What certificates and or degrees should a web hosting provider have to be able to support their clients and manage the growth of their company? A+, MCSE, RHCE to start?

How about a bachelors degree in business management ? :D That would be much more important than anything you listed above.

I have about 30 certs over the last 12 years and not one would help me run my web hosting company. :) I agree business is what is important when running the company. If you do not have the technical expertise I suggest hiring in someone from the get go.

You definitely need someone with technically expertise on your staff with some degrees. If you run a red hat server someone should most definitely have a RHCE degree.

Business Management is an essential tool unless you got a lot of common sense on you.

People who run some major sites may have barely passed high-school for all we know....i know a few people like that.

From what I've seen real experience in business will be worth the most. Too many people feel that web hosting is far different than typical businesses and don't think many of the thumb rules can be applied to hosting.

Making wise decisions seems to be the larger issue than support, although you do need both to succeed :)

I have a degree from the University of Hard Knocks.

I have a degree in Music and a lot of experience in performance - its useful in design and having an understanding of what clients want, but not worth a pinch of business wise!
In my experience some people are just better at business then others by nature - I always try to have a couple of trusted people around if a big decision has to be made, but other then that I just like to know I have one or two friends in the Internet industry who are skilled at coding about to outsource work to.
Like any industry its common sense and connections that count.
Regards,
RKBB

I think the Business Management degree with technical skills is essential for such business.
While man management and time management skills both should be considered important too.

How about plain old common sense, it's worth more than any cert i know of :)

haha. The best kind've cert you can have, i agree.

But it always pays to show off to customers that you have degrees within your business.

Originally posted by n3tw0rk5
How about plain old common sense, it's worth more than any cert i know of :)

But common sense is very rare in a common person.:)

LOL far too true, which is a shame, i've had to train up and manage plenty of university graduates over the years and only a minority had any common sense.

Being able to regurgitate a text book wont get you far in this world if you cant safely apply and expand on that knowledge :)

I have a degree from the University of Hard Knocks.

How about plain old common sense, it's worth more than any cert i know of

I Agree.

Anyone can learn the technical side of things, or you can hire someone to do it for you. Unfortunately, business skills and business aptitude is not something you can really learn as such.... and to hire people like that costs megabucks. :o

Originally posted by n3tw0rk5
How about plain old common sense, it's worth more than any cert i know of :)

I'll agree with that. It's something that seems to be greatly lacking among most hosts if WHT is any indication of the industry.

A degree in Information Technology would be beneficial. I know first hand. :)

I have done Diploma in IT from NIIT and am MCSE certified but I dont think you can do much without core experience.

Originally posted by n3tw0rk5
LOL far too true, which is a shame, i've had to train up and manage plenty of university graduates over the years and only a minority had any common sense.
Being able to regurgitate a text book wont get you far in this world if you cant safely apply and expand on that knowledge :)

It's true, but usually most of the people think that their mind is a warehouse of facts, they consider knowledge is power, they don't even understand that, it's powerful when it is used by putting action into it, but they never apply that.

Originally posted by MegaGeo
You definitely need someone with technically expertise on your staff with some degrees. If you run a red hat server someone should most definitely have a RHCE degree.


I have met some RHCE's and have an older ediiton of one of the study books sitting on my shel. In all honest RHCE to me is a joke. When I went through my Cisco/Novell classes I also found them to be a bit of a joke as well. The instructor in my Cisco class was a CNI which means she had to recieve a 90% or higher on her test to be able to become an instructor. In all honesty when our class got together to build our first real network (Being able to play counter-strike on it was the goal and reward) she couldn't answer hardly any questions about the routers or switches that we were using. All of her lectures were based off of the Cisco site for teachers which allowed her to just download powerpoint presentations other instructors had already created. This is not to say that there aren't CNA's, CNI's, CNE's, RCHE's, etc.. out there that are very knowledgable, but true "certs" come from experience, not memorizing a text book.

lol, that sucks. My friends cisco course was good, and well taught

I guess degrees don't mean everything...but try telling that to the masses.

Originally posted by MegaGeo
lol, that sucks. My friends cisco course was good, and well taught

I guess degrees don't mean everything...but try telling that to the masses.

Oh the course was great (we ended up teaching eachother, creating our own scenarios, topologies, etc..), but the test really is a joke. There is software you can legally buy and you will get about 60% of your questions word for word right off of that software.

Certs mean something to a business, but if you are starting your own webhosting venture, a business degree is far superior IMHO.

Overall, I think the degree will help you in greater way in present business environment for organizing the teamwork with your interpersonal communications, multitasking and organizational skills, negotiation skills, numerical skills and effective resource management etc.
Even you hire a person with this ability; you'll be able to check and manage all think in a broader sense and magnitudes of it hence you can lead your team more significantly towards your business goal.

Eventually, the life experience of a college degree helps you to provide this ability.

Originally posted by MegaGeo
You definitely need someone with technically expertise on your staff with some degrees.
My head sysadmin for when I owned httpme did not have any official certification. He was self taught, over the many years working with servers, and he was brilliant! :)

Okay, let me re-phrase that, lol.

You definitely need someone with technically expertise on your staff

(I ommited 3 words!)