IT Certifications

With the IT field having such a large area of departments and options to go into schools do not really go into much detail with their curriculum and give a broader knowledge base for people to start with. This is good to start out in the field and build your experience and determine what aspect you would like to go into with further detail.

This is where certifications come into play. They provide a means to further your knowledge in a specific area and a way to prove to employers that you have attained a certain level of knowledge. There are many certification providers for many aspects of the field. There are certifications for project management, repairing and troubleshooting pcs, build and troubleshooting networks, security, programming, operating system use and configuration, virtualization software.

There are some starting certifications that will be good to have when you all depending on where you want to go. For the system administrator the Microsoft Certified System Administrator(MCSA)  or the Microsoft Certified System Engineer(MCSE) gives you the starting point for managing Windows servres. CompTIA A+ for persons who want to get into the repair and troubleshooting of computers is a good place to start. CompTIA Network+ covers the basics about building networks and trouble shooting them from the standpoint of not needing to configure the devices yourself.  Network+ does more of the theory behind the network and server configurations. Cisco Certified Network Associate(CCNA) builds the knowledge base for the holder to build networks, configure and troubleshoot routers and switches.

iPhone OS 4.0

Apple has announced that OS 4 for the iPhone will have multitasking. This is a break for the iPhone where many users complain that they want to run multiple applications. Apple has released the API’s to developers that allow for this functionality so you can expect there to apps that will have this functionality soon. To get a list of the programs running the user would simply have to press the home screen button twice to view this information. The trade off with the use of multitasking is that you can expect your battery life to be less than it is now. The other downside to this is that only users with the iPhone 3GS and up will benefit as this is will not be supported by the iPhone 3G and older.

Another new feature to the iPhone OS is that it will support the ability to encrypt all e-mail and attachments, unlocking them with a user-entered pin code. This means that if the phone is stole sensitive emails will not be at risk of exposure. It will also support Exchange 2010 and allow users to sync multiple exchange accounts to a single device. A platform that will let advertisers and software developers embed a range of multimedia ads directly into an iPhone 4 application.

The iPhone is stilling missing flash and java support and will not likely support it in future releases.

Blackberry Enterprise Server Express

Blackberry Recently released a scaled down version of their Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES). This product is free and has most of the functionality of its Full counterpart. It supports up to 30 devices at a time and 200 emails a day and a about 100 users in total. This release is more geared towards small businesses that would need the BES infrastructure for day to day business and convenience, but cant not afford the licensing or cannot justify spending that much on a licensing. If the company starts out with BES express and outgrows this version it is full upgradable to the full version allowing for full scalability.

The up and coming System Administrators can also benefit from this free software because this can have the time to play with it in a test environment and get comfortable with the features and ways of getting things done, with out having an employer having to train them. Thus making them more adverse and capable at the start of a job.

BES Express can be downloaded from the Blackberry Website registration is required for download.

The Welcome Screen for BES Express 5.0`

Role Management