Cisco Unveils 'Networking Ph. D'
The Cisco Certified Architect outranks Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) to become the highest level of accreditation achievable within Cisco Career Certifications.
"Think about it as the Ph.D, the doctorate of networking," said Fred Weiller, director of product market for Learning@Cisco.
According to Weiller, as more new technologies are added, Cisco wanted to recognize and certify those who connect business strategy and IT, essentially marrying business' needs to network design. Weiller said the new certification focuses on the ability to see the business value of technology.
The new Cisco Certified Architect certification will recognize architectural experience and competency of network designers who can support the increasingly complex networks of global organizations and translate business strategies into evolutionary technical strategies.
For the channel, that will better enable partners to roll out and support a host of advanced new technologies and showcase their architectural skills. Weiller said certified architects can better deal with technical challenges of clients and earn stronger credibility.
"We applaud Cisco for taking an architectural approach and mapping it to the organization's business requirements," said Robert Stephens, vice president of The Revere Group, in a statement. "As a partner, we spend a great deal of time looking at the network from a global perspective. The new Cisco Certified Architect affirms the need to look at business drivers and validates that an individual possesses not only the expert technical acumen but can communicate the strategic business value of new technologies to senior business executives."
According to Sanjay Mehta, product marketing manager for Learning@Cisco, the new certification is above CCIE in terms of difficulty with a focus on infrastructure architecture expertise and ability to work with executive-level customers to ensure business requirements are tied into successful designs.
Mehta said a Cisco Certified Architect takes a big-picture perspective; focuses on how components are connected and the roles of those components; examines how problems or solutions are similar to others; and focuses on engineering principles like coupling and cohesion. That differs from a network design certification, which concerns itself with specific components and focuses on how those individual components work.
To obtain the new certification, which will be available starting next month, prospects must first pass a board exam. Candidates will propose and defend an architecture solution to a set of business requirements and will then be asked to modify that proposal on the fly based on additional requirements presented by the board.
Cisco Certified Architect hopefuls also require a CCDE (Cisco Certified Design Expert) certification, roughly 10 years of relevant industry experience and acceptance into the program via an application process.
The process is expected to take about six to eight months and cost about $15,000.
"Architecture is not just another name for design," Mehta said. "It's a different perspective and different set of skills."