Next certification step?

kbowen0188

I currently work as a Help Desk Specialist and Desktop Support Technician at a corporate bank. They are paying for my CCNA study materials and test fees, and I am feeling pretty confident in my studies at the moment. I am hoping to have my CCNA by July or September, and then may try and go after another certification before the year is done. This is up in the air, as I will also be starting on my final 2 years of college (Business degree with a focus on IT), so who knows if I will have the time.

Are there any certifications that are good to have for anyone who is in the IT field? I do not know what my focus is going to be, so I am trying just to educate myself in something that will be useful at any point down the road. My motivation for gaining the CCNA was just to understand networks at a deeper level, and be able to intelligently troubleshoot them if I have to, as well as intelligently discuss them. Networking is a core technology that everyone in IT experiences imho, so it seemed like a good idea to start there.

But what next?

I had considered VMware, perhaps a Microsoft Server or Desktop certification. Any other suggestions/ideas?

Master Of Puppets

Maybe the best option will be to do research on the different areas and choose the one you want to pursue. Getting random certs won't help that much. Employers want to see experience backing those certs. Cisco, VMware and MS are great but for different people, it depends on what you do and want to do. If you want to be well rounded, you can study the different materials but not necessarily certify in everything.