 From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and welcome to a special presentation of theCUBE here in our Boston area studio. Happy to welcome to the program Mike Epigen, Mike's senior director of education services at Dell EMC. Mike, great to talk to you. Thanks, Stu, thanks for having me. Talk about careers, you talk about jobs. When you're talking to partners and end users, what are some of the biggest concerns they have, and especially, you know, how do things like skill sets and training fit into it? Yeah, sure, I mean, it's twofold, really. It's part of it's the technology and how the technology industry is changing so fast and to your point, needing to keep up with that, which is blistering. So that's definitely a big challenge we look to address. And then the other part of it is just time, time in the day, and the ability to get out of work, to train, and that's actually driven a big shift in the industry to different ways of learning, different types of learning experiences that don't require someone to be in a physical classroom all the time. Yeah, I have to imagine that that's the case. Tell us, what's the state of certification these days? You know, there's always debates in the industry. It's like, ah, you know, have I just had the same certification for the last 20 years and I just kind of go through the road? Or what am I learning on the job? How are my certifications changing? You mentioned kind of remote versus there. You know, what's the industry look like these days? There is a big focus, as there always has been, around certifications on specific technologies, vendors, products, and obviously at Dell EMC. We have a big focus there. We have a portfolio of certifications to meet that need. But what we see in the market and hear loud and clear from our customers is that with all the change going on and the change driving, IT professionals need to be skilled, knowledgeable, proficient in much more than specific products and technologies. It's really the connection across multiple domains, infrastructure, applications, and security, which is really the interesting part of it and opportunity for us. What is the focus, you know, and why does the Dell family of companies, you know, have a right to kind of be, you know, a major partner for users in doing those certifications in the education? Yeah, we feel there's no one in a better position to really help build that knowledge and validate those skillsets based upon, first and foremost, Dell EMC's breadth of infrastructure and the capabilities there and with certifications really broadening across that infrastructure, looking at it more holistically. And then when you think about the family of Dell Technologies and bringing in VMware and Virtustream and Pivotal and RSA, very much adjacent technologies and broader solutions that really tie into what we envision and what we see and hear from our customers as defining and requiring the skillsets of the future. Give us a landscape of what the certifications look like today and you've got some news that you're going to tell us about, you know, what's new today also. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the state of current state today is, as I mentioned, very product centric, maybe a combination of products and moving forward now, we're excited to have more transformational certifications which span those different domains. So for example, as organizations to begin to or continue to modernize their data centers, implement integrated systems, convert systems, it requires a different skill set to manage and support that infrastructure that's now being deployed and leveraged in a different way, just as one example. You know, you said across multiple domains, but bring us inside a little bit just to know what's involved here. Yeah, yeah, certainly. So there's definitely a simplicity aspect to it, absolutely contrasted to deep expertise in server storage network, but that dynamic with the converge in hyper-converged infrastructure is actually administrator that they may not need to have as much depth in any of those areas, but they need to have breadth across all of them, right, also skill sets, knowledge and experience around different cloud and operating models to really round out the skill sets required there. Okay, who are these, you know, certifications targeted at? You know, what kind of stage in their careers? You know, what kind of path is there? You know, help us understand a little bit the journeys that, you know, people are on with their jobs and careers and certifications. Sure, so the new certifications that we have, it really spans quite a range, right? We have associate level certifications. Think of that as very foundational in concepts, which aren't even anchored specifically on Dell EMC products, but more concepts around converged infrastructure, cloud, hybrid cloud environments and concepts. For something like that at that associate level, it could be a technical person, a technical professional, it could be a business professional. It could be someone coming out of a university or even while they're in a university that's focused in building some knowledge and some skill set to enter the IT industry. So for that, there's a pretty broad spectrum. And then as you go up the levels or tiers within our certification program, as you'd expect more advanced, higher levels of knowledge and as you get up to the highest tiers in the program, it's really not just grounded on knowledge, but actually real world experience. And in some cases, the experience required may be five years of the right experience or in some cases with our new enterprise architect certification. It's at minimum 15 years of experience. How do you balance that and how does that fit in kind of IT with business and those various skill sets? Yeah. Great question, because you're right on about the technologies. There's the role itself in that example, architecting enterprise-wide solutions where there's extent in many years of experience required. But when it comes down to a technology perspective, obviously the shelf life on many of those is not quite that long. So it is a balance there. What I'd also say is that what these certifications help validate and what we see required in the market today is not just that technical focus, but very much so the business focus, the business acumen and the ability to engage with the business, understand business requirements, the corporate strategy, if you will, where they're going, and really translate or convert that into enterprise architecture. And enterprise architecture, that's very different than the past, that more sets the stage for an organization to be successful moving forward. Yeah, so if I hear you right, it's really a pairing of the technology and the business and