And. Talking. To all of you so my name is su darshan Krishnamurti. And I, am the, certifications. Product owner for Microsoft, and, I'm here, to talk about Microsoft. Certifications. And joining. Me on stage shortly will also be a customer. Of ours from. Lloyds. Banking, Group from London all the way from London Thank. You Andrew Paige for being here so, he'll come on stage in, a little while but I want to start with, the. Basic. Description. Of Microsoft, certification, program and some. Of the changes. That we are making and, some of the trends that we are seeing so, let, me start with a question how. Many of you in the room are Microsoft. Certified currently. Wow. Okay. And, how. Many of you have, MCSA, d-r-e certifications. The certification, that we used to have before. We. Still have it and, then the, role based in fundamentals, the rest of you are all based in fundamentals. Okay. Great so. We have a mix and. I'll try to talk, through all. The details. Of the program and some of the trends that we are seeing in the market and why we are making changes, that we are making in the in the program itself and like. I said earlier you'll also hear a customer use case of. What, they're saying, with digital transformation. So. Let me start with some of the key trends that we. Are seeing in the market around. Certifications. And skilling, so. There's this world of continuous. Learning that I'm sure you're all familiar with so certifications. Used to be probably. In the past skilling, and certifications, you should be a point-in-time activity, where you go to a class you, take an exam you get certified and. You probably have to do some continuous, education credits and, things like that in the past but now it's so. Much evolution, happening with the technology, itself in Asia or in new services are being added and services. Are being deprecated, so we've got to make sure it's, not once. And done it's it's more of a continuous learning mindset. That, we need to have and so that's one of the key trends that we are seeing not just from Microsoft, but also an industry overall right so the programs that are evolving the second. Thing is also around. Hands-on, learning. It's by doing and it's not just knowing skills but it's also doing skills so, in the past it, probably, used to be more around certain. Things that you needed to know in terms of the technology, and the product you were tested on those, knowing. Skills but it's now the trend is more around hands-on learning so, a lot of the components, that we've built in those certifications. That aren't hands-on because of that trend that we're seeing and. The last, thing you're seeing is also around the. Product, base to job role based evolution, and what we mean by this is in. The past we used to have experts. That were specific, to certain products, right so if you are a security engineer then you would know, everything there is about the firewall product, or. Endpoint. Protection product. But the. World that we live in today is more around end-to-end. Understanding. Of the. Job role itself so if you are a security engineer you need to understand the. Entire solution across the board not just a product so it's the evolution, from, the. Product, based knowledge, to more like job role based and so these are some of the key trends that we, are addressing in our certification. Portfolio. And in our track. So. Also. We've introduced this concept of role based learning which I talked about a little bit the evolution from product to role base so. Why are we doing this what are some of the key. Factors. That we are considering when we are making this change it. First thing is technology. And solutions, are evolving at a rapid pace so. In order to make sure that, the, skills, of the individual, are keeping up with, all the evolutions, that are happening with. News features and added, and deprecated, we, have to make sure that the, we make changes to the to the role so, it's the evolution of the role itself that's one of the the main reasons the, other thing is also when you think about from a business perspective, the.
IT Pro the IT professional, that is supporting the business is the. Key influencer, he's the trusted advisor right, he or she is the trusted advisor so you want to make sure that. That is supported the business wants to focus on, the. Line of business wants to focus on digital transformation. And things that they need to do they don't want to worry, about compliance, issues or they don't want to worry about you. Know what happens when you move from one prime to cloud what are some of the challenges that's not what the, business wants to focus on so who's, the responsible, person in order to ensure those, transitions, happen smoothly it's the job of the IT pro so, in order to have that IT Probie, and end-to-end. Specialist. An expert, who can understand, all of these things they. Need to be really, having the skills for that job role so that's the reason why you, know another, reason why we need role based learning and, lastly. If you're an individual, working, in. A specific domain, area you, want to have the confidence you want to have be productive, in your job so. The role based learning helps you get that as well from. A, skills, perspective, for the individual, so, these are some of the factors. And reasons, that we actually started, looking, at role based learning. And. I also want to talk a little bit about what, Microsoft, is doing with those changes. That we are making into, our certification, portfolio what. Are we doing to accelerate, growth within our ecosystem. First, of all we, are making it really applicable. To the employees, of Microsoft, 22,000, employees of Microsoft, that are in technical roles, they've, all been asked to take on the. Role based skilling portfolio, and also the certifications, that go with it so it's something that we are doing within. Microsoft, itself for our employees, secondly. We are working with a lot of customers, and partners to.
