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Tools and Techniques for the IT Professional www.certmag.com June 2008

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Earn up to 16 credits foryour IT certifi cations.

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June 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE �

EDITOR’S LETTER

Cert Really Goes GreenDANIEL MARGOLIS

Tools and Techniques for the IT Professional

VOLUME 10 ISSUE 6 JUNE 2008

GROUP PUBLISHER John R. Taggart | [email protected]

EDITOR IN CHIEF Norman B. Kamikow | [email protected]

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Mike Prokopeak | [email protected]

MANAGING EDITOR Daniel Margolis | [email protected]

SENIOR EDITORS Brian Summerfield | [email protected] Kellye Whitney | [email protected]

COPY EDITOR Meagan Polakowski | [email protected]

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Agatha Gilmore | [email protected] Deanna Hartley | [email protected] Lindsay Edmonds Wickman | [email protected]

DIRECTOR, CREATIVE & PRODUCTION SERVICES Kendra Chaplin | [email protected]

ART DIRECTOR Kasey Doshier | [email protected]

PRODUCTION MANAGER Linda Dziwak | [email protected]

WEB DESIGNER Spencer Thayer | [email protected]

E-MEDIA MANAGER Kat O’Connor | [email protected]

E-MEDIA DESIGNER Rahel Haile | [email protected]

VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS Gwen Connelly | [email protected]

EVENTS MANAGER Trey Smith | [email protected]

EVENTS COORDINATOR Christen MacKenzie | [email protected]

EVENTS SALES MANAGER Tana Johnson | [email protected]

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER Laura Cibuls | [email protected]

BUSINESS MANAGER Vince Czarnowski | [email protected]

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Cindy Cardinal | [email protected]

LIST MANAGER Jay Schwedelson | [email protected]

REPRINTS [email protected] OR call David Einziger at 212-221-9595, ext. 407

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER & ADVERTISING DIRECTOR James R. Yeakel | [email protected]

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Dave Lienemann | [email protected] Lisa Newton | [email protected]

PUBLISHER’S ASSISTANT Sarah Ryan | [email protected]

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSAgatha GilmoreBen WardenBrian SummerfieldDaniel MargolisDeanna HartleyJeff Pike

Katherine Spencer Lee

Kelly Shermach Kellye WhitneyKen Wagner

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman

Louis MarascioMeagan PolakowskiPatrick TurnerWayne Anderson

Norman B. Kamikow John R. Taggart PRESIDENT EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Philip S. Wolin Patricia Pierce GENERAL COUNSEL CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER

Certification Magazine (ISSN 1529-6903) is published monthly by MediaTec Publishing Inc., 318 Harrison St., Suite 301, Oakland, CA 94607. Periodicals Class Postage Paid at Oakland, CA and at additional mailing offices. POST-MASTER: Please send address changes to: Certification Magazine, P.O. Box 2083, Skokie, IL 60076-7983. Subscriptions are free to qualified IT profession-als. Non-qualified paid subscriptions are available at the subscription price of $39.97 for 12 issues. Canada/Mexico orders must be prepaid in U.S. funds with an additional $15 postage charge. All other countries outside the U.S. must be prepaid in U.S. funds with an additional $40 postage surcharge.

Certification Magazine, CertMag and CertMag.com are the trademarks of MediaTec Publishing Inc. Copyright © 2008, MediaTec Publishing Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reproduction of material published in Certification Magazine is forbidden without permission.

Printed by: RR Donnelley Inc., Mendota, IL

Our April issue featured an article on the energy and resource conservation move-ment within IT, sporting the eye-catching headline “Cert Goes Green.” The cover received an interesting

response from one reader, Anita Stark. She wrote:

“Please go green! If you’re really interested in going green, shouldn’t you be encouraging people to switch to online instead of print?”

Anita’s timing in sending this note could not have been better. As it happened, we here at MediaTec had recently decided to discontinue the print edition of the magazine, starting with the July issue. We’ll still be turning out a digital edition of Certification, but the main home of the magazine will now be our Web site: www.certmag.com. Our Web site has been a tremendous success for some time now, and we’ve seen that our readership — IT professionals and those who employ them — is most present online, so we will be concentrating our efforts there.

As for this issue, yes, you hold in your hand the final print edition of Certification. The magazine has existed in print form since fall 1999, emerging dur-ing the dot-com boom, weathering the subsequent bust and rallying along with the recovery. We’ve seen a lot of changes to our formula, style and content over the years, and our move to going all digital feels like the logical conclusion of that evo-lution. Going forward, we’ll continue to cover the cert market, as well as provide valuable IT career guidance to professionals at all levels. But we’ll also be expanding the scope of the magazine to look at where IT converges with the world and cul-ture at large, something we’ve at times touched on in our content but never really devoted ourselves toward. These changes will make for the strongest Cert yet. So be sure to set your browser to our URL and watch for our digital edition every month.

Daniel Margolis Managing Editor [email protected]

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� CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE June 2008

JUNE 2008

columnists8 TECH CAREERS Hottest Jobs Involve Wireless and

Mobile Technology KATHERINE SPENCER LEE

12 DEAR TECHIE Switch to Auditing Will Pay Off in Long Term WAYNE ANDERSON AND KEN WAGNER

�2 ENDTAG One Wrong Click to Armageddon BEN WARDEN

Online Degrees: Are They Right for You?WAYNE ANDERSONNo longer perceived as somehow “cheating,” online degrees have come into their own as a vital tool for IT pros busy with work and life.

18

CERTIFICATION

26 New Opportunities and Challenges: Are Application Developers Ready?LOUIS MARASCIOAs voice and the Web synch up more day by day, the field is wide open for application developers. Unified communication is expanding what already was an exciting field.

JOB ROLES

�� Where Have All the Help Desks Gone?PATRICK D. TURNERFor decades now, help desks and other forms of IT support have served as a vital place for fledgling techies to cut their teeth. But with this function moving overseas, where do IT pros get their start?

TECHNIQUES

IT issues, challenges and opportunities can be complicated. Searching for the information you need to understand them shouldn’t be. CertScope is IT search made simple. Look for these tags inside to see how CertScope can focus, streamline and simplify your online searches.

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June 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE �

resources� EDITOR’S LETTER Cert Really Goes Green

6 DATA STREAM

16 VIRTUAL VILLAGE Resume Tutorial

�1 AD INDEX

departments10 ACADEMIC CONNECTION

Be a Campus Know-IT-All AGATHA GILMOREEven as an IT student, you might not know how information technology works on campus. But having this information is crucial to your academic experience.

2� INSIDE CERTIFICATIONGIAC: The Hands-On IT Security Certification JEFF PIKEThe Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC) program has credentialed more than 20,000 professionals by offering 25 different IT security certifications tailored to specific skill sets.

�0 INTERFACEHexaware Technologies: The Other Side of Offshoring BRIAN SUMMERFIELDWith development centers in India, Germany and Mexico and offices in North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim of Asia, Hexaware has taken IT hiring global.

CERTMAG.COM COMMUNITIES

CAREER DEVELOPMENTwww.certmag.com/careers Kellye Whitney

DATABASEwww.certmag.com/database

Kelly Shermach

DEVELOPERS & DESIGNwww.certmag.com/development Kelly Shermach

SECURITYwww.certmag.com/security Daniel Margolis

STORAGE www.certmag.com/storage Deanna Hartley

SYSTEMS & NETWORKS www.certmag.com/networking Brian Summerfield

TRAINERS www.certmag.com/trainers Lindsay Edmonds Wickman

Michael Brannick, President and CEO, Prometric

Peter Childers, Vice President, Global Learning Services, Red Hat Inc.

David Foster, Ph.D., President, Caveon

Neill Hopkins, Vice President, Skills Development, CompTIA

Bee Ng, Ph.D., Senior Director, Autodesk Learning

Shawn Rogers, Worldwide Certification Project Manager, Hewlett-Packard Education

Erik Ullanderson, Manager, Certifications, Cisco Systems Inc.

Daniel L. Veitkus, Vice President, Training Services, Novell Inc.

Bob Whelan, Vice President and General Manager, Pearson VUE

Lutz L. Ziob, General Manager, Training and Certification, Microsoft

editorial advisory board

IT issues, challenges and opportunities can be complicated. Searching for the information you need to understand them shouldn’t be. CertScope is IT search made simple. Look for these tags inside to see how CertScope can focus, streamline and simplify your online searches.

CM0608_r9.indd 5 5/7/08 2:10:54 PM

6 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE June 2008

DATA STREAM News & Notes for Certified Professionals

WiMAX May Be Coming to Chicago This SummerWhen was the last time you used a pay phone? For many, it’s probably been at least a few years. The downfall of the pay phone is key to Don Stroberg’s vision of how a new wireless broadband technology — called WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) — will be adopted by the consuming public.

“In 1992, when mobile voice was introduced, every-body said the same thing: I’ve got services at home; I’ve got services in the office; I can get to a pay phone when I need one,” he recalled.

Stroberg, vice president of sales for Sprint Nex-tel’s Xohm Business Unit, anticipates Americans responding in the same way to the company’s next-generation Internet service. But in the end, he sees consumers adopting Sprint’s technology in the same way they abandoned pay phones and landlines for cell phones. “It’s going to be the same introduction, I think,” he said. “You’re going to see customer adop-tion of this really explode over the next five years.”

