Pete Fischer, a storage systems manager at a Midwest paper packaging company, followed this path to success over the past two years, achieving an associate-level EMC Proven Professional certification through online training. "EMC's coursework covered a lot of vendor-agnostic concepts and gave me a solid base for storage networking technology as a whole," Fischer says.

Steve Olson, infrastructure manager at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, similarly placed a high value on anyone with a combination of vendor-specific experience and certifications. He says that despite EMC's claims that the company's EMC Control Center management software would take the brainwork out of storage platform support and ease management problems, Olson found that managing his 20TB EMC DMX storage array is too complex through just a simple graphical user interface.

"Individuals holding disk subsystem certifications like EMC's are most valuable since it indicates to me they understand the inner workings of how a product like EMC's Symmetrix works," Olson says.

Though vendor-specific storage platform certifications clearly lead the pack among IT managers in terms of desired certifications, IT managers prioritize the other certifications in the top five differently depending on the environments and needs of their specific shops.

Fischer says that because of his company's continuing data growth, his shop will always need individuals trained and certified in backup software. Since his company uses Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), he gives preference to individuals holding the IBM Certified Deployment Professional -- Tivoli Storage Manager V5.3 certification when hiring or promoting. However, he also views other backup software certifications, such as Symantec Corp.'s Veritas Certified Data Protection Administrator, as viable alternatives if no candidates with the desired TSM certification are available.