Help Make, sure that, the skilling, plans, for customers, are also in place in terms of the. Portfolio, and we. Will hear Andrew page from lights bank talk about the specific, use, case where you know they took our, certification. Portfolio and the training portfolio and then they adopted, it across the customer. Environments, and the success that they've seen in the financial services market you will see that and, you hear from Andrew, first hand of what, that experience was like so that's the second piece, in terms of skilling, customers and partners and. Then we are also focused, on skilling future generations, when you look at our engagements, with with higher ed with secondary schools and the the things that we are doing to, ensure those skills are also, there for future generations those, are some of the initiatives that we are doing from a skilling, perspective, of future generation so basically. It's it's these three pillars that make up Microsoft, strategy, and focus around skilling, and around, certifications. The approach we take when, we actually build, these, job. Role is. Something, called job task analysis, which is an industry practice, where. We get in subject, matter experts, that are either in that job role if you're a security engineer then we would, get in a security engineer into, the job task analysis, we. Will also have, experts. From the field from. Microsoft field and our partners, all being, you know part of this job, task analysis process. And and, what they would do is they would go through each and every task that that role, would require for them to do as part of their job, role and that, would make up the content, for the. Blueprint. The exam blueprint so the exam blueprint is sort of the golden document, that we use to, create multiple artifacts. Including. Our training content certification. Exams as well, as our. Microsoft. Learn platform. Which we probably heard a lot about the, learning paths that go on Microsoft Learn so those are all actually. Coming from that job. Task analysis, output, and we, use that to build, content. For all of these these. Artifacts, that I just talked about, and. Then. We take these aligned learning. Experiences, not. Just from the. Training. And certifications. But also at events like when you go to Microsoft, ignite, like, you are here today you, will see, certification.
Exams, Being offered on-site and, you'll. Also see certification. Exam voucher offers that we offer here so that's all part of the experience that we we do in terms of the learning experience so it's it's around events it's, around classroom, training classroom training, we have our learning partners delivering. Classroom, training through Microsoft certified tech trainers. And that. Content, is also built. By Microsoft, and offered as Microsoft, official curriculum and then, the certification, exams are also the output of the, job. Task analysis, and the and the, blueprint, that I just mentioned. So. Those. Are some of the assets, that we create out of that process and, then, we look at some of the individual, benefits, that people would get from certifications, right so if you are if you are a Microsoft, Certified, Professional. What are some of the benefits that you would get right so we did a survey Global Knowledge actually did a survey in 2019, and the. Survey output, it, talks about the salary skills. Is 52%. Said their. Expertise, is most sought after in the organization, when they're certified so if your individual, and you know that helps. Stand. Out so that's one of the benefits key benefits that you would see the. Second thing is, that you. Know 55%, believe that they can really work in, transferring the knowledge to real work situations, and making them more productive so if, you are working. In a consumption based economy, where you know there's a lot of features being. Added and if you are not really familiar with all the features. That are being added to the services, that are being added then, you're going to be less productive so with the certifications, and the skilling that we do we, see that you. Know this is really resonating, with the market as well when we did the survey and. Finally you know if you're looking. At career progression or, if you're looking at entry-level jobs 35%. Of the people report salary increases, when, they, see that they. Got a certification so these are some of the benefits as an individual, that you would see in addition to the benefits as an organization, that I mentioned, earlier for. The certified, professionals. So. Let me talk a little bit about the the certification, program itself, so, the certification, program. Basically. Has three. Types right, now that we offer one, is at the foundation level called fundamentals, then, we, have the rule-based certifications, which is focused on a job role and then, we are introducing a new category new type called specialty, that we just launched at ignite and. Those. Are the three types of certifications, so, when you look at the the foundation fundamentals levels, on the left-hand side the. Foundational, skills which is pathway, to role based certs, this, is a certification that applies to a broad market it's, not specific, to a segment it's, for everyone whether. You're in a higher ed, student. Or. If, you are a enterprise. Customer, trying to actually, get your skills up so it applies there as well as, you. Know any other markets, or verticals so fundamentals.
