As Cisco continues its transformation from a “packet pusher” to an “infrastructure” company (see “Cisco's transformation still work in progress”), the company this week updates its curriculum for the entry-level Cisco Certified Design Associate program to focus on application services higher up the OSI stack.

The curriculum will now discuss application level security, voice networking, wireless, and content caching, among other elements, says Roger Beatty, senior manager of Cisco Learning and Development.

Cisco’s update of the CCDA program follows its stated ambition to play a more central role in network architectures, rather than just provide the plumbing. In December 2005, it unveiled a broad strategy for tying all its enterprise technology into a services model and launched a set of software tools aimed at letting customers monitor and measure application performance on a network. The basis of this services model is SONA, which aims to encompass all of Cisco's enterprise technologies - wired network infrastructure, voice, applications, security and mobility.

“The updated curriculum responds to changes in networking technology which now incorporates intelligence into the network itself,” says Beatty. Students will learn how to use Cisco enterprise architectures to prepare, plan, design, implement, operate and optimize enterprise campus networks, and networks that connect to the edge, branch offices, teleworkers and the data center.

Cisco recommends course prerequisite as Cisco Certified Network Associate knowledge, and familiarity with the wireless component of the Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks (BCMSN) course. The new DESGN 640-863 exam is required to achieve the CCDA certification.

The CCDA exam the stepping stone to the Cisco Certified Design Professional program. Cisco declined to comment on whether the curriculum for that would be updated as well.

Cisco claims that the CCDA is among the company’s top 3 or 4 certifications and said there were “tens of thousands” of CCDAs in the market, though it would not be specific with the numbers.

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Jon Brodkin is senior writer at Network World.