Re: Announcement: SMS MOC courses available

From: Marin Marinov (mlmarinov_at_askme.ca)
Date: 05/28/04

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    Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 16:31:07 -0400

    <snip>
    Let me try as a non-MS rep jerk ;)
    Training and certification are two totally different disciplines aiming
    at two different directions - gaining knowledge and proving knowledge,
    respectively. MOC courses are like interactive books - you get the
    theoretical material with the added "bonuses" of having a lab to play
    with and having an instructor to torture with questions ;) Many people
    come (or are send) to courses to improve their expertise in a certain
    area, not necessarily to get certified. Actually, a very low percentage
    of them do and I'm talking from experience in having taught hundreds of
    students. Organizations want to enhance the qualification of their
    systems administrators so they manage the environment more efficiently
    and sending them to courses is probably the most efficient way.
    Otherwise they'd have to count on administrators learning by themselves
    which is not very likely, dangerous (some love testing in the production
    environment), less productive, and with worse end results. So, customers
    are paying mostly for knowledge - not certification. Damn, I've seen so
    many braindumper MCSEs that are not qualified to even be candidate MCPs!

    Anyway, certification is not tied to passing a course - never been,
    probably never will be. Generally, there is no one-to-one mapping
    "course-exam" (though for some there is) so having a MOC course doesn't
    mean you (will) have a corresponding exam. If you take a deeper look at
    available MOC courses you'll notice that there are much more courses
    than exams. In addition, if you feel confident enough in your knowledge
    or think you can prepare in an alternative way you can hit the exam
    directly - no one minds, noone will stop you.

    I absolutely understand your point. However, first the need for such an
    exam should be assessed (the SMS 2.0 exam is one of, if not the, least
    taken, AFAIK). Most likely we'll see such an exam but it probably won't
    be until the end of the year (at least that's what I have heard people
    on the exam team answer to this question).

    I'm eager for an SMS 2003 exam too - I've been digging in this field
    since pre-beta so if one is available I'd go take it right away ;) Sorry
    I can't give you (and myself) happy news, but that's the situation right
    now. And please excuse me for getting carried away in writing, but I'd
    really like people to get the whole true picture. Hopefully, this
    cleared things up for you too ;)

    HTH

    P.S.: I certainly wouldn't call Cathy a "Microsoft rep jerk" - she one
    of the guys responsible for the great technical information and
    documents we keep getting every day on SMS 2003. 

    -- 
Cheers,
   Marin Marinov
   MCT, MCSE 2003/2000/NT4.0,
   MCSE:Security 2003/2000, MCP+I
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