Is For everybody it, caters to a broad audience it's, a mix of concepts and applied learning so we have mostly, concepts. Now in fundamentals, we don't have labs. Or performance-based, testing, yet but, that's the the kind of mix that we are looking at in terms of the fundamentals, category, when, you get into role based, certifications. It's, more job role focused so I talked about the the, azure cloud. Solution, architect, being a job role security. Engineer being under job role you could have developers, in. Asia or m3 65 those are all job roles and the, role. Based certifications, falls in that category and within, the role based certifications, we have two. Levels the associate, level which is in. The case of azure you would see as your admin associate, that's the, associate. Level certification, and the solution architect would be the expert level depending on what. The number of years of experience and. And the knowledge in. Terms of managing, or operating, or whether it's designing an implementation, so the expert level is more or are designing an implementation, whereas the. Associate, level would be more around managing and operating so. We have two levels there the emphasis is on applied learning so you will see performance, based testing and labs in those certifications, at the role-based level and it. Validates, technical. Knowledge on. The solutions right so if you are, operating. In the developer capacity, you'll be, tested on technical knowledge in. The specialty case which we just launched our very first certification that we launched in the specialty category, is called. Agile, for ASAP workloads so it's migrating. ASAP. Workloads, into, Azure so, that's kind of the area, where you know you have industry. Solutions, on Microsoft, platforms, and you're looking at skills using. Those industry solutions, onto Microsoft platforms, and we'll be doing more in the specialty category, so in. The container space in the Linux space you know those are all things that we are looking at in terms of evolving the specialty category and adding more to that portfolio. And. This, is the overall, certifications. Portfolio. That we offer today so. You see the levels and you see the different solution areas so. In apps and infra we have a lot, of certifications. In, the Azure security. Engineer developer administrator. Which are already out and, then we introducing, some new certifications. Actually, at, this event so power platform fundamentals, is a new certification that we just launched so that, a combination of power, bi power, apps and flow all put together and so the deploying power platform fundamentals, for. Job. Roles I mean those are not specific, job roles but anybody who's we call them a citizen developer who's probably a target audience for starting. With the power platform fundamentals, and moving up the technology. Stack as you look at associate, and expert levels and. I. Already talked about the idea for a CP workload so that's a specialty that we launched some of these exams are still in beta just FYI and these.
Exams. Will come out of beta once we have had enough, people take it so, if you're looking to. Take. Any of these certifications, on-site and if you have still. Not registered. No. Worries I mean you can go to the certification. Testing. Center and see if there's spots if not we also have the the. Free exam offer that we are making available for all ignite attendees so feel free to avail, of that that offer and. Take some of these exams that are that. Are new and being. Offered here today. And. Then, the last thing I just want to talk about before I hand it hand it over to Andrew is performance-based, testing, so like I said in our role-based, certifications, we, have performance based testing components. This. Is all real-world scenarios, that we are offering in the in real environments like accurate, so you have to log in to Azure portal deploy. A VM deploy. Compute, storage. And network. Resources, manage. Those resources and there'll be multiple tasks, that you need to go through in order to complete this - this. Particular, lab. Within, the exam, and we. Have typically, we have two labs one to two labs and about 15 tasks that you need to cover as part, of performance-based testing and we've. Got some great feedback on the content of the performance-based testing, itself of course there's some challenges - that comes with it because of, you. Know the the deployment. Itself Microsoft. Is actually leading the performance-based. Testing, in a in, a cloud environment I don't think there's any other vendor that's offering this today so then we have some challenges to overcome but the content, is we've, gotten really good feedback on what. We have in, there so. That's kind, of the overview of the the program and the different components of the program and. I want to at, this point bring over Andrew. To the stage to talk about a real customer experience, and he'll. Walk us through what. Lights. Bank group has gone through l, commander Thank You him thank, you. So. Good afternoon everyone absolutely delighted, to be, stood here today to give, you some, insight into our certification. Journey Lloyds, Banking Group so. Just to get started a little bit about myself I'm driving, the public cloud adoption journey, at Lloyds Banking, Group which, really, this year is focused on getting, a training curriculum established, because you can't drive cloud adoption until you have really. Good skills within your team my background, 15, years a software, developer, in the 90s and then, running. Software, development teams over the last 10 to 15 years of working on transformational. Projects. Ok. A little bit about the company that I work for and represent it's, a Lloyds Banking Group the, biggest, retail, and digital bank, in the UK, 30. Million, customers. Familiar. On most, high streets and in the community, through, its iconic, brands of Lloyds. Bank. Halifax. Bank, of Scotland and, a few others down the bottom for specialist, services, like credit cards, from, MBNA, etc. We. Lend to one in four. First-time. Buyers in the UK and we, process one in four of all, banking. Transactions, in the UK so we are pretty big. So. We're. Very much aware of that there are many reasons why banks need to modernize, and evolve to absolutely. Stay relevant in today's age, and we've. Got six of what we think are the top reasons just to quickly go through which. Actually then and underpins why we're on this certification journey. Number, one is customers, just expect, more you've all got cell phones smartphones, and, there are some brilliant rich applications. On there and today, the banking, customer, expects, their banking journeys on their smartphone, so that they don't have to go into a branch outlet, or go on to ring up to a telephony, Center they just want it in their hands, we. We, all know the rate of change of technology is forever increasing we. To be able to react quickly. We. Know there's the rise of the FinTech, and the tech giants that have either already entered, the technicals are the financial services, arena or may, well do so in the next six months we, have, macroeconomic.
