The VMware Certification Team would like to recognize Pavan Thota, Senior Staff Technical Curriculum Architect, for his outstanding efforts in the Network Virtualization Domain. Pavan has contributed as both a guide and a subject matter expert during multiple development activities, including competency modeling, item development, technical reviews, and standard setting workshops. Pavan’s knowledge and expertise of NSX and related products has helped VMware accelerate development of NV certifications while increasing the quality of exams. Additionally, Pavan has helped bring better alignment between VMware courses and certification exams, ensuring candidates are well prepared for skills validation. Thank you Pavan for your contribution and helping VMware’s certification program achieve the highest quality and best-in-class status.
What is your background? How did you come to work in IT?
I am an IT Technologist with 13+ years of experience in the IT and wide exposure to data center technologies. During my 8+ years of tenure at VMware, I’ve worn several hats like Technical Support Engineer, Escalation Engineer, Global Technical Lead, and Staff Training Specialist. These roles gave me an opportunity to look at various aspects of a product life cycle starting from how a product gets architectured, developed, released, and how a customer implements it.
In my current role at VMware RACE as a Sr. Staff Technical Architect for NSX, I am responsible for designing the curriculum for products available in NSX portfolio. The curriculum includes courses at various competency levels such as Install, Configure & Manage (ICM), Troubleshooting & Operations, and Design & Deploy – which are available for VMware customers, partners, and VMware employees. I also represent VMware at various events and training sessions to help customers understand VMware’s vision of Networking and Security and help them start their journey with VMware NSX Data Center.
What do you think makes for a great testing experience?
A test is considered successful when it aligns to the real-world responsibilities of the IT personnel taking the certification. A great testing experience involves a fair demonstration of your skill set and sufficient hands-on experience. That way, the certification itself becomes the most valuable asset to your career.
You have been involved in a lot of exam development activities. What about exam development is appealing to you as an Education Contributor?
Certifications play a crucial role in the success of both individuals and organizations that design them. Certifications motivate IT professionals to demonstrate the skills they learned through training and knowledge gained from their experience with the product. I’m glad to contribute to all the certification tracks associated with Network Virtualization, as I know how important it is to have a robust certification path for our VMware NSX Data Center customers.
Why did you become involved in the VMware Education Contributor program?
During our initial planning for Network Virtualization (NV) Certification tracks, we realized that VMware NSX-T Data Center was still at the early stages of adoption and the SMEs might need help in gaining the knowledge quickly on the product.
Having worked on the product internally for more than six release cycles, I wanted to accomplish two tasks by getting involved in the program:
- Provide guidance to SMEs during the early stages, so that they can write accurate and arguably not-so-easy questions.
- Ensure there is sufficient level of overlap between our VMware Education courses and certifications. Of course, the exam candidate must still leverage their real world experience and other preparation methods, but the collaboration between the curriculum and exam development teams was very important to the success of this release.
What is the most desirable facet of the Education Contributor program?
I was quite surprised with the diversified community and collaboration achieved during the program. It gave an opportunity to all the SMEs to work with professionals coming from different backgrounds across the globe. This helps us look at each question in multiple perspectives and eventually build a robust certification for our customers.
How have you benefited from the program?
There are several benefits and takeaways for me from this program:
- The learning experience of building an entire certification track from scratch is the biggest achievement. It isn’t very often where we build the entire certification track from scratch and I am fortunate to be involved in the Network Virtualization Certification track from the early stages.
- Understanding the process involved in building a question bank for a certification that is both technically and politically accurate to the targeted audience. It’s not just about writing a set of questions. We need to ensure the questions are not easily predictable or do not contradict or complement each other. There is a science involved behind a successful certification.
- Finally, the perks like participation credits and SME badges are always worth it. 🙂
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