Get certified!

How can channel partners ensure they are trained in the right technologies so they can win business? CRN takes you through the training and certification maze.

If you are spending more than half your training budget on maintaining vendor certifications, you are not alone.

In an industry where an 18-month product life cycle is average, constant training is a fact of life for resellers who need to keep up with the latest technologies.

With emerging market sectors such as security, VoIP, mobile and wireless all requiring levels of expertise and customer confidence, resellers are being increasingly pressured to keep their training and certifications up to date.

In a competitive landscape where customers demand credentials, and vendors offer valuable margin bonuses to certified partners, even Australia’s largest resellers admit that their training regimes are largely tied to their key vendor partners.

However, CRN spoke to resellers, distributors and vendors who believe that several technology and business trends will change the vendor-channel training dynamic.

One is a move towards cross-vendor solutions selling (increasingly supported by vendors working together to make their products more compatible), and the other is the adoption of open standards and open source software.

While CRN in the US reports that its reseller market is trending towards vendor-neutral certifications, some in the local industry say that such qualifications are less widespread – and considered less important.

But as the Australian IT industry moves towards a more open systems environment, some believe that resellers should look to more vendor-agnostic certifications, such as the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) offered by the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium.

So what influences a reseller’s choice of training? The vast majority of resellers, distributors and technology vendors agree that vendors are the greatest influence on the type of training resellers will choose. But this stems from the most important part of the business equation -- the customer -- says Michael Costigan, marketing director for distributor Avnet Partner Solutions.

"First and foremost it’s the market they’re in and what’s driving the end users," he says. "Compliance is a big thing, and security issues." Keeping up with new products and maintaining vendor sales certification is another motivator, Costigan says.

"Vendors do run their own direct training -- technical training and sales refresher courses.
We piggyback on what the vendors offer." Consequently, the training tended to be vendor-specific, with additional generic technology and sales training.

While most vendors offer sales and marketing training on top of their specific product training, often technology distributors see additional, often more customised, training as their value add -- or point of differentiation -- for their reseller customers.

For example, security distributor Firewall Systems offers weekly sales training at its Melbourne and Sydney offices, as well as a regular security update service that details new security threats and technologies.

New certifications around emerging technologies seem to be popping up all the time. In the US, tech-specific and vendor-neutral courses are taking off.

A CRN survey of resellers in the US found that four of the top five certifications resellers expected to grow fastest in importance over 2004 were vendor-neutral -- including CompTIA’s Linux+ and Security+, Planet 3’s Certified Wireless Network Administrator, and the Linux Professional Institute Level 1 and 2 courses.

So how can channel partners ensure they are trained and certified in the right technologies so they can win business? And, in the real world, does certification matter, or is it just an expensive piece of paper?

Services company Data#3 spends more than half its training budget on maintaining vendor certifications and has honed its business around four key vendors -- Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and HP. When asked whether vendor certifications are worth the money, Data#3’s managing director John Grant’s reply is blunt. "We couldn’t be in business without it."

Steve Ross, general manager of training provider Dimension Data Learning Solutions (DDLS), says there are two motivations for resellers to get certified: "One is to meet the demands of vendors; secondly, as a differentiator in the market". Certifications could be quite persuasive for customers dealing with a new reseller, he says.

But is certification really a differentiator, especially with ubiquitous vendors like Microsoft and Cisco? "Four or five years ago, no, but they now have specialisations," Ross says.

DDLS is largely a vendor-training oriented provider for Cisco, Microsoft, Novell, Lotus, Citrix and Check Point, although it offers such vendor-neutral courses as CompTIA and A+.

Ross says that recent increasing student numbers are a barometer for the strengthening of the IT sector. "People are back learning -- my numbers are proving it. Our student numbers were up by over 20 percent in the six months to the end of March. Because the market is on the rise, companies are investing in their staff to reduce churn and retain their good staff. IT people like to keep their skills updated."

And if the prospect of differentiation is not enough, the vendors offer a financial carrot too, Ross points out. Through lead provision, financial incentives and other benefits, certified partners could expect better treatment from vendors, he says. "A lot of vendors these days give more margin to certified partners such as Cisco and Microsoft in the business systems area."