Pressure Where, we have low. Interest rates and global instability, which all bear down on the profits that companies can make and. Coupled. With that we have to keep up with all the rules and regulations, and finally. We, are all very much aware of the threat, from cyberattacks, that, we need to absolutely. Be on top of so, we believe the best way forward is, to put technology at the heart of everything, that banks do and build a responsive. System. To be able to cope with that so, very briefly Lloyds, Bank is changing, its a positive response to that we, have redesigned our entire business divisions, around 17, value, streams and a value stream might be general insurance it might be markets, it might be mortgages, we've, split those value streams into labs some, of you may know that sort of concept via, tribes, which I think Spotify, does and those, labs are broken down into pizza', size feature. Teams those. Teams are set up for autonomy, with, as many handoffs, in the traditional, model of removed, to give them as much, empowerment. As possible, and we've also given. Them the scrum based methodology, so they can work to product backlogs when release regularly, now. This is where we're getting to the meat of the certification. So, we're adopting a hybrid, cloud model to give us alternate flexibility, we've got private cloud for low run cost and lift, and shift of traditional, applications, and we've got public cloud for the sheer scale. Of services, available we, are chatbots, artificial, intelligence, you name it and we want, to take a real cloud native engineering. With our public cloud so we will not lift and shift to that we will redesign, apps. For the cloud native world and we're going to focus heavily on containerization. And aks. In the coming months we're, underpinning, that with, a rollout, and an evolution, of DevOps principles. With continuous, integration continuous. Delivery, and, lots. And lots of automation, so. That's all good but, can't do public cloud without some skills so. At the outset of 2019. We, very, much were in the mindset of application, teams write, applications they. Raise tickets to infrastructure, teams who will provision, infrastructure, very much in a traditional, way in, our case with virtual machines and so. We. Really, did need to look, at that carefully, we did a survey across, those 17, value streams and a whole bunch of supporting, teams like risk and cyber, and security. And, what we found was very few skills in the bank in public cloud and those, that did have the skills were they were the ones banging, the desk to go faster, saying that we weren't quick enough they were absolutely, impatient, to adopt these brilliant new technologies, they. All decided, that we needed a structured, approach to training, and we needed to get on with it quickly. So. We, set ourselves a, few principles and aims, at the beginning of the year we. Wanted to raise the level of knowledge not, just in our engineering community, like the majority of you guys but, also in product, owners within the business within architects, within support, people, we, absolutely wanted.
