Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Training & Certifications
From: "Dave Howe" <DaveHowe () cmn sharp-uk co uk>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 14:00:20 +0100
Harlan Carvey wrote:
Well, like I said, certs for the products you're supporting always help. MCSEs for Windows systems, maybe even CISSPs for your upper level folks. The thing about the certs is that some vendors (Checkpoint, MS, etc) have a process set up where, with a certain number of certified folks, you can be a "certified reseller", or something similar.
You can get burnt by that too, if you are a reseller. Former orkplace were a Novell reseller since the 3.x days; During the 4.x days, Novell introduced levels of resellership, based on how many CNA, CNE and CNS (salesdude) trained staff you had. So, more than half our staff (it was a small outfit, six staff including the receptionist/secretary!) trooped off and the company paid for them to attend all the training sessions and get the exams, we were in at ground level (we didn't have enough staff to even try to make it to the second level; we would have to hire extra people just to hang certificates on) This was fine for over a year, then our bigger accounts started disappearing. After a few confusing weeks of trying to figure out what was happening, we discovered that novell had launched a "volume" licencing deal where bigger customers could get significant discounts by agreeing in advance to buy a certain amount of novell product - and that we weren't allowed to offer that at our level, so other resellers had called our larger customers and asked them if they were interested in 10-15% discounts for essentially the same product? So scratch one Novell reseller, we took a massive hit on the deal (didn't recoup anywhere near the cost of the training, and due to some staff moving on would have needed to train another newbie) and stopped selling novell products; dozens of smaller deals were never made (at least not though us, although many took us up on our suggestions to use NT or Winframe instead) so I can only assume novell took a hit on the deal too - particularly as it cost it 10-15% of retail price to take those larger accounts away from us in the first place. What I learnt from this was to never assume that reseller certification programmes are there for the customer or the reseller - they are purely a profit center for the vendor, and should be treated as such. _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- Training & Certifications Robert Repp (Apr 02)
- Re: Training & Certifications Exibar (Apr 02)
- Re: Training & Certifications Harlan Carvey (Apr 02)
- RE: [inbox] Re: Training & Certifications Curt Purdy (Apr 04)
- Re: Training & Certifications Harlan Carvey (Apr 02)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Training & Certifications Robert Repp (Apr 02)
- Re: Training & Certifications Harlan Carvey (Apr 03)
- Re: Training & Certifications Dave Howe (Apr 03)
- Re: Training & Certifications Ron DuFresne (Apr 05)
- Re: [FD] Training & Certifications Andrew J Caines (Apr 05)
- Re: Training & Certifications Exibar (Apr 05)
- RE: Training & Certifications Laura Taylor (Apr 06)
- Re: Training & Certifications Exibar (Apr 06)
- Re: Training & Certifications Harlan Carvey (Apr 03)
- RE: Training & Certifications Bojan Zdrnja (Apr 05)
- Re: Training & Certifications Valdis . Kletnieks (Apr 05)
- RE: [inbox] Re: Training & Certifications Exibar (Apr 05)
- Re: Training & Certifications Exibar (Apr 02)