Cisco unveils their own CCIE training program

This seems to be the big news of the week.  I caught wind of this over at CCIE Pursuit yesterday and checked it out at Network World today.  If you haven’t already heard the announcement, Cisco is unveiling their own authorized CCIE training program through select learning partners.  You can check out some of the early details at Network World.  But here are a few things that I found interesting.

First, they said that 3rd party boot camps to prepare people for the exams are not always up to par.  I suppose this is true.  But if you look at the program that Cisco is implementing, it is “composed of more than 400 hours of instruction over six months”.  So it’s not really fair to compare what Cisco is doing to a boot camp that lasts 5-12 days.  A more proper comparison would be Cisco’s program to Internetwork Expert’s end-to-end solution, or a package including IP Experts Blended Learning Solution and some additional classes.

For a training package, it does sound pretty intense.  400 hours over 6 months comes out to a little over 15 hours of instruction per week.  It will be interesting to find out how that is laid out.  I don’t know of anyone else offering a training program with that many hours of instruction.  In all honesty, it seems a bit overkill.  What takes 400 hours to teach?  Maybe they are counting the hours that you are spending labbing up their scenarios and other things that might count as learning activities.  If they are, can you count that as instruction time?  I suppose as more details come out, we will know. Now I’m not saying that the CCIE shouldn’t take less than 400 hours of preparation.  I plan on spending over 1000 hours of study time in my quest.  But maybe up to 200 of those hours will be instruction time where I’m viewing lectures.  The rest will be personal study and practice time.

Probably the worst comment I read in the article on Network World is that “It’s not to train to the test.  It’s training to become an expert.”  So is Cisco saying that their test doesn’t adequately determine if someone is an expert?

This definitely comes with a hefty price tag.  $5000 on through $20,000 depending if you get into a lot of personal mentorship.  I have a feeling those of us who are investing in our preparation out of our own pocket book will stick with the other vendors out there for the most part.  But I wouldn’t doubt that companies would prefer the Cisco approved training over other proven 3rd parties.  It’ll be interesting to see what sort of success Cisco has with their program.