The EvolutionEarly in 2007, Sprint announced a new wireless broadband network that it claimed would surpass the capabilities of Wi-Fi in applications and mobil-ity. Then, at the end of the year, Sprint engaged in a “soft launch” of its WiMAX network, dubbed Xohm, rolling out Internet service to its employees in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington. In this phase, Sprint is testing the network and working out any kinks before it launches wireless Internet service to consumers in Chicago by this summer.

This phase, which Sprint is calling the “micro phase,” will begin with modems and aircards designed to work with Xohm, but at later dates, the company plans to incorporate many other nontraditional elec-tronic devices onto the network, including digital cameras, PDAs and media players. “You’re going to start to see a significant number of what we would call ‘nontraditional wireless devices’ get embedded with WiMAX and show up this year and probably explode in ’09 and ’10,” Stroberg explained.

So What?On the surface, it appears WiMAX is the answer to all fast-paced multimedia needs; the speed and capacity of the network will support this wide range of applications and devices. Sprint also says the ser-vice and devices will cost less.

Another strong suit of the technology is the vast area covered. Frank Ohrtman, president of consultancy WMX Systems LLC, gave an illustration of WiMAX’s

coverage capabilities: “San Francisco’s model for municipal Wi-Fi called for 37,000 Wi-Fi access points, which is difficult to maintain. [With WiMAX], we can have one access point to cover 40 square miles.”

ChallengesWhile the range of capabilities of the technology sounds exciting, some worry about the technologi-cal challenges the devices will encounter.

Dr. Chi Zhou, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has done her own research on WiMAX networks. She believes the initial costs of deploying the technology will be prohibitive. “When you try to deploy WiMAX, you have to buy and install new equipment,” she said. “The initial cost will be high.”

Additionally, she sees problems with upgrading current handheld devices to be able to support the types of activities Sprint wants to make available on its WiMAX network. “The handheld device is limited in size and also is powered by battery,” she said. “So we have a limited battery life, and then if we actually use it for video play [or gaming], we need to have big memory size to store all the pos-sible video files — that is a huge challenge.” She said the increased battery and memory power will be difficult to incorporate in increasingly small handheld devices.

Others, meanwhile, have concerns about WiMAX’s potential for adoption among consumers.

Floyd Alcorn is senior manager at Cognizant Tech-nology Solutions and provides consulting for wire-less services.

On the surface, it appears WiMAX is the

answer to all fast-paced multimedia needs; the speed and capacity of

the network will support this wide range of

applications and devices.

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“[With] a combination of the network, the device and some application, there’s going to need to be some ‘wow factor’ that happens with WiMAX,” Alcorn said. “[Cognizant is] of the opinion that if it is more of the same of what we have today, it may struggle to get to a point where people make an eco-nomic decision to buy additional service.”

Sprint’s Stroberg agreed with Alcorn: “We don’t have the exact combination yet, [but] it’s not just incumbent on [Sprint to come up with the ‘wow fac-tor’].” The company has been encouraging other companies to take part in building WiMAX and the embedded devices it would support through its part-nerships. Recognizing the challenges, “we’re com-ing anyway,” said Stroberg.

Program UpdatesCisco has unveiled the redesign of its CCVP pro-fessional-level voice certification program. The integration of more hands-on labs is the most sig-

nificant change in the CCVP coursework. Students practice on live networks at Cisco learning partner sites and engage in lab activities that model the challenges of the real world. Other enhancements to the CCVP curriculum include the elimination of a course in gateways and gatekeepers. Instead, this information is integrated throughout the pro-gram’s courses, which frees up time to add more complex network exercises. Also, the curriculum now covers single-site, centralized and multi-site configurations. To gain CCVP certification, stu-dents must pass five qualifying exams, includ-ing three that are new to the program: CVOICE 6.0/624-436 Exam, CIPT1 6.0/642-446 Exam and CIPT2 6.0/642-456 Exam. There are two paths to the CCVP certification: the Cisco Unified CallMa-nager v4.1 and the Cisco Unified Communications Manager v6.0. 8

– Meagan Polakowski, [email protected]

S E R V I N G I T G O V E R N A N C E P R O F E S S I O N A L S

Certified in the Governance of Enterprise ITTM (CGEITTM)recognizes IT professionals who have the knowledge, personal skill and business experience to maximize IT’s contribution to enterprise success while managing and mitigating the risks posed by IT.

• Supports the growing business demands related to IT governance• Increases the awareness and importance of IT governance good

practices and issues • Defines the roles and responsibilities of the professionals

performing IT governance work

Final Registration: 24 September 2008First Exam: 13 December 2008

Grandfathering Program Now Available!Apply for certification without taking the CGEIT exam through 31 October 2008.

Visit www.isaca.org/cgeit for more information.

ISACA Now Offering a New Certification in IT Governance

CGEITcertmag8.125x5.875:CGEITcertmag8.125x5.875 4/16/08 9:20 AM Page 1

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TECH CAREERS

Hottest Jobs Involve Wireless and Mobile Technology

KATHERINE SPENCER LEE

Wireless and mobile devices are some of the tech-nologies that earn the biggest “oohs” and “ahhs” from employees as they gain access to exciting new communication features and options. There’s little doubt that these gadgets have the “wow fac-tor,” but, as many information technology profes-sionals know, a lot of work is required to support and maintain them.

To put it frankly, a mobile workforce is more demanding. Growing use of wire-less devices such as smart phones, cell phones and laptops has created new pressures to ensure these tools function effectively and securely within a company’s network. There may be a variety of products and brands in use, requiring IT pro-fessionals to broaden their expertise quickly to manage them all.

Here are some of the positions being most affected by the growing use of wireless and mobile devices:

Messaging AdministratorMessaging administrator is one of the hottest job cat-egories in IT right now. According to the “Robert Half Technology 2008 Salary Guide,” salaries for these pro-fessionals are expected to increase 7.1 percent this year versus 2007, to between $55,000 and $77,500 annually, due to the strong demand for their talents. Messaging administrators are needed to evaluate, recommend and implement mobile messaging solutions.

Network ManagerNetwork managers are responsible for ensuring a company’s road warriors can securely and easily access the firm’s data and files remotely. They over-see mobile messaging servers and integrate wireless products into the firm’s network. For three consecu-tive quarters, networking has been cited as the most in-demand position in the “Robert Half Technology IT

Hiring Index and Skills Report.” According to the “Sal-ary Guide,” compensation for network managers is forecast to climb a solid 7 percent in 2008, to the range of $74,500 to $98,500 annually.

Network Security AdministratorOne of the chief concerns for most companies when they consider the use of wireless and mobile devices is security. How can employees use these gadgets securely when they’re out of the office? What if the devices are stolen or lost? Network security admin-istrators implement policies and procedures to deal with these types of issues, resulting in employers competing heavily for their talents. Salaries are pro-jected in the range of $72,750 to $103,000 per year, a 4.5 percent increase over 2007.

Telecommunications SpecialistThose who specialize in telecommunications and are able to design and manage remote access technolo-gies are in demand. The role of telecommunications specialist historically has focused on voice, data and video cabling and equipment, but it has broadened in recent years. Salaries for these professionals are fore-cast to rise 4.1 percent in 2008, to between $49,250 and $72,500 a year.

Systems AdministratorSystems administration is another category that has been changed by the growing use of wireless and mobile technologies. Systems administrators have had to develop knowledge of wireless connectivity to play a key role in helping maintain the wireless network. They’re often responsible for configuring and troubleshooting wireless and mobile devices. Salaries for systems administrators are expected to increase 3.8 percent this year, to the range of $51,750 and $78,750 annually.

The use of wireless and mobile devices is only expected to grow over time. So if you’re looking to make yourself more marketable, gaining new exper-tise in working with and optimizing these tools can be a smart career move. 8

Katherine Spencer Lee is executive director of Robert Half Technology, a provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis. She can be reached at [email protected].

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ACADEMIC CONNECTION

Be a Campus Know-IT-AllAGATHA GILMORE

But there are some instances when you might find yourself uncharacteristically mum. For example, when it comes to assessing the role of information technology in your curriculum or daily campus life, you might not know what to ask.

Enter Educause, a nonprofit organization created to improve the use of information technology in higher education. In partnership with the American Associ-ation of College Registrars and Admissions Officers and the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, Educause developed a handy guide to help students evaluate IT on campus.

“This is thought to be a set of questions to help [stu-dents] think intelligently about the IT environment at schools they’re considering,” said Peter DeBlois, director of programs and media relations for Edu-cause, which has 17,000 active members from more than 2,250 colleges, universities and educational organizations.

While DeBlois said the primary audiences are pro-spective college students, the campus IT organization and the admissions office, the publication – called the “Student Guide to Evaluating Information Technol-ogy on Campus” – also could be useful for students considering or who have recently selected IT as a major.

“There are so many reasons why institu-tions have different computing organiza-tions, based on their size, institutional mission and so on,” DeBlois said. “It’s not to rank them, but to help students and parents and guardians make informed decisions.”

The guide offers students more than 40 pertinent questions to ask about an insti-tution’s IT environment, and the questions

are relevant for both two- and four-year public, private or research institutions. The queries are organized into four main categories: academic experience, adminis-trative experience, student life and services and fees. To help narrow it down, DeBlois highlighted the one crucial must-know from each category.

Academic ExperienceJust because you’re a savvy IT student doesn’t mean you’re an instant expert on all the equipment require-ments for your classes.

