Over the past several months, CCIE candidates have been making public mention (on various lists, forums, etc) that they have purchased CCIE Voice training from Internetwork Expert, but have not received what they paid for. To be honest, we have been happy to have a good number of them give up and come to IPexpert and we have remained quiet about it.

Yesterday, some of those being kept on the hook began speaking out loudly on the Group Study email list. In response, Anthony acknowledged the continued delays and gave assurance of full refunds…

from    Anthony Sequeira <asequeira@internetworkexpert.com>
reply-to    Anthony Sequeira <asequeira@internetworkexpert.com>
to    ccie voice <danmccie@gmail.com>
cc    ccielab@groupstudy.com
date    Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 11:08 PM
subject    Re: Internetwork Expert – Worst Voice CCIE Vendor

Please contact our Customer Service or Sales department with your information and I am sure they will provide you with a full refund. So sorry about the delays. I am sure they are a result of our desire to create some of the best materials available. We always strive to do that.

Anthony J. Sequeira, CCIE #15626, CCSI #23251
Senior CCIE Instructor

I will not be a hypocrite here; I acknowledge that IPexpert has slipped on release dates ourselves in the past. I second Anthony’s assertion that some slippage is permissible, when necessary for the assurance of the best-possible product. However, there comes a time when the customer needs to be served and sometimes that means letting them move on. One of the guys in the ongoing Group Study thread questioned “why a product which was announced in October of 2007 still hasn’t been completely released.”

For a CCIE Voice candidate that is resigned to the idea of waiting for the new blueprint change, perhaps they don’t mind more waiting for the IE products they purchased. However, the guys that are really hurt are the ones hoping to pass on the CURRENT blueprint. It’s a shame that their needs have not been held with the highest priority. :(

An offer from IPexpert…

IPexpert has a well-respected line of products and courses for the CCIE Voice track, backed by 24 full racks of gear accessible through a great customized user interface. We have been focused on Voice heavily for 4 years now and have a solid track record of success. Instructors Vik Malhi and Mark Snow have worked tirelessly to continually refine our Voice training to be the best available anywhere.

We would like to take care of anybody that wants to be training immediately:

1. For the first FIVE customers to present us with a paid receipt (dated prior to today) for IE’s undelivered products, we will immediately provide a FREE CCIE Voice Blended Learning Solution – a $1999 value – that’s our ENTIRE product line.
2. For any other customers with a paid receipt (dated prior to today) for IE’s undelivered products, we will provide a significant discount off the training products and/or courses you need.

It doesn’t look like IE will be sad to see you leave…

from    Anthony Sequeira <asequeira@internetworkexpert.com>
reply-to    Anthony Sequeira <asequeira@internetworkexpert.com>
to    ccie voice <danmccie@gmail.com>
cc    ccielab@groupstudy.com
date    Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:20 PM
subject    Re: Internetwork Expert – Worst Voice CCIE Vendor

I am speaking for me personally. Let me make that clear. I am not speaking on behalf of anyone at Internetwork Expert right now.

I want you to call our Customer Service and get a refund and take your business elsewhere. I personally do not want you as a customer of our company.

Anthony J. Sequeira, CCIE #15626, CCSI #23251
Senior CCIE Instructor

Well, I *am* speaking on behalf of IPexpert here: We DO want you as a customer of our company!

Email your receipt to no_more_waiting@ipexpert.com including your contact details. Let us know about your preparation plans as well. You will have complete CCIE Voice materials in your hands right away!

We wish you would have just come to IPexpert first, but we won’t hold that against you! ;)  We look forward to helping you succeed sooner rather than later.

As always, thanks for reading and happy studying! – Wayne

Fascinated, I watched the big announcements again carefully and thought I’d share some of my own, personal thoughts about the way I personally perceived the news…

ANNOUNCEMENT #1: 10 months ago, IE decided NOT to take part in Cisco’s 360 program

The main theme of their webcast/commercial was about how they DIDN’T join Cisco’s CLP (Cisco Learning Partner) program and are not going to sell the 360 training; a decision they apparently made 10 months ago. Since when does deciding NOT to do something 10 months ago qualify as news, worthy of such hype? Maybe next week we can learn how Brian decided NOT to go skydiving or some other “almost/maybe could have, but decided not to” kind of event.

