Cisco Revamps CCNP Certification, Adds New Track

Cisco this week revamped its flagship CCNP certification requirements and added a new certification option aimed specifically at network service provider operations.

The changes reflect Cisco’s desire to map certification and training skills more directly to proving capability in a given individual’s job role rather than simply exercising technical acumen in specific products, according to Cisco.

“We did rigorous, externally focused job-task analysis in coming up with the new guidelines and exams,” said Christine Yoshida, manager of learning and development for Learning at Cisco. “We met with partners in detail to understand their roles as network engineers.”

The result? The deep dive into job roles has enabled Cisco to devise a new certification testing methodology that validates expertise on specific job tasks and scenarios its partners face every day.

“We’ve evolved from simply a multiple choice test,” Yoshida said.

The revised CCNP certification track is designed for network engineers with at least one year of professional experience who are looking to elevate their skills to more complex networking solutions. The new coursework features hands-on labs, e-learning lessons— meant, Yoshida said, to ease the travel burden and out-of-office cost associated with classroom coursework—and a series of self-paced demos. There are three new courses being introduced that relate to network engineers implementing and maintaining routing and switching networks.

Passing three 120-minute exams, which will be held in April and May, is required to achieve the new CCNP certification.

Meanwhile, Cisco has introduced a new certification track for network service providers specific to managing and maintaining a network operating center—either on-premises or in a managed services environment, Yoshida said.

“Our older programs were not focused on network operations engineers, but on those people that set up the network initially,” she added. “This new track is really called out for the network operations folks.”

Yoshida said that final details of this track, including coursework requirements and exams, are not yet in place, but that partners can qualify individually or as an organization for this certification when it’s live.

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