Microsoft Offers Free Training to Virginians
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has announced that the state is partnering with Microsoft to offer free technology training and skills certification to residents of the Old Dominion.
Through the company’s Elevate America program, Microsoft will work with the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) to distribute 11,250 vouchers for technology training and certification.
“This partnership will provide thousands of Virginians with the technology skills they need to attain and sustain employment as the economy recovers,” Kaine said. “At the same time, this critical training will ensure Virginia’s workforce emerges from this economic downturn stronger than ever — and ready to compete on a global level.”
The company is offering 5,000 vouchers for online training, 5,000 vouchers for online testing and 1,250 vouchers for more advanced-level training. Each training voucher can be used at a community college for either a free class to boost general computer skills or training on one of the programs in Microsoft Office Suite, such as PowerPoint, Excel or Word.
The testing vouchers are redeemable for an assessment, which shows that a student is Microsoft-certified in a certain field, if he or she receives a passing grade. Advanced-level vouchers will be used for training for students on an 70-685 information technology professional career path in areas such as Web development and database management, the company said.
VCCS will work with the Education Department and Virginia’s workforce centers to distribute 1,500 training vouchers, 1,500 testing vouchers and 400 advanced-level vouchers. VCCS will keep the remaining vouchers for distribution as needed on a first-come, first-served basis, Microsoft said.
Citrix is expanding its top-level administrator certifications to focus more on virtualization. It’s a step that makes sense for a company working hard to claw out its space in the virtualization market, and has some very intriguing products.
It’s adding the specialization onto its flagship Citrix Certified Enterprise Engineer (CCEE) and Citrix Certified Integration Architect (CCIA) credentials, adding “for Virtualization” onto the title.
The certifications will be available starting in the fall, according to Citrix. Current CCEE and CCIA holders have an upgrade path: CCEEs will need to pass the “A15 — Engineering a Citrix Virtualization Solution” exam to add the virtualization moniker, while the higher-level CCIA will have to pass that exam and “A16 — Architecting a Citrix Virtualization Solution.”
The upgrade paths expire June 30, 2010. After that time, candidates will need to begin from the beginning.
CCEE is aimed at the engineers and high-level administrators implementing virtualization; the CCIA is targeted more at designers and architects.
Virginia is the second state to partner with Microsoft on Elevate America; Washington was the first. The goal of the initiative is to provide 1 million vouchers in the U.S. for Microsoft e-Learning courses and some free Microsoft practice tests at no or low cost to recipients.
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