I’ve used technical books from Packt Publishing for years and they are always a great asset.   I’ve also served as technical editor for the book “IBM Cognos BI v10.2 Administration Essentials“.

The following is a quote of their special offer:

Packt Publishing celebrates their 2000th title with an exclusive offer – We’ve got IT covered!

Known for their extensive range of pragmatic IT ebooks, Packt Publishing are celebrating their 2000th book title `Learning Dart’– they want their customers to celebrate too.

To mark this milestone Packt Publishing will launch a ‘Buy One Get One Free’ offer across all eBooks on March 18th – for a limited period only.

`Learning Dart’ was selected as a title and published by Packt earlier this year. As a project that aims to revolutionise a language as crucial as JavaScript, Dart is a great example of an emerging technology which aims to support the community and their requirement for constant improvement. The content itself explains how to develop apps using Dart and HTML5 in a model-driven and fast-paced approach, enabling developers to build more complex and high-performing web apps.

David Maclean, Managing Director explains `It’s not by chance that this book is our 2000th title. Our customers and community drive demand and it is our job to ensure that whatever they’re working on, Packt provides practical help and support.

At Packt we understand that sometimes our customers want to learn a new programming language pretty much from scratch, with little knowledge of similar language concepts. Other times our customers know a related language fairly well and therefore want a fast-paced primer that brings them up to a competent professional level quickly.

That’s what makes Packt different: all our books are specifically commissioned by category experts, based on intensive research of the technology and the key tasks.’

Since 2004, Packt Publishing has been providing practical IT-related information that enables everyone to learn and develop their IT knowledge, from novice to expert.

Packt is one of the most prolific and fast-growing tech book publishers in the world. Originally focused on open source software, Packt contributes back into the community paying a royalty on relevant books directly to open source projects. These projects have received over $400,000 as part of Packt’s Open Source Royalty Scheme to date.

Their books focus on practicality, recognising that readers are ultimately concerned with getting the job done. Packt’s digitally-focused business model allows them to quickly publish up-to-date books in very specific areas across a range of key categories – web development, game development, big data, application development, and more. Their commitment to providing a comprehensive range of titles has seen Packt publish 1054% more titles in 2013 than in 2006.

Erol Staveley, Publisher, says `Recent research shows that 88% of our customers are very satisfied with the service knowing that we offer a wide breadth of titles in a timely manner, and owing to the quality of service that they receive 94% of customers are willing to recommend Packt to friends and family. It’s great that we’ve hit such a significant milestone, and we want to continue delivering this fantastic content to our customers.’

Here are some of the best titles across Packt’s main categories – but Buy One, Get One Free will apply across all 2000 titles:

• Web Development
• Big Data & Cloud
• Game Development
• App Development

At the time of this writing, these two ebooks introducing the 2012 version of SQL Server and Windows are free Kindle books on Amazon:

Introducing Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 [Kindle Edition]

Introducing Windows Server® 2012 [Kindle Edition]

Microsoft has overhauled the levels of certifications to meet their perceived changes in the skill sets of developers.  There will be four levels of certification in the Microsoft Solutions Expert program

1. Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) – core skills and a prerequisite for further levels
2. Microsoft Solutions Expert (MCSE) – relevant and up-to-date skills for IT professionals working with the solutions
3. Microsoft Solutions Developer (MCSD) – Like MCSE, but geared toward developers, rather than IT professionals (not to imply that developers are unprofessional).
4. Microsoft Certified Solutions Master (MCSM) — Beyond expert level, the highest level of skills are validated by this rigorous testing process.

Microsoft has also integrated Cloud Computing concepts into many of the exams to reflect the changing environments that are emerging.

A track that has been changed, probably relevant to the readers of this article is MCSE Business Intelligence: http://aka.ms/MCSEBI

FYI, there’s a 2-for-1 offer by Prometric at this time: http://aka.ms/Prometric241

Opinion:  I like the clarification of levels of skill proficiency and the distinguishing of breadth versus depth with IT Professional and Developer, but MCSE has long been associated with Microsoft Certified System Engineer and this could cause confusion with older managers.