There were some questionable statements made throughout the presentation… starting with the FIRST slide!

“We were honored to be selected to participate in the development and delivery of the 360 program.” (0:01:30)

Oh, really?

The truth is, Cisco put this project out to bid in a RFP to a dozen or so training entities. As Brian points out himself later in their commercial, “we had the option to sell our self-paced training to Cisco.” (0:02:06) It turned out that Cisco was hoping to pay much less for the materials than IE (or IPexpert) would be willing to accept. The process had little to do with being “honored to be selected.”

“If we became a Cisco Learning Partner, we could not focus our business outside of the U.S. It has to be within North America.” (0:03:30)

Wrong.

Basically, Cisco Learning Partners are able to sell/market in any “theater” they desire, provided they are approved to do so and agree to pay the “royalties” (referred to by many as the “Cisco tax”) for activities in the other regions. While IE may have found doing so undesirable (as IPexpert did when we were a CLP), Brian’s statement was untrue and was repeated multiple times.

Later in the presentation, Brian talks about the requirements Cisco has for CLPs, saying that they would have to sell a certain number of “kits.” (0:08:35) Actually, when IPexpert was a CLP, there was a benchmark set for revenue, not kits. On the very next slide, Brian claims that IE will do $5MM in business this year. If that’s true, they would have easily surpassed the revenue benchmarks set for CLPs.

I’m wondering if IE will become a CLP if Brian decides to actually read the contracts. Maybe someday.

More about IE’s decision-making process…

“Back in December timeframe, the January timeframe, we knew we weren’t going to participate.” (0:13:19)

OUCH! But that doesn’t help your other point…

IE customers have been clamoring lately (places like Group Study) for their long-promised product updates. During the presentation, Brian suggests that they haven’t delivered updated products because of lingering decisions about the 360 program. In fact, one of the slides reads, “This has caused a delay in our release schedule while the decision was being considered.” Well, if his customers weren’t already puzzled by the above quote, Brian later reiterates, “we pretty much knew back in December of 2007 that we were not going to participate in the 360 program.” (0:25:20)

“… with the scholarship program, we give away three full-blown scholarships…” (0:05:15)

Yeah, and… ?

While I do praise them for their generosity, Brian’s repeated claims of IE being a $4-5 million company left me wondering why they don’t do more. This year, I am pleased to say that IPexpert gave away well over $100,000.00 of CCIE training… and didn’t make people beg for it in written essays. As I write this, I’m thinking of some things IPexpert can do for the unfortunate candidates that don’t write a good enough essay to win IE’s “scholarship.” Stay tuned for an announcement on that! :)

“We could be charging more!” Brian says somebody told him that CCIE training is underpriced.

Charge more?

After the Tolly Group report showed the offset in value, as advertised by IPexpert and IE product and course offerings, IE rushed to make changes. (I believe these findings led to more of IE’s announcements yesterday as well.) The point is, I don’t think it would be wise for IE to charge more (though I wouldn’t mind it).

ANNOUNCEMENT #2: IE catches up to its competitors with business and product delivery concepts, then calls their revelations “CCIE 2.0″

Hey, everyone, CCIE 2.0 is here! Judging by recent Group Study threads, I’m guessing some customers are wishing Internetwork Expert finished their CCIE 1.0 first. Anyhow, drop whatever you’re doing because IE has some big ideas…

• Mailing lists (1:05:30)

Obviously, this isn’t a new idea at all. In fact, after using Group Study for years to build the reputation/visibility of himself and IE, it was my impression that Brian was bashing Group Study directly when he said he “won’t name it, but a public mailing list” is “80% junk, so much junk, you just leave.” (1:30:00)  Brian’s new list isn’t going to have any OTs so don’t worry about that!