“It’s important for students to find out how technol-ogy is going to be used in their fields of interest,” DeBlois said. “For example, if you’re going into engi-neering, are you required to purchase a certain type of computer or laptop in order to do academic work either the initial first year or in advanced courses?”

DeBlois also noted that as more students bring their own equipment to campus, they should verify that their personal laptops “mesh with disciplinary expectations.”

Administrative Experience“The one most compelling ought-to-know for pro-spective students is to find out how security and pri-vacy and things like file sharing are handled on the campus,” DeBlois said.

As an IT student, you probably send many attach-ments via e-mail and use the Web extensively – possibly even divulging personal or other identi-fying information – so it’s important to understand

As a student, you’re rarely at a loss for questions. Indeed, an inquisitive mind is at the root of all learning — and the better the queries, the richer the experience.

CM0608_r9.indd 10 5/7/08 2:11:24 PM

your university’s policies and proce-dures. It’s also crucial to know how file sharing works via the campus library’s online database.

“Many schools will not only offer but require that students using the network download a package of software – that will include virus protection, a firewall and other security features – before they’re authorized to get on the network,” DeBlois added.

Student LifeAs an IT student, you’ll probably be run-ning from place to place to get assign-ments done, so it’s important to know where the public computing areas are, DeBlois said. Most importantly, you should find out where and how wireless networking is available. If you’re commut-ing to class, this information is particularly important, as is finding out how to access the network from home or elsewhere.

“Commuting students need to find out what their opportunities to access com-puting remotely are,” DeBlois said. “That’s certainly a consideration for major urban institutions and those with large part-time commuter populations.”

Services and FeesWhen much of your curriculum involves networking and Web use, it’s critical that you fully understand the nature of your uni-versity’s IT help desk: its hours, what kind of help is available and where you need to go for additional resources, DeBlois said.

“It’s good for [students] to find out just how the computing and technology support ser-vices work at the institution,” he said.

The Educause guide also stresses that students should remember they are con-sumers as well, and they should find out about the costs associated with things such as antivirus software packages or using the library’s online services. 8

– Agatha Gilmore, [email protected]

DOES YOUR COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITYOFFER DEGREESAND PROGRAMSIN IT?

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THAN 50,000 ITPROFESSIONALS?

Advertise in AcademicConnection: Where IT professionals look when they’reheaded back to campus.

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I use it every day.

Call 800-756-7920to enroll today.

Of all the resources I use to make a difference in IT today, the one I use the most is what I learned through Bellevue University. A degree gave me the knowledge and confi dence to take the lead in my job, making a difference every day.

Select from more than 20 accelerated bachelor’s degrees and 12 master’s degrees online including these for IT professionals:

• Bachelor’s in BIS, CIS-Business, CIS-Technology Advancement Program, Internet Systems and Software Technology, MIS, and Systems & Network Administration

• Master’s in CIS and MIS

y

Real Learning for Real Life

Accredited by The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The Bellevue University College of Business also is accredited by the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE). Bellevue

University does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or disability in the educational programs and activities it operates.

www.bellevue.edu

Earn up to 16 credits for your IT certifi cations.

CM0608_r9.indd 11 5/7/08 2:11:27 PM


DEAR TECHIE

Switch to Auditing Will Pay Off in Long TermDear Techie,I am looking for some sound advice regarding CISA and the IT auditor. I am considering moving into IT auditor as a career option. I have been working in IT for the last eight years, but mostly in network support. I would like your opinion on whether IT audit would be a wise career move; and furthermore, judging from my work experience, would I be able to apply for CISA certification? Thanks for your time.

Regards, Donald Chodeva

Ken Wagner:

To become a certified IT auditor, I would recommend an auditing certification such as the CISA. However, there are more general audit qualifications such as the Certified Internal Auditor offered by the Institute of Internal Auditors. Or there’s a more specialized qualification program offered by (ISC)2 that includes the CAP, the SSCP or the higher CISSP certification. Combine any of the above certification programs with other IT professional certifications and this will only enhance your chances of entering the field.

The CISA is internationally recognized, and it’s rein-forced by the fact that you can’t just sit for the exam at a normal testing center, but at set ISACA-named centers only at set periods. Getting CISA status is not as easy as just passing an exam. ISACA says: “A minimum of five years of professional information systems auditing, control or security work experience (as described in the job practice areas) is required for certification. Substitutions and waivers of such expe-rience may be obtained if certain education and gen-eral IS or audit experience requirements are met.”

I must point out that you are moving from one area of IT where you have eight years experience to another field of IT: Do not expect an easy or smooth transition. You’ll be moving from a hands-on job to one where you’ll be assessing systems and then handing over your findings. Plus, your salary may drop as you’ll be entering the field at an entry-level position. While the IT auditing field isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, it is still a good field to get into, especially since it is one that is rapidly growing due to companies’ increasing aware-ness of security and the need for legal compliance.

Wayne Anderson:

No matter your level of experience with information security, I would encourage you to start preparing in

this area. One of the key things about a certification is that part of the credential is to certify your experi-ence in the subject matter. I would advise starting with a lower level certification (or two, depending on your budget and time available) and working up to the CISA.

My recommendation for your first credential in this space would either be the CompTIA Security+ or the GSEC from GIAC. Security+ is one of the worst-written exams I have sat for in terms of the lack of polish; however, it has a more comprehensive set of material than many credentials that have a more senior placement in the industry.

You are building a solid footing to make sure this is something you have a basic understanding of and something you will be interested in long term. The CISA has a cost both in terms of sitting for the exam and the extensive study required. At the same time, the rewards of the CISA credential also could be sig-nificant, depending on your expectations. Certification Magazine’s 2007 Salary Survey indicated that individu-als with the CISA earned, on average, $98,740.

CISA-certified folks are in demand, too. At the time of this writing, a search on the keyword “CISA” on each of the major search engines turned up volumi-nous results, including 1,277 listings on one first-tier employment site. I would caution you to temper your enthusiasm with the knowledge that using the CISA to get a job will only help you go after one of these positions in combination with experience. Until then, expect your CISA to be a key to entry-level positions that will pay off in the long run with increased salary and desirability as an experienced employee. 8

Wayne Anderson is a highly certified instructional consultant and the certification lead for Avanade, a global Microsoft consultancy. Ken Wagner is an IT network manager and part-time IT lecturer in the United Kingdom. He has lived in the United States, Asia and Europe. To pose a question to Ken and Wayne, send an e-mail to [email protected].

CM0608_r9.indd 12 5/7/08 2:11:27 PM

BIND IN

CM0608_r9.indd 13 5/7/08 2:11:27 PM

BIND IN

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EnergizeyourIT careerat www.certmag.com• Career-Focused Communities

• CertScope®

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VIRTUAL VILLAGE

Resume TutorialDANIEL MARGOLIS

Building a resume seems simple enough, but when you actually sit down to do so, it’s possible to draw a blank. More difficult is figuring out how to target your resume toward a specific desired outcome or tailor it for better success.

Members of our CertMag.com discussion forums recently saw fit to conduct an impromptu resume advice session. It started with junior member dsa1971 post-ing: “I’ve been working on my resume and am looking for some good IT resume examples to help me with my resume, preferably examples for programmers and ana-lysts. Any links to some examples would be great.”

Regular forum contributor Wayne Anderson responded with a lengthy breakdown of this subject:

“A solid resume is indispensible in being able to properly represent yourself to potential employers. The good news is that because of how critical this is to each professional, the Internet provides a wealth of information and resources on how to guide your career materials.

Monster’s Basics: This provides basic tips on build-ing a technical resume and using it to stand out from the pile to get the interview. If you are new to resumes or looking to brush up your resume-writing skills and concepts because it has been a while, this is a good place to start conceptually. http://content.monster.com/resume/home.aspx

Microsoft’s Resume Template: Obviously 100,001 candidates are using the templates posted here. Use these as a starting point and customize them from there to stand out from the crowd. Do not be afraid to modify the template. Use visual cues — such as certification logos — near the top of your resume to stand out from the stack. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/te...33.aspx?av=ZWD

Dice Resume Ideas: Any discussion of technol-ogy resumes would not be complete without featuring some of Dice’s ideas on the matter. Dice is focused on technology jobs as a technol-ogy job board, so all of the resources on Dice are going to be specifically focused for that audi-ence. This provides a good set of resources for resume tips for various situations and how to han-dle changes in your job-seeking status. http://career-resources.dice.com/tec...articles.shtml

Finally, a personal tip. I am very involved personally on the Internet. I contribute to several technical com-munities, run my own personal Web site, write a per-

sonal and a technical company blog and give small presentations locally. Over the years as my visibility has increased, I have picked up some experiences that I would advise anyone implement as soon as possible, before you encounter any of the problems I have:

1. Remove your intimate contact info from any Inter-net-posted resource. I am not saying do not provide your contact information to Monster.com to cre-ate an account, but if a job site offers the ability to mark your address and phone number confidential, I would strongly advise you to do so. On Word docu-ments that you host on personal Web sites or post as CVs for speaking or other presentation engage-ments, remove your address and phone number. An e-mail is all the contact that an interested party will need for the first contact.

If you trust them or want the opportunity to go further, you can always provide a resume with full contact information on a private channel such as e-mail.

