Mike Adams - Vice President/GM, Learning@Cisco, sits down with Dave and Stu at Cisco Live EU Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain. #CLEU #Cisco #theCUBE https://siliconangle.com/2020/01/29/ciscos-new-certification-responds-to-customer-hunger-for-software-skills-cleur/ Cisco’s new certification responds to customer ‘hunger’ for software skills Changes recently promoted by Cisco Systems Inc. in its well-known professional certification programs aims to address enterprises’ needs for software programming skills on top of other capabilities, according to Mike Adams (pictured), vice president of learning at Cisco. The new Cisco DevNet program embraces network professionals and software developers into one community to create integrated teams. “Fundamental networking capability and skills still are critically important,” Adams said. “But the thing [customers] are hungry for right now is being able to add software programming skills on top of that.” Cisco DevNet announced new certification programs for network engineers and software developers at last year’s Cisco Live event in San Diego. Today, the company announced that the entire DevNet certification program will be updated in February 2020. Adams spoke with Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Cisco Live event in Barcelona. They discussed major changes to Cisco’s certification programs, how to bring together network and software capabilities, and the creation of a Customer Success Manager certification. (* Disclosure below.) Building a team of the future To meet business demands, Cisco injected and embedded more programming fundamentals on the network engineering track. “There are 20% of the software skills that we have built into each level, and 80% of that traditional sort of network engineering capability,” Adams explained. On the software side, Cisco introduced 20% of network engineering skills to the curriculum. “This is about building an IT team of the future,” he said. “It’s not about having one individual that knows everything; it’s about being able to assemble teams that know how to solve these problems together.” Other important changes have also been incorporated into the program, including the development of continuing education credits to allow participants to learn new things in order to maintain certification instead of redoing an old test. Another example is the creation of the Customer Success Manager certification following the trend of business evolution toward a customer-oriented model, Adams pointed out. “Cisco has pivoted its historic services organization toward a customer success,” he said. “And we’re now certifying folks to be customer success managers in the industry as well.” These changes to the program are the most profound reform made in a decade. The value of this certification is that Cisco maintains the integrity and rigor of the program over time, according to Adams. “Using the structure and integrity that we’ve built over the last 26 years and now injecting new capabilities and skills into this model is really what the focus is,” Adams concluded. Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Cisco Live. (* Disclosure: Cisco DevNet sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cisco nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)