• CCIE candidate blogs with ratings. (1:07:20)  I wonder where they got that idea.

On the topic of blogging, Brian expressed great concern about the bloggers being “backed by other companies.” He wondered, “are they getting something to say something, and that’s exactly the thing that people don’t want with blogs.” (1:07:50) That’s funny; earlier this year, IPexpert approached some bloggers that were displaying IE banners to see if they would also display an IPexpert banner. Often, we were told that they were given free and/or discounted IE products in exchange for their blogging, so “the Brians won’t let them” advertise IPexpert, too.

But now, with IE’s CCIE 2.0 explosion, Brian wants to “keep these blogs clean. We want to keep these vendor-neutral.” This should be interesting to watch, since he predicts IE will be paying out over $10K per month to helpful bloggers. (1:10:20) I wonder if any will be rewarded for talking about IPexpert or Narbik or CCbootcamp.

Seeing how they treat customers that choose to work with more than just IE, I don’t think Brian will be too “vendor-neutral.” (There are more victims than just Larry H., sorry to say.)

• More interaction with the instructors

After talking a LOT about how customers are going to have much more interaction with the instructors (singling himself out, specifically), it appears to me that most of the interaction will be with “Customer Success Managers” (who are still in training right now!) and those people will report to Brian. (0:30:00) He says, “in the early days, people would just email Brian or myself, but the Customer Success Managers are now those people,” adding, “these are the people you are going to communicate with.” Also, “when we were a small company, people could talk to me directly.” (0:52:10)

• Poly-Labs will revolutionize everything!

Brian tells how their Poly-Labs output will provide the student with recommendations, claiming “nobody else does that.” (1:01:50)

Is that so?

Actually, Proctor Labs has a very robust grading system that provides students with remedial learning suggestions as well as up to 10 hours of video tutorial for EACH graded lab. In each lengthy video, the instructor walks the student through the lab, step-by-step. It may not be “Polymorphic,” but our customers seem to like it!

• Lots more Class on Demand (1:13)

There is going to be 40 hours of Class on Demand added every month. “Nobody can beat that!”

Try to keep the breaks short, OK?

My understanding is that some IE COD videos are left with the breaks in the recording. While I admit that I have not verified this with my own eyes, Brian repeatedly makes comments in the presentation like “4 hours long… 5 with the breaks.” Why not do some basic post-production work, so the advertised length of videos actually represents lecture / learning time?

Also, when you get to CCIE 3.0, try producing your videos in high-definition. Students love it!  :)

• Regular, perpetual updates to products

“People ask us all the time, ‘when is version 5 of volume 1 going to be done?’ It’s never going to be done.” (0:37:00)

After reading some recent Group Study posts, that won’t come as a shock to some IE customers.

Brian talked a lot about the problem of “long delays between updates,” promising that “we’re going to have constant updates… we want to get into this evolution of constant, perpetual updates.” (0:35:30)

Hey, now you’re catching on! At IPexpert, our R&S products were completely updated again and released this summer. Earlier this month, I spent time with one of our valued customers that provided some great feedback and suggestions for our Volume 1 Worbook and Proctor Guide. Wayne and I discussed it and had Tyson Scott dedicate two weeks making improvements to several sections. The updated files were immediately made available to all customers that owned that product.

So I can tell you from a company already providing regular, perpetual updates, this “new idea” you have should be a hit!

ANNOUNCEMENT #3: IE is Self-Proclaimed “Largest CCIE Trainer in Cisco”

Yes, that is a bold statement for Brian to make, but he was ready to back it up with facts…

“Let me tell you all the companies we beat out to become the largest CCIE trainer inside of Cisco. And that’s us!” (0:14:07)

No, I didn’t edit that. That’s what he said.

If you’re wondering if you read that quote wrong, you didn’t. It was just another of many incoherent statements throughout this big announcement.

