Is it Time to Toss Your Servers?

Some small and mid-sized businesses should consider getting rid of their servers altogether, some experts argue. New Web-hosted computing options can dramatically reduce your hardware needs.

Abaca Technology Corp., which launched in 2005, offers physical and virtual anti-spam appliances. The company uses Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service to host the software that works with its appliances. Without EC2, it would have been much harder — and much more expensive — to launch Abaca, according to Bill Kasje, vice president of Business Development. “As a small company, we were able to get our servers up and running quickly,” he says. “We didn’t have to invest in a big infrastructure environment, or have backup power and redundancy, all the things our customers expect from us because email is a mission-critical application.” Though Abaca does deploy in-house servers, it would need at least four more, in a cluster configuration, if it were hosting its software in-house, he says. This way, Abaca’s IT team could focus on the company’s core competency: filtering spam.

For many small companies, the smorgasbord of newly available off-site or “cloud” computing offerings means they can reduce the number of servers they purchase and maintain in-house. In fact, according to James Staten, principal analyst as Forrester Research, they may no longer need servers at all.

“There are now options available over the Internet that didn’t exist before,” he explains. For instance, companies used to use servers for file sharing, but there are many Internet-based options such as Microsoft Windows Live, Dropbox, and so on, that provide the same options over the Web. “Backups can be done over the Web too,” Staten adds, “and it looks almost exactly the same as when you back up to a server. A lot of people have print servers, but that’s not really necessary any more either, with today’s network-based printers, or wireless-enabled printers with built-in print servers.” In fact, Staten believes, many small companies no longer need any in-house servers at all.

Better without servers

Why reduce or eliminate servers? “The number one advantage is it gets you out of the IT business,” Staten says. “You don’t have to worry about high availability.” [A high availability configuration ensures continued function by connecting two or more servers in a cluster so that one can “fail over” to the other in case of a problem.] You no longer need to worry about off-site backups, emergency power supplies, or how your company would preserver its data in a widespread disaster like a hurricane, since all these protections are now provided by an off-site by a service provider, and defined in your contract.

You can also get by with fewer IT staff, Kasje says. “We would have to have IT staff monitoring systems around the clock. All we have to deal with are the software issues, so that’s much easier. There is a whole class of problems we don’t have to address.”

Not having servers on site means much lower upfront costs, though it also means ongoing costs to pay for a service or server space. “You’re trading capital expense for operating expense that you can adjust up or down, depending on your needs,” Staten says. And while the day-to-day costs may be similar, or perhaps lower for owned equipment amortized over several years, off-site servers can provide lower cost if you take risk into account. “There are so many more things to account for,” he says.

Three off-site options

For companies that want to cut their server count and turn to Web-hosted options instead, there are three different basic options to choose from:

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) In this approach, an application is provided by a SaaS provider and runs on its servers. Your employees (or customers) use the Internet to log into the software. Well-known examples include Salesforce and Google Documents.
• Hosted servers In this approach, you contract for server space — or even an entire (real or virtual) server at your provider. In many ways, you can treat this off-site server as if it were a regular server, loading applications and data onto it as you see fit. However, the hosting provider maintains the server, usually providing backups, security protections and such.Rackspace and Hostway are two examples of this approach.
• Raw cloud space “Cloud” is a relatively new term that is often used to describe any Web-hosted offering. Strictly speaking, it simply refers to the architecture by which software and/or data reside in a network or “cloud” of servers connected by the Internet, rather than on a single machine. You can lease raw space in the cloud, for instance, from Amazon’s EC2service.

In this setup, you are still responsible for managing your own server space. If your provider had an outage, in the case of SaaS, the application would be up and running as before once the outage was over. In a hosted server setting, the provider would restore data on the servers, providing the configuration you had before the outage. In a cloud computing outage, once the outage was over, your IT staff would need to reconfigure and reload your online server with the applications and data that were there before. You would be responsible for ensuring backups, and also the security of your data.

Because of these added tasks, Staten doesn’t recommend pure cloud computing for small companies unless they also have solid in-house IT expertise. On the other hand, he says, “If you’re really tech savvy, these are great new options to avoid ever having a server within your walls.”

Whichever option you choose, Abaca’s Kasje recommends giving off-site computing a try. “You can step into this very easily,” he says. “And you should be able to figure out very quickly whether it’s something that can benefit your business.”

Onsite vs. Off: Where Should Your Servers Be?

