The Changing Face of Cisco Training

Companies looking to cut costs and increase efficiency are turning toward software virtualization in order to cut down on hardware and increase their versatility. For the IT professionals that work on virtual machines, this development has been a turn of good fortune. Businesses are hiring aggressively for IT professionals with virtualization expertise, as this CNN Money article points out.

As businesses continue to hire virtualization specialists, network certifications are also popping up. Both VMware, a world-leading virtualization company, and Cisco are offering new certification courses. A senior manager at Learning@Cisco, Marcello Hunter, has said that

"Network virtualization is a key component of next-generation datacenters, and it is clear that virtualization skills are essential to ease the adoption of these networking technologies and maximize the return on enterprise investments. We now incorporate VCP training into two of our Cisco Data Center Unified Computing certification programs. Teaming with top organizations in virtualization like VMware to develop authorized training, education and career certifications underscores our commitment to providing organizations and individuals with the technical knowledge and expertise needed to capitalize on the evolution of networking technology."

The certifications available from VMware, VMware Certified Professional (VCP) and VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX), are growing in popularity throughout the IT industry. They are designed for system administrators, system operators, systems engineers, consultants, architects, and enterprise designers. IT professionals with a VMware certification are thought to earn from 15% to 19% more than non-certified IT professionals. Presently, there are approximately 40,000 VCP-certified IT professionals. The rest of the article has lots more interesting information. If you’re interested in virtualization and Cisco IT training, you should check it out!

Cisco Training Resource

Here's a great article about Cisco training and certification courses. It offers some sound advice, such as beginning with the CCNA and gaining some experience before going after the CCNP. They also advice not using an online-only training course due to the sometimes unpredictable nature of Internet access. The article also goes into why you would even want to participate in a Cisco training course, which is always a good question:

A lot of trainees presume that the school and FE college route is still the most effective. So why then are commercial certificates becoming more in demand? With 3 and 4 year academic degree costs climbing ever higher, together with the IT sector's general opinion that vendor-based training is closer to the mark commercially, there has been a large rise in Microsoft, CompTIA, CISCO and Adobe certified training programmes that educate students at a much reduced cost in terms of money and time. Academic courses, as a example, clog up the training with a lot of background study - and much too wide a syllabus. This prevents a student from getting enough core and in-depth understanding on a specific area.

If you're thinking of getting Cisco certified, keep in mind that you can always visit Cisco's own Support Community Forum.