Everybody, To understand, what public cloud was all about then conversations. Can happen an investment, will flow because. Everyone, understands, the benefits, we. Wanted to make it easy for colleagues, to find and access training materials, and we, wanted to put our toe in the water of certification. And see if it really worked and we set ourselves a conservative, target, of getting 60 people certified, by the end of 2019. Some. Of the desired outcomes, we were looking for is that leaders, become more informed on everything, available, in public cloud so they can work with the business. Funding. People, to absolutely, make the best investment decisions, and can, also understand. Their new responsibilities. Because with public cloud I always, say comes great responsibility. You, could you don't rely on an infrastructure, team to fix your infrastructure, in the middle of the night you, in the application, team need to have the skills to be able to do that yourself so by training, leaders, as well as engineers then, they can think about the gaps in their team and they can plug those gaps either with further training or by recruiting, in additional, people to bolster, that missing skill. We. Also for the colleague out there we wanted to really encourage them and make them feel valued, and that the type of training program we place, is really starting to make a difference so we. Started, to enact this vision, back in May June and, that's, at that time since. That time we've now taken a, bank wide approach we've, looked at many teams, we've, looked at the cyber the security, that platform, engineering teams I've got some of the guys on the front row here as well, as application, teams and we looked at managers. Architects. Product owners as well as engineers and we trained a whole. Bunch of those guys, we, decided that technical, training was not enough if. We've got a hybrid cloud approach we need one track of a free track training program one track should, absolutely explain. What our cloud strategy is, in very clear terms and, allow, people to understand, which cloud do I put my workload on and in what situations. So, we. Also then obviously, embrace, the Microsoft, technical training curriculum, which Sudarshan. Has explained, to you all but then we had a third truck, but, when you get back to your laptop after you've been on your training course what, are the policies and processes that you need to follow in your own company, to absolutely, know, how to get going with us you're on day one because you will have to integrate with it somehow so we've put a very simple Wikipedia, together to be able to do that we. Also harvested, a very simple web page of all the best online training, links so that we could make it really easy for people to find this information and we use the enterprise skills initiative widely.
And Run a whole bunch of as your fundamentals, courses, we. Also made, it on Microsoft, learn, Microsoft. Will learn is independent. To classroom, courses and I personally, use that to gain my certification. As your fundamentals, and because, I wanted to be able to tell. Others if I'm asking people to go through that I wanted, to be able to say well look I've done it and if I have not touched code for 15 years and I can take the time took me about 10, hours of study to get to the point where I could take the exam then it helps me you know inspire, others as well and. Quickly. Can you touch a little bit more on Microsoft, learn and what was your experience there, because I know you. The combination, of structure. Training, for some attendees, and you had Microsoft learn so what was your experience like there well that's a really good point so it's alright what, I found was when people have been on the training course L can we get a copy of the PowerPoint, slides from that presentation. That we went on and and, I said well no actually Microsoft. Learn is even better it's, a really, rich website. With. Everything. That's only as your fundamentals, course but written in a self-study. Follow, fashion really, rich I found. It absolutely great to use that to actually go through and get myself to a point where I was confident to take that certification. So. Some. Facts and figures I'm really proud of guys which, set ourselves a target of 30 by the ending that sorry 60 by the end of the year and we smashed that by the end of September, so just in three months of people doing as your fundamentals. 90. People had taken the time to. Do that extra bit of study and absolutely. Smash. That and it what we found was 55, of those 90, were people had been on the face-to-face course, and. 34. Of them had actually done the distance learning so, they're the guys that want to do it and in, their own time that. Not particularly bothered about a classroom course so, you have both options and both options are working, roughly, to the same pass rate percentage so, don't. Just promote classroom learning it's. Far far cheaper and far more. Effective, sometimes to have that distance learning as well. So. What, we plan to do for the next few months we're carrying on doing more as your fundamentals, to get that level of knowledge up across the bank but we're now stepping, into the role based learning and, we're going to try and get 60 people through role based training by the end of January we're, going to do these your administrator, course the. Security, course of the solution, architecture, one and and. We're going to run those as classroom, and we're, going to encourage distance, learning on those as well so, you. Know we're, already well beyond our conservative, plan of 60, by the end of the year I hope that's you know kind of double by the end of January or February certainly. Think it's possible. So. If, that's not enough to encourage you guys to study, I think sorry. To encourage you guys to take the certification I think there's, a number of other really, good reasons even, the is your fundamentals, course in that one day there, is so much information in, that course you need to do, the study after, the course to get the most out of it and certification.