Trying to back up the point, he adds, “when we competed against the other vendors for business inside of Cisco, we took that business!” (0:14:38) That’s strange; I wonder how IPexpert has been able to perform dozens of on-site Boot Camps for Cisco. We’ll stop taking what’s yours, Brian, and I’ll ask Narbik and Brad to have the same courtesy. Can we at least sell into your classes?

Expanding on the point that IE does so much business with Cisco, he admits, “we’ll probably lose this business because they’ll be forced to go to the 360 program, but that’s fine.” Yeah, I bet he thinks it’s fine to lose “two weeks a month on average” of training! (0:15:08)

ANNOUNCEMENT #4: IE getting into lower-level certs

What a coincidence! Just 10 days after IPexpert announces IPexpert University, Brian announces that IE is also “going to start going into the Associate and Professional levels.” (1:19:45)

Interestingly, Brian claims that he, along will Anthony, Scott, Petr and Brian will be the ones teaching all those different classes! (1:25:30) And the existing CCIE courses? That is amazing!

Other Observations

Seemingly missing from the event:

1. Is Scott Morris really an IE employee? Except for the occasional Group Study post from an IE email account, he seems elusive. Not even a “hello” during the big announcement and just a couple passing mentions by the Brians.
2. Also missing was the prior effort to proof read the slides for typos. It seems like a Major Corporate Announcement would call for a proof reading session, but I guess that’s something Brian thinks the bad “marketing people” and MBA-types would insist on.

Top 10 Contradictions & Other Wild Statements

1. There were supposedly 500 people registered for this big announcement (1:39:25)… but only 2 questions. Strange!
2. Brian charges that “Cisco Systems creates the market for Test King.” (0:22:25)
3. Brian states that he, Anthony, Scott, Petr and Brian will be the ones teaching their Associate and Professional-level courses. (1:25:30) We’ll see about that.
4. Talking about the scholarships, “We started this recently, but we’ve been doing this for years.” (0:05:20)
5. “I was involved in a lot of start-ups. Not a lot of start-ups, a few start-ups.” (0:34:05)
6. Pumping up the Poly-Labs launch, they are “actually in beta now. Actually, alpha I guess, technically. Alpha or beta.” (0:42:30)
7. About the guy writing their assessment labs, “his PhD is in eLearning,” then “he’s working on his PhD thesis in eLearning.” (0:57:50)
8. After repeated reassurance that he is not concerned about profits (only customers!), Brian reveals that if IE signed on to offer the 360 program, “it would take away half of our revenue right off the top… at least half… maybe even more right off the top.” (0:11:30)
9. Brian states that they NEVER deny a requested date to retake a class. You pick a date, you get it! (1:17:17) But how could this be if “every single 12 Day Bootcamp we run is sold out“? One of these claims cannot be true – sorry!
10. “This is key.” Since so many topics were prefaced with, “this is key,” I assume that either some were not really key, or there were just way too many key points. And that’s key!

Some other notable moments:

• It was funny when Brian referred to Bruce and Val as, “the most respected instructors out there…” all the while beating up their product line.
• “We do charge for the rack time to resit a class,” admits Brian. (1:17:17)  Hey, thanks for leaving some downfalls in tact after the Tolly Group report was released!
• 100 racks soon, 400 later!  LOL…

NOTICE TO THE HARDCORE IE FANS

If you plan to refute any of my comments, PLEASE HURRY UP and verify what I’ve said first. I tried to help you out by providing time stamps for you to get around quickly! You see, after the Tolly Group report was released comparing IPexpert’s CCIE R&S offering to Internetwork Expert’s, they quickly made changes to their website in order to refute what was already documented. So act fast!

A TRUE EXAMPLE OF IRONY

During the presentation, Brian warns his followers

“Don’t get fooled by fancy marketing or misconceptions out there.” (1:17:17)

Oh, I think they’re catching on, Brian!

Can’t wait for next week’s 2-hour presentation on the Polymorphic Supercharged Gizmotron 3000.

