Microsoft and Cisco certification superpower status confirmed

Microsoft and Cisco accounted for a combined 45 per cent of courses taken by tech pros quizzed in recent survey

Microsoft and Cisco's status as the two superpowers of tech certification has been underlined in a recent survey of tech professionals.

The vendor duo left the field for dead when it came to the training courses taken over the past year by the 29,000 IT professionals quizzed in the survey, which was conducted by computer-based testing company Pearson VUE.

VMware, Oracle and IBM also fared well, as did industry body CompTIA.

The top ten certification programmes were from Microsoft (23.4 per cent), Cisco (21.4 per cent), VMware (11.2 per cent), Oracle (8.3 per cent), CompTIA (8.3 per cent), IBM (6.9 per cent), HPE (5.2 per cent), Dell EMC (3.9 per cent), Juniper (2.9 per cent) and Linux Professional Institute (LPI) (2.7 per cent).

Yielding 29,297 responses from around the world, the survey was completed in October 2017 and saw participation from 35 IT companies.

Pearson VUE claimed that it had sniffed out a trend from the data, namely that IT employers are increasingly investing in training and assessment for staff.

Some 56 per cent of exams were paid for by employers - an increase of six per cent compared with the company's previous annual survey - and only 30.5 per cent were paid for by the individual test-taker.