Is A really nice way of encouraging, people not, to go and kind, of fade after, they've taken the course everyone, gets back to work everyone. Has the pressure of the day job so, without, this further study and that little carrots or encouragement, of a certification you. Can risk, losing your investment, in the training with, post crossfade. So. We've, said encourage, everyone don't just train your engineering, colleagues although, they need the training you need everybody. To understand, what's going on with cloud because it is pretty much brand new to a lot of organizations, you. Already know that certification, is a great way to encourage this and gives. People a real goal to aim for so. The, one thing it does also give you it a little bit of a management metric. You'll be able to see and kind of understand, how your colleagues. Are recurring in terms of your cloud maturity, level with the statistics. That come from the, certification. So. Don't just take it from me I've just got the, top ten kind of bits of feedback from people have taken the certification. I won't go through them all I'll just bring two or three of them up so, people. Said free, training, and a certification it's a no-brainer it helped me decide how to set up my teams for the future, the, satisfaction of learning new stuff I want. To be a part of it gives. You confidence and, credibility in, your own team the. Certification. Acknowledges. The time and effort I have put in. Technology. Paces 10-x certification. Helps you stay relevant and that's back to your point about continuous. Learning you know it's not just a case of you know do, it and then you set up for five years you've. Got to keep you've got to keep you've got to keep looking at those things I think, and finally, it, helps if you if you certified, yourself it helps you advocate, as you're an aspire others in your team to do the same. So. My final slide. Pick up this, talk a few. Extra little tips and tricks. Training. Takes, time. Even. If you just do the 1-day fundamentals, course there's, still the time needed to study after that but realistically, your engineers especially I want to going to want to get into those associate, level courses so, make sure you model up the amount of time that's required and get your product owners and your leadership to buy into that there's. No point you, want you need that top level support because they will need to be the time provision, to allow them to study. We. Also found a couple of barriers to to, training that I would really encourage you to look, into as early as you can so. Don't let this cost of certification be, a barrier we, found that some people were really eager to study and then when they found there was a hundred-pound. Fee or whatever it was for the exam, some people dropped off now we quickly remove, that barrier and we found that you know absolutely getting. Swamped with people wanting to take the exam so don't, let a monetary, figure get in the way of people. Being able to certify. Now. We're at where a bank and we're proud of the fact that we, were. Pretty. Locked down on data loss prevention which the previous talk mentioned so, if you have some, very tight internet, access controls you might find that certain training sites are inaccessible, from your works machines, so, we just recommend, that look into that if it doesn't work consider, things like bring your own device or the. Use of you know Chromebooks, I know it's the at the google word but we found Chromebooks, to be extremely, effective and extremely cheap so, let. The colleagues learn at work but don't let your work internet, restrictions stop them doing that. Now. The, classroom course is that Microsoft provide the brilliant but, the generic so. Why, not add 30. Minutes, to the end of the course to, explain to the colleagues what the next steps are when they get back to the workplace and how they actually uses, your and how they get on boarded with us your when, you actually get back into the workplace so we've done that on all of our course and it's been really well received and, then.
I Won't go through all the points there but produce. Some very simple guidance for people getting back from the certification, or for the distance learners. You know advise. Them to take the exam within two to three weeks of the course because then they, won't lose too much information and they'll be they'll be those kind of sites obsess. Advised. Some typical study times by you know take, taking a sample of five or six people and you know how much time did it take you to study personally. I spent. About ten hours studying after I'd actually done the one day course I I haven't been hands-on technical for for ten or fifteen years so, our family found it pretty straightforward, but I did need to put some additional time into it to be able to to, be able to pass that successfully, which which, I did and I'm I'm really proud to be able to do that we, encouraged local study groups as well across the UK, so, that colleagues can get together and discuss, practice. Exam questions or just discuss the topics and any nerves they might have about taking, a certification and, that that's only, just starting but it seems to be going quite well and, and. Again once you get going there's no reason why you can't gamey fire this and have some friendly interesting, competitions, or if that's not good for you then maybe just so you know a bit of a hall-of-fame for, those that pass the exam you know share. Those successes, and. I think finally I just leave you with a few points I. Think. You know beat be inspirational, where you can guys if you're, able, to take the certification yourself, please do so and lead, from the front encourage. Your leaders to do the same because it just looks so much better from a colleague point of view if the leaders are also you, know taking those courses especially the, fundamentals, yeah not necessarily, going to ask a leader to take the five day security, course but, let's, let's try and let's. Try and generate some followership, and share, those successes, so. That's, all I've got. To say but thank you for listening I've enjoyed, talking to all this afternoon. Thank. You Andrew so, you saw a really good customer use case there where Andrews. Team, the, financial, services industry was, actually focused. On. Evolving. From you, know traditional, ways to more of the modern ways to deploy cloud, solutions, and they, did not have the time and the energy, and the resources to, go through that themselves so Andrews, team stepped up they, took on the responsibility, of getting people trained and certified and. You see that great use case that you, know most of the industries. Are facing, right whether it's manufacturing, retail or, financial. Services, all these sectors you know they're looking at digital transformation. And so the line of business wants. To focus on the business while, they give the opportunity to the IT department, to kind of you know evolve and they. Don't want to be again, bothered by the security compliance issues or. You. Know the cloud adoption issues, and things like that so that's. A great story. Andrew and thanks thanks for coming all the way from London and sharing that excellent. Story with us thank you thank you so, in terms of the the, action, that call, for action here is you, know there are different assets. That are available for, you to explore. If, you're not certified or if you're looking at certifications. So we have the, Microsoft certifications. Webpage, where you can go and look at the exam details there's details about the certification the requirements. And what. Are the components. For a certification some, of the certifications, have multiple exams and so. All the details will be there in the certification page and then, the exam details page will give you a list of all the skills measured as well so the objective, domain and the the, gt-r process that I talked earlier about the, output, of that is the exam blueprint, and the objective domain so that is published on our web page so you can go download that information and then you can look at how. Do you get those skills whether you already have those skills so you just want to directly go take the exam because, you're in the job role or you, want to go acquire those skills so then there are assets available and.