Considerations such as power costs, servers crashing, and security need to be considered when making the decision where to store your servers.

Data and the flow of information inside the corporate structure are crucial to any business today. Yet computing itself has become a commodity. So how does a fast-growing enterprise balance its critical data needs against the expense and demands of server computing?

That’s where offsite data centers, or co-location facilities, come in. Small and medium-sized businesses are planning to purchase an average of 3.6 new servers each in 2006, according to a small and medium-sized business survey by Forrester Research, the Cambridge, Mass. research firm. The survey found that 48 percent of small businesses planned to increase spending on servers this year. But rather than creating their own mini server farms, many companies instead are opting to rent rack space offsite, inside buildings designed exclusively to house thousands of servers hooked up to the Internet.

The advantages are numerous. “Co-lo” centers offer extremely high-bandwidth Internet connections, redundant power and cooling systems, back-up generators and 24-hour security.

Get over the offsite paranoia

But, as with any rental in a large complex, tenants worry about the neighbors. How many competitors walk past the cage loaded with your mission-critical equipment on the way to service their own?

 “The attraction to keeping your servers on-site is complete control,” says Miles Kelly, vice president of marketing and strategy for 365 Main Inc., a San Francisco-based data center supplier. “Some companies are just too paranoid to go offsite.”

But many are getting over that paranoia — and fast. When 365 Main opened their 227,000-square-foot center in San Francisco in 2004, it had one customer and one equipment rack. By the summer of 2006, when the company’s 350-plus customers had filled the flagship center, 365 Main opened a 315,000-square-foot facility in Chandler, Ariz. Nearly two-thirds of its rentable space filled within weeks of opening.

Both regional and national competitors, like Equinix and Digital Realty Trust Inc., are seeing similar demand.

While some data center facilities provide maintenance and support services to hosted servers, many “co-lo” providers focus on what they call “environmentals” — power, cooling, security and broadband connections — leaving care of the hardware to the tenant owners.

These environmental factors are the key arguments in favor of moving servers off site.

The hidden costs of onsite servers

Power supply often triggers the move. As a business adds servers to its local facility, managers quickly see their power bills skyrocket and, worse, that the regional utility simply cannot supply any more energy to the building. The power problem is compounded by the fact that a typical high-end server in 2006 consumes four times the power of a high-end server from 2003. Offsite data centers offer what they call a mega-plug – twice the power capacity that’s actually required to run the facility at full capacity.

Cooling, or the lack of it, can also trigger the move. Even an hour or two without air-conditioning can cause high-end servers to crash, and companies are loathe to purchase the redundant systems needed to guarantee the machines keep their cool.

Security requirements built into the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a federal law that required companies to practice better account for internal control processes, also drive servers offsite. Under that law, public companies must ensure that customer data is protected at all times. Rather than hire a night shift to guard the machines, smaller companies prefer to send servers offsite.

Internet connectivity, particularly for companies that rely on a strong Web presence, also can be a deciding factor. Shared data centers offer top-quality fiber-optic links and volume deals from a variety of connectivity providers.

Expect to pay $600 to $1,000 per month per rack at most self-service co-location centers. Some companies prefer to break down cost into monthly charges per square foot, which range from $18 to $30.

Time to Consolidate Your Data Center

Old, overgrown dinosaurs of data centers may be costing your business more than you realize. Here’s what to know if you’re considering consolidating them.

More and more small-and medium-sized businesses are thinking about consolidating their data centers, as a result of having grown haphazardly or through many mergers and acquisitions. According to a 2006 report by tech research firm IDC, 80 percent of U.S. IT organizations are consolidating and in 2009 global spending on IT consolidation should hit $25 billion.

“Most of these things aren’t planned and then executives wonder how in the world they’ve grown to the number of servers they’ve got,” says Cal Braunstein, chairman and CEO of research at the Robert Frances Group, a Westport, Conn. IT consulting firm. “They need to add another application, and somehow before they know it, each of these applications are on different servers.”

And, oftentimes those different servers can be in different rooms, on different floors, and even in different cities.

M&A activity sparks consolidation

One big driver of data center consolidation is the rash of mergers and acquisitions that leave the new entities with IT systems that are often incompatible, sometimes burdening even forward-looking companies with outdated systems from a company being acquired. “CIOs are telling their CEOs, ‘Could you please buy a company with the same IT platform and infrastructure?’” says James F. O’Grady, the director of technology value solution for Hewlett-Packard Financial Services.

