Best IT Certifications for 2024

Earning specialized certifications is a surefire way to advance your career in the IT field, regardless of industry or current career level. The right certification validates your skills and knowledge, which makes you more desirable to future employers who want to attract and retain the best employees. Below, we’ll explore the top IT certifications and share how to examine your goals to choose the right path forward. 

We’ve narrowed IT certifications into specific categories to help IT professionals assess what’s available and pursue the best certifications to show their willingness to learn and develop the in-demand career skills employers want.

Database platforms have changed greatly over the years, but database technology remains important for various applications and computing tasks. Available certifications for IT professionals include those for database administrators (DBAs), database developers, data analysts and architects, business intelligence, and data warehousing specialists, and other data professionals.

Obtaining database certifications demonstrates an understanding of database concepts, design, implementation, administration and security. This can boost your credibility in the job market and show potential employers that you have the skills needed to work with databases. The best database certifications include the following:

SAS is one of the world’s leading firms for business analytics, data warehousing and data mining. Today, the SAS Global Certification Program offers 23 credentials across categories including foundation tools, advanced analytics, business intelligence, data management and administration.

SAS programmers remain in high demand, with a quick search of job boards showing thousands of open positions. Obtaining SAS certification shows employers that you are proficient in the company’s popular suite of tools. Some of SAS’s certification programs include the following: 

Many professionals earn certifications to help navigate their career paths. According to the IT Salary Report, 92 percent of information technology professionals have at least one certification.

Cisco Systems is a market leader not only in networking and communications products, but also storage networking and solutions for data centers. Cisco offers a variety of certifications for IT professionals, ranging from entry level credentials to expert-level exams. 

These certifications prepare professionals for Cisco-related careers. A search of job boards reveals thousands of open positions for Cisco experts, underscoring the continued relevance of these skills. Some of Cisco’s certifications include the following:

Dell Technologies remains one of the world’s leading computing companies. In addition to its well-known hardware lineup, Dell also offers solutions for networks, storage, servers, gateways and embedded computing, as well as a broad range of IT and business services.

Becoming certified in Dell products can help make IT professionals competitive in engineering roles for server, virtualization, networking, systems, integration and data security. Additional roles include consultants, account executives, system administrators, IT managers and deployment managers.

In the mobile era, it has become increasingly important for network engineers to support local, remote and mobile users, as well as provide proper infrastructure. The focus on application and app development now leans more toward mobile environments, requiring security professionals to thoroughly address mobility from all perspectives.

Due to the fast-changing nature of mobile technology, not many mobility certifications have become widely adopted. However, a few of the top mobility certifications can help IT professionals stand out in this rapidly evolving field. 

If part of your job includes selling and implementing an IT solution, you may want to pursue the best sales certifications. You’ll show your organization that you’re willing to go above and beyond to reach sales targets.

As remote and computer-based work has become more common, it’s more important than ever that businesses and individuals be able to maintain their hardware. While discussions about potential computer-related jobs often revolve around software work and coding, jumping into the IT field by becoming a computer technician is an excellent starting point.

Today, thousands of hardware technician jobs are available across the country. Entering this industry becomes more accessible for those who acquire computer hardware certifications. These certifications can showcase your expertise and proficiency in the upkeep of computers, mobile devices, printers and other hardware components.

IT pros with solid cloud computing skills continue to be in high demand as more companies adopt cloud technologies. Today, Google Cloud is one of the market leaders in the cloud computing space. 

Regardless of where you are in your IT career, engaging with certification programs can demonstrate your willingness to keep on top of rapidly evolving cloud technologies. To that end, Google has introduced a host of certifications for its cloud platform, including the following: 

In the fast-changing world of technology, it can help to focus on certifications that have stood the test of time. “Evergreen” refers to certifications that remain popular year after year. 

The top evergreen certifications are based on recent pay surveys in IT, reports from IT professionals about certifications they want or pursue the most, and those that appear most frequently in online job postings. Obtaining these credentials is one step toward ensuring that your skills remain relevant for a long time: 

IT governance provides structure for aligning a company’s IT with its business strategies. Organizations faced with compliance rigors always need experienced IT pros who can see the big picture and understand technology risks. This means certified IT governance professionals are likely to remain in high demand.

