Taking An Active Step Towards A Better Career

I've been working as a systems analyst for almost 8 years now and it has been a good career for me so far. My company has given me a lot of opportunities to grow and advance my skills. However, as new and fresh graduates join our IT department, I feel that I'm being left behind in terms of technical knowledge.

Although I can choose to accept this fact and allow myself to be promoted to a managerial position, with less hands-on work requirements. I don't want to be left behind by younger colleagues when it comes to systems application and deployment.

This is why I'm choosing to take an active step towards a better career in IT. Yes, I'm currently learning my options and seriously considering enrolling in a Cisco certification program.

One of the more specific training that I want to explore is the Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE)® Storage Networking Certification. One of my company's major client is the Manila Port Operations and I was one of the team members who designed their container tracking system. It was one of the best projects that I had and I'm thinking of talking to my boss if I could take on the IT management responsibilities of that project.

I'm always amazed with IT systems, particularly this one because the storage area network at the port is very extensive. It interconnects a lot of storage devices and data servers across the pier, including some in the container ships and container trucks. With this certification, I hope I can learn more on how to effectively implement, manage and troubleshoot storage area networks including LANs, MANs and WANs over Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCIP and FICON.

With this move, I'm hoping to get promoted to a managerial or supervisory position in the company while still keeping hands-on responsibilities, which is my true love about working in IT. Yup, I really like designing and modeling different systems. If you're interested in taking an active step in your IT skills, I suggest you take a look at Cisco Learning Network and maybe find a training program appropriate for you.