Why consolidate when it’s an expensive undertaking? Let’s start with those systems that are the product of mergers and acquisitions. All the little band-aid fixes to make these systems work together may be costing your company money — not to mention resources — that could be better spent elsewhere.

Even without mergers, small and medium-sized businesses tend to be sitting on a lot of older servers being kept around in order to save money on costs of new equipment. However, since many of these machines have poor utilization rates, they aren’t necessarily the best use of money. Braunstein estimates various utilization rates of different systems as follows: mainframes (75-90 percent), Unix (10-20 percent although some achieve up to 60 percent), and Windows-Intel systems (5-12 percent).

High maintenance and licensing fees

On top of having all this old equipment around, there are high maintenance costs and licensing fees, not to mention the issues of power and cooling for all your machines. “Two years ago no one cared about power and cooling,” says Braunstein. But now that energy costs have skyrocketed, businesses are starting to be more aware. Costs for power and cooling could run 40 percent of your run rate for operational components for your data center. Consolidation can mean lower power output, says HP’s O’Grady. If you have five data centers all over the country and you really only need three, not only will consolidation save on power costs but will also save on labor costs.

Those are big numbers that could be made smaller through consolidation. On average, says Braunstein, hardware costs tend to be 15 percent of overall costs.

What it means to consolidate

Consolidation can mean different things to different businesses. For some, it’s reducing the number of data location center locations and moving equipment to places that have lower operating costs, according a March 2007 report by HP, titled “Data center consolidation: Financing options address more than just cost.” Two spaces in midtown Manhattan dedicated to holding IT are more expensive to maintain, than say, combining them both into a new one in northern New Jersey. With telecommunications advances, it’s more feasible to locate the data centers away from your office.

Another approach is to consolidate at the current site by putting in a converged voice-and-data network. Or you can save space by installing racks. With a vertical rack, instead of buying servers, you buy components that altogether look a little like an entertainment system. Blade servers work on the same concept as a rack but are even more condensed. A blade comes in a smaller box, so it slides in vertically. You can get a number of these going across a couple of rows, giving you a tremendous amount of capacity in a small space.

And, then there’s the virtual approach. Companies can virtualize their servers by running many systems in a single box. Not only can that save space but it can also up performance; instead of running at about 10 percent utilization, it can be at least 40 percent.

Paying for it

No matter how you undertake it, consolidating your data center is going to cost money. According to HP, often you’ll have to keep the old data center running as you’re setting up your new one. Or, you can set up a temporary facility — using the same type of old equipment — as you’re taking apart the old center and setting up the new one. So, you could potentially have up to three data centers running at the same time before you get everything sorted out.

Companies, like HP, and IBM, and to lesser extent, Sun, who are all in the data center consolidation business provide financing options, including leasing, short-term equipment rental, and help with the recovering of money from asset sales. They also work with the customer to apply some of the costs to covering the purchasing of new equipment.

Another approach, says Braunstein, that may make sense, is putting the new data center inside one of your current spaces. “You could consolidate it piecemeal so you don’t have to go beyond the bounds of existing data center,” he says. “It takes longer this way, however, it’s a good approach because you get to see what works as you go along.”

Are Your Passwords Too Weak?

Hacked passwords can compromise company data security. Strategies for creating the best passwords

"Breaking: Bill O Reilly is gay." That message was sent from the Fox News Twitter feed in January. A hacker had broken into Twitter's systems, thanks to a weak password chosen by a Twitter employee. By using a so-called dictionary attack -- a program that guesses passwords by systematically trying every word in the dictionary -- the hacker had figured out a Twitter employee's password:happiness. After gaining access to Twitter's systems, the hacker leaked the passwords used by Fox News and several celebrity Twitter users, including Britney Spearsand Barack Obama. Some of those Twitter feeds were subsequently filled with obscenities and links to pornography.

Then, in July, another hacker broke into a Twitter employee's personal e-mail account and was able to find a password the employee used for several Web services, including Google Apps, which Twitter employees use to share private company documents. The hacker then forwarded the sensitive information to a popular technology blog, which published many of the documents, including notes from company meetings.

As Twitter learned the hard way, data security measures are useless if a hacker manages to get an employee's password. And yet most people are pretty lazy when it comes to passwords. Security experts recommend using a different password for each application, but a survey bySophos, a security firm, found that 81 percent of respondents used the same password for multiple sites. About a third of them used the same one for everything.

