Being a skillful technician has become a job as much as being employed as one. How so? The technical landscape is constantly changing. There once was a time when all you needed to do was master a few programming skills from the leading enterprise application vendors and one or more operating systems. Training was expensive and only available to licensed customers or employees of the company where a product was licensed. If you worked at the company but were not part of the development or application support team, you had no access. As a user, you only had user access but no real understanding of the administration or how the tool really works. Your scope of learning was limited to your role or job and you had; and what the company had licensed. Server-based tools and applications could only be used. The process of becoming skillful was very controlled and contained. But the landscape of how and where we learn as skilled technicians is constantly changing.
Both open source and enterprise technologies have a robust library of applications and operating systems. The landscape has changed most noticeably in the enterprise arena. Enterprise technologies have opened their doors to students, non-customers, and independents. Large enterprise companies such as Oracle now make full versions of their software available for review in non-production environments. By creating a free account and agreeing to their terms, most software can be downloaded into a test environment for development and review.
This new open-doors policy allows access to basic forums for support, but gives you a fully functioning product to work with. Microsoft has also adopted this plan by allowing fully functioning products like Microsoft SQL Server to be available for download in a trial for at least 6 months. They also have SQL Express, which is a non-limited version of a SQL Server product but a lighter version. It does not have all the functions of SQL Server, but some of the core ones are still in place. Although Microsoft disables or limits their functionality after a trial, it still gives you reasonable time for review. Most users already have access to a licensed copy of a Microsoft Operating System, but there is a large assortment of tools to try for the 64-bit platform. For those who don’t, Microsoft clearly states this limitation regarding its server-level operating system: if you need more time to evaluate Windows Server 2008, the 60-day evaluation period may be reset (or re-armed) three times, extending the original 60-day evaluation period by up to 180 days for a total possible evaluation time of 240 days. After this time, you will need to uninstall the software or upgrade to a fully-licensed version of Windows Server 2008. With these options available in your arsenal, you have the foundation for maintaining your technology-based skills. As a technical professional the goal is to create an environment that can be used without restriction. This can be accomplished by making a selection of tools and applications from both enterprise and open source.
Open source has always been just that. Searching sites like SourceForge or leading software companies in this space you will find what is referred to as the community edition of their software. Yes, it does not have all the features of an enterprise release but enough to build a good foundation for learning and development. In fact, some leading organizations find that the community edition is sufficient to run their production operations. This places any technical resource in a valuable positon, since the same application can be studied independently. Products like MySQL and SugarCRM both have community editions available to download and configure in your own environment. Some web-hosted environments already have tools that are considered part of the stack like LINUX, Apache, MySQL and PHP. These resources have a large community support and most questions are answered in a reasonable amount of time. For a quicker turn around you would to need to finance a paid support service.
Cloud computing companies like HortonWorks and Cloudera have a sandbox version of their product that you can download with an environment preconfigured and ready for use. Each site has enough robust documentation to kick start your exploration into this space. Amazon even offers the AWS Loft were you can meet up and work with AWS experts for free. Both AWS and Azure have documentation on usage of their services and products on the site.
Programming languages like Python and Java have their own programing engine you can download to work with. There are also alternative database engines like MYSQL, Postgres, Casandra and MongoDb. MongoDB has a free Mongo University program with video based instructions, testing, and a help forum to assist new developers. Microsoft has the Microsoft Virtual Academy, which has videos and basic training giving by their own subject matter experts.
Having the programming tools, applications and operating systems aren’t much use without proper training. Leading training vendors like Udemy, Codecamp and Lynda offer classes taught by subject matter experts. If you do a search, no doubt you will find a number of such service offerings, some of which are free. It is always a good idea to review the comments to see if the class will suit your needs.
Another suggestion is to subscribe to a useful tech news email to stay abreast with the changes in the technology. Mowing down the tall grasses of useless email solicitations, a useful newsletter can be highly beneficial. You will be able to read about emerging technologies from the leading vendors and perhaps find some useful e-book deliveries. If your selection is not useful you can easily unsubscribe.
Clearly having a good strategy or plan is essential for being a skillful tech pro. Now with a wide selection to choose from the possibilities are endless for building your tech expertise.