2012 Year in Review

Well, it’s been another great year for the Babbage Simmel staff and alumni.  We did tons of training and certification testing this year, with Visual Studio taking the crown for the most trained subject.  We taught twice as many Visual Studio courses in 2012 as the runner up for subject of the year, SharePoint 2010.  Now Visual Studio did have a slight advantage as both the 2008 and 2012 versions of the software were still being taught and in demand. 

Windows 7, Project Management and System Center all finished pretty dead even in a respectable third place.  System Center, however, didn’t really get its legs until the second half of 2012, and it’s been the most popular class over the last couple of months.  I look for this trend to continue into 2013 giving System Center a great chance to be our most popular class next year.  It was a pretty good year for Windows Server  as well, although most of that was the 2008 version.  It looks like Windows Server 2012 could be pretty big next year, and another solid contender.   

All and all it was a fantastic year for IT training.  The industry has picked back up again, and all signs point to more growth in hiring percentage and training budgets in 2013.  I also wanted to mention a couple classes coming up in early January that only have a couple seats left. 

M-10747 Administering System Center 2012 Configuration Manager

1/07/13-1/11/13

M-10266 Programming in C# with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

1/14/13-1/18/13

Do yourself a favor and start the year off right! 

We hope you all have a very safe and fun holiday season.

See you next year!

-Matt 

IBM Cognos Training

This week we wanted to take some time and spotlight a couple new training classes here at Babsim.  What exactly is IBM Cognos?  We’re glad you asked.

From business intelligence to financial performance and strategy management to analytics applications, IBM Cognos software can provide what your organization needs to become top-performing and analytics-driven. With products for the individual, workgroup, department, midsize business and large enterprise, Cognos software is designed to help everyone in your organization make the decisions that achieve better business outcomes—for now and in the future.

Cognos solutions are designed to help you make smarter decisions and manage performance for optimized business results. Combine your financial and operational data into a single, seamless source of information in the environment of your choice for transparent and timely reporting, analysis and action.

Now let’s take a closer look at a couple of our IBM Cognos offerings.

B-5152 IBM Cognos Framework Manager: Design Metadata Models (V10.2)

IBM Cognos Framework Manager: Design Metadata Models is a five-day, instructor-led course that provides participants with introductory to advanced knowledge of metadata modeling concepts, and how to model metadata for predictable reporting and analysis results using Framework Manager. Participants will learn the full scope of the metadata modeling process, from initial project creation, to publishing of metadata to the Web, enabling end users to easily author reports and analyze data.

B-5160 IBM Cognos Report Studio: Author Professional Reports (V10.2)

This course is designed for professional report authors to learn report building techniques using relational data models, and ways of enhancing and customizing, and managing professional reports. Attendees will participate in hands-on demos and workshops that illustrate key concepts while learning how to use the product. The second part of this course builds on topics learned in the Fundamentals section. The Advanced section is designed to teach advanced report building techniques using relational data models, and ways of enhancing, customizing, and managing professional reports. Attendees will participate in hands-on demos and workshops that illustrate key concepts while learning how to use the product.

-Matt

New System Center Courses

 

We’re busy finishing a jam packed week here at Babsim. It’s always nice when you can fill every room in the building. One of our biggest classes this week was Systems Center, taught by our old friend, Ken Alexander. This class has been one of our most popular classes this year, and I’m sure it will be next year as well. Let’s take a look at this class and when it’s offered next so you can secure your seat ahead of time. On top of that let’s also take a look at some new system center classes that were just released. Let’s try to make these new classes just as popular

M-10747 Administering System Center 2012 Configuration Manager

This five-day instructor-led course provides students with the knowledge and skills to configure and manage a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager site and its associated site systems in the role of Configuration Manager Administrators.

-1/14/13

-2/18/13

-3/18/13

-4/1/13

Now, here are the brand new System Center 2012 classes that just released:

M-55006 System Center Operations Manager 2012

This five-day course provides instructor-led students with the knowledge to successfully design and deploy Microsoft’s System Center 2012- Operations Manager (SCOM). In this course, students are introduced to the basic theory of service monitoring. Students also learn about configuration, deployment, monitoring, and operation. Upon course completion, students will have the skills necessary to manage Operations Manager for maximum business benefit. This course incorporates case-studies and hands-on learning opportunities so students can practice applying business solutions to real-world scenarios.

M-55009 System Center Service Manager 2012

This 5-day System Center Service Manager administration course provides the day to day SCSM administrator with the ability to maintain Service Manager 2012 within their organization. This course is approximately a 50/50 mix of lecture/lab experience for the student. It provides best practice sharing as well as the opportunity for the student to dive deep into their own lab experience. This System Center class starts with a brief introduction of how the various System Center products interoperate, and includes a discussion of how SCSM architected and deployed.

M-55008 System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

This four-day instructor-led course provides students with the knowledge to successfully maintain Virtual Machine manager within their organization. In this course, students are introduced to the various Systems Center products and provides a deep-dive into SCVMM. Upon course completion, students will be able to architect and deploy Virtual Machine Manager. This course incorporates case-studies and hands-on learning opportunities so students can practice applying business solutions to real-world scenarios.

Don’t forget, if you need to use the remainder of that 2012 training budget before the end of the year, we still have classes available for the next couple weeks. Check out our list of classes to find out which ones you can still hop into this month.

-Matt