Written by Charles Longfellow
It’s industry-wide – just about every IT position requires some certification as part of it’s hiring process. Yet, for a student looking to get certifications for todays…and more importantly…TOMORROW’s IT landscape – what should you choose? A+ Cisco CCNA? The options are myriad – but let’s look at it not only from today’s lens – but also from a historical perspective.
It’s 1998. Microsoft is pushing its latest domain-based software, Windows NT, to compete with the heavy market share dominated in the business sector by Novell Netware. At the time, Novell required 12 tests to be completed to become Novell-certified. Microsoft, ever wanting to capture the growing market share in the client-server model of the time, pushed forth it’s signature certification path, MCSE, or Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer in Windows NT. Now, you could become certified with only SIX tests, and not 12 like Novell. Additionally, the word on the street from MS to every company was….” Want to put in a cheaper MS domain? Well, you need certified personnel to run it!”
I still remember the lead instructor at Mindworks, a technical certification training center in Scottsdale at the time, telling us prospective students….” You’ve chosen a great career field. You’ll be guaranteed work for the next 20 years.”
And he wasn’t wrong. After getting my A+, Network+, and all six MCSE tests, I started off in Network support, then databases and reporting, to server support, systems integration, and now finally to statewide IT Management support, integrating four large datacenters and thousands of systems.
Fast-forward 27 years, it’s now 2025.
Where to go, so I can tell students…….” You’ve chosen a great career field. You’ll be guaranteed work for the next 20 years.”? The answers in today’s field aren’t nearly so black-and-white, and to answer it, we do need to understand two unspoken axioms in the world of IT – the 5 Year Rule, and the 15 Year Rule.
Every five years, hardware and software changes just enough that you need to upgrade your operating system and equipment. It’s as true today as it was 25 years ago – otherwise, we’d still be typing DOS prompts on an old 486 PC. Easy enough – we can all relate. Are you still using a Motorola Razor to bid on eBay? Nope. The 5 Year Rule will continue.
But it’s the 15 Year Rule that you need to best focus on – and that is, how things are done in the IT field takes a paradigm shift in a new direction. We went from saving files on floppy disks to burning them on CDs, then on flash drives, and now on personal cloud storage. We went from standalone server hardware to virtual machines and then finally to containers, allowing us to have a single server host thousands of cloud machines.
In the world of 2025, with so much focus on cloud computing, AI, movement aware from standalone client-server datacenters to hybrid model, we need to think about what job humans will be doing in the IT field in the next 20 years as we continue to move from onsite to cloud, small wiring closets to 120-acre share data centers, and from programs sold of website to being generated by an AI interface. Looking for job security in IT for the next 20 years? Then focus on two growing certification trends – Data Center Technician, and Data Warehouse Technical Lead.
Let’s face it – you can’t support a 120-acre datacenter without humans to rack servers, respond to alarms, deal with high humidity centers, and replace drives on SANs. Most of these positions in data centers don’t require a college degree and can easily be filled with a simple certification career path.
Also, let’s not forget the continuing ongoing focus on AI. Well, AI needs a HUGE amount of data to learn – and that data has to be stored somewhere and maintained properly by humans. AI can write a quick JAVA applet, sure – but it can’t fine-tune a query, or think about what data sets to tie into to make itself smarter. Also, think about all the data that gets captured with so many interconnected devices – just collecting it is called HEAP Data. Logically designed systems are relational and efficient – something only humans can do efficiently.
And finally – all these systems are useless unless they can talk to each other on a global network. Think about all your devices, your phone, table, laptop, car GPS, Ring Doorbell, point of Sale terminals all connect to each other on the same networking principles – even though the hardware and software is drastically different.
A recent article on DailyMail.com had this to say about the Data Center Technician career path:
“The irony of artificial intelligence – which could threaten human jobs in a number of different disciplines – powering job growth in the data center sector is not lost on those in the industry.
Joe Minarik, CEO at DataBank, said AI is unlikely to replace the staff working at data centers.
‘If a server goes down in a rack, I need a body to physically go see what went wrong. Did a breaker flip? Did a server catch on fire?’ he said.
‘We still need humans.'”
So – where to go? Here’s a great place to start.
Data Center Technician – CompTIA’s Network+ and Server+ – two outstanding certifications that will not only stand the test of time in data centers, but also a great entry level starting position. And they are an excellent foundational starting point for the next 20 years. Of course, it never hurts to flush out your knowledge base, with A+, or even Security+.in today’s modern world.
Data Warehouse Technical Lead – CompTIA’s Network+ and Data+ or DataSys+ – not only do we need data, but every system that’s tied together needs it too. Knowing how to connect and arrange disparate data systems is a golden pathway for the next 20 years. Additionally, with large datasets comes privacy concerns – so adding a Security + certification to your resume will really shine.
And never forget – that 5 Year and 15 year rule – certifications will change periodically as the IT Landscape changes, which is something we as IT professionals all face. But as a wise man said…”A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Making the first step is easy…knowing the right path to take you to the end of those thousand miles is just as critical.
