http://www.cisco.com/go/certifications to keep up on
all the latest available certifications and associated
tracks.In addition to the Associate- and Professional-level
certifications, the Cisco certified specialist certifications
have changed as well. Previously, in some cases multiple
exams had to be completed to become certified as a
specialist in a specific topic or discipline. With the new
changes, however, candidates can take and complete any
one of the specialist exams mentioned in Table 1-4 to
become certified in that technology area. For example, a
candidate who is proficient with Cisco Identity Services
Engine (ISE) could pursue a specialist certification for
security identity management implementation by taking
the 300-715 SISE exam.
Another major change to the certification program is that
changes have been made to the flagship CCIE program.
The CCIE Routing and Switching certification and the
CCIE Wireless certification have both been rebranded as
CCIE Enterprise certifications: CCIE Routing and
Switching became CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure, and
CCIE Wireless became CCIE Enterprise Wireless. The
goal of this change was to align the certifications with the
current technologies that candidates are seeing in their
work environments as well as the industry trends that
are changing the way networking is being consumed and
managed. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, software-
defined networking, automation, programmability, IoT,
and other trends are drastically changing the approach
network operations teams are taking to networking in
general. The business outcomes and use case–driven
adoption of these new technologies are shaping the
industry, as are the approaches vendors are taking to
building and designing their products. User experience
as well as adoption are now critical and are top-of-mind
priority topics for many customers. Cisco therefore
wanted to align its career certification portfolio with