One vendor that uses margin as a training carrot is network security vendor WatchGuard Technologies.

Sven Radavics, sales director for Australia/ New Zealand, says WatchGuard’s top tier Expert partners get a rebate of about 12 percent on their buy price, while second tier Professional partners would receive a discount equivalent to 7 or 8 percent. Certified partners also receive sales leads, he says.

Vendor training or vendor neutral? With the maintenance of partner certifications taking up the majority of the training for many resellers, including Data#3, Leading Solutions and Dimension Data, the value of vendor-neutral courses is somewhat overshadowed.

But while it might be expected that vendors would sing the praises of their own training courses, one vendor that advocates vendor-neutral qualifications is WatchGuard’s Radavics.

"I’m a big fan of some of the certification and training courses, such as SANS (SysAdmin Audit Network Security Institute).

"SANS offers very technical security training, ranging from auditing and policy generation through to specific generic technology training such as firewalls and intrusion detection.

"It’s an interesting approach and it will eventually take off in this country. We’re just lagging a little," he says.

A more common vendor-neutral qualification in Australia is the CISSP, says Radavics. "I’m not seeing it widely adopted in the reseller community, but is more widely adopted than SANS."
The CISSP course is perhaps more attractive to resellers because it is cheaper and required less time commitment, he says.

While vendor-agnostic certifications might take a back seat for resellers who have built their business around particular key vendors, Australia may be set to follow the US trend in which cross-vendor solutions are changing not only the IT landscape but also how resellers obtain training.

Data#3’s Grant is one managing director who preaches vendor loyalty, but is also looking to a future in which vendors themselves start to overlap their technology with other manufacturers.

While software companies such as SAP had been using Microsoft platforms for a long
time, Grant believes that hardware vendors doing the same thing is an emerging trend. He points to work being done by IBM and Cisco on telephony as it applies to mobile workers as an example.

"We’re very mindful to follow cross-vendor solutions being provided by the vendors we’ve identified as key to us. Our next phase is to work with solutions that incorporate multiples of those vendors," Grant says.

Similarly, Leading Solutions has diversified from its original business of focusing solely on HP, says Leading’s national service and support manager Rex Galley. "In the last 12 months we have broadened the hardware offering to include both Toshiba and Acer products.

"Each of the vendors have their own specific training regimens; however, hardware vendors in general have tended to relax the requirements and recognise that each vendor also has a lot
of commonality in their technical training and therefore are more prone to make exemptions possible."

This cross-vendor recognition is a new and welcome development, says Galley. "In the past each vendor took a very narrow focus on their own training for certifications.

Unsurprisingly, security is flagged as a key area in which resellers will seek training this year, according to DDLS’ Ross.

Both specific and generic security courses, such as Microsoft’s Fundamentals of Network Security, would be in demand, he predicted. DDSL also offers an intensive five-day Ultrahacking Defence course.

For 2005, Data#3 is looking at VPN security, network security and management as the hot areas for staff training, according to Grant.

More generally, Data#3 is looking at Microsoft e-business software including content management, SharePoint Sevices and CRM, he says.

Leading Solutions echoed the security and wireless mantra, with Galley saying both areas would be training focal points.

The 2004 trend towards all-in-one security devices is set to continue this year, says WatchGuard’s Radavics. But he admits that demand for all-in-one devices tends to come from the SME segment. "In enterprise we’re still seeing mostly a preference for best of breed. The other big hotspot is wireless and security," he adds. "Securing wireless is the number one standout requirement."

In addition to the security area, Microsoft and Cisco courses remained in demand. "We’re seeing a lot of interest in SQL with the anticipated release of Yukon (SQL Server 2005) this year," Radavics says.

Cisco telephony courses were another hot area, says Ross. VoIP has overcome its slow start, impeded by the slow buying cycle for customers migrating from legacy PABX technology, he says. ITIL (an IT Services Management best practice framework) training was also proving popular, because it was a prerequisite for dealing with a number of organisations, particularly government departments, says Ross. "We’re seeing growth in project management and ITIL spending."

Looking at the motivation behind end user spending on IT, Ross says end users are looking for productivity gains. With that in mind, resellers would find training around email management and wireless to be beneficial. "As we see wireless come of age, we’re seeing applications which support PDAs, such as the integration of Outlook and Exchange."