Many people use very simple passwords: Two of the most commonly used arepassword and password1. Others tend to choose easy-to-remember words or dates. These weak passwords are no match for a dictionary attack, say security experts. Automated password-cracking tools can check more than a million password variations in 28 hours. Passwords composed of random strings of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation, such as J, can usually withstand an attack, but those are tough to remember.

Fortunately, there are some ways to create strong, memorable passwords. Two words connected by a number can thwart many dictionary attacks. So can using a full sentence, such as Jane Smith's Salesforce login is password, or a line from a song or a nursery rhyme. For online applications that cap password lengths, try a mnemonic, or memory aid, such as an abbreviation. For instance, take the first letter of each word in the phrase Jane Smith's Salesforce login is password. Then, to make it stronger, add an 's and substitute the number 1 for the letter l and an equal sign for is. You getJS'sS1=p, a very good eight-character password. Other tricks for strengthening abbreviation passwords are to swap an @ sign for an a and the number 3 for an e. You can vary this formula for each application you use.

Vaclav Vincalek, president of Pacific Coast Information Systems, an IT and security consultancy in Vancouver, British Columbia, uses a different mnemonic. He picks a pattern on his keyboard, like the triangle formed by the c, 6, and n keys. He enters the keys of the pyramid twice: once in lowercase, once in uppercase.

If you still have trouble remembering passwords, there are some technological fixes.Bruce Schneier, a security expert who is chief security technology officer at BT, a telecom company in the United Kingdom, created Password Safe, a free program that stores passwords. Now, he needs to remember only one password -- the one for Password Safe. Other password vaults include RoboForm and Mitto.

Some programs -- Passlogix, Imprivata, and myOneLogin -- let companies manage employee passwords for applications inside and outside the firewall for as little as $3 per user per month. Such programs tout their ability to give workers a single sign-on, one login for access to their corporate network, e-mail, and applications.

There's also software that keeps tabs on whether employees use strong passwords. Password auditing programs such as L0phtCrack, which costs $295 and up, apply various hacking techniques to check user password strength. More sophisticated -- and more costly, at $13,000 and up for a software license -- security tools such asCloakware, Cyber-Ark, and e-DMZ Security can bar an employee from using the same password for, say, logging in to e-mail as for checking the company financials.

If that sounds too complex, Schneier recommends a low-tech solution: Write your passwords on a sheet of paper and store it in a safe place. Hackers are less likely to break into a locked desk drawer.

Build a Killer Website: 19 Dos and Don'ts

If you do it right, your website can be the best marketing tool you have. Ilya Pozin, founder of the Web design firm Ciplex, on how not to screw it up.

I’m continually surprised by how many people call my design company with very firm ideas about what they want on their business website and yet, they haven’t thought through some of the most basic questions first. For this reason, our first question is always “Why do you need a site?,” not “What do you want on it?”

At bottom your website is a marketing tool. For many businesses, it’s the only source of business. If done right, it can be a major part of yours.

Here’s my quick-hit list of the top dos and don’ts before you get started:

Do:

1. Set smart goals. And make sure they’re measurable. Here are a few great ones a Web designer wants to hear: increase conversion rates, increase sales, generate more leads, reduce overhead, and improve brand awareness.
2. Plan on becoming an SEO wizard. Sure, you’re going to want help from the pros and eventually you might even need your own in-house SEO expert, but search engine optimization is something you need to know about too. It has one of the highest ROIs in marketing. Plus, do it right and SEO can literally put your marketing on autopilot, allowing you to focus on improving the quality of your business, instead of figuring out how to bring in customers to your site. Start readingSEOmoz and stay up to date with SEO changes by reading sites like search engine land.
3. Use open source tools. You could go with a proprietary content management system (CMS) but that means you’re typically stuck with one company and paying hefty license fees to boot. Do yourself a favor and go with an open-source system—I like WordPress and Magento—that any developer can access.
4. Think about your mobile strategy simultaneously. Research the percentage of your visitors that are likely to use mobile devices to access your site. If it’s high, you may want to consider building a separate mobile version of your site, or even an app. If it’s relatively low, just make sure your website works on smart phones, but don’t invest into a mobile version.
5. Steal from your competitors. Before you build your site, check out your competitors and write down the things they do well. If you like the look and feel of another site, there’s no reason not to start with something you like and then make it your own.
6. Develop your content. The biggest slow-down in the Web design process is content. If you’re going to sell products on your site, get product photos and product descriptions ready. If you sell services, you’ll need a description of each service. Get as much of your content together before you start building your site—it will save you weeks. And while you’re at it… 
7. Write with calls to action in mind. Good calls to action allow visitors to quickly decide what they want to do next. Having a big sale? Don’t just write a banner that says “50% off all products.” Write one that says “50% off all products, CLICK HERE to view them.”
8. Always answer the question “why?” Have you ever walked up to someone you’ve never met, handed them a business card, and walked away without saying a word? Likely not. If you want people to do something on your website, such as sign up for your newsletter, don’t just put up a box that says “enter email” or even “sign up for newsletter”—you’ll get a very weak conversion rate. Tell them why they should do it: “Sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly specials.” Same thing goes for Twitter and Facebook logos. Just putting them up isn’t smart. Tell people why they should follow you on Twitter or friend you on Facebook. What will they get out of it?  
9. Trust your Web designer. I tend to see the worst end results with customers who come in with a “I know what I want, just do what I tell you” attitude. You hired an expert because they know more than you, right? Let them do what they do best and they’re more likely to meet and often exceed your goals.

