Kaseya Certified Engineers: Will MSPs Ask for Them By Name?

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Kaseya launched the certification program in partnership with Florida International University Professor Dr. Masoud Sadjadi. The IT Scholars organization also assisted the effort. The Kaseya Certification Program offers four levels of proficiency for the Kaseya platform, the company says. Earn the certificate, and your company is immediately eligible for Kaseya priority support. Translation: Kaseya certified professionals can leapfrog Kaseya’s Tier 1 support and go straight to Tier 2.

When the certification was announced, Kaseya said it would train MSPs and IT managers to master Kaseya’s agent deployment, agent procedures, audit and inventory, information center, live connect, monitoring, patch management, remote control, system set-up and ticketing.  The training includes streaming videos, virtual environments, and self-assessment quizzes; one-on-one mentoring sessions also are available.

First Mover

Early adopters include Chris Amori, president of Virtual Administrator, a master MSP that has a longstanding relationship with Kaseya.

“I received an email from Dr. Sadjadi back in March that they were doing a final pilot of the Certification program, and offered to enroll in their Expert Package,” said Amori. And yes, Amori paid for the training, which included lectures, practice tests, labs and then the certification exam.

“Since that time I have personally trained over 400 Kaseya partners,” said Amori. “I wasn’t shy about offering feedback to Dr. Sadjadi about the training, and he was very receptive and some of my suggestions were added to the course.   I appreciated the design and organization of the training, much more structured then anything that I have done, and it was obvious that an educator had designed the course.”

“The final exam was not easy,” concedes Amori. “It requires an in-depth understanding of Kaseya, and there were many times, even with my six years experience using the product, that I had to refer back to help file for some of the questions.”

Amori wanted to become the first certified Kaseya administrator in the world. And on May 12, 2011, he passed the exam.

For most partners, Amori says the certification offers two potential benefits:

What’s Unique?

Amori thinks Kaseya certification could be a “good differentiator” in a world where everyone is A+/Net+ certified, and many managed services software providers lack certification. An examples: The Dice.com job board for high-tech professionals today (Aug. 23, 2011) lists about 14 positions for Kaseya experts. I suspect Kaseya certified professionals would move to the top of the resume stack if they applied for those positions. And perhaps more Kaseya-centric positions will be listed if the certification catches on by name.

Meanwhile, there are certainly some vendor-neutral accreditations and certifications in the market. The MSPAlliance has long offered accreditations to MSPs. And CompTIA in May 2011 launched the MSP Partners Trustmark. We’ve heard that CompTIA is preparing a potential follow-up, perhaps an accreditation or certification, to the base Trustmark.