Cisco just announced a new entry-level certification called the “Cisco Certified Technician” (CCT). This certification sits along side the Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician (CCENT) level of certification. According to Cisco, the CCT is for individuals that “have the skills to diagnose, restore, repair, and replace critical Cisco networking and system devices at customer sites.” There are three different flavors of CCT certification including:
I can understand the need for an entry-level certification for data center and to a lesser-extent, TelePresence…but I’m wondering why there is a need for the routing and switching certification — isn’t that what the CCENT is for? In my honest opinion, if you are looking to get Cisco certified, I’d skip the entry-level stuff and focus on the CCNA level first. Then you can build up the the CCNP and CCIE if you want. For me, adding an additional layer of basic-knowledge certifications such as the CCT and CCENT is an overkill and simply confuses the certification candidate. That being said, I’m sure there will be plenty of people that are interested in the new CCT tracks. My personal level of interest would be the data center track first followed by the TelePresence and the route/switch track would be a distant third.