This technology could be sold as a productivity booster, enabling communications for a mobile sales force rather than bringing them back into the office, he says.

Data#3 is one integrator beginning to focus on the growing mobility market, as the corporate market begins to demand solutions for mobile executives. The company currently has a pilot under way with Vodafone on BlackBerry devices.

But rather than seeking training on particular ‘hot technologies’, in keeping with their vendor-focused approach, Grant says the integration company will focus on the technologies that its vendors deliver.

Open Source is another key area in which the major players are ramping up product releases and training.

Last month distributor Avnet Partner Solutions announced it had taken on the distribution of Novell SuSE Linux enterprise products and launched what it says is Australia’s first Linux testing and certification centre for ISVs, the Novell Authorised Testing Centre (NATC).

Avnet’s Costigan says the initiative with Novell SuSE was a response to increased curiosity from partners about commercialising Linux. The education process around Linux and open source would help infrastructure partners answer questions such as ‘what does it mean if I lead with Linux into a sale?’ he adds.

While admitting that the Australian industry was to some extent still in the transition from awareness to engagement with open source technology, Costigan says that partners would see a lot of large scale tender opportunities open up around Linux.

Other moves are afoot that will bolster the role of open source in the Australian IT industry this year.

Paul Dury, who looks after Global Learning Services and Professional Services for Linux company Red Hat, says the growth of Linux into a "serious corporate contender" has seen a corresponding growth in Red Hat certifications.

The number of courses being offered in A/NZ had doubled in the past year, he says. "We’re seeing a lot of the large banks and telcos getting their people skilled and deploying the product." Dury says the surge in Linux and Red Hat interest at an enterprise level provided an opportunity for the channel.

"Keep in mind that most of those large corporates won’t have designers and implementers. We’re certainly seeing demand for people to come in and look at the architecture."

But he notes that resellers should be rolling out basic Linux certifications through their staff base, warning of a potential skills shortage. "The number of certifications out there haven’t matched the growth of the products."

Despite calling for more Linux qualifications, Dury played down the significance of vendor-neutral qualifications such as Linux+. "We see a bit of it, but they don’t tend to carry as much credibility as a course from a vendor."

Earlier this month Red Hat completed a road show for its new RHEL4 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4) product. With security a major component of the new product, Dury says there were additional studies that partners could undertake around the security component.

Also on the training front, Red Hat recently introduced a new certification -- Certified Architect -- to its suite of engineer certifications. Released in the US about two months ago, the qualification was aimed at "the big consulting guys", says Dury.

The certification would allow them to work on major design projects in the large enterprise space. The courses are already available in Australia, but the certification exams (five in total) have yet to be offered here.

Dury says the tests should be available locally within three months, once Red Hat examiners were trained up on how to offer and supervise the ‘hands-on’ exams.

Other open source training opportunities are on the horizon with Sun Microsystems. Another open source player, Sun released the latest version of its Solaris operating system last month. Solaris 10 is an open source product available for free download.

A certification for Solaris 10 is on the way, says Alan Cory, Business Development Manager, Education Services for Sun Australasia.

The certification test, being developed by independent testing body Thomson Prometic, is due to be released by early May. The exam was being developed as a problem-solving exercise in a simulated work environment, says Cory.

While policy design, firewall configuration and managed firewalls had been hot areas in 2004, Nick Verykios, marketing director of security distributor Firewall Systems, says the demand
in 2005 will be around heuristics, neural networking and behaviour analysis.

With traditional, physical security providers amongst Firewall Systems’ customers, Verykios says IT security resellers need to begin taking a managed security approach or they risk losing customers to established security firms that are expanding their service offerings to include data.

"Security is a new kind of sale -- it’s selling business continuity and risk management. We’re trying to build policy experts in our reseller base, and get them close to the Holy Grail -- owning the customer."
Verykios says the managed security model is vendor-agnostic, because end users do not want to buy a name brand security product.

"The customer wants to buy an SLA. It has to make sense to the board of directors, who are interested in risk mitigation, and to the CEO, who is interested in business continuity.

"It’s a security solution wrapped in finance and sold with a monthly bill for ongoing maintenance and monitoring."