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The future of CCIEs?

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  • The future of CCIEs?

    Xin chào các bạn,

    Dưới đây là một thảo luận có chủ đề " Tương lai của chứng chỉ CCIEs được trích ra từ forum network professional. Admin xin được trích đăng một số thảo luận trong chủ đề trên. Để giữ nguyên luận điểm của tác giả, admin xin được để nguyên văn tiếng Anh. Bạn nào gặp khó khăn trong việc đọc hiểu, vui lòng hồi đáp lại chủ đề này.

    Đây không phải là quan điểm của admin. Admin chỉ giới thiệu một số quan điểm xung quanh chủ đề rất hay được thảo luận này.

    Thân mến,
    Admin@

    ----------------------------------
    Future of CCIE's -
    ashok_boin

    Jan 20, 2004, 6:37am PST

    Hi,

    CCIE-R&S is the PRESTIGUOUS certification today. But i have seen nowadays CCIE's are growing very fast. So, what will be the future of especially CCIE-R&S by the end of this year? How will be the demand for them at US, UK and India after 1 year compared to CCNP/CCIP/CCSP's?

    Finally, i am curious about to know which minimum and maximum position at present a CCIE holding in big MNC's in the world. If i am not wrong, as Manager-IT?

    Thanks in advance...

    Regards...

    Ashok.
    ------------------------------------

    chuck.price@tcada.state.tx.us - NETWORK SPECIALIST III, TEXAS COMMISSION ON ALCOHOL & DRUG ABUSE

    Jan 20, 2004, 9:22am PST

    The CCIE is an impressive certification to hold and it does open a lot of doors. There are many companies that require a candidate to possess the CCIE.

    If you look at the breakdown of total CCIE's you'll notice that it is very much slanted towards the R&S discipline. There are several other tracks available and very low numbers in those ranks.

    But it stills boils down to experience. There are numerous non-CCIEs who are quite capable of doing the same level and quality work as a CCIE.
    In my opinion as long as there are routers and switches there will be a need for CCIEs or CCIE-level technicians.

    ----------------------------------------------------

    xavierchang@hotmail.com - ENGINEER, BSC

    Jan 20, 2004, 1:27pm PST

    As stated previously, it really all comes down to experience. As I have said many times on this forum, when the network falls down, you can't simply wave your certification in the air and demand that the routers behave themselves. You either know what to do or you don't. Companies don't just hire people just because they carry a certain certificate. They hire them because they are supposed to know what they're doing.

    In answer to your specific questions:

    *How will be the demand for them at US, UK and India after 1 year compared to CCNP/CCIP/CCSP's?

    That's a trivial question. I think it's safe to say that the CCIE will always be in greater demand than the lesser Cisco certs. However, see below.

    *What will be the future of especially CCIE-R&S by the end of this year?
    I will choose to answer this question in several parts:

    a)Certs and their life-cycle

    The future of all Cisco certificates is almost certainly ultimately destined to go down. This should not be surprising as all certifications eventually decline in value. There was a time when the Novell CNE and the Microsoft MCSE were the star certifications of their day, and look at them now. Every certification has its golden era followed by a period of decline, and while it may be a matter of opinion as to when these eras begin and end, I think there's a general consensus that the golden era of the CCIE is over. You will find some vehement CCIE supporters here on this forum (where is my old "friend" Reliquary anyway?) , yet I don't think that even the most rabid of them will seriously dispute that the CCIE program has seen its best days come and go, and that things will never be as good for CCIE's (or any Cisco certified people) as they were in, say, 1999.

    b) Growth rates and the implications to revenue

    I'm sure you are aware of the basic tenets of supply and demand and so I feel no need to repeat them here. But as you have probably noticed, the supply of CCIE's is increasing inexorably, but the demand for CCIE's is not. Let's face it - Cisco is no longer the high-growth company that it was in the late 90's. The late 90's witnessed the greatest data network infrastructure buildout the world has ever seen and probably ever will see, and Cisco was the greatest beneficiary, growing at a mind-blowing 50-60% per year, which is nearly unprecedented for a company of that size. But the result of that buildout has been equally jarring - every customer who wants a Cisco network essentially has one. Cisco is now a highly profitable company, but not a growing company. John Chambers himself admits that he doesn't think that Cisco's revenue will grow by more than 10% per annum for the foreseeable future.