2. Keep two versions of each resume that you use. One is your “elevator pitch” resume. One is your full CV. The elevator pitch resume is the one that you use to get attention. This is one in which you com-press your experience and skills, throw down logos

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June 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 17

and flash like its 1999, and use it to get attention for further discussions. The second one is the full, dry, super-professional resume that you use for situ-ations such as an interview or for employers that need everything there is to know about your career before they consider you. You should do this for each resume that you put together.

3. Build multiple resumes if you have a varied skill set and are pursuing multiple possible positions. For example, if you are a Linux guru that can do Web development and you want to go after both types of job, don’t try to use a catch-all resume. Build a tar-geted set of resume and cover letter for each focus and use them as appropriate.”

Systems & NetworksWhen making a career change in IT, choosing between two certs can be a daunting task. Our Sys-tems & Networks discussion forums recently saw a post from someone struggling with such a decision. In a thread titled “CCENT or CCNA,” junior member rjw817 said: “I have been working in IT for about 1.5 years now, making a career change. I received my B.S. in IT in September 2007. I am working in a network environment but at the bottom of the totem pole. I am greatly interested in the networking field and would like to get certified. Should I advance gradually and take the CCENT or buckle down and go for the CCNA? Study time is not a problem. My employer has offered to pay for classes. Suggestions from you seasoned pros would be greatly appreciated.”

Forum regular Wagnerk answered: “My first ques-tion to you is, ‘Will you or are you working with Cisco equipment?’ If not, then I would recommend for you to either do a non-vendor specific cert like the CompTIA Network+ or a certification program from the vendor that you actually work with like HP or 3Com, etc. Now, assuming that you are or will be working with Cisco equipment, I would recommend doing the CCENT 640-822 ICND1 exam and course. I say this because by doing this exam you’ll do the entry level Cisco cert and get a feel for what it’s like. Then, if you feel like you want to progress higher, all you have to do is top up to the CCNA by doing the 640-816 ICND2 exam. That’s my opinion anyway.”

SecurityOver in our Security forums, Wayne Anderson posted these recommendations for deciding which security cert to target, beginning with a short anecdote:

“Recently while I was talking with some newly found associates at a Borders bookstore, I came to the realization that rather than the problem of yesteryear of an industry in which security cer-tification essentially meant you chose between nothing, the Security+ or the CISSP, today’s secu-rity credentialing industry is overflowing with possible credentials to go after, which can make concentrating or choosing a specific credential program to pursue rather difficult.

I spent some time this week researching many security credentials including some interviews with some folks who have many of them and have come up with a look at some of the most common creden-tials in the field that I hope some will find helpful.

Entry Level: Security+ from CompTIA. Basic concepts, wide range of material, includes physical security concepts.

Intermediate: SSCP from (ISC)2. A little beyond the Security+ basic concepts, explores deeper concepts around attack vectors and protection.

Advanced: CISSP from (ISC)2. The ‘gold standard’ of security certification. Inch deep and a mile wide, so to speak. There is some minor controversy around the exam as the ques-tion quality is uneven; however, the credential is unbeatable for universal recognition.

Management: Intermediate/Advanced: GSLC from GIAC. There is no substitute. Broad subject content and deep content coverage.”

This started a discussion of these selections. Junior member gpearson responded:

“Wayne, as I am fortunate to hold both the CISSP and several GIAC certifications, as well as the CISM from ISACA, I would actually state that the CISSP leans more towards the management and overall under-standing of a comprehensive security program. The GIAC certifications are quite technical in nature, and less focused on the management content.

Agree? Disagree? Have something else to share? Your comments and thoughts are always appreciated on our forums. Visit them at www.certmag.com/forums. 8

– Daniel Margolis, [email protected]

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CERTIFICATION

Online Degrees: Are They Right for You?

WAYNE ANDERSON


CM0608_r9.indd 18 5/7/08 2:12:05 PM

Search for “online degree” on Google and you are liable to come back with more than 2� million returns.

“Get your degree fast!”

“Never go into a university!”

“We are accredited!”

As gimmicky as it may seem, there’s a real need for this service. To advance careers, many professionals find they need to return to school to obtain a degree or to further their education with a graduate program. It has become possible for universities to offer distance learning options via the Internet that can be flexible enough to avoid interrupting profes-sionals’ jobs. These programs are noted for their reduced cost, increased flexibility and the convenience of obtaining the degree from home in some cases. But there also is the perception that an online degree is easier than obtaining a diploma in a traditional college campus setting.

At the same time, using an Internet-based program of study introduces its own set of challenges. Candidates need to be highly motivated to complete self-study, discipline is needed to complete long-term assign-ments and for synchronous programs — those in which you attend a class with a teacher in real time online — students still have to make time to attend classes. Online students have to be able to filter out dis-tractions.

As the concept of attending a university online has become more accepted in professional societies around the globe, the number of degree programs and institutions has skyrocketed to address a varied landscape of learning needs. New online learning models have emerged, from hybrid models in which a student takes classes on a flexible sched-ule at a nearby campus, to options that are completely online with a real-time teacher or completely self-governed. Every year there seem to be more and more options to extend professional learning online, but how can students tell whether an online degree is the right career move?


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Types of Degree ProgramsThe first thing to consider when looking at an online degree is the type of program being offered by an institution. In recent years, programs have been introduced that provide students with more and more autonomy and control of their programs of study. While programs vary by institution, most online degree offerings break down into three cate-gories: hybrid programs and synchronous and asyn-chronous online learning.

Hybrid study programs offer students the opportu-nity to take some classes online and some in a tradi-tional university setting. Online synchronized study offers students the choice of studying through an online portal system; how-ever, the student is expected to appear for most classes on a real-time schedule. These classes often are presented via video and webcam over the Internet in the evenings and offer the student the abil-ity to pose questions, inter-act with a real professor and obtain real-time support for the learning material.

Recently, online institutions have introduced courses that are completely online self-study, also called asynchro-nous learning. These courses often boast a series of assign-ments that need to be com-pleted in a certain timeframe, with an online feedback sys-tem or forum that allows stu-dents to pose questions to the professor and their class-mates.

Early distance learning and online learning programs allowed students to attend many of their classes at a local institution’s traditional campus and then pay to attend certain courses via an online learning system in a hybrid model. This hybrid model offers students the opportunity to choose the

“best” method for their individual learning needs, as well as the option to take some classes at a cam-pus. Even in classes that are entirely presented through the online distance learning mechanism, there still is the opportunity to visit a professor on campus and obtain personal support for concepts presented in the class.

This level of support comes at a cost to the students in the flexibility of their programs of study. Many of the classes offered in this hybrid environment are synchronous — that is, they offer either video or other learning content that is taken by a class of students at a given time. Often, this can mean pro-fessionals will need to plan to either be available at

Every year there seem

to be more and more

options to extend

professional learning

online, but how can

students tell whether

an online degree is the

right career move?

CM0608_r9.indd 20 5/7/08 2:12:06 PM

home at a certain time, or they will lose that access to the professor and instead attend a recorded session.

Online degrees with synchronous learning provide a com-pletely online program, so the student will not need to plan to attend in-person classes but still will participate in real-time online sessions. These programs attempt to offer students a balanced learning environment. While students are not required to appear on a traditional campus, they still must plan to “attend” some classes online during certain times offered as video broadcasts, usually supplemented with a chat or voice channel to allow students to ask questions.

Many institutions that use this synchronous learning envi-ronment for online students will also offer “office hours” — posted times when a professor is available to answer a question quickly — roughly analogous to when a student at a traditional university would be able to come and ask a question of a professor. While many synchronous learning programs will provide better real-time support for students and the ability to directly ask questions and get answers, students interested in one of these programs will need to be careful about scheduling and will need to balance work or other family demands against the times classes are con-ducted on the computer.

More and more common these days is asynchronous online learning — the completely independent self-study method. In a self-study environment, the student is completely responsi-ble for learning, and the institu-tion takes more of a mentoring role, connecting students with resources for study material and textbooks, ways to get help and grading exams. As the stu-dent is completely responsible for his or her own learning, the course can be self-paced and there is no time that the student is required to be available to attend an online class.

Stephen Gatlin, president of Gatlin Education Services, a provider of learning con-tent to online organizations, described the independent self-study method. “Stu-dents can create their own study schedule and complete

courses in their own time,” Gatlin said. “The instructional design is such high quality that the actual learning experi-ence is rich and interesting, as well as effective.” These kinds of programs offer the most flexibility for the student but the least direct support for the student’s learning. Stu-dents often can look forward to online Web-based forums or e-mail for learning assistance.

Online Degrees Fit in the IT IndustryWith online degree programs’ relatively recent introduc-tion to the IT industry, many students are unfamiliar with the level of acceptance of online degrees offered and how certifications fit into the degree programs. This varies by institution and can be based on the location of a learning institution’s headquarters and the university’s technology partners. These are key questions students should ask the

Interested in pursuing an online degree? Check CertScope to read 30 CertMag articles and link to 96 Web sites covering “online degrees.”

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CM0608_r9.indd 21 5/7/08 2:12:09 PM


counselor of any institution they approach because many programs offer certification as part of the program; however, the degree of integration varies, including how program fees are incorporated.

When examining a school’s value for your career, one of the most important things to examine is the level of accreditation of the school. There are six regional accreditation associations in the United States, and the school you are considering should be listed with one of them. With-out regional accreditation, the degree or credits you earn with a given school may not be rec-ognized by outside businesses or other schools.