Thanks for reading! Your comments are welcome…

In the upcoming weeks we will be blogging on various techincal topics, topics relating to CCDE and CCIE-focused news and I’ll also be introducing the IPexpert team – in various posts – outlining their position / roles & responsibilities and including various pictures (employee pictures, facility pictures, Proctor Labs hardware pictures, etc.).  I’d like to know what YOU would like us to blog about.  Please reply to this post or send me a direct email at wlawson@ipexpert.com.  Thanks! – Wayne

As a preface to this post, our lawyer suggested I point out that the views expressed in my blog posts represent my own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views or official standing of IPexpert as a company or of our staff, partners or others. :)  With that said…

Last week, Cisco officially threw their hat in the CCIE lab training ring with the announcement of their “360 Learning Program.” This announcement came as no surprise to the leading CCIE-focused training companies.

Back in early 2007, Cisco began approaching established and successful (and some not-so-successful) CCIE training vendors on the market. They cast the net far and wide, asking known vendors around the globe to bid for the “opportunity” to have their courseware purchased then be re-branded as Cisco’s own curriculum. While that may be the ideal model for municipalities seeking a contractor to mow the lawn in city-owned parks, I was gravely concerned by what the apparent determining factors would be when selecting the “winner” that would advance a CCIE training initiative.

When they approached IPexpert, they expounded on the benefits that would come from a “Cisco-controlled” CCIE training program that centralized and streamlined the training options available on the open market.  Initially, the program caught our attention. But after a few face-to-face meetings and many conference calls, our interest faded. That said, I still hoped Cisco would move forward with their program, believing it could be a potential benefit to IPexpert in various possible ways, whether it succeeded or failed.

I should note that, at the time, IPexpert was a Cisco Learning Partner (CLP), which was a dreadful experience that I’ll blog about in a future post. For now, the point is that “only Learning Partners” were allowed to bid on this opportunity, though it became well-known that outsiders were sneaking in through back-door channels.

Throughout the bidding process and well after, we heard more and more about Cisco’s vision of a program where CCIE-focused companies would create the content and other aspects of the proposed solution. At one point, it was suggested that the vendors work together adding bits and pieces to the program, which sounds nice, but is not based in reality. While there are examples to leading vendors partnering with one company or another, it seemed unlikely that such collaboration would take off in a model that provided so little incentive to do so.

In my view, the opportunity as pitched by Cisco boiled down to this:

1. We’ll will take your materials that you created (likely of the course of several years and untold investment), then slap a Cisco logo on it.
2. Then, we’ll slap the Cisco logos on what was your material and allow your direct competitors to sell it.
3. Since we only have a relatively small number of racks to make available for CCIE candidates, we’ll take control of the racks you have purchased and created custom GUIs for, so they can be tied into our tracking and scheduling systems.
4. We’d like you to fly your instructors across the country to teach other would-be CCIE instructors how to do what they do… for your competitors.

As you can imagine, this opportunity became less and less an opportunity for the “core” group of vendors that have a vested interest in protecting their brand and investments… except for NetMasterClass. Let me say clearly that I really like Bruce and Val at NMC. They are very nice guys and I won’t question or speculate on their motives. As the leaders of our companies, we all have decisions to make and live with. Only time will tell which decisions are the right or wrong ones.

So, here we are with the 360 / NetMasterClass offering being made official. During Cisco’s presentation last week, I found it interesting they avoided the topic of how much the training would cost engineers. They talked about costs for the other topics covered in the presentation, including lab exam costs, but forgot to detail the 360 program prices and what you get for each cost level. Their “Top 10 questions” page vaguely references $5,000-$20,000 and NMC’s menu presents a confusing list of options, so that might be why they didn’t try to explain it during the presentation.

NOTE: In the follow-up post to come this week, we will examine each component of the 360 offering. For now, I’ll just express my amazement of how much more expensive NMC’s products got when their logo was traded for Cisco’s.

Also, during the presentation, it was pointed out that Cisco’s desire for the program was to “teach experts” and not to “teach the tests.” Jeff Rensink, author of the CCIE Trek blog, really slammed this point on a recent blog post asking, “is Cisco saying that their test doesn’t adequately determine if someone is an expert.” Great observation, Jeff!!!