    Cisco now derives the overwhelming bulk of its revenue from the replacing, servicing, and upgrading of its existing customers base. For example, customers might want to upgrade their LAN to GigE or increase their WAN bandwidth which often times necessitates a router upgrade. Or they're replacing old 2500's or 2600's that are now EOL with newer gear in order to keep pace with Cisco's maintenace cycle. But none of these things helps CCIE employment. A GigE network is not much more complicated to maintain than a FastE network, and certainly doesn't require any additional expertise. Neither does a network that has greater WAN bandwidth. For the most part, an interface is an interface, and a port is a port.

    c)Skills and the relative need for them

    I would go so far to say that the lack of Cisco growth is far more harmful to CCIE's than to any other Cisco certified people. The great reputation of the CCIE program was forged in the late 90's when Cisco network growth was truly gangbusters. As I'm sure you remember, dotcoms were sprouting like weeds after a summer squall and large companies were frantically upgrading their infrastructure to avoid being "Amazon'ed" out of existence. The result was the greatest datacom buildout in world history, the lion's share of it flowing to Cisco's coffers. However, the reality is that it is far more difficult to build out a network than to maintain an existing one. You need quite a bit of expertise to build out a new network, but once it's done, it's done. Sure, you might incrementally add capacity or sites to an existing network, but this is far less taxing than the initial buildout. This is the same fate that befell the explorers that followed Columbus - you can only discover the New World once. You can't discover the New World over and over again. You can discover rivers and mountains and deserts and things like that, but the most important discovery (the existence of the New World) has already been completed. Therefore the great work and the great need of the CCIE program has largely been fulfilled. The world needed lots of skilled network engineers to complete the buildout of the late 90's, but now that that buildout is over, the world simply no longer needs as many skilled network engineers. The world needs network techs (cable-monkeys) to do the maintenance but not the highly skilled network engineer for buildouts The world obviously still needed some skilled network engineers, because obviously there are still a few buildouts happening, but just not as many. Just like when the world was building out railroad systems in the 1800's, there was great demand for highly skilled railroad engineers, but when the buildout was complete, the demand for those engineers dropped. The world obviously still needed a lot of railroad techs, but not a lot of railroad engineers anymore.

    d)The Specter of Reliability

    Another equally ominous trend for Cisco certified people (but a very good trend for Cisco itself) is the fact that Cisco is rapidly improving the quality and reliability of its products. Datacom products, and Cisco products in particular, have always been noted as being rather unreliable when compared to their telecom equivalents. In the past, Cisco routers and switches have always been rather notorious for rebooting for no reason or otherwise crashing or displaying unwanted behavior. This should actually not be surprising for anybody who has studied the trajectory paths of technological innovation - every technology in history has undergone a phase of innovation coupled with unreliability where human expertise is at a premium. For example, the first British textile machines of the Industrial Revolution, while highly productive and innovative, were also notoriously unreliable and required numerous highly skilled (and highly paid) British mechanics and engineers to keep them running. The first cars were also notoriously buggy and prone to mechanical failure. Compare that to the historic unreliability of Cisco routers - call it the Cisco "make-work" program. However, every technology eventually reaches a reliability 'tipping-point' where the reliability of the technology vastly improves. For example, a few decades into the Industrial Revolution, companies began to enact standardized systems, interchangeable parts, precision machining, and other techniques that greatly improved the reliability of the technology. I think we would all agree that cars of today are far more reliable than cars of the past. I would argue that Cisco has reached and passed this tipping point. Cisco is now in the forefront of such strategies as NonStop Forwarding, Graceful Restart, Stateful Switchover, and other techniques designed to greatly improve the reliability of Cisco gear. While this is obviously very good for Cisco (because Cisco will now sell more gear), this is not so good for Cisco certified people. The Cisco "make-work" program will be over. If Cisco networks are made more reliable, then the world will need less people to babysit networks. Good for Cisco, bad for Cisco engineers. Cisco engineers may well be destined to become the Maytag repairman of the future.

    e)Rapid technological change - the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about

    What I find rather disturbing in the IT world is the feeling that many IT workers lack any sense of historical perspective. People don't realize how quickly things have changed in the IT world, and how quickly they can change again. Cisco may be dominant now, but what about in the future? Remember, this is the IT industry where things can change very rapidly. Consider this.

