Dick Lewis MCSE Home Page • Resume • Study Resources • FAQs • E-Mail

 

Other Certification Options

Cisco
There appears to be continued demand for the Cisco certified individual in the marketplace. The Cisco CCIE is the premier certification, with CCIEs pulling down $200-$300 per hour as a billable rate. This is almost double the MCSE billing rate. The cost of getting the CCIE and the difficulty of passing their very stringent observed lab exam are not for the faint of heart. Recently I found a training center advertising the CCIE course set and labs needed to pass for $20,000. The pass rate on the final is very low due to the difficulty. The CCNA exam #640-507 is currently being redone and may be released to beta soon if you want to get your feet wet in this area. The Beta exams in Cisco are different than in the Microsoft world in that they are free.

 

Linux
Red Hat has begun to offer their Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE). The RHCE exam is 6 hours long with only 1 hour of multiple choice questions. The other 5 hours are hands on troubleshooting, installation and network services. The RHCE training seminars are 5 days and cost $2500. They assume that you are a Linux/UNIX poweruser, ISP or an administrator and newbies should not expect to be able to generate the test score needed to pass. Red Hat has some introductory courses but even these have cautionary notes about prerequisites.

If you believe strongly that Linux is the direction that the market will be going over the next few years then here is the option for you. With a new program like this you will not yet find the wealth of training material and freebie study information on the Internet that has become common in the Microsoft Certification world.