Earning one of the following certifications proves a commitment to understanding the role of IT governance and its position in a company’s current and future success. Getting certified can validate your expert knowledge and lead to advanced career opportunities.

An IT system administrator is responsible for managing and maintaining the information technology infrastructure within an organization. The position demands sought-after career skills, ranging from configuring and maintaining servers and clients to managing access controls, network services, and addressing application resource requirements.

If you’re in charge of managing modern servers, there’s a long list of tools and technologies that system administrators must master. Obtaining some of the most prominent system administrator certifications can demonstrate your mastery to potential employers. 

ITIL, or Information Technology Infrastructure Library, was developed to establish standardized best practices for IT services within government agencies. Over the ensuing four decades, businesses of all types embraced, modified, and extended ITIL, shaping it into a comprehensive framework for managing IT service delivery. 

The ITIL framework remains the benchmark for best practices in IT service and delivery management, offering certification programs that cater to IT professionals at all levels. These training and certification courses ensure that IT professionals stay well-prepared for the ongoing evolution in IT service delivery management. There are four certifications in the ITIL certification program:

An IT enterprise architect is responsible for designing and managing the overall structure and framework of an organization’s information technology system. Enterprise architect certifications are among the highest that an IT professional can achieve; fewer than 1 percent ultimately reach this level. 

Enterprise architects are among the highest-paid employees and consultants in the tech industry. These certifications can put IT professionals on a path to many lucrative positions. The average worker earns over six figures annually. Some top enterprise architect certifications are listed below:

To become an enterprise IT architect, you’ll need knowledge of systems deployment, design and architecture, as well as a strong business foundation.

CompTIA is a nonprofit trade association made up of more than 2,000 member organizations and 3,000 business partners. The organization’s vendor-neutral certification program is one of the best recognized in the IT industry. Since CompTIA developed its A+ credential in 1993, it has issued more than two million certifications.

CompTIA certifications are grouped by skill set and focus on the real-world skills IT professionals need. Armed with these credentials, you can demonstrate that you know how to manage and support IT infrastructure. 

A longtime leader in database software, Oracle also offers cloud solutions, servers, engineered systems, storage, and more. The company has more than 430,000 customers in 175 countries. 

Today, Oracle’s training program offers six certification levels that span 16 product categories with more than 200 individual credentials. Considering the depth and breadth of this program — and the number of Oracle customers — it’s no surprise that Oracle certifications are highly sought after. 

Vendor-specific certifications address a particular vendor’s hardware and software. For example, you can pursue Oracle certifications and Dell certifications to become an expert in those companies’ environments.

Business continuity and disaster recovery keep systems running and data available in the event of interruptions or faults. These programs bring systems back to normal operation after a disaster has occurred.

Business continuity and disaster recovery certifications are seeing a healthy uptrend as new cloud-based tools grow in popularity. While business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning have always been essential, they’re becoming more critical than ever — and IT certifications are following suit.

Cisco Contact Center Strategy To Be Reshaped With CloudCherry Acquisition

Cisco is buying CloudCherry, a company focused on customer experience management.

Cisco Systems has been on a mission this year to refocus its contact center business.

Under Amy Chang, Cisco's senior vice president of collaboration, the company on Monday announced its plan to buy CloudCherry, a privately held Customer Experience Management (CEM) company. The deal will improve Cisco's contact center tools by injecting more predictive analytics and customer journey mapping capabilities into its portfolio.

Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Salt Lake City, Utah-based CloudCherry -- which has raised $16 million in funding, according to Crunchbase -- is a Cisco Investments portfolio company.

[Related: 'No More Islands' Across Cisco Collaboration Portfolio, Tech Giant Says]

Cisco has been pushing more AI and machine-learning into its collaboration portfolio, and now it's the contact center's turn, said Vasili Triant, vice president and general manager of Cisco Contact Center Solutions.

"With CloudCherry, we’re augmenting our contact center portfolio with advanced analytics, rich customer journey mapping and sophisticated survey capabilities that all our customers can use – whether they’re using Webex Contact Center in the cloud, or our hosted and on-premises solutions," Triant said in a blog post on the deal.

CloudCherry’s open API platform simplifies how customer data is ingested from systems of records, transactional data, and other data sources in real-time, which helps contact center agents close the feedback loop with customers and improve end user satisfaction, Cisco said.