As long as the school has been accredited by one of these six associations, the degree you earn from their programs will have the same standing as a degree earned from a tradi-tional university. When asked what caution he would have for a student considering an online degree, Pat Partridge, vice pres-ident of enrollment at Western Governors University, indicated that a student shouldn’t “think it’s easier. It’s generally not. Studying and preparation is still essential.”

Many of these online degrees are focused on technology, and as a result, can offer a student a more comprehensive learning experience than some tradi-tional university settings.

“Our programs are developed around core com-petencies recognized by the marketplace as being relevant,” said Ruki Jayaraman, director of the College of Information Technology at Western Governors University. “Unlike traditional degrees in [computer science] or IT, the degree programs at WGU are not only designed to develop hands-on skills and capabilities in current areas of informa-tion technology, but also help students become competent in project management, leadership and professionalism.”

By attending programs integrating additional com-ponents that go beyond the technology and general education focuses of many traditional institutions, students can gain exposure to many of the real-world scenarios they will encounter in the field.

As part of this beyond-the-classroom focus, many organizations integrate information technology-centric industry certifications into their degree pro-

grams. Being aware of how an institution of choice uses certifications can help a student choose a program that will provide the basis to build a suc-cessful career right after graduation. Many institu-tions provide the learning necessary for a student to certify and then allow students to choose whether or not they would like to take that extra step on their own. Other programs integrate certifications as exams in technology-focused courses to provide an industry-based assessment of a student’s learning. An enrollment counselor at any university should be able to explain how certifications are integrated into the degree program.

There is the perception that an online degree is

easier than obtaining a diploma in a

traditional college campus setting.

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June 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 2�

Matching a Program With Your LifeWith the wide array of options that students have to pick from in online study programs, they should take the time to choose the program and university that works best for them. Each of the available types of programs places different demands on the student, and institutions have different ways of implement-ing the programs within each category. Students interested in self-study programs should be aware that a balance exists in most programs between flexibility for the student and the amount of support resources available for each class.

When considering an online program, it is important to take the time to find out about the program and the institution offering it. It is important that a student understands the time and commitment involved in enrolling in an online degree program.

“Do the research,” Jayaraman said. “Talk to peo-ple who have had experience in online learning to ensure that you not only understand what the learn-ing responsibilities entail, but that you are prepared for them.”

Some students may choose to give up some of the flex-ibility in a fully self-paced asynchronous online pro-gram in order to obtain some of the advanced sup-port from professors that a synchronous or hybrid pro-gram may make available. For self-study programs, it is critical that each student is prepared to put in the time to complete course material every week.

“Students will need to have the discipline to commit them-selves to 20 to 30 hours a week for learning and preparation,” Jayaraman said. “Unlike a traditional brick-and-mortar institution, where students have structure and a sched-ule for attending classes, stu-dents can sometimes get lost in an online world, where they lose the connection with oth-

ers in their cohort group and, sometimes, the motiva-tion for learning. They must have the discipline neces-sary to stay focused.”

Making the DecisionIn the end, students will have to make the decision about which program type and institution most closely matches their schedules, abilities and career aspirations.

Each program has differences in learning format, mentoring resources, exams and assessments, access to professors and resources required for completion. Taking the time to examine the avail-able programs, find out how the university works, how certifications are integrated and the total costs will help you determine if an online degree program is right for you. 8

Wayne Anderson is a highly certified instructional consultant and the certification lead for Avanade, a global Microsoft consultancy. He can be reached at [email protected].

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2� CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE June 2008

INSIDE CERTIFICATION

GIAC: The Hands-On IT Security Certification

JEFF PIKE

When GIAC founder Stephen Northcutt moved from network management to the information assurance function, he observed that many people came to work day after day to produce policies or run tools with no understanding of the fundamental technologies and principles of security. They were often stressed out, secretive, edgy and defensive because they knew they did not have the understanding or mastery of tools they needed to be effective. And unskilled security professionals do not reduce risk; in fact, they put their organizations in jeopardy.

To address this concern, in 1999, Northcutt — a renowned pioneer of intrusion detection who cur-rently serves as president of the SANS Technology Institute — created the Global Information Assur-ance Certification (GIAC) program, which has since credentialed more than 20,000 professionals and is leading the industry in technical, job task-based IT security certification. Unlike many other IT security certifications with a broader focus, GIAC is unique in offering 25 different IT security certifications tai-lored to specific skill sets.

GIAC’s mission is to provide assurance to employers that their people can do the job. The objectives for each GIAC certification are developed in collaboration with some of the top subject matter experts in the industry.

The most popular GIAC certifications include GCFA (Forensics), GCIA (Intrusion Analysis), GCIH (Incident Handling and Hacker Exploits), GSEC (Security Essen-tials), GSLC (Security Leadership) and GREM (Reverse Engineering Malware). Most of these certifications are unique in the industry, and updating each certification to reflect the latest standards is a continuous process.

The GREM certification, which validates the skills of those responsible for detecting and reverse engi-neering malware, is being updated with the latest techniques for analyzing worms, Trojans and other malware plaguing the industry. According to Lenny Zeltser, lead author of the SANS course “Reverse-Engineering Malware” and co-author of the book Malware: Fighting Malicious Code, “The evolution of malware demands a broader and more compre-hensive skill set from the analysts, and GIAC has

met this need by expanding the GREM certification. I don’t know of any other professional designation that certifies this unique group of people.”

Because of the specialized skill sets validated by GIAC certifications, they are recognized as some of the most relevant in the industry. According to Wayne Ho, business information security officer at Global Bank, “GIAC certifications are the only hard-core, hands-on technical certifications available in

the market.” As an example of how certifying spe-cialized skill sets translates to getting the job done, Ho said, “GIAC proves that I have a solid technical background to support any challenge I deal with every day. There are so many new tools coming up daily, but the underlying background affirmed by GIAC essentially remains the same.”

Benefits of GIAC CertificationFor individuals, a GIAC certification validates a job-based skill set that favorably influences job security and a higher rate of pay. It also reinforces that the person has the knowledge and skills to handle the job at hand. Peter Leight of Universal Orlando said, “There is no question in my mind that my SANS/

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June 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 2�

GIAC experiences gave me a far greater knowledge base to draw on when faced with the need to cre-ate unique security and compliance solutions for my company. The resulting implementations made us dramatically safer and reduced the overall cost of compliance significantly.”

For employers, a GIAC certification offers increased confidence in their employees’ skills and is a great indicator of job-related knowledge. Some employers use GIAC certifications as an aide in their promotion and payroll decisions. Jeffrey Wiley of Raytheon uses GIAC to help in his hiring process: “Being a GIAC certification holder myself, I know what it rep-resents, and when interviewing [for a position], I fre-quently move GIAC holders’ resumes to the top of the interview stack. GIAC is an invaluable cert to have. It

ensures that the holder truly has hands-on skills.”

In addition to the obvious benefits that come with a recognized credential, several GIAC certifications are included in the Department of Defense 8570 program. The DOD 8570 directive says that those who work for the Department of Defense and hold an IT security-related position must demonstrate they have an ade-quate level of practical IT security knowledge. The 8570 directive enforces this premise by approving a select group of IT security certifications.

Top-performing GIAC certification holders also will find additional benefits as members of the GIAC Advisory Board. The GIAC Advisory Board is made up of GIAC cer-tified professionals who wish to give back to the security community by taking an active role in the GIAC program. Membership on the Advisory Board is available to those who score better than 90 percent – which is considered honors level – on a GIAC certification exam.

GIAC looks to the Advisory Board first when input is needed from industry subject matter experts on certification development. GIAC Advisory Board members often have additional opportunities to get involved with SANS and GIAC, including access to a closed mailing list of Advisory Board members with whom they can collaborate regarding the issues they are facing in the field.

The GIAC program is ANSI/ISO/IEC 17024 accredited. This ANSI (American National Standards Institute) accreditation means GIAC is a responsible, fair and quality-oriented testing and certification-granting orga-nization within the high-stakes testing and certification industry. GIAC is expanding its scope to include other specialized certifications later this year.

Becoming CertifiedThe first step to becoming GIAC certified is to choose a certification domain. The sec-ond step is to determine the specific skill sets you would like to validate, and then map these skills to the correspond-ing certification. The third step is to determine if you need additional training; GIAC offers knowledge assess-ments and practice tests to help you ascertain your skill

level. The final step is to take your certification exam.

GIAC certification domains include:

• Audit domain: Duties consist of auditing the secu-rity posture of networks and systems or auditing systems for compliance with policy.

• Legal domain: Covers legal issues related to IT security.

• Management domain: Covers the skills needed to manage a technical staff of administrators, ana-lysts and IT security personnel.

• Security administration: This is by far GIAC’s most popular domain. If you are a technical person with technical hands-on duties and you want to validate and improve your skills, this domain is for you. GIAC offers 13 specializations in this domain at varying levels of complexity.

“Being a GIAC certification holder myself, I know what it represents, and when interviewing [for a position], I frequently move GIAC holders’ resumes to the top of the interview stack.”

INSIDE CERTIFICATION continued on page 39

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JOB ROLES

New Opportunities and Challenges: Are Application Developers Ready?

LOUIS MARASCIO

Armed with tools such as AJAX and Ruby on Rails, and bolstered by the rise of software as a service, application developers have multiple venues to ply their trade, whether in Web-based applications, in the data center or within the local area network.

