I was honored this week to be invited to the Cisco Network Design Expert (CCDE) and Network Infrastructure Architect beta program (NW filed a report a couple weeks ago about this new certification). This is a private beta program for senior engineers and existing CCIEs to help Cisco develop a new "design focused" expert level certification program. Furthermore, Cisco is contemplating how to create an "architect" certification for the most experienced and knowledgeable engineers.
From Cisco's beta team invitation e-mail last week:
This will be a collaborative effort with the Cisco CCIE and Network Design Professional community. Not only will it include complex network design principles, theory, and analysis, it will include multi-vendor high availability design and strategic infrastructure architecture concepts. At the highest level, this credential is intended to focus "beyond the network" where network design and architecture are leveraged to help grow an organization's respective business.
There was an initial Q&A session with about 50 CCIEs at Networkers this week that gave a quick overview of Cisco's intention. The next hour was spent in discussion with the engineers. Overall, Cisco is making a very strong effort to include the expert certification community to prepare this new certification. It's something they should be commended for.
Over the next week I'll post more information about the beta program and notes from the Q&A meeting.
Michael Morris is a communications engineering manager at a $3-billion high-tech company. His background is in enterprise WANs working with telcos and developing large-scale routing designs. He has worked on networks at government and corporate organizations, including networks at two Fortune 10 companies. In his current role, he leads a team of 10 engineers responsible for large-scale IT networking projects and architectural standards for data networks, storage area networks, IP telephony, contact centers, and security. Michael is CCIE #11733 and recently became one of the first three Cisco Certified Design Experts (CCDE) ever (#20080002). He has 11 years experience in networking and communications, including four years as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army. He has a bachelor's degree in MIS from the University at Buffalo and is working on his MBA from NC State University. In 2008, he was awarded the Network Professional Association (NPA) Professional Excellence and Innovation Award for his work on network architecture, templates and enterprise MPLS design.
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CCIE has been a contra skill set for HPC environments
CCIE and the whole Cisco training method has been a contra skill set for High Performance Computer Networks. To high of a percentage of people I have worked with CCIE's are not outside of the box thinkers. The focus on skill sets needed for working for a ISP seen to be continue in this new training. To draw an analogy, we do not need art students that can create works in the style of the "old masters" when they get out of school but a student that after studying the "old masters" look at a blank canvas and create "Nude Descending a Stair Case".
Network Infrastructure Architect Certification (CCDE)
The Primary focus of this Certification Should not CCIE point of view as the focus for the CCIE is ISP or Service Provider (More of a support & Implement role). With the New trends in the Data Center Architecture, and HPC environment growing the CCDE should be focused on high performance routing LANs or MAN’s, with Multiprotocol support like the Unified Fabric of Cisco Nexus Switches. The WAN would be a secondary focus as Ethernet from a Service provider has become much cheaper and more practical.
Unified Fabric:
http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/2007/09/a_unified_fabric_for_the_data_1.html