Overview of Cisco Certifications

Cisco's main motivation behind the current certification program is to provide a means of measuring the skills of people working for Cisco resellers and certified partners. Cisco fulfills only a small portion of its orders via direct sale from Cisco; normally, a Cisco reseller is involved. Also, Cisco has not attempted to become the primary source for consulting and implementation services for network deployment using Cisco products, preferring instead to use partners as much as possible. With that business model, there is a great need to distinguish, ensure, and certify the skill levels of the partner company's employees.

The CCIE program was Cisco's first foray into certifications. Introduced in 1994, the CCIE was designed to be one of the most respected, difficult-to-achieve certifications. To certify, a written test (also given at Sylvan Prometric) must be passed, and then a two-day hands-on lab test is administered by Cisco. Cisco does not publish numbers on pass/fail rates for CCIE or the other certifications, but rumors have the failure rate on all lab test takers at over 50 percent, with failure rate for first-time lab takers at over 80 percent.

Certifying resellers and services partners, by using the number of employed CCIEs as the gauge, worked well originally, partly because Cisco had far fewer partners than today. Cisco uses the number of CCIEs on staff as part of the criteria in determining the level of partner status for the company, which in turn dictates the discount received by the reseller when buying from Cisco. (For more insight into reseller certification, go to CCO, at www.cisco.com.) This practice continues to be a good way for Cisco to judge the commitment to having people with proven Cisco skills on staff, which in turn improves customer satisfaction—and customer satisfaction is tied to every Cisco executive's goals.

The CCIE certification became inadequate for helping certify resellers and other partners because, among other factors, the number of partners increased disproportionately to the difficulty of the CCIE exam. For instance, there are around 4500 CCIEs worldwide and 2500 resellers (and not all the CCIEs work for resellers, of course). Furthermore, many resellers that do not perform services do not require the extreme expertise of a CCIE on staff, other than to get a better discount. What Cisco needed were certifications that were less rigorous than CCIE and that would allow Cisco more granularity in judging the skills on staff at a partner company. So, Cisco started an entire Cisco Career Certification program, of which CCNP and CCDP are a part.

Cisco developed Routing and Switching career tracks, WAN Switching career tracks, and several specialization career tracks. Thus far, the Routing and Switching career tracks, which begin with CCNA/CCDA certification, have proven to be the most popular and make up the heart of Cisco certification. The Routing exam required for CCNP/CCDP certification is part of the Routing and Switching career tracks.

Two categories of certifications exist—one to certify implementation skills and the other to certify design skills. Resellers working in a presale environment need more design skills, whereas services companies need more implementation skills. So, the CCNA and CCNP are implementation-oriented certifications, whereas CCDA and CCDP are design-oriented certifications.

Rather than requiring just one level of certification besides CCIE, Cisco created two additional levels—an associate level and a professional level. The associate level (CCNA/CCDA) is the most basic, and the professional level (CCNP/CCDP) is the intermediate level between CCNA and CCIE.

Several of the certifications require other certifications as a prerequisite. For instance, CCNP certification requires that you have CCNA certification. Also, CCDP requires both CCDA and CCNA certification. CCIE, however, does not require any other certification prior to the written and lab tests. CCIE certification is extremely difficult, however, and it is unlikely that someone could acheive that level of certification without a level of experience and training equalled in attaining and practicing associate- and professional-level certification.

Cisco certifications have taken on a much larger role and importance in the networking industry in recent years. From a career standpoint, Cisco certification can certainly be used to help you get a new job or a promotion. Or, you can have certification added to your performance evaluation plan and then justify a raise based on passing an exam. If you are looking for a new job, not only might passing an exam help you land the job, but it may actually help you make more money.

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