Microsoft MCITP Certification Training

Many IT experts have differing opinions on which certifications are most valuable to today's technology professional. One thing most agree on, however, is that vendor-specific certs from Microsoft are among the most desirable accreditations to earn, thanks to the Windows operating systems and their vast market shares.

IT experts who want to display their comprehensive skills can rely on the Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) certification to show both potential employers and possible clients their extensive knowledge.

Erik Eickel, a Tech Republic writer and IT professional, is confident that the MCITP credential is the up-and-coming Microsoft certification. In fact, Eickel ranked the MCITP certification No. 1 in Tech Republic's annual "10 Best IT Certifications" report for the past three years in a row.

"By matching the new certification to popular job roles, as has been done to some extent with CompTIA's Server+ (server administrator), Project+ (project manager), and A+ (desktop support) certifications, Microsoft has created a new certification that's certain to prove timely, relevant, and valuable," Eickel wrote in the most recent report.

What makes MCITP certification so valuable?
According to training information from Microsoft, MCITP basically picks up where MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) certification leaves off. Candidates for MCITP certification have at least two years of experience as IT professionals.

Eickel notes that the MCITP certification is unique because it matches skills in popular job roles. The accreditation is available in a number of different specialties which relate to several different IT professional career paths, so it is able to convey precise knowledge in one's chosen area of expertise.

According to Microsoft, the MCITP certification is available in the following platforms:
Windows Client
Windows Server
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft Office Project Server
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft SharePoint Server
Microsoft Lync Server

Certification exams are further broken down by job functions in each platform, including developer, technician and administrator roles. Eickel points out that some areas might be more applicable than others. He specifically highlighted the Enterprise Desktop Administrator, Server Administrator and Enterprise Messaging Administrator paths as being particularly relevant to today's IT pros because newer Microsoft platforms are rapidly replacing retiring Exchange servers.

Banking on the MCITP certification
Because of its immediate application to so many up-and-coming job functions, earning MCITP certification can pay off for many IT pros. According to 2011 salary information from Global Learning, the mean annual salary for an IT professional with MCITP certification is $77,529. Data shows mean income figure can vary by specialization:

MCITP: Server Administrator - $75,311
MCITP: Enterprise Administrator - $79,824
MCITP: Database Administrator - $84,320
MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator - $91,192

MCITP certification is likely to be a great way for today's IT pros to display their skills and validate experience through its relevance to job-specific functions.

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A new way to sell used IT equipment

MarkITx offers two-sided market for selling used IT gear

The buying and selling of used IT equipment is not a trivial market, but it doesn't get enormous attention. In many cases, enterprises unload used equipment as a trade-in or at bargain price to a wholesaler because they just want the equipment off the floor.

A new Chicago-based startup says it has developed a system to help enterprises get as much value out of their old IT equipment as possible.

The company, MarkITx, is running an online system for selling equipment, but it's not a new version of an eBay-like system. The seller and buyer remain invisible to each other, the money goes in escrow, and the transaction may even involve third-party vendors to refurbish equipment.

Ben Blair, the CTO of MarkITx, said the exchange works like "a two-sided market" rather than an auction. Buyers post what price they want to pay for particular piece of equipment, including condition and quantity. Sellers post the quantity and current condition of the equipment they are selling and what amount they want to receive for it.
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Blair provided this example: A telecom operator wants to sell a few cabinets of Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) systems for $2.1 million, and a financial exchange operator is seeking a UCS for their back office.

MarkITx puts a value on the equipment, and in this case it recommends selling the Cisco equipment at $1 million, based on a range of $800,000 to $1.2 million. The telco lists all their equipment at the suggested price, but each unit is listed as a separate item at its fair market value. If the buyer and seller agree on the price, the trade is executed automatically and the payment is put in escrow with MarkITx.

Once that happens, the telco is then given shipping instructions to an OEM- or ISO-certified refurbisher that MarkITx is working with. That third party inspects the equipment, test and verifies it, and the equipment is delivered to the buyer. When the buyer accepts the equipment, the funds in escrow are released.

