Be confident of expertise and experience with The Open Certified Technical Specialist (Open CTS) Certification
The Open Group Open Certified Technical Specialist (Open CTS) certification is an independent global certification for qualifying the skills, knowledge, and experience of Technical Specialists. Accepted and applicable worldwide, Open CTS boasts over 3,000 certified professionals from a wide range of organizations in more than 50 countries worldwide.
This certification requires applicants to demonstrate skills and experience against a set of conformance requirements through written applications and peer interviews. There are no training courses to attend and no written exams to complete.
Open CTS certification is:
- The most trusted independent benchmark for validating Technical Specialist skills and experience
- A distinctive, peer-reviewed, vendor-neutral, globally recognized, portable credential
- Used by the world’s leading enterprises as an objective measure of capabilities
- A proven guide for filling critical roles and responsibilities
- An outstanding career move
Open CTS is available at three levels, Certified, Master Certified, and Distinguished, and consists of a family of technical specialties in:
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- Application Development
- Application Integration
- Business Analysis
- Data Platform
- Data Engineering
- Network Systems
- Packaged Application Implementation
- Product Support
- Security
- Server Systems
- Storage Systems
- Testing
Why Become an Open Certified Technical Specialist?
Here, Remy Alexander, Director at Digital Practice, Philips IT, discusses the benefits of Open CTS she has witnessed.
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A Stepwise Path to Certification
Certification is awarded through experience-based profile assessment against a set of conformance requirements by recognized industry experts within their appropriate field, so no course to attend and no examination is required.
Certification is broken down into three stages – this allows candidates to manage their certification at a pace that is most suitable to themselves and start to show evidence for their expertise more quickly:
- Step One - submit five separate Milestones, which are then evaluated independently. (Upon successful completion of a Milestone, a Milestone badge is awarded.)
- Step Two - compete the experience application
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Step Three - attend a board review. (Upon successful completion of the board, the full Certification and Certification badge is awarded)
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Benefits for Individuals
For individuals, The Open Professions certification represents an ideal mechanism for demonstrating knowledge, success and overall business capabilities. Open CTS certification can significantly enhance and affirm your professional skills, improve your prospects for rewarding assignments, accelerate career advancement, and result in greater peer recognition.
Open Professions are regularly at the top of the most in-demand skills in the Foote Partners’ quarterly pay-review reports, with an above-average pay premium for professionals
"The need to certify information technology professionals against an open and global standard is crucial for our customers, employees and the industry at large. We expect that the defined set of worldwide standards for measuring the skills and experience of IT specialists, motivating and empowering them with portable credentials will be accepted anywhere and will contribute to a further professionalism of the IT industry."
Ron Tolido
Executive Vice President, Global
CTO, Capgemini Insights & Data -
Benefits for Organizations
For organizations, Open CTS certification provides an independent, global, experience-based benchmark for identifying, assessing and selecting the most qualified individuals for critical roles and responsibilities. Specifying Open CTS certified individuals in procurement and project proposals can considerably reduce recruitment time and cost, and result in higher project success rates.
Open CTS certification can help to optimize the staff recruitment and retention process and motivate staff to acquire this widely recognized industry standard to authenticate their skills and experience.
Organizations can also utilize The Open Group materials to build their own professional certification programs and apply the Open CTS certification structure to enhance their own learning and development programs.
In a marketplace where confidence is a key purchasing factor, suppliers can demonstrate their expertise by showing that they use certified Solution and Enterprise Architects for specific projects. Open CTS certification is a powerful competitive differentiator that provides your customers with reliable assurance of the skills and capabilities of your IT professionals and of the quality and interoperability of your products.
“Credit Suisse’s IT division is required to provide high-quality, innovative and cost-efficient technology solutions to our integrated global bank. In order to achieve our goals, it is critical that we attract and retain the best IT professionals in the market. By following industry best practices, The Open Group has defined an outstanding benchmark for IT Architects and IT specialists, which makes it easier to identify the highly skilled and experienced professionals that Credit Suisse is looking for. In addition, I am very much in favor of The Open Group’s efforts to certify skills and experience, rather than academic qualifications only.”Andreas Buzzi
Head of Software EngineeringCredit Suisse
