How do I prepare myself for a First Career change?

I am planning to move from educational consultant to software because

1. Good salary

2. Good infrastructure

3. Social status

4. Global Exposure

5. sense of command Or It just my infactuation about these facts!

Or can i take up Software Testing or CRM (if so how %26amp; where do i start)

How do I prepare myself for successful career change.

I am 29 now, am i too old to get into this stream! please give your thoughtful answersHow do I prepare myself for a First Career change?
I would suggest that you do some research and see about getting into some of the mainframe programming areas. Right now most of the 'old' mainframe support people are retireing and there is a huge vaccum in that area. Also in 35+ years of working in IT I have found that the larger the system and larger the company the more they pay. There are a number of 2 year community colleges that have a mainframe training program but there are a few 4 year schools that also have mainframe training programs.

All of the fortune 500 companies are keeping their 'bet your business' information on mainframes because of their security and reliability and they will be around for a long time so you will have job security.

Right now if you know Cobol, CICS, DB2 then you can get a job starting Monday morning.