MarkITx will also bring the equipment up to the condition that buyer wants. For example, a seller is offering 10 rack-mount LCD KVMs at $200 each but in "C" condition. However, the buyer wants them in "A" condition, with replaced back panels and polished glass. The refurbisher says it will cost $100 per unit to bring the equipment to "A" condition, and if the buyer is willing to pay $300 per unit, the trade executes.

Blair said the company, which began operating last May but just launched publicly this month, is clearing about $1 million in transactions a month. It has $5.5 million in supply on the market, and $13.5 million in demand, he said. The bulk of its customers are in telecom, data center, education and government. The company is paid by the seller through a default commission of 20%, but it has membership plans for lower commissions.

Blair believes there is an opportunity for the company because he says many enterprises are only interested in getting rid of their equipment, not in maximizing its potential resale value. They believe that once IT departments investigate the potential resale of some of the equipment through their market, their minds will change.

"[Wholesalers] make their spread off ignorance," said Blair, who said his company's model ensures offering transparency on price.

According to IDC, the market for used equipment in the U.S. is about $70 billion.

Joseph Pucciarelli, an analyst at IDC, said that a lot of companies are restrained on what they can spend on capital equipment, and purchase used equipment to augment their existing systems. In many cases, they buy used equipment to keep compatibility with existing systems as way to keep their "support footprint" from expanding, he said.

Pucciarelli said companies typicall will unload used equipment to an original equipment manaufacturer (OEM) as part of a trade-in on an upgrade.

The company doing the upgrade won't get top dollar for their old IT equipment, but they may not see a selling alternative as worth their time, said Pucciarelli. Relative to the overall size of the transaction in an equipment upgrade, "you are talking about something that is pennies on the dollar [for the used systems,]" he said.

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Intel cuts back Itanium plans, raising questions about chip's future

The upcoming Kittson chip will no longer be manufactured on a new process or be socket-compatible with Intel's Xeon

Intel has scaled back plans for the next version of Itanium in a move that raises questions about the future of the 64-bit server chip, used primarily in Hewlett-Packard's high-end Integrity servers.

In a short notice posted quietly to its website on Jan. 31, Intel said the next version of Itanium, codenamed Kittson, will be produced on a 32 nanometer manufacturing process, like the current version of Itanium, instead of on a more advanced process, as it had previously planned.

[ALSO: Intel/McAfee: What's the future of security?]

Intel has also shelved a plan announced only a few months ago to make Kittson socket-compatible with its Xeon server chips, which would have reduced costs for both Intel and HP, the main seller of Itanium systems. Kittson will now plug into the same socket as the existing Itanium 9300 and 9500 chips, Intel said.

"The modular development model, which converges on a common Intel Xeon/Intel Itanium socket and motherboard, will be evaluated for future implementation opportunities," Intel said.

The revised plans paint a bleak picture for Itanium, according to some observers. "It could easily be that this is their way of cutting it back and having essentially an exit strategy," said industry analyst Nathan Brookwood of Insight64.

"It may very well be that Itanium's time has come and gone," he said.

Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds said there may yet be a new manufacturing process, or "shrink," for Itanium, if demand improves sufficiently to make the investment worthwhile. But he doesn't expect any more major updates to the chip's microarchitecture. "I think after this we're talking about shrinks," he said.

Intel launched Itanium in 2001 with the hope that it would eventually unseat the RISC chips used in Unix servers, but sales have never come close to the volumes it expected. Early versions of Itanium underperformed, and Advanced Micro Devices outsmarted Intel by adding 64-bit extensions to its x86 server processors, a strategy Intel eventually mimicked.

Still, HP and Intel have long insisted they are committed to Itanium, a sentiment they reiterated this week. HP killed off its own PA-RISC chip early on in favor of Itanium, and has far more riding on the design than other server vendors. HP has acknowledged paying Intel millions of dollars to fund Itanium's continued development.

During that time, the writing for Itanium seemed to be on the wall. With shipments relatively low, vendors including Red Hat, Microsoft and Oracle stopped developing new software for the chip. Oracle has been forced to resume its development for Itanium, after HP filed a breach of contract lawsuit, but not before some customers backed off.

"When Oracle said no more software for Itanium, that spooked a lot of customers," Reynolds said.