"Predictive analytics help agents make journey modifications in real-time, such as up and cross-selling and enabling discounting or couponing to meet customer needs during the interaction, to improve first contact resolution and customer happiness," Triant added.

The CloudCherry team will join Cisco’s Contact Center Solutions business led by Triant after the acquisition closes, according to San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco.

Cisco has been selling collaboration and contact center solutions for years through its channel partners. The tech giant today has more than 3 million agents across 30,000-plus enterprises, Cisco said.

The two companies expect the deal to close during the first quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2020 and is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Also in the collaboration department, Cisco in August announced its intent to acquire Voicea, a deal that Cisco said will boost its flagship Webex platform with meeting transcription, voice search, and data privacy features.

Cisco: Data Center, Collaboration, Services Buoy Solid Q2

Cisco rode solid revenue growth in its data center, virtualization, collaboration and services to a stable second fiscal quarter, even as its quarterly profits declined year-over-year and areas that vexed Cisco in the previous quarter, including public sector revenues, continued to concern.

Overall, said Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers Wednesday, Cisco's revenues in categories like collaboration and data center virtualization are growing admirably. Customers are investing in Cisco's technology architecture vision, Chambers said, even if Cisco has seen some decline in key areas like switching and security.

For its second quarter, Cisco reported earnings of $1.5 billion, at 27 cents per share, down nearly 18 percent from the $1.9 billion, on 32 cents per share, it reported in the year-ago quarter. It reported revenues of $10.4 billion, a 6 percent increase from the $9.8 billion it reported in the year ago quarter. Analysts had been expecting $10.24 billion in revenue.

Guidance for Cisco's current and forthcoming quarters was disappointing, with Chambers predicting Q3 revenue increases between 4 and 6 percent, and Q4 revenue increases between 8 and 11 percent. Both ranges are below Cisco's oft-described growth target of 12 to 17 percent.

Bright spots for Cisco were in its new product groups, which Cisco describes as data center, collaboration, security, wireless and the video-connected home. Overall revenue growth across those five categories was 15 percent, and according to Chambers, they represent 39 percent of Cisco's product revenue overall.

Collaboration, which includes the products Cisco acquired with Tandberg, saw a 37 percent year-over year revenue increase and is nearing a $4 billion annualized run rate, Chambers said.

Data center virtualization, in which Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) resides, grew 59 percent year-over-year, and UCS' specific year-over-year revenue growth was 700 percent. Vblock, the virtualized data center package for which Cisco partners with EMC and VMware, saw 40 new customers in the quarter, and has a $1 billion pipeline.

"The data center evolution is playing out as we anticipated," Chambers said on the company's Q2 earnings conference call Wednesday.

Wireless was up 34 percent, he added, while security and video-connected home both declined, at 9 percent and 4 percent rates, respectively.

Most notable among Cisco's mature product categories was a 7 percent year-over-year decline in switching. Chambers attributed the decline to competition and also noted that Cisco is in the midst of several major product transitions expected to yield switching products with dramatically better price performance.

He stated firmly that Cisco would not combat its decline in switching revenue with pricing.

"This is not a price game, this is a price performance game," Chambers said during the conference call's Q&A section.

He added that transitions in switching -- the transition from Cisco Catalyst switches to Nexus switches, for example -- were happening "faster than we expected." Routing and switching accounted for about 46 percent of Cisco's revenue, he said.

Routing itself was up 4 percent year-over-year.

Chambers said that services were continuing to be an integral part of Cisco's revenue, and now account for 21 percent of that overall revenue, with 67 percent gross margins.

Cisco's global public sector revenue grew 17 percent, and in the U.S., grew 9 percent during the quarter. But Chambers cautioned that state, local and federal IT spending will worsen in successive quarters.

Cisco also saw decreases in its set-top box business, down 11 percent overall, and in its overall consumer segment, which Chambers described as more challenging than Cisco expected.

Asked by analysts if Cisco would revise its stated 12 to 17 percent growth targets thanks to the slower quarterly growth seen in its fiscal 2011, Chambers said Cisco would go quarter-by-quarter to make that call.

Cisco's hiring was relatively flat in the quarter; it added 330 employees to reach a total headcount of 17,935.