The New Cisco Net Management Cert – But it's not from Cisco

Get Geek Cred with the Solarwinds Certified Professional (SCP)

When most people think networking products, Cisco's on the list, often at the top. But when most people think network management products, Cisco may be on the list, but other vendors may play a more important role. This same thought translates to the Cisco cert space. None of the Cisco career certs focus much attention on network management. So I'm going to go out on a limb and start today with a conclusion: the new Solarwinds Certified Professional (SCP) cert has a good chance to become the defacto net management cert in the Cisco cert space.

To be honest, some of my reasons are more related to emotion, hunches, and gut feel, while some are more concrete. But, as usual, this is an opinion piece, and you can offer your opinions as well. I will also do a survey before I'm done today. So, on to the backstory that led to my conclusions.

At Networkers (aka Cisco Live) last month, Tuesday morning general session I think, all the seats were covered in orange-themed Solarwinds flyers. And although I came to learn that SCP had been announced a few weeks before the show, the flyer advertised SCP. So, we're at the show, on the day that traditionally Cisco would announce any new cert stuff,  and here's a big flyer about a new cert - but from a partner company. Big hmmm there... so it got me thinking: is there an implicit approval of SCP by Cisco? Is it just advertising that Solarwinds paid for? Will anyone actually care about it anyway, without the usual drivers? Is there a hole in the Cisco cert space, and does this fill it?

As far as the "is there a hole", I think the answer is yes. The hole may not need filling, but the hole exists. In fact, looking at the most popular track (CCNA/CCNP/CCIE R/S), net management is mostly ignored other than very small topics here and there, and never as an area for broader consideration. The CCDA and CCDP tracks include a whole exam topic each on network management, but appear to have the most net management focus inside the career certs. I spent a little (not a lot) of time looking at Channel partner specializations, and again see small mentions of net management, but nothing extensive. (anyone know of any such Cisco certs?) So, if someone looks at network management as one of their core skills, there's no Cisco cert that certifies those skills.

Next, I like Solarwinds, from afar, but I like them. Full disclosure: I have no business relationship with them. But most of my childhood memories are from the 1970's, where orange was THE interior design color - and the Solarwinds stuff is covered in orange. And I love cartoons - Bugs Bunny is still played on our TVs with some regularity - and Solarwinds uses cartoonish drawings. They even brought the artist to Networkers - too cool - do you think the picture looks like me? So, absolutely nothing to do with whether SCP makes sense, but I like 'em, so that counts a little. ;-)

So, what is SCP? According to folks from Solarwinds at Networkers, it's 2/3 vendor neutral, and 1/3 Solarwinds Orion NPM. This link details the topics, with the "Orion NPM Administration" at the end being the obvious vendor-centric part. It includes these topics (followed by a few examples):

• Protocols (SNMP, NetFlow, etc)
• Planning (scope of what's managed, monitoring thresholds)
• Operations (configuring devices to be managed, SLA reporting)
• Fault and Performance (t'shooting broke stuff, finding degraded performance)
• Orion NPM admin

So, here's a summary of reasons why I think SCP can be successful:

• The Cisco management and management cert vacuum; SCP fills the hole
• 2/3 vendor agnostic is open enough
• Cheap lab prep: Orion NPM has a free 30 day trial - plenty of time to learn what's needed for the exam
• Seems like realistic skills; most network engineers manage/operate networks and actually do a lot of the tasks listed for the cert
• I like Solarwinds ;-)

To be fair, here's some negatives:

• Cisco has levied no requirements for SCP for any partner
• I can't imagine Cisco would ever levy such requirements on partners
• The catch 22 with any new cert - until it's popular and gets a good rep, people shy away
• Some vendor centricity
• The same old issues about whether an engineer needs to get any cert 

Now, to the poll. For you long-timer followers, you'll see the familiar setup: I need to constrain the question a bit just so it's at least somewhat focused on the topic of the day.  So, think of the market for SCP as all people who care about networking and who are willing to pursue certifications. That is, let's ignore the folks who would never bother with a single Cisco cert. (That's a reasonable choice, but ruling those folks out lets the poll focus more on SCP). Next, the poll ALLOWS MULTIPLE ANSWERS - choose all you think are true. Several branches exist:

• The popularity of SCP inside the Solarwinds community
• The popularity of SCP with users of the competition
• The popularity of SCP with Cisco certified people

And inside this last category, I think there's some reason to think about whether that person goes broad (multiple CCNA or multiple CCNP track) versus deep (pick topic X, and run for CCIE X).

The nice thing about this one is that we can look at it annually, and in 3 years, we'll know if I was way off, or not. Click away, and post your opinion!

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