Teste

“Ensuring project teams have the skills required for both implementation and ongoing management and maintenance of new technologies is essential to maximizing the value organizations receive from their technology.”

– Cushing Anderson, IDC vice president, IT Education and Certification research [1]

Without question, the condition of the economy is having a fundamental impact on how companies conduct business. While organizations are looking to cut costs and reduce risks wherever possible, they’re also turning to IT to maximize the efficiency of their existing assets.

Yet, while IT is playing a more crucial role than ever before, IT project success rates “remain abysmal,” according to IDC.[2] The best way to reduce the risks of these projects, according to the same research, is developing the skills of the team. Almost 30 percent of the respondents to the study said the skill of the project team was the most important factor in IT project success.

In fact, there’s a strong correlation between skills development and IT project success. On average, organizations that spent 8 percent of project budget on training met their objectives 85 percent of the time; those spending 10 percent met objectives 100 percent of the time. [3]

The economy makes skills development critical for individuals as well. Certification, as an industry-recognized validation of skills, is a proven differentiator—whether the individual is a seasoned IT professional looking to demonstrate his or her value to the organization, or someone looking to break into the industry for the first time.

Over the last 17 years, Microsoft has invested heavily in skills development—and certification as a validation of skills—because it knows, from third-party and its own research, that the training and certification process drives satisfaction—and improving customer satisfaction is a core value for Microsoft.

After a period of downturn, the demand for IT certification has increased