional exams, in terms of reliability, have always been very high,” Linsky said. “Add in performance-based items and the reliability goes up even more; [it] makes the whole exam more relevant.”

That spells huge benefits for IT companies, as it makes candidates more marketable. “If you know that someone can maneuver a performance-based testing experience on their way to a certification, then you as a hiring manager have a much more reliable indicator of their skill level,” Linsky said. “We’re going to spend a lot of time and energy [indicating to] hiring managers that this is something they need to start looking for and have to be searching out and recruiting against,” he said.

Just because performance-based testing is more realistic doesn’t mean it’s designed to trick people. “Microsoft Learning’s role is to get an accurate measurement of a candidate’s true skill level to a hiring manager [or] an IT manager,” Linsky said. “If you know how to manipulate the technology, you should do well; if you don’t, you’re going to struggle. We think of our exams as testing someone’s ability to go do a job.”

Feedback from the usability study indicates that test-takers seem excited about performance-based testing. “It mirrors real-life situations that they’re going to run into rather than traditional multiple-choice answers, so they definitely prefer much more of a performance-based, lab-based, hands-on experience because it’s extremely relevant to what they’re going to be doing from day-to-day,” said Bill Wall, director of certification at Microsoft. “[Test-takers] also like the fact that after they pass, they feel like they’ve achieved something, set a higher bar, and perhaps over time it does a better job of eliminating those people who shouldn’t have the certification — who don’t have the skills.”

While performance-based testing is a more realistic gauge of a candidate’s skills, the scoring doesn’t differ from the traditional section, except that instead of having a choice of four or five answers, they are left to complete an open-ended scenario to find the correct answer using the technology. “If you’re using the [user interface] — using the command line — you have to go to the command line and enter in the proper information, the proper string of commands,” Linsky said. “So rather than having the answers displayed for you, you’re given a scenario and you’re given access to the technology and you’re asked to work through the technology. And to find the correct commands and components of the technology will allow you to get to a right answer.”

While Microsoft is not allowed to reveal passing scores, it can reveal some changes that will be made to the score report candidates receive. Each Microsoft exam typically consists of five to seven functional groups, or topic areas. When Microsoft first released simulation questions, the limitations of the technology made it difficult to give candidates a traditional exam-section score by functional group. The new score reports are laid out by functional group, thereby allowing candidates to assess their specific areas of weakness.

“We’re going to be involving a lot of our current [Microsoft Certified Professionals] who will be testing and validating the new performance-based testing technology we’re working on that incorporates Microsoft’s own virtualization technology,” Linsky said. “A lot of people think we’ve been giving it lip service, but it’s a complex thing to integrate into your program. We’re a leading certifier of people in the IT state, [and] we couldn’t wade into it haphazardly. We’ve had to really think about how to incorporate it correctly into our program.”

The Oracle Certification Program continues to be the most popular certification among all database vendors. This is no surprise considering Oracle has dominated the market for large scale relational databases worldwide. Oracle has completely revamped the DBA Certification track with the release of the Oralce9i database. To best understand the modifications that the DBA track has undergone, it’s best to first review the Oracle8i DBA track.

To become an Oracle8i Certified Professional (OCP) DBA, the certification candidate needed to pass five exams:

• Introduction to Oracle: SQL and PL/SQL
• Oracle8i: Architecture and Administration
• Oracle8i: Backup and Recovery
• Oracle8i: Performance Tuning
• Oracle8i: Network Administration

Passing all five exams was a very challenging task, to say the very least. The first two exams in the track were often considered to be among the toughest…as mastery of their content was essential in passing exams 3 and 4. The Network Administration exam was an entity of its own, containing content much different than the others…although extremely important for the DBA to perform his or her duties.

With Oracle9i, the DBA Certification track is now divided into 2 primary tiers, as well as a third Master-level tier:

• Oracle9i Certified Associate (OCA)
• Oracle9i Certified Professional (OCP)
• Oracle9i Certified Master (OCM)

The core Oracle9i DBA track consists of 4 exams: 2 for OCA, and an additional 2 for OCP.

Oracle9i Certified Associate (OCA)

The OCA tier was designed to provide for an entry-level DBA certification designation for the Oracle9i platform. Information Technology professionals with little or no Oracle experience can obtain the knowledge and skills necessary to break into the highly lucrative and challenging Oracle profession. The skills obtained from completing this certification track will allow the candidate to participate on Oracle-related projects acting as junior-level DBAs. Typically, a senior-level DBA will work closely to assign appropriate DBA tasks to strengthen existing skills, and challenge them to learn slightly more advanced procedures.