Don’t:

1. Do it yourself. I know—I run a Web design firm, so of course I’m going to say this. But seriously, your website is often where your customers’ first experience your brand. If it looks homemade, they’re going to make assumptions about your business that you want to avoid. 
2. Make people think. When visitors come to your website, they typically already know what they want out of it. Do a three-second test: If within three seconds a visitor can’t figure out what to do next, go back to the drawing board.
3. Expect visitors. Lose the “if you build it, they will come” mentality. Simply putting up your site will not result in any visitors.
4. Spend all your money. Don’t max out your entire budget on the website. You can get a well-designed site for under $1,000 from a freelancer, or a few thousand dollars from a professional agency. And you can always make improvements as your business grows. It’s far more important initially to have some money left over for a marketing budget so you can actually make a return on your investment.
5. Add a blog. Are you really going to write posts? Be honest. If you won’t, then forget about a blog. A website with an outdated blog can create the perception that your company is small or even out of business.  
6. Add Twitter and Facebook buttons. If a potential client clicks through to your social pages and sees hardly any followers, they may lose trust in you. First build up your social presence, then commit to posting and engaging your fans on a regular basis, and only then promote them on your website. Also keep in mind that some businesses simply don’t belong on Twitter or Facebook.
7. Try to please everyone. Your website will be a mess if you try to accommodate every type of visitor who might come along. Figure out who is likely to be your most frequent users and focus on creating the best experience for them.
8. Add testimonials. Building credibility is important, but too often testimonials sound fake. “’They are great!’ says John Smith” simply isn’t believable. If you’re going to have testimonials make sure they are specific, and something people can relate to.
9. Use Flash. Some sites still need it, but if you can, avoid it. Adobe just announced that it will no longer support Flash on mobile devices and set-top-boxes. The last thing you want is for a potential customer to be unable to open your site.
10. Expect a killer website overnight. Good websites take time to build. If you want the best results out of your site, be prepared for several months of work.

=====Ilya Pozin=====

6 Steps to a More Marketable LinkedIn Profile

 So let’s tune yours up with six simple steps:Overall, LinkedIn is the best social media platform for entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals. Unfortunately, your LinkedIn profile may not be helping you to create those connections.

Step 1. Revisit your goals. At its most basic level LinkedIn is about marketing: marketing your company or marketing yourself. But that focus probably got lost as you worked through the mechanics of completing your profile, and what started as a marketing effort turned into a resume completion task. Who you are isn’t as important as what you hope to accomplish, so think about your goals and convert your goals into keywords, because keywords are how people find you on LinkedIn.

But don’t just whip out the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and identify popular keywords. It’s useful but everyone uses it—and that means, for example, that every Web designer has shoehorned six- and seven-digit searches-per-month keywords like “build a website,” “website templates,” “designing a website,” and “webmaster” into their profile. It’s hard to stand out when you’re one of millions.

Go a step further and think about words that have meaning in your industry. Some are process-related; others are terms only used in your field; others might be names of equipment, products, software, or companies.

Use a keyword tool to find general terms that could attract a broader audience, and then dig deeper to target your niche by identifying keywords industry insiders might search for.

