The new Windows 2000 track for MCSEs stresses enterprise complexity because it’s based on key findings from a survey of 2,800 IT professionals worldwide.

New Windows 2000 Track Offers Opportunities

The new Windows 2000 track for MCSEs stresses enterprise complexity because it’s based on key findings from a survey of 2,800 IT professionals worldwide.

• By Anne Marie McSweeney
• November 01, 1999

The availability of Microsoft Windows 2000 will bring tremendous benefits to your clients and colleagues—and tremendous business opportunities to you, if you can demonstrate expertise with this latest version of Windows. To help you establish that expertise, the new MCSE/Windows 2000 certification will be available soon.

To ensure that the new certification is as valuable as possible to you and your customers, we designed it based on a job task analysis of more than 2,800 IT professionals in 85 countries. The new track raises the bar on skill requirements because professionals like you told us this was crucial to keeping the certification targeted on real-world requirements. Here are some of our key findings:

• Analysis and design are an increasingly important part of the IT professional’s job. You and your colleagues are called upon more and more to participate in design of architectural solutions that meet increasingly complex business requirements.
• IT professionals rated troubleshooting the most important, frequent, and difficult part of their jobs. Such troubleshooting can involve diagnosing and resolving problems with network infrastructure, system architecture, security, and reliability and availability.
• Much of the increasing complexity of enterprise environments involves a greater emphasis on Web use and on connecting remote offices. The majority of environments have secure Web servers with indexed files and Web sites. IT professionals are tasked not only with keeping remote offices in touch, but also with keeping remote users connected.

The new MCSE/Windows 2000 certification stays focused on your needs and those of your customers by reflecting these findings. For example, because of the growing importance of design issues, design exams are now part of the core requirements for the first time. In response to the emphasis on troubleshooting, the new exams have an increased emphasis on this ability. Separate exams for security and network infrastructure address issues of security, reliability, availability and networking.

Today’s employers expect an individual with the MCSE credential to have a minimum of one year of experience implementing a network operating system. To reflect this market demand, the successful MCSE candidate in the Windows 2000 track should have at least one year of real-world experience to pass the exams.

To leverage the skills and knowledge of MCSEs already certified in Windows NT 4.0, we’ve consolidated four of our six required exams into a single, accelerated exam that will make it time- and cost-effective for them to upgrade to the new certification.

To get all the details on the new certification track and how you can take advantage of it, visit the MCP Web site at www.microsoft.com/trainingandservices/default.asp?PageID=MCP&SubSite=cert/mcse&AnnMenu=mcse.