Cisco Top Tech Trends Overview

This article is based on Cisco's recent survey on Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) professionals, which is the highest level of Cisco professional certification. To carry out the survey, Cisco cooperated with market research consultancy Illuminas. Illuminas conducts the survey from nearly 100 CCIEs from 80 countries, who work in companies range from small, mid-size, and enterprise level. Cisco tells what technologies CCIEs plan to prioritize within five years. Besides the survey also explains their opinions on green computing initiatives.

Fred Weiller, serves as the director of talent development marketing at Cisco, request respondents to overview the top technology trends and skills of the next five years. The final result is predictable but surprising.

“When we asked CCIEs what are the technologies and the technology trends of the future, they pretty much came up with virtualization [and] unique communications including video and cloud communication,”.“But then, when we asked them what will be the in-demand skills, which is different from the technologies themselves, what came up No. 1 was security and risk management. That was a surprise because security and risk management doesn't get as much big headlines. It's not the hottest topic like video or virtualization.”

-Fred Weiller, director of talent development marketing at Cisco

Weiller believes this result makes sense when you think about how closely CCIEs work with networks.

“It's understandable when you understand networks,” Weiller said. “They didn't go for the buzzwords, if you will. They really went for what actual professionals need to know - a deep understanding of what it takes to really get a network running and run it well.”

The second and third skills most possibly to be in need in the next five years is CCIEs rated network architecture and network design.

“It's reflective of the fact that networks have now become a collapsed utility,” He said. “Before you used to have a network for data, a network for VoIP, a network for video surveillance and security, etc. Now it's all coming together into one single network, and there's a demand for people who have architecture [and] design skills, who can map business objectives to a vision [of] all those networking technologies coming together.”

CCIEs estimate that energy efficiency in the data center will be the top green networking initiative impacting networks in the next five years.

“By 58% they rated energy efficiency in the data center as the top green initiative,” he said, adding that this is in line with the larger demand for computer power in data centers, which Cisco considers as continuing for the foreseeable future.

“It keeps growing, but at the same time it needs to grow in an energy-efficient way,” Weiller said. He added that the second- and third-ranked initiatives here - teleconferencing or telepresence, followed by teleworking - are differently pitched: “Those are a business-centric application of IT rather than [an effort to] save energy in our IT environment.”

This article is written by Hannah Santhanam, a senior engineer of CertIdea which is the leading certification study material provider for IT professionals. If you meet some technical difficulties and need her help, she can be reached by support@certidea.com.

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