Dell Unveils Four New 'Product Agnostic' Certifications Around Cloud, Services And Security

Dell EMC is taking a product-agnostic strategy with four new certifications – unveiled on Thursday and available to channel partners – that are aimed at developing future-proof skillsets around digital transformation.

"Our certification approach is now moving away from product-based skillset enablement towards more product agnostic and developing skills that really are aligned to infrastructure cloud solutions, IT-as-a-service and architecting businesses for the future," said Charles Atkins, vice president for Dell EMC Education Services, in an interview with CRN.

The new certifications are part of the Dell EMC Proven Professional program, which has more than 150,000 certified individuals. For the first time, the program is introducing a Master certification level which is now the highest-level tier in the program followed by Expert, Specialist and Associate.

[Related: Dell EMC Channel Chief Mullen On New Storage Investments, IoT Bundles Ahead And Dell-VMware Partner Program Strategy]

Dell EMC's new Master Enterprise Architect certification validates both the technical ability and the holistic understanding to deliver secure IT-as-a-Service solutions that further digital transformation.

"This is really moving the skillset from being a technologist to a transformational leader – architecting end-to-end solutions across the board for a company," said Atkins. "Whether it's your Cisco network, your Dell EMC data center solutions – it's a broad-based technology baseline skill set on how to architect an end-to-end solution."

The company's new Expert Systems Administrator Multi-Cloud certification creates capabilities in multi-cloud solutions. The certification validates an individual's ability to manage workloads across multi-cloud environments and expertise in Dell EMC infrastructure, VMware vRealize Suite and integrating with public cloud providers including Microsoft Azure, AWS and Virtustream.

"This is where you really get deeper into, 'How do we administrate a cloud-to-cloud solution -- whether its VMware, Virtustream, Azure, AWS, etc. – to develop the skill set and then enable the individual to manage workloads across multiple cloud solutions," said Atkins.

The third new certification is the Specialist System Administrator Infrastructure Security, which builds skills to take a security-first approach to administering Dell EMC infrastructure across the data center and cloud. The security cert teaches best practices in configuring and managing enterprise solutions in alignment with their organizations' overall security strategy.

"This really starts to introduce a level of recognition for baseline skill sets and architecting a security framework. This is something we'll be adventitious to the market that supports Dell Technologies approach to security and security products," said Atkins.

The fourth Dell EMC certification is the Associate Converged Systems & Hybrid Cloud Platforms which creates foundational knowledge of integrated infrastructure and cloud strategies. Partners can learn through use cases and interactive experience in which they play the role of a CIO looking to modernized their IT environment.

Dell EMC's Master Enterprise Architect certification and Associated Converged Systems & Hybrid Cloud Platforms are now available. The Expert Multi-Cloud certification will become available on April 30, while the Specialist System Administrator Infrastructure Security is set to launch in June.