IT Training suggestions?

[hambone79]

I am a mechanical engineer that spends about 75% of my time doing design work (via Pro/Engineer) and about 25% of my time administrating the server where all of our CAD data and engineering files are stored. I also spend a good bit of time helping to write the company configurations for Pro/Engineer and Perl scripts to automate tasks for the engineers.

I have had a few people mention that I should go ahead and get some IT related certification because it may help me move up in our Engineering Services organization. I talked to my boss about this and he said he would be willing to ask the company to pay for my certifications if I can come up with a proposal for needing the training. I don't even know where I should start on this so I'm looking for suggestions for IT training (that give certifications) that covers some of these topics:

- Pro/Engineer administration
- Windows system administration
- Linux system administration
- Perl scripting
- SQL databases
- Networking

Thanks!

[hambone79]

Nobody has any suggestions? Just to be clear, I'm looking for basic certifications that will look good on a resume.

[tvtech]

first check your local community colleges. This is exactly what they are geared for is certificate courses. Also check out the dept of continuing education at your local state University/College, these are seriously they are the way to go. if that fails,check out ITT tech,or some of the other private colleges they're not as good and they're grossly overpriced but it will get you where you want. third check out Barns and Noble honestly do a lot of your certs via book; like, NETWORK + and A + MCSE, MCSA Micorsoft server LPI LCPI and Cisco all can be done via book you just have to cover the cost of materials. they're the basic basic the cert test costs around 200 and the books/training course is about 50-75 depending on what you buy you can learn it on your own in about a week or a month depending on how fast you read. In the end the certs don't matter if you don't use the systems you won't know how to use the systems no matter how many certificates you have.