It's unclear what prompted Intel and HP to revise their Itanium plans suddenly, but one possibility is that customers got skittish about Oracle's retreat and told HP they planned to leave the platform, prompting Intel and HP to reconsider their plans.

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Hot or not: tech trends for 2013

Hot or not: tech trends for 2013

Some technologies are poised to break out in 2013; others are doomed to whither away and die, while the rest won't fully arrive for some time to come.

Join us on a whirlwind tour of 10 technology trends for the coming year, and find out which are hot and which are not.

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HOT: Fly-by spies
Surveillance has never been so cheap or so easy. For just $300, you can buy a small remote-controlled copter with a video camera and launch your own spy network. Drones have been deployed by police departments from Seattle to Miami as roving CCTV cameras; they've also been used to track endangered rhinos in the wild and by Occupy Wall Street protestors to provide bird's-eye coverage of street actions. Their use has become so widespread that state and federal officials are mulling legislation to regulate unmanned aerial vehicles. Until then, though, the sky's the limit.

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NOT: Ultra HD screens

Ultra-HD displays were all the rage at CES this year, but don't expect to find one hanging from your or anyone else's living room wall any time soon. Why? The usual reasons: Content formulated to look its best at 4320p will be ultra-rare for some time to come, and the 4K sets available today are still ultra expensive -- try $20,000 for an 84-inch model. Even a "budget priced" 50-incher could run you five times the cost of a standard 1080p panel. If you're like most of us, you probably bought a state-of-the-art flat panel within the last three or four years. Unlike computers, televisions don't go obsolete that quickly, no matter how much you might want them to

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HOT: The body computer

Google Goggles, the Fitbit, and the Nike+ FuelBand were just the beginning of the merger between physical bodies and digital devices. At CES, Puzzlebox demonstrated a toy helicopter you could control using brainwaves. Interaxon's Muse headband measures your brainwaves and displays them on your smartphone or tablet, so you can learn how to manage stress. This year will see a slew of similar devices that interact with our bodies to clock our workouts, monitor our health, or just soften us up for the Singularity. Remember, resistance is futile.

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NOT: Ultrabooks

Last year was supposed to be the year of the Ultrabook. It wasn't, and this year they aren't looking so hot either. Intel's answer to the MacBook Air was years late and several dollars too much to lure PC users away from their tablet fixation. Market forecasters IHS iSuppli, which had predicted more than 22 million of the uberthin ultralights would ship in 2012, later slashed that guesstimate to slightly over 10 million. Of course, the chipmaker says even thinner more powerful models are poised to make a strong showing in 2013. We say the odds are slim.
 

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HOT: Smarter Web pages

HTML4 is dead; long live HTML5. Recently declared "feature complete" by the Worldwide Web Consortium, the new markup language has changed how websites look and feel, as well as put a bullet into the head of Adobe Flash (may it rest in pieces). Meanwhile, major sites are moving to responsive Web pages that automatically adjust to fit any device they're displayed on, whether it's a big screen in your living room or a small one in your pocket. Remember how crappy websites look on your mobile device? You soon won't. Now if we could just bump up the IQ of the people who are looking at them..

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Cisco fills out SDN family with 40G switch, controller, cloud gear for data center

Nexus 6000 designed for high-density 40G; InterCloud, for VM migration to hybrid clouds; ONE Controller for programming Cisco switches, routers

Cisco this week will fill out its programmable networking family with a new line of data center switches, cloud connectivity extensions and a software-based SDN controller.

The new products fill out Cisco's ONE programmable networking strategy, which was unveiled last spring as the company's answer to the software-defined networking trend pervading the industry. Cisco ONE includes APIs, controllers and agents, and overlay networking techniques designed to enable software programmability of Cisco switches and routers to ease operations, customize forwarding and more easily extend features, among other benefits.

This week's data center SDN rollout comes after last week's introduction of the programmable Catalyst 3850 switch for the enterprise campus.

The new Nexus 6000 includes two configurations: the four RU Nexus 6004 and the 1 RU 6001. The 6004 scales from 48 Layer 2/3 40Gbps Ethernet ports, all at line-rate Cisco says, to 96 40G ports through four expansion slots. The switch also supports 384 Layer 2/3 10G Ethernet ports at line-rate, and 1,536 Gigabit Ethernet/10G Ethernet ports using Cisco's FEX fabric extenders.

