Pink Elephant Blog
The Rising Wave Of Enterprise IT Certifications
Surf's Up -- Grab Your Board It has been two weeks since our whirlwind Asian tour that took us to Beijing, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and I am still suffering from the last vestiges of jet lag. 
While I am no stranger to life on the road, this particular trip gave me new and very important insights into the growing global markets blossoming in the regions of South East Asia and Greater China. In my last post I talked about a book called “The World is Flat” written by Thomas Friedman that explores the effect these growing economies are having on the global market. Much has already been said and written on how off shoring and international outsourcing opportunities are changing the labour market across the globe.
An area that has not received the same literary attention has been on the declining ability of IT professionals to differentiate themselves from their peers. We have traditionally done this by seeking out and stockpiling technical certifications to attach to our resumes. The principle being that the more Microsoft, Cisco, Novel, etc... certifications one obtained the better positioned we were for the good paying jobs. Yes, experience is the true test of our abilities but it was often the number of certifications that initially got us that first interview. However, what happens when these certifications flood the market and now countless thousands of Asian IT professionals seek and gain these same certifications but offer their services at a much lower cost. The answer is that these certifications become commoditized in a flooded market. This trend then puts pressure on individuals and organizations looking to differentiate their workforce and services to find new badges and certificates to obtain. In my opinion this observation is one of the primary drivers behind the rising interest in education and certifications that are oriented at Enterprise IT Management practices rather than a pure technology focus. Examples of these types of certifications focus on enterprise IT roles such as: Service Management, Security Management, Project Management, Solutions Architecture and Information Risk Management. While the need to differentiate oneself in a crowded market is indeed an effective driver, I see three primary contributors to this rising interest. Three Drivers For Enterprise Certifications
- The evolution of the IT organization from technology to service management. The Service Organization
- The rising interest and adoption of general IT controls based on growing legislative and compliance requirements.
- The growing commoditization of technology focused certifications.
At Pink Elephant we have certainly seen this trend proven in the growth of our ITIL®️ and COBIT education business and this is validated in the exam statistics provided by EXIN and ISEB. If you look at their statistics, interest and growth in ITIL certification more than doubled starting in 2005 from the previous yearly trends (coincidentally the same time period when these three drivers began to kick in). Ask yourself if this is truly a coincidence or are there profound drivers at play here that are re-shaping the focus of our industry and personal IT careers. Just as a last piece of information consider that in 2005 more than 25% of the ITIL certifications globally were awarded in China. Yes the world is flat after all! Troy's thoughts, what are yours? ”It's a small world but I wouldn't want to paint it” ~Stephen Wright
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Comments
I agree with this whole-heartedly. As a former IT director, I would usually glance past the alphabet soup at the top of their resumes and into the PM or ITIL experience they would have.
North American universities need to share some of the responsibility here. Many have not updated their computer science curriculums to include ITSM of any sort. When hiring a CS graduate, I would much rather that they are well versed in change management than being able to build their own operating system.
Mike Atlas | December 21, 2007 at 1:55pm