hello my name is Jim Dixon and I am on the faculty team for the IT infrastructure program today I'll provide some information about what you will learn in this program and why you may want to take it what type of work you can expect upon graduation and hopefully answer some of your questions this program is designed to help you learn about working in the operations area of information technology the non software development area in this field you work with network equipment our server hardware and software cloud computing platforms and user devices the way I often describe this is we provide and support the infrastructure that's required for products produced by software developers that includes the architecture and design through fixing the problems that occur this is great for anyone who is interested in IT but isn't really interested in programming or for someone who's interested in programming and having solid skills and knowledge in IT operations we'll help them develop the software that they're interested in working on this program can be of great benefit to those who have finished their undergraduate work in an IT oriented field of study and would like additional education in the application of their new knowledge someone who's finished our undergraduate work and a different field of study and work or someone who has finished their undergraduate work in a different field of study and would like to get into IT you would also find this program quite beneficial anyone who has been working the IT field and has gained experience and would like to augment that with more formal education would also benefit from this program completing this program may provide better access to a desired completing this program may provide better access to a desired job or move into a different area of work within the IT field you iti is a bring-your-own-device program in other words you have to have your own laptop there's a webpage on the Conestoga site that states you need to have the better configuration and describes what that is I'd like to provide some more information specific to this program first you can run Windows or Mac doesn't really matter the College website says that if you're running a Mac you need the parallels application which is not required for this program website also states that you need 8 gigabytes of memory and 16 is recommended we highly suggest that you have 16 gigabytes of memory a gigabytes is not going to provide you with the performance that you're going to be very happy with and along with that a solid-state storage device is recommended and I'm going to tell you that you really really want to have that again you will not have very good performance without it you another point a screen size website is saying 15 inches or larger and in this type of a program the more screen real estate you have the better off you are having said that many of our students work with 13 inch screens and rapidly flip back and forth between applications if you're totally comfortable with that then that's fine addition to wireless networking you must have wired networking for this program if your laptop does not have a wired networking port you will need an adapter for that and you must have a webcam last thing I want to address with this is the time that's required to repair your laptop if it fails and that is typically associated with your warranty if you have a warranty that requires you to mail your laptop away and it takes a few weeks to get it returned to you this is not going to be very good for you you will be using your laptop every single day in this program so you need to ensure that if there's a failure you can have that fixed by next day you you our program is delivered at our Waterloo campus and I'm going to switch over and give you a view of the type of environment that you could expect you you this is a view of our networking lab at the Waterloo campus and this will look at and this will look like most of the rooms that you would be studying and the thing that's a little bit different about this one is because it's our lab the desktops are little bit higher they're more workbench style but all of the labs include the power and wired network connections that you can see here for connection of your laptop the other thing unique about this particular lab is that our data center is connected behind the other thing that is unique about this room is that our data center is attached to the back and let me spin the view around so that you can see that you what you can see at this point is a ton of networking equipment that we provide for our students to work on with respect to in class studying completing of labs completing assignments that type of a thing and I'm gonna back the view out here a little bit you can see that there is more equipment than what is just in the middle there the other thing that you cannot really see on the right side due to the glare off the window is our private cloud environment we have our own site we have our own on-site private cloud which is where you do all your systems work using industry standard software for virtualization the other thing I'll point out is that all of this equipment is available remotely so if you're working on labs or assignments and you would rather work from home rather coming onto campus so if you would rather work from home rather than coming on campus you can absolutely do that you you you excited I like to look at is what kind of jobs can you get when you finish the program and it's pretty varied quite frankly I've shown a few general types of positions I've not included any job titles and the reason for that is in this industry they're almost meaningless I've seen the same job title used at different organizations where the people working with that title are doing fairly different things and are often paid quite a bit differently as well one type of position that's pretty common is working on a support team in this type of a job you spend much of your time analyzing and solving problems and in the IFT field support teams are often tiered meaning that you would have different tiers within an organization and the tier one workers would be working on less challenging problems with more difficult problems escalated a higher some organizations some organizations go all the way up to tier four you could also be working in an administrative type of role which is pretty common administrators spend much of their time creating configuring and maintaining IT infrastructure sometimes this work specializes in one areas such as virtualization and cloud sometimes you work on everything the work often involves automating routine tasks through developing scripts or integrating with automation tools such as ansible fieldwork provides a great opportunity for those who like to get out and meet people and not spend all of their time in an office this could involve working for a product vendor and visiting both perspective and existing clients to analyze requirements and product fit or you could be working with an oat source or providing contracted third-party support for products and services consulting houses also provide yet another consulting houses provide yet another opportunity to work in the field there's also data analysis there's also data analysis design and architecture in this case you take the challenge of analyzing more abstract problems and develop a requirements and possibly solutions in this case you take the challenge of analyzing more abstract problems and developing requirements and possibly solutions this type of work is often completed in-house in larger organizations some organizations outsource this work regardless of size and those companies can be anywhere between tiny and huge you can work at just about any type of company that you wish in this field insurance manufacturing banking logistics health care education digital security consultancies you name it you I've chosen a few questions that are often asked about the iti program I chose a few questions that are often asked about the iti program first on the list is can I be successful in the iti program without IT work experience or education the answer to that is absolutely yes ITA iti is designed to include those who have no specific IT background it will obviously be easier for you if you do have post-secondary credential and something related to computer science information systems information technology or extensive work experience in the field the program will be challenging but hard work should result in solid success another common question is can I start work at a higher level another common question is can I start work at a higher than entry-level position after completing the program you can and that is really based on the work that you put in as well as the prior education and experience that you have you may have a degree or diploma coupled with this graduate certificate that is very attractive to industry you may have solid work experience and just added a postgraduate credential doing excellent work in the program and demonstrating position you doing excellent work on the program and demonstrating a passion of excellence doing excellent work in the program and doing excellent work in the program and demonstrating a passion for excellence will be recognized during interviews all of these will combine to landing a great job all of these will contribute to landing a great job you many people ask if there's much hands-on work and the answer to that is absolutely yes ITI is a highly approached I T I is a highly applied program you will learn many things through a program what you learn how to do and you will learn how to do many more things the level of practical skill our graduates gain helps them the level of practical skill our graduates gain helps them the level of practical skill our graduates gain helps make them much more attractive to companies looking to hire you and finally is there anything I can do to continue my studies once I complete iti an excellent approach is to specialize in a particular area by completing a second graduate certificate program an example of that would be our IT network security program which you can likely guess involves infrastructure security you adding a specialty program to a program that is more general like iti can help start and build a career in a specific area of information technology and that brings us to the end of the information I have for you today if you have any additional questions please feel free to email me at the address that you see here thanks for your interest in the iti program