Vendor cert levels

Wed Sep 3 21:34:05 UTC 2014

On 3 Sep 2014, at 12:23, Jared Mauch wrote:

>> On Sep 3, 2014, at 5:00 AM, Isaac Adams <isaacnanog at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hey Folks,
>>
>> I am trying to work out a strategy for vendor certification in our 
>> company.
>> As a general rule, do you all fund employees certification and if so 
>> what
>> kind of levels do you try to maintain as good practice?
>>
>> For example. NOC staff should be JNCIA and engineering JNCIP to 
>> JNCIE?
>>
>> Clearly certification does not usually reflect ability but it does 
>> help
>> people feel valued and to maintain a basic level of competence.
>
> Cisco discriminates against customers without certification and delays 
> service and support to them as a result.  (e.g.: you can’t open a 
> sev 1 case online unless you are “CCIE”).

You can however just call them and yell "Environment Down" and they will 
call it whatever Sev you want. There are an unending number of issues 
with their online case opening "portal" however.

Filling out a form online to wait a call back was never my first choice. 
Plus putting that Cisco hold music on speaker is a good way to improve 
the mood!

> You likely want to have someone with this access in their account to 
> speed access when there are network critical issues.
>
> - Jared