Cisco Launches New Certification Track >> VIDEO

A few days ago, Cisco officially launched a completely new certification track centered around its entire Medianet portfolio -calling it simply the "Video" track- consisting of Unified Communications and TelePresence Video Conferencing products, along with Digital Media Signage and IP Video Surveillance. This track currently only offers the CCNA Video certification, however I doubt they will stop there.

This track seems to follow the CCNA Data Center in that it does not require you to certify at the CCENT level before attaining this CCNA Video, however it does require you to pass the 640-461 ICOMM, which is the same exam required to become a CCNA Voice (which by the way is a product that INE happily gives away for free in streaming mode and is also available for download at a nominal price). The second exam you must take and pass is a brand new one - the 200-001 VIVND. This exam is broken down into a two-phased learning approach by Cisco, the first giving you basic understanding of video-based systems, and the second diving a bit wider into four of Cisco's specific Medianet product suites, namely Cisco Unified Communication and Collaboration, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Digital Media Suite (DMS), and Cisco Video Surveillance (all links are for the design guides, not just basic product info). Passing this exam also gives you a specialist cert, being that of a Cisco Video Network Specialist.

As mentioned before, it seems highly unlikely that they will stop at only CCNA Video, likely continuing on to include CCNP Video and finally to add a CCIE Video certification at some unknown point in time. I don't know about you - but I would venture to guess that the CCIE Video -when it comes- will be the most QoS-heavy cert of them all to date, considering all of the different LAN QoS classes presented in the excellent document Tim Szigeti and team spent 3 years putting together and refining in the Medianet Design Guide. Now I simply wonder if we'll see a Catalyst 6509-E in the CCIE Video exam, or a Nexus 5K/7K. ;-)