CompTIA is working on developing the Mobility+ certification

I just got an e-mail about this. They are looking for mobility experts:

Mobility Experts Needed

CompTIA is looking for IT professionals who have experience in wireless networking, mobility architecture, mobile security (both Wi-Fi and R/F) and policy, and experience in troubleshooting mobile devices to be involved in creating our CompTIA Mobility+ certification exam.

The purpose of the Job Task Analysis workshop is to identify areas of competence required for a certification, and to ensure that the examination objectives are relevant to job roles and activities for the target audience.

Potential Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) must have strong knowledge and experience in deploying and managing corporate Wi-Fi and/or R/F networks, including device management, architecture, security, and device management -- preferably in a multi-vendor environment. They should also have understanding of wireless networking operations and mobile devices and should have at least five years of IT experience, with at least two years of technical hands-on experience with wireless and mobile devices.

SMEs will receive a $300 a day stipend for the 4-day workshop, plus $300 to defray travel expenses and have their hotel lodging paid by CompTIA, after their acceptance and full participation in the program.

Mobility Experts Needed

When: Dec. 11-14, 2012
Where: CompTIA Headquarters, Downers Grove, IL. Downers Grove is a western suburb of Chicago accessible by O'Hare and Midway airports.

I know that some of you deal with this exclusively, so it might interest you. Being a CompTIA SME might be nice for your resume.

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N2IT

I remember back in the day you had help desk with split roles (Infrastructure and Applications) and other varations of that. With the mass wave of mobility hitting the scene I wondering if you will see this again. Mobility for a lot of service desk is one of the biggest incident drivers.

IMO in the not so distant future you will see mobility experience and certification overtaking desktop and laptop certifications. Especially with VDI hitting the scene.

veritas_libertas

My company hired an individual just to support BYOD needs. That should give you a feeling for what we are going to see in the future.

N2IT

Veritas in our organization something similiar has happened. We have a mobility team that continues to grow. It's scaled from 1 person to ~4 which seems overnight. I think it will continue to trend upward. Service desk are not equipped to handle this many devices and all the other associated problems with mobility. (Account management, applications, service plans, etc.)

nosoup4u

My company just hired a group of three to devote to a "mobility" team, I know they purchased transformer primes and the att with the docker. I agree in the next 5-10 years will look very different but I still think there will be a place for traditional machines or at least term server boxes.

veritas_libertas

nosoup4u wrote: »

My company just hired a group of three to devote to a "mobility" team, I know they purchased transformer primes and the att with the docker. I agree in the next 5-10 years will look very different but I still think there will be a place for traditional machines or at least term server boxes.

Yes, the death of the Desktop and Laptop are greatly exaggerated.

ptilsen

The trend towards mobility is undeniable, but I'm just not sure about this direction for compTIA. I don't think we're going to see a lot of people go after this because the market won't be looking for it. Most helpdesks will already hire without A+, and I don't see them adding mobility+ as a requirement. I don't see many organizations as needing to split helpdesk for different user hardware devices. Maybe at a few organizations, but I think by and large mobility doesn't change the ideal structure. One of the biggest benefits to tablet and phone integration is that the modern platforms are easy to support.

The complexities and costs are in preparing the infrastructure for these devices. You have to design, implement, and manage an MDM solution that is tied in with security needs and business goals. You hire an experienced, skill admin team for that, not a bunch of helpdesk guys with a lame Comptia cert.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I really see Comptia's certification lineup as becoming a really lame way to try to maintain relevance in all facets of the industry. The trio is good for entry level and for getting an improved, holistic understanding of infrastructure, and maybe Server+ and Linux+ help as well, but the rest is pretty much nonsense. Healthcare, cloud, green, strata, CASP, and now mobility? They're not gaining buy-in from the market and I don't think they're going to. They don't solve organizational needs and don't act as serious differentiators between job candidates. So much of the industry is already not fully on-board with the staples that I think introducing new certs like this are just a waste of money on Comptia's part.

Instead, Comptia should be changing the structure of A+, Net+, and Sec+ to include troubleshooting common OS/hardware problems on smartphones/tablets, understanding how they communicate with a corporate network, and understanding the implications they have for security, respectively. Wireless is an integral part of most networks at this point; there is just no reason to separate it from Net+ and Sec+ any further. Adding another cert for people to spend $200-$500 and weeks of study on to fulfill a minor need just doesn't make sense to me. I think the trio is appropriate for entry-level and that Comptia should focus its efforts on keeping those exams well-rounded and relevant.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe mobility will start to take place as its own department in organizations and its own true specialization for professionals, and maybe this certification will come into play. I'm betting on the other direction -- it gets integrated as a subset of systems and network administration and support roles. An integral subset, for sure, but not a focus.

Edit: One thing I do see is the shift away from such bottom-heavy IT organizations. As platforms improve, we're going to see bigger focuses on successful admin and engineering teams deploying solutions that work well, reliably, and intuitively. I think this is happening regardless of mobility, as maintenance costs go down and application delivery becomes easier.

N2IT

I don't think it's a stretch at all to be honest. A laptop for a corporate environment is 1,500+ on the CHEAP end and 1,000 for a desktop. You can get a WYSE terminal with a license for 250 - 600 USD. Take 90% of an organization of 20,000 users and you get quite the savings.
18,000 users * 600 USD + 2000 users * 1500 USD = 13,800,000.00
10,000 users * 1,500 USD + 10,000 users * 1000 USD = 25,000,000.00

Saving of 11,200,000.00

Now of course you have infrastructure cost and other cost. But you would save quite a bit in support cost through resource reduction and not to mention the data is more secure and risk of knowledge and information loss is less of a risk because it's captured on a server.