With the collaborative evolution of the Web as well as the enterprise, there has been a shift in the way application developers are approaching their work. They are more fully cognizant of the business impacts of their labor. With this knowledge in hand, application developers are moving further away from siloed job roles and closer to the strategic apex of their organizations.

Looking ForwardAs we speculatively look to the future of application development, we are able to identify several vectors

for growth, but we’re convinced that one of the big-gest potential areas for new applications is the accel-eration of unified communications (UC) adoption.

Previously, voice and the Web lived in silos. For Web application developers to have the audacity to touch the telecom cabinet, they might be run out of the office. Now, with UC deployments gaining market share and the migration from copper to fiber well under way, these two previously independent worlds are rapidly colliding, spurring creative chaos and providing a brand new marketplace for applica-tions development.

This new generation of telephony deployments will create a myriad of new opportunities for converged applications that will take advantage of new tech-nology, transform business processes and create entirely new business models.

Key to the success of any of these applications is their ability to grow the business or reduce costs. Application developers must take advantage of tools that reduce development timeframes, employ an application life-cycle management strategy and ulti-mately deliver a supreme user experience.

Migration and AccelerationThe initial wave of migrations to unified communica-tions was largely driven by telephony cost savings through toll bypass and a reduction in total cost of ownership through network convergence and IP tele-phony. The next wave, which many customers are in now, is the acceleration of unified communications applications such as presence, mobility, collabora-tion and video to transform the way they do business

Pushed by technological innovations and empowered by the rise of collaborative tools brought about by the ascendance of Web 2.0 technologies, application developers are facing a wide-open landscape to apply their skills.

CM0608_r9.indd 26 5/7/08 2:12:18 PM


and drive productivity to increase revenues. This rep-resents a unique opportunity for application develop-ers to build new applications that previously were not possible due to cost, complexity, tools or training.

The business desire for applications that integrate voice, video and data is not new. In fact, it was pre-viously known as computer telephony integration, or CTI. However, as much as application service provid-ers (ASPs) fell out of favor as software as a service (SaaS) gained momentum, there are fundamental dif-ferences powering the shift away from CTI.

It is important to realize that this is more than just acronym swapping – ASPs are now out in favor of SaaS because SaaS enables a broader shift toward Web 2.0 and its related technologies and architec-tures. The shift away from CTI to a more generic and powerful unified communications platform repre-sents a new way of building, deploying and managing applications.

True unified communications platforms – powered by proper VoIP architectures – utilize and benefit from the maturation of standards such as SIP and the fusion of those standards with new Web development technologies such as AJAX, JSON and REST.

No longer is the telephony domain such a special-ized island – application developers who understand

the Web now can build applications that leverage communications to do new, interesting things. This enables organizations to further capitalize on their investments by deploying integrated applications across multiple departments and across the entire enterprise in a much more cost-effective manner.

Contrast this model to the old CTI model used for call centers, where developers were creating interactive voice response (IVR) and intelligent call routing rules (ICR) applications. These purpose-built applications relied on protocols such as CSTA, TAPI and JTAPI to integrate into a traditional time-division multiplexing environment and focused on call-center requirements, rather than the more generalized architecture and capability support applications used by all employees. Call-center applications built using these technologies were indicative of long development and deployment cycles, thus creating expensive solutions.

In fact, just to build one of these applications required uniquely specialized skill sets. Not only did develop-ers have to be aware of how traditional telephony operated, a rarity for engineers raised on the Internet, but they also had to be experts with the specialized development tools required for the telephony domain.

The shift from a traditional CTI model to a more flexible and open unified communications platform created an

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environment ripe with opportunity and demand for a new breed of application developers. Those develop-ers who are skilled in Web applications and under-stand the business criticality of real-time communi-cations such as dial tone will be equipped with the skill sets needed to be successful in the new world of unified communications applications.

New Tools for New Unified Communications DevelopersOne option for developers to build feature-rich appli-cations for their UC solutions is the Cisco Unified Application Environment. This tool allows develop-ers to spend more time focusing on high-value intel-lectual property. It also allows customers to bring new applications to market faster, and it standard-izes the deployment and management of applica-tions to reduce total cost of ownership

The Cisco Unified Application Environment delivers the following features to develop, deploy and man-age unified communications applications:

• A telephony protocol extraction framework and visual develop-ment environment that enables Web and enter-prise developers, who lack telephony skills, to easily and rapidly develop feature-rich applications.

• Automated test tools that perform functional, load, system and regres-sion tests to reduce test cycles and increase the success rate of project completion.

• A set of application life-cycle management tools that standardizes, centralizes and automates manage-ment of all unified communications applications.

• A standard applications container enabling devel-opment, quality assurance and operations to collab-oratively manage scalability, performance and reli-ability of all unified communications applications.

• Abstract implementation differences across products and versions to minimize interoper-ability challenges, so customers can upgrade their UC infrastructure without breaking their applications.

• The ability to access the full features of UC implemen-tations from a visual high level using tools such as Viseo, along with the ability to manipulate C+ code.

• Future support for scripting languages such as Python and Ruby.

Case in PointOne example of a company realizing the business benefits of developing and deploying applica-tions using Cisco Unified Application Environment can been seen at a management and technology consulting company that was using a Web-based application to reserve temporary office space for consultants as they travel between various offices and customer locations.

The application was successful in reserving office space, but did not have a feedback mechanism to determine if the space was in fact being used. To effectively measure the utilization rate, the com-pany used Cisco Unified Application Environment to enhance the existing application. Now, when consultants arrive at their reserved space, they are required to log in to the Cisco Unified IP Phone.

This information is captured and used to determine actual office-space utilization. The company now leases spaces on actual-use data rather than inflated estimates, saving the company in excess of $1.5 mil-lion per year. As an added benefit, consultants also are more readily accessible to customers.

CertScope links to 227 CertMag articles and 255 Web sites touching on “application development.”

Application developers must take advantage of tools that reduce

development timeframes, employ an applications life-cycle management strategy and ultimately deliver a

supreme user experience.

CM0608_r9.indd 28 5/7/08 2:12:22 PM

In another example, implementation of Unified Commu-nications Application Development was undertaken by an early UC adopter, a global finance company.

Before deploying VoIP, the company’s analysts put together a list of customers affected by the day’s news. The analyst would then look up and dial the phone number of each customer. If the customer answered, the analyst would read the information to the customer on the phone. If the customer’s voice mail answered, the analyst would read the information to the customer’s voice-mail system. Then the analyst would look up the next customer’s phone number.

Analyst time is a valuable and expensive resource, and the company decided it could streamline this process, saving a considerable amount of its ana-lysts’ time each day.

It first set out to automate the generation of the cus-tomer lists using a BEA WebLogic server. Then, its custom application would auto-dial customers on the list through Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

If the customer answered, the analyst would read the information to the customer as before. If the customer’s voice mail answered, the application would automate playback of the information as a recorded message and immediately move on to auto-dial the next customer number, freeing the analyst from leaving recorded messages. The appli-cation could also record calls and store them in a database for reporting.

These two applications are just the tip of the ice-berg for the emerging world of unified communica-tions application development. With VoIP gaining greater market share and the plethora of tools now available to application developers, the evolution of this space will increase innovation and efficiency, reduce costs and create new pathways to collabo-ration and communication. 8

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CM0608_r9.indd 29 5/7/08 2:12:26 PM

However, it’s also alarming because it causes quali-fied technology professionals in developed countries to lose their jobs due to purely bottom-line consider-ations, which can have ripple effects in the larger political and business spheres.

In a few ways, Hexaware Technologies, a global pro-vider of IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) services, is emblematic of this trend.

The company, which was founded in 1990, trades on the Mumbai and London stock exchanges. It oper-ates six development centers — four in India and one apiece in Germany and Mexico — along with offices in North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim of Asia.

Hexaware’s stated mission is “to build value for cus-tomers through innovative use of technology and tal-ent.” To that end, the organization is focused on deliv-ering business results from technology solutions, and it specializes in business intelligence, business analyt-

ics, enterprise applications, transportation, IT in human resources and modernization of legacy systems.

Hexaware has about 175 active clients, 60 of which are Fortune 500 or Global 500 companies. Talent has played a large role in accomplishing all this in less than two decades.

Today, Hexaware employs 7,000 workers globally, many of which are technology professionals based in India. No matter what their background may be, they can all expect a standard hiring and training experience.

To begin with, the company looks for certain quali-fications in candidates for employment, said Deep-endra L. Chumble, Hexaware’s chief people officer. “Education and background help us in short-listing people depending on the job requirements,” he said, adding that the ratio of hiring recent college gradu-ates to experienced professionals is about 7-to-3.

“We look for both recent college graduates and already established IT professionals,” Chumble said.

“While we hire many new grads from engineering schools and management institutes to bring in fresh knowledge, we also hire experienced people to bring more expertise to the company.”

In particular, the company looks for experience with certain technologies and solutions, including but not limited to .Net, C++, Cobol, J2EE, Oracle DBA, MySQL, Sybase and HTML/Java Script. Addition-ally, Hexaware considers industry-specific experi-ence in areas such as banking and finance, CRM, airlines, insurance, hospitality and logistics, along with technology-specific certification.

“Certifications help us in identifying the right people having the right skill sets and expertise,” Chumble said. “Certification and experience also help in showcasing to us and the clients that the expertise possessed by an individual is confirmed by a recog-

INTERFACE

Hexaware Technologies: The Other Side of Offshoring

BRIAN SUMMERFIELD

�0 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE June 2008

The offshore outsourcing we’ve seen in the IT industry since the beginning of this decade is a trend that’s at once encouraging and disconcerting. It’s heartening because it brings the benefits of free markets and economic globalization to places that previously have been marked by poverty and strife.