The Nexus 6001 sports 48 10G ports and four 40G ports through the four expansion slots. The Nexus 6000 line features 1 microsecond port-to-port latency and support for up to 75,000 virtual machines on a single switch, Cisco says. It also supports FibreChannel-over-Ethernet tunneling on its 40G ports.

The Nexus 6000 will go up against 10G and 40G offerings in Arista Networks' 7000 series switches, Dell's Force10 switches and Juniper's QFabric platforms. Cisco also announced 40G expansion modules for the Nexus 5500 top of rack switch and Nexus 2248PQ fabric extender to connect into the Nexus 6000 for 10G server access and 40G aggregation.

Cisco also unveiled the first service module for its Nexus 7000 core 10G data center switch. The Network Analysis Module-NX1 (NAM-NX1) provides visibility across physical, virtual and cloud resources, Cisco says, including Layer 2-7 deep packet inspection and performance analytics. A software version, called virtual NAM (vNAM), will also be available for deployment on a switch in the cloud.

For hybrid private/public cloud deployments, Cisco unveiled the Nexus 1000V InterCloud software. This runs in conjunction with the Nexus 1000V virtual switch on a server and provides a secure tunnel, using cryptography and firewalling, into the provider cloud for migration of VM workloads into the public cloud.

Once inside the public cloud, Nexus 1000V InterCloud provides a secure "container" to isolate the enterprise VMs from other tenants, essentially forming a Layer 2 virtual private cloud within the provider's environment. The enterprise manages that container using Cisco's Virtual Network Management Center InterCloud software on the customer Within the context of Cisco ONE, Nexus 1000V InterCloud is an overlay, while the Nexus 6000 is a physical scaling element for the virtual data center. A key core element of Cisco ONE is the new ONE Controller unveiled this week.

ONE Controller is software that runs on a standard x86 server. It controls the interaction between a Cisco network and the applications that run on it and manage it through a set of northbound and southbound APIs handling communication between those applications and the network.

Those APIs include Cisco's onePK set, OpenFlow and others on the southbound side between the controller and the switches and routers; and REST, Java and others on the northbound side between the controller and Cisco, customer, ISV and open source applications.

Among the Cisco applications for the ONE Controller are a previously announced network slicing program for network partitioning; and two new ones: network tapping and customer forwarding.

Network tapping provides the ability to monitor, analyze and debug network flows; and custom forwarding allows operators to program specific forwarding rules across the network based on parameters like low latency.

Cisco also provided an update on the phased rollout of Cisco ONE across its product portfolio. OnePK platform APIs will be available on the ISR G2 and ASR 1000 routers, and Nexus 3000 switch in the first half of this year. They'll be on the Nexus 7000 switch and ASR 9000 router in the second half of 2013.

OpenFlow agents will be on the Nexus 3000 in the first half of this year. This is in keeping with Cisco's initial plan for OpenFlow, which was changed last spring to appear first on the Catalyst 3000. OpenFlow will now appear on the Catalyst 3000 and 6500, and Nexus 7000 switch and ARS 9000 router in the second half of this year.

For Cisco ONE overlay networks, the Cloud Services Router 1000V, which was also introduced last spring, is now slated to ship this quarter. It was expected in the fourth quarter of 2012. Microsoft Hyper-V support in the Nexus 1000V virtual switch will appear in the first half of this year, as will a VXLAN Gateway for the 1000V. KVM hypervisor support will emerge in the second half of this year.

As for the product announced this week, the Nexus 6004 will ship this quarter and is priced from $40,000 for 12 40G ports to $195,000 for 48 40G ports. The Nexus 6001 will ship in the first half of this year and pricing will be announced when it ships.

The 40G module for the Nexus 5000 series will ship in the first half, with pricing to come at that time. The 40G-enabled Nexus 2248PQ will cost $12,000 and ship in the first quarter.

The NAM-NX1 for the Nexus 7000 will ship in the first half with pricing to come at shipment. The vNAM will enter proof-of-concept trials in the first half.

The Cisco ONE Controller will also be available in the first half. Pricing will be announced when it ships.

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