    Cisco as a company has only been around for 20 years, and has been a truly dominant company for probably only the last 10. Think about what that means. 10 years ago, in the year 1994, Microsoft was still developing Windows95. 10 years ago, the Internet was still used only by academics. 10 years ago, no non-academic had ever heard of the Web because Netscape hadn't launched the browser yet (Netscape launched the browser in 1995). So no web-browsing, and certainly no e-commerce or Internet searching or peer-to-peer filesharing or blogging or instant messenger, or any of these things that we now take for granted. Or perhaps more happily, no mass emails enticing me to see naked pictures of Britney Spears or offering me cheap Viagra or, ahem, "male organ enhancements" or millions of dollars from people in Nigeria that I don't know. The IT world of today is basically unrecognizable from somebody who stepped into a time machine from 10 years ago. So who's to say that in another 10 years, IT won't be equally unrecognizable to us?

    Or consider the fate of the IT companies involved. 10 years ago, Novell was absolutely dominant in the workgroup server space, with over 75% market share. How is Novell doing now? 10 years ago, DEC was still a force to be reckoned with. How's DEC been doing lately? 10 year ago, Nortel and Lucent arrogantly towered over the relatively puny Cisco Systems. How are Nor-cent doing now? 10 years ago, Wellfleet and Synopsis merged to form Bay Networks, and for a while, the combined company of Bay Networks had greater market share and greater revenue than Cisco. How is Bay doing now? Heck, 9 years ago, Netscape launched its epoch-leading browser and for a while held dominant market share in the browser space. How is Netscape doing now? 10 years ago, Peoplesoft, Siebel, The point is that things change very quickly in the IT space and a company that was dominant in one era is certainly not assured of being dominant (or even existing) in another era. Just because Cisco is strong now doesn't mean that Cisco will be strong in the future. Again, look at what happened to Novell.

    Even the companies that did survive the perils of the IT world are now greatly changed. IBM, for example, started life selling tabulating machines (a technology that is completely obsolete now), then became a dominant computer hardware company in the early 90's, and now they derive the bulk of their revenue from services (IBM Global Services). Basically, you can think of IBM as historically being 3 entirely different companies that all happened to use the same name. Sun rose to prominence on the strength of its workstations, a market in which they were dominant. Sun lost its dominance in workstations as it began to concentrate on servers, and Sun became a dominant server company in the late 90's. Now Sun is attempting to change again to emphasize software and Linux. Even Microsoft is a far different company than it was in 1994. In 1994, Microsoft had minimal penetration in the server space (NT3.5 was an absolute dog), but WindowsServer2003 is a very viable server OS. So even if Cisco is still strong in 10 years, who's to say that Cisco will still be deriving most of its revenue from routers and switches? Cisco may well have transitioned into a telephony vendor or a wireless radio company, or something else of which we can't possibly conceive. Who knows? That's the nature of IT.

    {Incidentally, if I may digress, this leads me to another issue that comes up from time to time - that of certs vs. degrees. People often ask whether they should get a degree or get a cert. Remember that Cisco is only 20 years old. Heck, Microsoft is only 29 years old, Oracle is only 27, and Sun is only 22. IT is replete with once-dominant companies that have been relegated to the sidelines or worse - DEC, Novell, Apollo, Netscape, SGI, Informix, and the list goes on. A degree will always hold value. For example, if you've been watching the US Presidential election campaigns, you can't help but notice how reporters always seem to mention the alma maters of the candidates. For example they'll say something like: John Kerry, Yale '66, JD Boston College '76, or Wesley Clark: West Point '66, Master's Oxford '68, or Howard Dean: Yale '71. Or even George Bush: Yale '68, MBA Harvard '75. These are degrees that these guys got 30+ years ago. That goes to show you that 30 years after you graduate, a degree will still be valuable. Will the CCIE still be valuable 30 years later? Heck, will Cisco still be around 30 years later? And even if Cisco is around, will that mean that Cisco will still be a predominantly routing/switching company? I think I can safely say that there is no technology in IT that was dominant 30 years ago that is still dominant today. Heck, even stretching back 10 years is not easy.}

    f) Does that mean that you should ignore certs? No.

    None of the above should be taken to mean that you should ignore certs completely. Certs can indeed be valuable when used properly. Certs can be a useful stepping stone in your career. For example, they are helpful in getting the attention of HR and recruiters. They are also useful as a way to package and organize your studying. They therefore can be beneficial to your career. But as I've said before many times on this forum, they are not the end-all, be-all. Certifications are a tool to help you advance your career, nothing more, nothing less. By themselves, they guarantee nothing. Think of certifications as a hammer in your toolkit. When you need to repair something, sometimes you need screwdrivers, sometimes you need pliers, sometimes you need wrenches, and sometimes you need other handtools. If all you have is a hammer, you can't fix much. Any certification, even the CCIE, is therefore just one step on a long journey.
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