CM0608_r9.indd 30 5/7/08 2:12:27 PM

BIND IN

CM0608_r9.indd 31 5/7/08 2:12:27 PM


BIND IN

CM0608_r9.indd 32 5/7/08 2:12:27 PM

June 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE ��

nized industry organization and the IT professional has acquired the knowledge required to perform the same at a specified level. Hence, education and cer-tifications both are valid and desirable.”

Moreover, certification is used to align talent within the organization, Chumble said. “Certifications play a major role in matching the right people with the right positions and roles. If a candidate has appropriate certification, then our initial applicant screening pro-cess is less time-consuming.”

Hexaware also takes into account proficiencies that aren’t purely technical. Key behavioral competen-cies include customer focus, process orientation, continuous learning, team building, strategic think-ing, decision making, networking, communication, planning and organization and problem solving.

Once onboard, new hires can expect to go through a great deal of training. Hexaware has an extensive three-month program for recent college graduates, particularly those recruited from engineering schools and management institutions, called FTP (Foundation Training Program). The four phases of FTP include:

Phase I – Three weeks of boot-camp training on:

• Soft skills

• Operating system concepts

• Design

• Programming concepts (such as algorithms, data structure, problem solving)

• Database concepts

• Languages (such as C++)

• Web technologies

Phase II A – Two weeks of foundation training on:

• Hexaware domain and practice

• Testing

• ADM (analytical data management) life cycle

• Microsoft Office tools (Word / Excel / PPT)

• Case study

Phase II B – Six weeks of specialization training on:

• New technology

• Technologies such as .Net, USAS, AS/400, mainframe, Oracle, PL/SQL, BA/BI and various ERP applications

INTERFACE continued on page 39

Today, Hexaware employs 7,000 workers globally, many of which are technology professionals based in India. No matter what their background may be, they can all expect a standard hiring and training experience.

CM0608_r9.indd 33 5/7/08 2:12:30 PM

�� CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE June 2008

The changing economy will lead industries to seek ways to cut costs and improve efficiency. Companies can save money and provide their workers with top-notch, level-1 IT support by offshoring their help-desk functions. Many companies are going for it.

Accounting and consulting firm BDO Seidman LLP recently conducted a telephone survey of 100 chief financial officers at U.S. technology companies with annual revenues of $100 million to $15 billion. Forty-nine percent of respondents stated that they do some type of outsourcing of manufacturing or ser-vices outside the U.S.

Another 2008 study by Forrester Research – “Outsourcing Fever Reaches Legal Departments” – concluded that between 2003 and 2015, 79,000 legal

One of the classic IT jobs in the United States may be slowly disappearing.

According to a May 2007 report by Datamonitor, “There will be considerable investment in contact center outsourcing across Western countries over the coming five months.” The report — titled “The Future of Vertical Investment in Contact Center Outsourcing” — also states that new industries, including health care and tourism, are starting to outsource their help-desk functions to other countries.

TECHNIQUES

Where Have All the Help Desks Gone?

PATRICK D. TURNER

CM0608_r9.indd 34 5/7/08 2:12:31 PM

June 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE ��

Certifications are a great way to get your foot in the door or move up in the IT world. There are several certifications that are good to have or pursue when you are trying to get a help-desk job.

The CompTIA A+ is a great vendor-neutral certification to get started with. The A+ mainly focuses on PC-based hardware and operating systems. If you want to focus on a Microsoft-based shop, there is the Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Techni-cian (MCDST) that focuses on the Windows XP operating sys-tem, as well as some basic hardware knowledge. One of Micro-soft’s newest certifications, the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) Vista Configuration, is a great way to certify your skills in a help-desk position that supports Vista or is plan-ning to in the near future.

If your job consists of supporting Linux, the CompTIA Linux+ might be a good choice. The Linux+ certification gives you a ge-neric knowledge about Linux that is applicable to any distribution your company supports.

Novell has a brand new desktop certification – the Certified Linux Desktop Administrator (CLDA) – that concentrates on the desktop version of SUSE Enterprise Desktop 10. This would be a great certification if you work for a Novell shop moving to Linux on the desktop.

This certification takes experience you have on the Windows desktop and gives you a Linux equivalent. It is specific to SUSE Enterprise Desktop 10 and is not considered a generic Linux certification. There are a lot of similarities between all Linux distributions, and almost any Linux certification would be con-sidered a great start.

Apple has its Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist (ACHDS) for those who support Macintosh computers in the workplace. The ACHDS training gives you all the basics of the OS X operating system, configuring services and troubleshooting problems. There is a new version of this certification that is intended for OS X Leopard that was released a few months ago, versus the older Tiger version of the operating system.

Besides the major industry-recognized certifications, there are companies that support and certify help-desk individuals. One of the larger organizations is HDI. HDI is a large, membership-based organization that certifies help-desk and technical sup-

port professionals. They have different levels of training and certification ranging from customer service-based soft skills to managing and directing a help desk.

As with anything you pursue, make sure you have the prerequisite skills and the right amount of experience

before you attempt any of these certifications. When you begin the path to certification, make sure your learning comes from multiple sources. A combination of books, classroom learning and good testing software can help tremendously.

Nothing beats real-world experience when taking a certifica-tion test. So if you are looking to get hired on a help desk or just want to improve what you know, pick one of these certifica-tions and go for it! 8

Getting Started on Help-Desk CertsPATRICK D. TURNER

CM0608_r9.indd 35 5/7/08 2:12:32 PM


jobs would be outsourced to other countries. Companies specializing in outsourcing are crop-ping up in many different industries, so the trend is becoming increasingly popular on many fronts.

Reasons for OutsourcingThere are several reasons why companies out-source jobs overseas. The first and foremost is cost savings. Labor in other countries costs much less than in the U.S. Rising costs of salaries, health care and insurance make the U.S. worker more expensive. Also, there is a huge workforce in India with a lot of talent.

One of the reasons foreign employees are willing to work for less money is because there are so many of them, and at that point, it’s simple supply-and-demand economics. As U.S. companies look to cut costs, having fewer employees on hand directly lowers the cost of doing business. It’s more cost-effective to pay a fixed cost and out-source the positions.

As a corporation grows, it sometimes loses its ability to focus on strategy and future plans. This is another reason companies outsource. Many companies become reactive in their day-to-day operations. The help-desk workers and other first-line positions spend a lot of time putting out fires and less time planning and strategizing for the future. By having another company handle these everyday tasks, current staff is able to concentrate on higher-level IT issues.

Quality and Language Barriers Are RisksAs beneficial as it can be, there are downsides of outsourcing. Quality control may become an issue if there are no policies or regulations to keep standards of service in check. The out-source company must be able to solve the prob-lems it is faced with so it does not frustrate users into giving up or seeking help elsewhere.

Outsourcing companies usually are focused and knowledgeable about what they are doing and do it quite well. A company should ensure the function being outsourced is done better than what could be provided in-house. A cost savings is not going to help if clients are dissatisfied with the service they are receiving from an outsourcing company.

The outsource company also must provide tan-gible numbers and statistics on what they are

One of the reasons foreign employees are

willing to work for less money is because there are so many of

them, and at that point, it’s simple supply-and-demand economics. As U.S. companies look to

cut costs, having fewer employees on hand

directly lowers the cost of doing business. It’s more cost-effective

to pay a fixed cost and outsource the positions.

CM0608_r9.indd 36 5/7/08 2:12:32 PM

accomplishing. Surveys on customer-service satis-faction must be in place to ensure the proper results. Language barriers have been a classic problem with outsourcing to companies outside the U.S. Time dif-ferences also have come into play when dealing with support technicians in other time zones across the world. Several companies have outsourced to Mexico to try and balance out these time issues.

“Companies aren’t considering only the cheapest places, but are looking at location for other rea-sons, like being closer to customer bases,” said Lee Duran of BDO Seidman in a recent Information Week interview.

There are some cases in which outsourcing has gone bad. Revelex Corp., which offers an Internet plat-form of technology tools to the real estate industry, had problems finding enough workers in south Florida to support its 50 percent a year growth as it approached 12,000 clients. It decided to try outsourcing and found it difficult to work with the time constraints and culture of the time difference. It eventually brought the operation back to Boca Raton.

So what does all this mean for the average IT guy? A lot of IT folks got their start on a help desk; it was either a good or bad experience that you may have enjoyed or may just want to forget about. Where does this leave the entry-level guy trying to get a job out of a trade school or college? Where are we going to start and work up from?

We can’t start in the middle, miss-ing the help-desk experience that every seasoned IT pro has under his or her belt. It was a rite of pas-sage for most of us: Get an entry-

level help-desk job, get certification or two and move up in the organization to bigger and better roles.

However, movement toward offshoring of IT support presents new opportunities for IT pros to work for U.S. companies that specialize in providing help-desk services to corporations. In several different target markets, such as health care, it is possible to build a business that performs IT support and help-desk functions. But the company would have to provide top-notch support and unprecedented customer ser-vice at a competitive price.

Getting It RightOne example of a company built around this new-found demand for outsourced IT support is Perot Systems. Perot Systems provides IT services to health care facilities that want to save money by outsourcing to a U.S.-based company. It signed a contract with Jewish Hospital and St. Mary’s Health Care System Inc. to take over the IT ser-vices that were formerly provided in-house. This affected 110 workers, who became employees of

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Make the most of it.

