IBM Certification for a Dynamic Infrastructure

  By Becky Gonzalez —

The Tivoli certification program offers several certifications in service management. The Tivoli program includes advanced-level certifications for the IBM Certified Advanced Deployment Professional in the following areas:

• IBM Service Management Network and Service Assurance.
• IBM Service Management Security and Compliance.
• IBM Service Management Service Availability and Performance Management.
• IBM Service Management Service Delivery and Process Automation.
• IBM Service Management Data Center Management and Transformation.
• IBM Service Management Asset and Financial Management.

Asset management: Production, delivery and facilities assets are important components of a dynamic infrastructure. Asset management solutions ensure safe and reliable operations by controlling costs, mitigating risk, increasing return on assets and enhancing operational efficiency for all types of assets.

Two examples of IBM certifications in asset management are:

• IBM Certified Deployment Professional – Tivoli Asset Management for IT v7.1.
• IBM Certified Deployment Professional – Maximo Asset Management v7.1.

Security: Security solutions deliver capabilities that enable organizations to take a holistic approach to security, compliance and risk management, supporting the secure delivery of services with speed and agility in the dynamic infrastructure. A secure infrastructure is critical in most business environments and is a key component of dynamic infrastructure.

Tivoli has several certifications designed to validate IT skills supporting a secure infrastructure. In addition, IBM provides several different certification offerings in the area of security.

For Lotus, there is the IBM Certified Advanced Security Professional – Lotus Notes and Domino 8, designed to validate the more advanced level of skills required by someone in a security role.

Rational offers the IBM Certified Specialist – IBM Rational AppScan Standard Edition. This certification focuses on security from an entirely different perspective. This certification is intended for IT specialists with experience using IBM Rational AppScan Standard Edition, a Web application security testing tool that automates vulnerability assessments.

Then, as a services offering, IBM has a brand new professional certification program that is all about IT security. The Internet Security Systems (ISS) certification program was formally launched June 1. Available from ISS is the IBM Certified Advisor – Internet Security Systems Technical v1. The IBM Internet Security Systems technical advisor is an IT professional who has a strong understanding of current technical security technologies and can accurately position the ISS offering portfolio against competitive technologies.

Skills to Support SOA Infrastructure

Critical to any infrastructure is architecture. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) fits hand-in-glove with the premise of a dynamic infrastructure. SOA allows a business to build, integrate and deploy functions and processes independent of the application or system platform. An SOA infrastructure increases flexibility, responsiveness and performance, consistent with the IBM Dynamic Infrastructure strategy.

The SOA Professional certification program offers an IBM Certified SOA Solution Designer role. This certification validates the candidate’s ability to assess and translate requirements for business process flexibility and agility into a service-focused software solution, using SOA principles.

Additionally, the IBM SOA certification program offers a certification for the administrator role and an entry-level certification for the SOA associate.

Skills for a Dynamic World

Given the purpose of a dynamic infrastructure — to integrate business and IT assets so they are aligned with the overall goals of business, while improving service, reducing costs and managing risks — the number of differing dynamic infrastructure implementations are immense.

However, keeping pace, the IBM Professional Certification Program has an extensive and diverse portfolio of certifications for IT professionals, energized with new and developing skills and ready to meet the challenges of today’s dynamic world of business. 

Becky Gonzalez is a program manager for IBM Professional Certification. She can be reached at editor@certmag.com.