Then sense-check your keywords against your goals. If you’re a Web designer but you don’t provide training, the 7 million monthly Google searches for  “how to Web design” don't matter.

Step 2. Layer in your keywords. The headline is a key factor in search results, so pick your most important keyword and make sure it appears in your headline. “Most important” doesn’t mean most searched, though; if you provide services to a highly targeted market the keyword in your headline should reflect that niche. Then work through the rest of your profile and replace some of the vague descriptions of skills, experience, and educational background with keywords. Your profile isn’t a term paper so don’t worry about a little repetition. A LinkedIn search scans for keywords, and once on the page, so do people.

Step 3. Strip out the clutter. If you’re the average person you changed jobs six or eight times before you reached age 30. That experience is only relevant when it relates to your current goals. Sift through your profile and weed out or streamline everything that doesn’t support your business or professional goals. If you’re currently a Web designer but were an accountant in a previous life, a comprehensive listing of your accounting background is distracting. Keep previous jobs in your work history, but limit each to job title, company, and a brief description of duties.

Step 4. Reintroduce your personality. Focusing on keywords and eliminating clutter is important, but in the process your individuality probably got lost. Now you can put it back and add a little enthusiasm and flair. Describing yourself as, “A process improvement consultant with a Six Sigma black belt,” is specific and targeted but also says nothing about you as a person—and doesn’t make me think, “Hey, she would be great to work with.”

Share why you love what you do in your profile. Share what you hope to accomplish. Describe companies you worked for or projects you completed. Share your best or worst experience. Keep your keywords in place, leave out what doesn’t support your goals, and then be yourself.

Keywords are important but are primarily just a way to help potential clients find you. No one hires keywords; they hire people.

Step 5. Take a hard look at your profile photo. Say someone follows you on Twitter. What’s the first thing you do? Check out their photo.

A photo is a little like a logo: On its own an awesome photo won’t win business, but a bad photo can definitely lose business.

Take a look at your current photo. Does it reflect who you are as a professional or does it reflect a hobby or outside interest? Does it look like a real estate agent’s headshot? A good photo flatters but doesn’t mislead. Eventually you’ll meet some of your customers in person and the inevitable disconnect between Photoshop and life will be jarring.

The goal is for your photo to reflect how you will look when you meet a customer, not how you looked at that killer party in Key West four years ago. The best profile photo isn’t necessarily your favorite photo. The best photo strikes a balance between professionalism and approachability, making you look good but also real.

Step 6. Get recommendations. Most of us can’t resist reading testimonials, even when we know those testimonials were probably solicited. Recommendations add color and depth to a LinkedIn profile, fleshing it out while avoiding any, “Oh jeez will this guy ever shut up about himself?” reactions. So ask for recommendations, and offer to provide recommendations before you’re asked.

The best way to build great connections is to always be the one who gives first.

Ways of Becoming Cisco Administrator

Do you dream of becoming Cisco administrator? Well, it is the dream that majority of IT aspirants see. Cisco certification means excellent career and great pay. You will have the option of working anywhere and in any leading company of the world. In short, possessing Cisco certification is like dream come true for anyone. You can even opt for freelance work. The specialization of Cisco administrators is building, maintaining, providing technical assistance and troubleshooting Cisco networks. The work of Cisco administrator is challenging and the pathway of getting Cisco certification is also not easy. However, if you have a good brain and you really have zest for computer engineering, you can surely become Cisco administrator.

First step of becoming Cisco administrator is getting degree in information technology or computer science. Majority of employers demand bachelor’s degree, however, there are administrators who possess just associate’s degree. Your efforts should be acquiring as many Cisco certifications as you can. The most lucrative job applications are from Cisco Network Associates. A good experience in areas of general information technology and technical support in school is a plus factor for becoming Cisco administrator. Internship is also a good thing.

You learn different concepts during schooling such as infrastructure, networking and technologies. You need to master the tactics of hardware installation, server operating systems and windows client. Practical knowledge is more important than just education and certifications. You should have good communication skills as well as interpersonal capabilities. You should be able to work in large team. Possessing good analytical skills will help you in identifying the root cause of problem in network and in troubleshooting and solving that problem.

Cisco administrators have good job outlook. It is expected that jobs in this field will increase by 53% by the year 2016. The average salary is expected to be $84000. Hence, it is a wise decision to contact some computer training institute and start your training for getting Cisco Certification.