The Oracle9i Certified Associate (OCA) requires passing two exams:

• Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL
• Oracle9i Database: Fundamentals I

Oracle9i Certified Professional (OCP)

The OCP tier was designed for mid to senior-level DBAs with one or more years of focused Oracle DBA experience. The knowledge and skills obtained from completing this tier of the certification program prepare the DBA to provide the full assortment of DBA-related tasks…from Database Design and Development to production tasks such as Performance Tuning and Backup & Recovery.

The Oracle9i Certified Professional (OCP) requires passing the two exams in the OCA Tier, plus two additional exams:

• Oracle9i Database: Fundamentals II
• Oracle9i Database: Performance Tuning

Note: It is also possible to become an Oracle9i Certified Professional (OCP) by taking one exam: Oracle9i: New Features for Administrators. To qualify to become an OCP by taking this one “Upgrade” exam, you must first be an Oracle8i Certified Professional (OCP).

Oracle9i Certified Master (OCM)

There is a third tier to the Oracle9i DBA Certification Track, the OCM. This track is targeted at very senior level DBAs and Oracle consultants. If you have less than 5 years of serious Oracle work experience…and have not spent many hours working with and testing advanced Oracle9i features…don’t even consider this Tier as an option. I don’t mean to sound negative about this, but let me continue with more on the requirements…and hopefully you’ll see what I mean.

The OCM designation first requires that you obtain your Oracle9i OCP credential. Once this is secured, Oracle requires that you take two advanced Oracle courses from Oracle University. These are Instructor-led courses that will cost on average $2,000 each. There are about a dozen different courses to choose from:

• Oracle9i: Program with PL/SQL
• Oracle9i: Advanced PL/SQL
• Oracle9i: SQL Tuning Workshop
• Oracle9i: Database: Real Application Clusters
• Oracle9i: Database: Data Guard Administration
• Oracle9i: Database: Implement Partitioning
• Oracle9i: Data Warehouse Administration
• Oracle Net Services: Advanced Administration
• Oracle9i: Advanced Replication
• Oracle9i: Enterprise Manager

Once you’ve completed the course requirements, you can then register for and take the “practicum” exam. The practicum is a two-day, hands-on performance exam that requires the candidate to perform a number of tasks using Oracle9i on the Linux platform. Some of the skills that need to be proven include: database configuration, replication, partitioning, parallel operations, diagnostics, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and backup and recovery…all with “real-world” scenarios.

So, what’s the problem with that you may ask? First, the skills you’ll need to know and be able to perform are covered in many more than just two of the advanced courses you’ll be required to take from Oracle University. So even if you do take the two required courses, you’ll need to learn and be prepared for much more. This could require many months of additional self-study or many thousands of dollars in additional Oracle University courses. Second, the cost of the practicum exam is an outrageous $2,000. You won’t want to fail and re-take (re-pay) for this exam!!

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of a Master-level Oracle certification, but the course requirements and exam cost make this Tier cost-prohibitive for most.

Now you can have a second chance to pass your Microsoft certification exam!

Due to popular demand, the Second Shot offer has been extended through June 30, 2008! For a limited time, you can take advantage of this free offer—a second shot at any IT professional, developer, project manager, or Microsoft Dynamics certification exam. Just register for this offer before your first exam, and you will get two chances to pass. But this offer won’t last forever.

Register for the Microsoft Second Shot offer and take your first exam no later than May 31, 2008. If you do not pass on your first try, receive a free Second Shot at passing the exam through June 30, 2008.

There is no limit per person: If you register for this offer, you receive one free retake for each exam that you pay for and do not pass.

To take advantage of this offer:

• Step 1: Register for Second Shot on the Microsoft Web site, and receive an exam voucher number.

• Step 2: Schedule and pay for your initial exam through the Prometric Web site, call center,* or test center. You must have the voucher number available prior to registering.

• Step 3: Take the exam.

• Step 4: If you do not pass the exam, wait one day and then register for your free retake exam through the Prometric Web site, call center,* or test center. Just use the same voucher number.

• Step 5: Take your free Second Shot!

Which exams do the Second Shot offer apply to?
The Second Shot offer applies to any Microsoft Learning IT professional, developer, project manager, or Microsoft Dynamics exam.

Register now for this special offer…