06STS0011 1/23/06 1:40 PM Page 1

Check CertScope to read 188 articles and link to 167 Web sites on “help desk.”

CM0608_r9.indd 37 5/7/08 2:12:33 PM


Perot Systems. These workers are guaranteed a job for a year, and Jewish Hospital decided to keep seven workers on staff to perform its higher-end IT plan-ning and analysis.

This is considered an IT out-sourcing success story because the work went to a U.S.-based company and no U.S. jobs were lost. The overall concern is how much work will eventually wind up overseas. “Estimates of the number of service jobs poten-tially at risk, by economists and research organizations, range widely from a few million to more than 40 million, which is about a third of the total employment in services,” said a July 2007 New York Times report.

A company that can provide both technical support and a busi-ness process will be ahead of the game. According to an April 2005 article in the Houston Business Journal, “By combining the two cost-saving strategies of IT out-sourcing and business process outsourcing, companies of all sizes can realize improvements in both the bottom line and in a syn-ergistic relationship between the technology users and technol-ogy providers — whether inside or outside the company.” The benefits of providing both give a company a competitive advan-tage over others.

To try and combat the offshoring problem, IBM is focusing on shift-ing technology services to become more couched in business knowledge than software technology. By positioning itself as a higher-end out-source corporation, it is able to retain many of its cli-ents and prevent them from going overseas to get a better price.

So what will become of the great outsourcing dilemma that many companies in the U.S. face every day? There

are definite advantages and disadvantages to out-sourcing. Many take a negative view that it takes jobs away from U.S. workers. Others see outsourcing as an opportunity for growth and a positive impact on their businesses. 8

Patrick D. Turner is president of Little Pond Consulting LLC. He can be reached at [email protected].

We can’t start in the

middle, missing the

help-desk experience

that every seasoned

IT pro has under his or

her belt. It was a rite of

passage for most of us:

Get an entry-level help-

desk job, get certification

or two and move up in the

organization to bigger

and better roles.

CM0608_r9.indd 38 5/7/08 2:12:34 PM

June 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE �9

INSIDE CERTIFICATION continued from page 25

Jeff Pike serves as technical director of GIAC. He can be reached at [email protected].

• Software security: Programmers and code audi-tors certify here. This important domain is growing quickly because it represents the best chance to correct vulnerabilities before they appear in pro-duction code that is subject to attack.

If you are already a subject matter expert seek-ing certification, you can register directly for a GIAC certification exam. For those needing to learn more or brush up on their skills before they attempt GIAC certification, the SANS Institute offers training courses that correspond to most GIAC Silver certifications.

There are different levels of GIAC certification; each level more rigorously validates a candidate’s skill than the previous. All candidates start out with GIAC Silver Certification examinations that are comprised of a multiple-choice exam of approxi-mately 150 to 200 questions. Questions are written to best assess hands-on skills using complex sce-narios and targeting pragmatics. Multiple-choice exams enable remote administration for large numbers of candidates; however, there are limits to multiple-choice exams.

For those who demand a more in-depth credential, GIAC offers the Gold program. An applicant chooses a research topic and works with a GIAC adviser to create an original research document in an effort to prove that his or her skills translate to the real-world in a tangible way and give back to the community.

The most prestigious GIAC credential is the GSE (GIAC Security Expert). This is an elite certification geared for the “top guns” in information security and validates hands-on skills directly. The GSE (Security Expert), GSE-Malware and GSE-Compliance are the only certifications in the IT security industry that require candidates to perform the task before they can achieve the certification. Each consists of sev-eral days of rigorous hands-on testing.

The Global Information Assurance Certification program serves the IT security industry by offer-ing a large group of specialized certifications that correspond directly to specific hands-on skill sets required for critical ITSEC job roles. 8

Phase III – One day of quality training, including information security

Phase IV – Two weeks of coaching and mentoring

For experienced professionals, the training is some-what different. The company conducts specialized project-specific development based on the require-ments and needs identified during appraisal of candidates. However, they still receive training on Hexaware domain and practice.

Hexaware also has defined career paths for its employees. The company is segmented into five verticals that offer growth opportunities to indi-viduals in multiple career streams. Cross-functional movement across streams is encouraged per pre-defined criteria. The career streams include:

• Project management: This caters to delivery of client projects. It covers the entire life cycle of software projects such as development, applica-tion servicing and maintenance, testing, package configuration and analytics.

• Technology: This deals with developing competen-cies in technologies such as ERP solutions from providers such as SAP and Oracle, mainframes, business intelligence and business analytics, Java, .Net and software testing.

• Domain: This refers to developing competencies in industry verticals such as travel, transport, hospitality and logistics, asset management and domains such as finance, human resources, sup-ply-chain management and CRM.

• Business development and account manage-ment: This covers creation and growth of lines of business through marketing, sales and account management efforts.

• Enabler: This function enables the other streams to effectively execute their functions. This is further classified into six sub-streams that include finance, human resources, administration and training.

As Hexaware expands and takes on new projects and clients, the specific competencies it looks for may change. However, it likely will continue to assess candidates on the basis of their experience, skills (technical and nontechnical) and certification. 8

– Brian Summerfield, [email protected]

INTERFACE continued from page 33

CM0608_r9.indd 39 5/7/08 2:12:34 PM

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</ENDTAG>

One Wrong Click to Armageddon BEN WARDEN

Executives at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. were stunned recently by a remarkably detailed article in The New York Times regarding their quiet settlement talks with the government over the popu-lar schizophrenia drug Zyprexa. Initially, executives thought surely someone from the government was to blame, but after further investigation, they discov-ered the scary truth.

A member of Eli Lilly’s outside counsel team meant to e-mail a sensitive memo to a colleague, Bradford Berenson, but instead accidentally sent it to Alex Berenson, a Times reporter.

Talk about a scoop that fell into his lap.

This is a story that has been relived a thousand times since the mainstreaming of e-communication: pri-vate information accidentally sent elsewhere. From small indiscretions in the office or among friends to secret memos detailing billion-dollar payoffs, both can happen by just one or two wrong clicks. It begs the question, is it the person or the technology that’s responsible for such gaffs?

Many would argue that it’s ultimately the person who’s responsible. If someone misuses something, whether it’s a toaster or a computer, they should be held accountable, not the machine.

On an episode of the popular sitcom “The Office,” the lovable doofus boss of Dunder Mifflin, Michael Scott, had a similar but more personal e-mail blun-der. Michael secretly is dating Jan, his boss, and after the two returned from a Jamaican vacation he accidentally forwarded a racy picture of the two to a warehouse employee who then sent it to the entire office. Michael quickly and comically tried to sup-press and downplay the situation, but the damage had been done.

Regular viewers of the show undoubtedly see Michael’s e-mail faux pas as consistent with his dim-witted, often inappropriate personality. However, it’s unfair to characterize everyone who has ever been responsible for an e-mail misstep as stupid. It’s a phenomenon that has many levels beyond just black and white. I’ve certainly been guilty of send-ing an e-mail to the wrong recipient. Luckily, it was just a banal public relations inquiry and not anything personal or sensitive.

While most IT professionals would place the blame on the end users entirely for misfired e-mails, I may be taking an unpopular stance when I say it’s

not entirely their fault: e-mail carriers often are too tricky for their own good nowadays.

I’m no all-knowing e-mail czar, but I do use Outlook Express and Google mail every day. When I first read the story about Eli Lilly’s e-mail debacle, I could eas-ily put myself in the lawyer’s shoes. Presumably the lawyer typed in “Ber” for Berenson and two popped up. He or she clicked the first one, Alex Berenson and not Bradford Berenson, and thus the Times had an easy front-page bombshell story.

If Alex Berenson’s first name began with “C” or any ensuing letter in the alphabet, it wouldn’t have happened.

I’m not calling on software designers to remove address auto-save. Instead, have an address book pull e-mail addresses by first and last name, not by the address itself, or don’t have one at all. Write addresses down (gasp). Auto-save makes people lazy and is the first step in computers becoming smarter than humans and taking over the world. Can’t you just hear your e-mail auto-save func-tion talk to you when beginning to type an e-mail address? Computer: “OK, I see an ‘R,’ an ‘O,’ a ‘T.’ Got it! Jim Rothschild! It’s got to be! Just hit enter and I’ll take of the rest!”

Meanwhile, the annoyed user: “Why does Outlook think I want to send this to Jim Rothschild? I’m trying to send this to Suzy Rothenberg. Why is this machine trying to tell me what to do?!”

But I digress. Often auto-save functions can be use-ful in e-mailing and Web searches, but a computer is still an input-output-oriented device. Translation: Users are responsible for the information they input. For an IT professional who deals regularly with end users, isn’t a world of “the computer did it” excuses more frustrating than one where the user doesn’t have any?

Clearly e-mail auto-save isn’t going anywhere. Technology rarely moves backward when new ver-sions of popular programs, such as e-mail, are being designed. But as long as it’s there, IT professionals can’t blame users 100 percent for sending a misdi-rected e-mail.

Oh, and if anyone wants to avoid “accidentally” sending me controversial, sensitive information on IT certification, please disregard the e-mail address below. 8

– Ben Warden, [email protected]

CM0608_r9.indd 42 5/7/08 2:12:54 PM

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