making sure that there's good partnership there. Absolutely. Okay, you mentioned kind of skill set in the market. What are some of the big gaps? What are customers coming and saying, hey, I've got people with skills, but I need to retrain them? Where's the place where you see the biggest opportunity today that some of these new certifications are helping? Yeah, a couple that come top to mind. First one is security, a hot topic everywhere. And a critical step in that, in implementing security is making sure the infrastructure is secure, right? We hear that over and over again. And what we see is that a very product-oriented approach in IT to securing products or parts of the infrastructure. So one of the new certifications where we're excited to have brought to market is infrastructure security. And it's looking across the spectrum, across all Dell EMC infrastructure, as well as connections to VMware and other vendors. And it's really focused on taking a security-first approach and implementing the right security controls in the infrastructure to meet an organization's security policy and requirements. So security, you know, super hot. What else from the announcement do you want to make sure people understand some of the new pieces that are helping on these transformations? You know, I think another area that is definitely worth a shout-out is the deployment of multi-cloud environments and Dell EMC infrastructure, private cloud, connectivity and integration with different public cloud providers. That's what our large customers around the globe are doing. That's one of the biggest problems we've seen is the operating environment for that multi-cloud world is challenging for customers. There is no single pane of glass. And if I'm a Dell customer working with Azure and Azure Stack, I've got one thing. If I'm then a VMware customer and I'm looking at VM, where the Amazon, that can be very different. And customers are stuck in the middle. How do you, from an education standpoint, live in that multi-cloud world? What do you do? Where do you say, oh, hey, I've got an associate program here, but you might want to take the AWS associate program here and terminology and multi-cloud environments? Yeah, yeah. So the certification is called the Multi-Cloud Administrator Expert Certification. And there's a path to get there. There's actually multiple paths to get there. And it really focuses in anchors around Dell EMC infrastructure and VMware vRealize Suite and the automation capabilities there. Now, the certification isn't just validating the knowledge. It's actually also the real world of experience of managing that environment. And it extends to public clouds. As part of that certification, it's validating that individuals have the experience and have actually working environments where they're actually integrating into those different public cloud providers. So that could be, of course, both Dell EMC and VMware cloud partner providers, but also into other popular cloud providers like Virtustream, Microsoft Azure, AWS, and so on. So we're not certifying them on those third-party cloud providers, but our certification validates an individual's experience and their proficiency working with those environments. It's part of a larger solution. So, Mike, your background's from the EMC side. Maybe speak to a little bit. The portfolio you mentioned, Virtustream. VMware, of course, has very rigorous types of certifications there. How do those play across the various solutions? Yeah, there's a lot of great synergies there. So as I mentioned, our certification validate into some of those areas, but an additional opportunity for the individuals who are looking to get certified, for example, it's called co-badging. So for individuals who have a specific Dell EMC certification, like that multi-cloud expert, as well as, in this case, a VMware certification, their VCP, not only do they get to proudly wear those two badges, but there's a third co-badge which really distinguishes that person as having a broader set of experience across that even bigger solution. Last thing I want to touch on, Mike, is plan it for the future, to talk a little bit about the rollout of some of these new certifications and how does this prep customers not just for the needs of today, but where they need to go in their career for the next five years? Yeah, sure. So what we're validating in these certifications is absolutely relevant to a lot of our customers that we see that are transforming at a rapid pace. But what I like to say is that transformations of journey, the masses of organizations are in motion, they're obviously at all different stages, but really what we're focused on validating is the future skills needed. And we see a big, a lot of pent-up demand actually for that today. So what we, for example, our master level certification to your question about kind of what's next, where it's going, that is an extremely rigorous certification, not one that is achieved via an online proctored exam, it's actually conducted by a board review. So candidates submit applications, and depending upon the application, it's accepted or not, those that are accepted actually will have the opportunity to present in front of a board. And it's something that we'll run quarterly. Our first one at Dell Technologies World, just coming up in a couple months, and we'll run them quarterly after that. And for those who pass the board review and have the extensive amount of experience and meet the requirements, achieve that master level enterprise architect certification in that case. Okay, great. Well, we're looking forward to being, we're going to have the cube at Dell Technologies World. It's actually the first event we ever did was EMC World back in 2010. So it'll be, I can't believe our ninth year doing the cube there, lots of coverage. Mike, I just want to give you the final word, you know, we were talking offline a bit. We've got friends in the industry, lots of things have changed. Personal level, what do you give people that have been in tech for a while? You know, what advice do you give them? I'd say like any role, even outside of tech, but I think mostly in tech is keeping up with the pace of things. It's, that right there is a full-time job, as you know, and as our customers know. And you know, coming from the learning industry and education services, it's a passion of mine and something I get really, really excited about. All right, Mike and Pigeon, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on the update. We look forward to hearing the results from the board of views at Dell Technologies World and beyond. And be sure to check out thecube.net for coverage of Dell Technologies World, lots of other shows 2018 and beyond. I'm Stu Minin, thank you so much for watching theCUBE.