---
title: "On Cloud Certification: EMC vs IBM"
date: 2011-08-04T17:13:36Z
modified: 2011-08-04T17:13:36Z
permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/on-cloud-certification-emc-vs-ibm/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 3441
categories:
  - IBM
tags:
  - IBM
  - azure
  - certification
  - cloud
  - EMC
  - VMware
timestamp: 2011-08-04T17:13:36Z
---

Generally I prefer to avoid vendor spitting matches. If a company claims to have won a thousand customers from their arch-rival in a quarter, its funny how they haven’t counted the losses. Its actually called churn.

But cloud certification is kind of a big deal. Major waves in the tech industry tend to have an associated certification- think CNE, MCSE, ITIL and so on. Today a VMware Certified Professional commands a premium in the market. Simples.

But the Cloud market has yet to coalesce around a standard set of certifications.

Chuck Hollis documented EMC’s [introductory play in this area](http://chucksblog.emc.com/chucks_blog/2010/12/creating-a-new-generation-of-cloud-professionals.html) December 2010, with a [follow up in March 2011](http://chucksblog.emc.com/chucks_blog/2011/03/emc-cloud-architect-certification-an-update.html), calling it the “first ever cloud certification”. At that time 482 people were enrolled for classes.

I worked closely with IBM though on its Cloud Certification program, so I was a bit surprised when EMC claimed it was first to market – given IBM launched at Impact in May 2010. By March 2011 400 people had completed the course, and become IBM Certified Cloud Solution Advisors.

The obvious question is – why the hell did you wait til August to post about something that happened in March? You can blame WordPress draft mode for that…

More seriously, its not a big deal. Chuck is a good guy, and I suspect just had no idea IBM had already entered the market. The numbers of people going through the vendors’ courses were not that different at the time. No clear leader has emerged.

Of course other players are in the mix – including for example the [Cloud Credential Council](http://www.cloudcredential.org/). Another obvious potential dominant player in cloud certification is Amazon Web Services. It is no surprise at all to see AWS pimping the [University of Washington Certificate in Cloud Computing](http://www.pce.uw.edu/prog.aspx?id=6698&tab=Courses).

Meanwhile as far as I call tell Microsoft is so far focusing on Azure _education_ rather than certification and authorisation.

I will write a follow up in the Fall where I get the latest numbers from EMC and IBM. They will just be reported numbers though- I don’t have an elaborate methodology for testing claims. Any other certification programs I should be looking at?

disclosure: IBM and Microsoft are both clients. VMware is too, but the EMC mothership not yet. Amazon is not a client.