We Talked a little bit about Microsoft, learn I would encourage all of you to go look at Microsoft learn if you have not done already and we have a booth. Down in, the hub where you can go learn more about Microsoft, learn and we are introducing, rich new capabilities, into. Microsoft, learn and. Every sprint and, some. Of the things that Andrew talked about in terms of creating that friendly competition, and gamification, gamification. Is actually available on Microsoft learn today. Where. You have points badges and trophies that you can earn so you can go explore that and try, to implement that within your team's. Classroom. Training again, a lot of good. Assets available at. The hub if you want to go look at the. Classroom training option some of our learning partners are also there if they. Can provide you more details for your region for your areas where you can go take those classes so, that's available and that's, offered by, Microsoft's. Certified, trainers, so, they are they're actually certified, to offer those curriculum so they're also available and a lot of them are delivering, sessions. And I have a list of all the sessions the. M CDs are delivering all the exam prep, sessions here as well so, the last thing is practice tests we also have, at. Ignite, the. Option to take free practices, so this is a, partner, company that's offering practice, tests before you take the real exam there, are two modes where you can take the practice test you can actually go in the test mode or. You can take a practice, mode where you are actually answering, questions, and the system. Is telling you if, you give the answers wrong or if you want a more detailed explanation there, are explanations provided, so you can leverage. That as well as one of the assets to, go prepare for the certification exam. So. These are all the exam. Prep sessions that are available at ignite so, you can go attend any of these sessions where the MCTS, will will. Tell you more. Details on how to prepare for the exam what are some of the types of questions that you would get, what. Would be the if there's a lab then you know what. Kind of lab is it how many tasks, would be part of the lab so. You will get more details about the exam itself and depending, on what job role that you're targeting and what certification, you can targeting, you will get those details at these sessions so. Use. The rest of the week to attend these sessions and, you. Know finally the the free certification, exam offer that, we have available for all ignite attendees, so this is valid, for up, to, six months 180.
Days Before you and this, voucher, would expire this offer will expire so make, sure you. Spread the word around and you ask your colleagues and your friends who are attending, ignite to also make. Make use of the software and this, is available for all the their role based exams and the fundamentals exams and also the new specialty, certification that we just launched so you can take that, free. Certification exam or four as well. So, the. Other. Things that I already talked about visiting, the certification, booth in the Microsoft, learn area you, can schedule a certification exam, through. That page. That we have for the free certification, exam so there's a page for going. And registering, and then you will get some notification. And then you can walk. Through the entire process of going. In schedule and exam either with Pearson VUE directly, if you want to take a exam. But the test center or you can also use online, proctoring so, how many of you are familiar with online proctoring, anyone. Tried it, so. Online proctoring is a really, easy, way for you to take the exam from, either your home, or office and. You can schedule that at your own convenience and, the proctor will be available in remote remotely, will be proctoring you for for that specific exam so that's a great option as well in areas where the test center is not close by and you want to do it from, your home or office and. Finally. You know visit, our page look at all the other tracks that we offer, and. You, know please evaluate the session your feedback is really important, so, andrew is has. Been gracious enough to come and present here he'll want to get some feedback as well and I would love some feedback for, our sessions so please download the app and go to the website and give. Us some feedback on, the session thank. You and have. A great rest, of Ignite thank, you very much.
2020-01-19