(I'm just going out there I know I have holes in my theory but I just wanted to toss this out there) Tear up my throughts but I just can't see desktops and laptops remaining the norm for much longer. It just doesn't make financial cents/sense.

ptilsen

Actually when you look at the real costs, there are very little savings in terms of software and hardware, and often increased costs. The infrastructure costs are massive -- supporting the disk I/O alone for VDI is actually more expensive than the hard disks in traditional PCs, as an example (this will change as SSD $/GB comes down). Also, corporate PC costs are way down -- a corporate desktop is usually under $800 with warranty and licensing compared to a thin with licensing being $200-$600. Yes, the thin is ultimately cheaper, but not by nearly as much as you'd think.

However -- and it's a big however -- you're right about resource costs. You can lay off half your helpdesk -- yes, half, if you can get away from supporting so many desktop PCs and locally installed applications. You take a resource that scales linearly with users (helpdesk) and replace it with one that experiences an economy of scale with users (admins). Even if you keep desktops but go with a session virtualization approach, your end-user support goes way down.

I think the real changes of technology's direction right now are in that workforce breakdown: much less support, less maintenance, more implementation, much more design.

veritas_libertas

@ptilsen: I'm with you on the certification. I don't see it as being useful.

N2IT

VT sorry for hijacking your thread and turning into a VDI thread.

Agree with PT, this is just going to end up being another failed CompTIA certification.

Vendor neutral certifications for framework and methodologies
Vendor specific for technology certifications

Just my 2 cents

antielvis

I think there is some relevance to this certification. I can foresee a future where the smartphone & tablet become commonplace tools on a domain. I use Windows 8 regularly and you can see that's where MS wants to go. The smartphone and tablet will be part of the domain.

I can also see a day in SMB (small and medium business) where the smartphone & said support is handled by a 3rd party. A comparison would be how many smaller firms use a printer/copier company versus expecting their technician to solve those issues. I foresee it on the same level as the Comptia IT Healthcare technician. It'll be useful in specific environments. FYI, IT Healthcare is primarily an American thing as much of the rest of the world doesn't have private hospitals.

This isn't a game changer, but it has more relevance than other Comptia certifications. It's not going to get you a job, but in certain circumstances it might be a good addition to your resume.

ptilsen

antielvis wrote: »

I think there is some relevance to this certification. I can foresee a future where the smartphone & tablet become commonplace tools on a domain. I use Windows 8 regularly and you can see that's where MS wants to go. The smartphone and tablet will be part of the domain.

Heck, I think that's the present. I just don't think it requires its own certification. These devices are too easy to support and integrate. Even BlackBerry certification never took off back when those were 90% of the market. Now that the market is diverged from any single solution, I don't see any mobility-specific certification being highly relevant. Maybe the CWNA line, but the push towards smartphones and tablets doesn't really change the established WiFi scene at all, IMO.

antielvis wrote: »

I can also see a day in SMB (small and medium business) where the smartphone & said support is handled by a 3rd party. A comparison would be how many smaller firms use a printer/copier company versus expecting their technician to solve those issues.

That definitely is the present. More and more SMBs outsource all their technology to MSPs. Big examples are Konica Minolta and Ricoh. They started as printing providers and now offer total solutions, including MDM and SaaS. Every MSP that wants to stay in the business of supporting SMBs is looking at total solutions. This means they expect their existing teams to support the platforms, not that they have new techs to support them.

antielvis wrote: »

I foresee it on the same level as the Comptia IT Healthcare technician. It'll be useful in specific environments. FYI, IT Healthcare is primarily an American thing as much of the rest of the world doesn't have private hospitals

I don't know anyone or know of anyone who has seen a dime of RoI from Comptia Healthcare IT in any country. It's a totally worthless certification. Healthcare IT just isn't that special, regardless of whether it's public or private. Finance and defense IT are far more complicated, but don't have their own Comptia certs, again because they would receive no industry buy-in.

We can all agree mobility is becoming an even more integral part of IT, but what we're talking about here is Comptia. More than half of its certifications have failed to achieve any industry relevance. Really, only one Comptia certification has real ubiquity -- the A+. I just have no reason to believe employers will be looking for new Comptia certifications. They couldn't even fully buy into (or even understand) the MCITP line from what is an unquestionably more important vendor. Your time and money are going to be better spent on a CCNA or MCSA than another Comptia cert beyond the trio at pretty much any career level.

veritas_libertas

N2IT wrote: »

VT sorry for hijacking your thread and turning into a VDI thread.

I only posted because I thought someone on here might like the chance to become an SME for CompTIA. I honestly don't find the whole Mobility+/BYOD thing that interesting, so you are more than welcome to take this thread anywhere BYOD/Mobility Device that you want.

I came a year ago to the same view as ptilsen. Focus on the server/infrastructure side, because the devices will always have to connect to servers and the packets will always have to traverse the routers and switches.

kurosaki00

Took them long enough

I personally think this is a field comptia would do good
general no vendor specific Mobile technologies cert
sounds good to me

eansdad

There was a JTA for Mobility scheduled for Oct 16th-19th, I wonder if they couldn't find enough people for this?

demonfurbie

i just got the beta invite this morning ... not sure if im gonna go

MrAgent

i got invite this morning as well. Posted the details in a seperate post.

tpatt100

I think there is a future in this and BYOD annoys me from a security perspective, heck many companies seem to have extremely out of date mobile device company policies. Last two places I worked at my phone would ask me every five minutes if I wanted to join a new hot spot somebody's device was broadcasting.

And the sarcastic side of me thinks this cert might help you land a job working the mobile section at Best Buy