Read our latest article to find out how powerful an official Microsoft course and certification is to your technical team
In a competitive environment training and upskilling can be the driver of the change. Adding to the equation an economic scenario reshaped by a pandemic, the power of qualification it’s even more visible. Competition brings more players to the table, which means quality needs to be assured. You need to guarantee that your training investments will deliver the expected results. That’s when an official training partner makes the difference.
A recent study from IDC indicates that Microsoft trained, and Certified IT professionals perform 26% better than colleagues with the same responsibility who are not certified. The white paper named “Leveraging Microsoft learning partners for innovations and impact” shows relevant data on how crucial is to invest in IT training provided by official partners.
Alan Deery, CEO of New Horizons Ireland explain the difference. “The online training market is highly competitive. When investing in an official Microsoft course companies are guaranteeing that their teams will be trained by highly certified instructors, with access to official materials, courseware’s, labs, and more. It’s an investment which will pay itself back as the IDC study shows”, states Deery.
Why you Should Get your Team Microsoft Certified
The IDC study shows that IT professionals trained by Microsoft partners can perform better than their peers, mainly when it’s related to cloud technologies. The impacts are beyond performance and can reflect long-term gains for the businesses. We summed up below some relevant data presented in the research.
- Timeliness: Well-trained cloud migration teams meet nearly 90% of their business and project milestones compared with less than 50% of milestones met by cloud migration teams at only "average" skill level.
- Insight: 90% of the organizations with well-trained teams are satisfied or very satisfied with their ability to monitor, forecast, and optimize server, storage, and network resources compared with less than 10% of the organizations with undertrained teams being satisfied with their ability to optimize resources.
- Business impact: 80% of the organizations with teams well trained in automation and orchestration tools report being satisfied or very satisfied with the business impact of the move to the cloud, while only 20% of the organizations without sufficient skills were satisfied in the same scenario.
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Microsoft Certified Azure Cloud Professionals
More than 650 IT leaders interviewed for the research connected the performance of their Microsoft cloud certified IT teams with the performance improvement of their businesses. The findings include:
- Certified cloud engineers were more effective. Microsoft certified Azure cloud engineers spend 20% less time setting up the infrastructure, completing significant projects nearly two days sooner than uncertified engineers.
- Certified cloud administrators had more capability. Microsoft-certified Azure cloud administrators are 55% more likely to be able to determine the scope of the impact of a security issue with a virtual machine than uncertified engineers.
- Certified enterprise administrators were more efficient. Microsoft certified enterprise administrators spend 40% less time designing and implementing Microsoft 365 services than uncertified engineers.
- Certified security engineers were more proficient. Microsoft certified security engineers have 37% fewer network-related security incidents that impact multiple devices than uncertified engineers.
Top Reasons to Get IT Training from Microsoft Learning Partners
When you hire Microsoft Learning Partners they will provide customised, end-to-end training solutions for your company – As an official partner, training companies like New Horizons Ireland can tailor the training experience to your needs, according to your business objectives and learning requirements.
Learning partners can deliver the scale, flexibility, and speed to meet your skilling needs – Digital transformation is the essence of Microsoft Learning providers, we can move fast and stay focused on the main goal of getting your team qualified to provide the resources needed. We can deploy training programs considering the client’s schedule, time zone, platform, etc, offering the flexibility that suits your teams.
We also provide value-added services that can help your skills development program succeed – As official learning partners, we offer a variety of tools and approaches that are essential for supporting students. These can include hands-on labs; a mix of self-paced and classroom training; custom content; role-based learning paths; mentoring and discussion groups; assessments before, during, and after the training; and help with certification prep and exams if needed.
High-quality training content e delivery – we deliver Microsoft training using official courseware and content designed by Microsoft engineers and experts. Only highly qualified and certified instructors deliver training, all MCT’S have hands-on experience with the technologies, so we can guarantee the best learning experience for the students.

The Importance of Customised/End-to-end Training
One of the points highlighted by the leaders interviewed for the report was the importance of the end-to-end training, which official learn partners are technically equipped to provide. Helping companies to develop their learning programs in alignment with their business goals is part of learning partners' daily routine. The below steps are part of the action plan that all Microsoft partners use when developing customised learning solutions for their clients:
- Identify the knowledge gaps and potential pain points
- Simplify the learning initiative
- Reach learning and business objectives
- May include the creation of a career framework or custom learning pathways
- Establish learning priorities
- Management of certifications and digital badges
- On-target learning initiatives
Business success often relies on the skills and capabilities of the IT tech force. Leveraging new technologies, adapt to new platforms, get the workforce digital-ready are a couple of examples of what we can do for your IT workforce. The pandemic has shown how critical is to be ready for digital transformation and how this can be a great competitive advantage to keep enterprises running and profitable.
*Sources used in this article:
Get Help from Experts at New Horizons Ireland
New Horizons Ireland is the major Microsoft official training partner in Ireland and has trained more than 20 mil people around the country in the last 5 years. New Horizons Ireland's courses can be delivered as online live, mentored learning, instructor-led classes, and eLearning on-demand. We can also customise our range of courses to meet your company's needs and deliver it as a private session for your group.
Contact one of our Account Managers to check our options and choose the best training structure to achieve your company’s goal and needs.
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