Dell EMC Lays Out Certification Framework

When Dell announced its purchase of EMC (including VMware) for $67 billion back on Oct. 12, 2015, it was the largest tech company acquisition ever undertaken at the time. VMware remains an independent, publicly-traded company — in which Dell EMC has a sizable stake, to be sure — while the rest of EMC is now part of the privately-held and burgeoning Dell technology empire.

That probably explains why the VMware certs have stayed independent of Dell EMC as well, but there's still a lot of stuff to digest as Dell EMC's Certification Roadmap clearly shows:

Despite having shed numerous business units, such as Sonic Wall and its security appliances, that have their own specific certs, Dell EMC now handles a sizable certification portfolio. Let's take a look at what falls under this giant umbrella, using the categories that appear in the roadmap graphic.

I'm going to skip the certs labeled "EP" only in that chart, because they apply only to Dell EMC employees and members of that company's partner networks. Those who fall in either of those categories have plenty of other options to learn about Dell EMC credentials that apply to them — though they too should find the various roadmaps (the general one shown here, plus specific ones for each of the five categories show) useful as well.

Plan and Design: The Cloud Architect EMCCA certification is general enough to be positioned as an industry certification, which means it theoretically applies even outside the Dell EMC umbrella. The Technology Architect EMCTA and Design Engineer VCE-CIDE certifications are positioned as EP and aim at various EMC technologies and platforms in the areas of converged infrastructure, storage solutions, virtualization, availability and backup.

Deploy: This category features EP credentials for Cloud Engineers EMCCE and Implementation Engineers (in both EMC/EMCIEand VCE/VCE-CIIE silos). It also offers EPC designations for Dell EMC Proven Professional credentials on Product/Technology elements such as VxRail, Storage Resource Management, SAN, and Data Protection. Also included here: Dell Certified Professional credentials across various Platform categories, including data storage, networking and server products.

Manage: This category embraces a whole slew of credentials, including EMC Cloud and Storage Administrator certs (EMCCAD and EMCSA), various EMC Product/Technology certs (Dell EMC Proven Professional credentials on Storage Resource Management, SAN, and Data Protection), VCE Administration Engineer (VCE-CIAE), and Dell Certified Professional certs (including PowerEdge DCPPE, Storage DSDPS, and Networking DNDNS).

Support: Applies only to Employees and Partners, and includes credentials in the areas of Data Storage, Scale-out Storage, and Data Storage, Networking, and Servers. Applies to both the EMC and Dell sides of the house. Certs included here are Dell EMC Proven Professional EMCPE and EMCTSE, as well as Dell Certified Professional DCPPE, DSDPS, and DNDNS.

Technology: Falls entirely within the Dell EMC Proven Professional certs, and includes credentials in the areas of information storage (EMCISA), cloud infrastructure and services (EMCCIS), data protection and management (EMCDPM), and data science (EMCDSA and EMCDS).

The acronyms for the various credentials covered in the map (which number in the 30s) indicate their provenance. Those that start with "EMC" came from that side of the house, those that start with "D" came from one of the Dell business units, and those that start with "VCE" focus on virtualized block-level storage and converged infrastructure for data centers at large enterprises and in service centers.

Though the credentials are now all under one roof, there are still strong strains of prior parentage visible and hard at work. It will be interesting to watch how these offerings morph and merge over time. But what you have here is a terrific and usable snapshot of the way things stand at Dell EMC, certification-wise, right now.