Cisco introduced the CCIE certification in 1993 to aid the industry in distinguishing the top inter-networking experts worldwide.
Fifteen years later, the company has announced the results of a comprehensive end-customer survey conducted by the international CCIE community. Through this survey, Cisco is trying to gain insight into what digital infrastructures will look like over the next five years.
According to Cisco, there are several factors that are driving innovation such as virtualisation, security and risk management, unified communications, video, and real-time collaboration.
The majority (two-thirds) of the CCIE holders surveyed expect virtualisation to be the top networking investment over the next five years. Virtualisation is seen as an energy-, space- and cost-saving measure and the respondents believe that a holistic and comprehensive virtualisation strategy can increase operational efficiency and simplify management.
About fifty per cent expect more companies to adopt unified communications leading to increased collaboration in the workforce. Thirty per cent of those surveyed expect that over the next five years, CIOs will especially focus on accommodating the needs of a highly collaborative, global workforce.
Real-time video solutions such as Cisco TelePresence will be one of the top green initiatives affecting networks and network engineers, according to 52 per cent of the respondents.
“CCIE holders have established a reputation for leading the networking industry in deep technical networking knowledge and are typically deployed into the most technically challenging network assignments,” said Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn, general manager, Learning@Cisco. “As a result, they have an unparalleled depth of knowledge and experience.”