I think the truth is that it might just be another “right thing to say” catchphrase. During the past year, while Cisco was encouraging IPexpert’s involvement in the program, there was great emphasis on the tracking system that would be monitored to gauge which vendor is able to crank out the most number of CCIE successes.

Let us remember that Cisco’s learning programs are now aligned under its Customer Advocacy division, making it a profit center. It’s not all about the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from teaching people to be experts. Why else would Cisco insist on calling IPexpert’s CCIE training products and courses “derivative works” even though they had no CCIE training to “derive” other works from? (Because Cisco collects royalty payments for companies selling “derivative works.”)

So, what do I see in the cards for this new program? I know it’s risky for me to put predictions out there, but this is just some conversation among friends, right?

PREDICTION 1: Problems for the Learning @ Cisco team

Frankly, I don’t think the “Learning @ Cisco” team at Cisco really understands that the CCIE certification is a totally different beast – different than any other class or certification that Cisco currently supports (CCNA, for example).  Cisco’s model is for much of their content to be created by third-party vendors / developers.  This content is then formatted per Cisco’s standard template and thrown into a 3-ring binder, then made available as a “kit.”  When “ACME Computer Training” wants to teach that class – they call their CLSP and order the content.

The top existing CCIE training vendors have set a standard for keeping their courseware extremely up-to-date. At IPexpert, we do not inventory ANY courseware. It is all printed on-demand and shipped to the classroom the week prior to each course. Why? Because our instructors make refinements / additions / changes to the course materials between almost EVERY course. That way, students are always learning from materials that reflect the most current thinking, best practices and most effective content.

How up-to-date will the 360 materials be maintained? If they are able to keep innovating and improving the offering, who will do it and how will all these cookie-cutter entities get trained up on the changes and understand what the instructor that made the changes had in mind? Will past students automatically get access to revisions? How?

PREDICTION 2: Problems for the Learning Partners attempting to deliver the training

Most Learning Partners (those that focus on the lower-level Cisco certifications) are used to delivering classroom training. It will be interesting to see how they make the shift toward a blended learning model that emphasizes self-study learning as a part of one’s preparation path. How will they market the “off-the-shelf” (NMC) books in a way that differentiates them from their competitors, especially when they had no role in creating the product and can’t really identify with it.

Once they sell some books to a student, whose racks will their student use to practice hands-on? What will be available to them and when? At what cost?

PREDICTION 3: Problems for the CCIE candidates / students

For reasons that could include the points in my first two predictions, the 360 program may well prove to be a “sub par” offering. Wouldn’t that be ironic after Cisco described current third-party Boot Camps that way?   ;)

If that comes true, it will be the individuals – the CCIE candidates – that would have suffered the most. Probably the most affected will be Cisco employees, whom I suspect are going to be strong-armed into using the “official” training. Pride and corporate policy will keep Cisco from throwing in the towel for a while – long after a great many have over-paid for under-delivered programs.

What Your Peers Think: Some popular bloggers have chimed in on the issue

• CCIEguru quips, “Cisco should do a 360 and re-do its 360.”
• Arden Packeer’s in-depth analysis concludes, “I think I’ll stick to the third party vendors for my CCIE material.”
• CCIE Journey points out that “the courses start out at $5000 and can get up to $20,000. Which to me seems high when you have Internetwork Expert, Narbik, IPexpert and the others out there that deliver high value material at a fraction of that cost.”
• Greg Ferro at EtherealMind predicts, “the number of companies offering CCIE training to increase rapidly as they will think this is an opportunity to grow by adding CCIE to their existing CCNP/NA/SP/DP offerings and increase revenue. Of course it won’t be and they will exit the business by the end of next year.”
• CiscoFerret worries about the 360 program moving to “spoon feed candidates” to satisfy Cisco’s commercial desire to “have a higher pass rate than the competition.”
• CCIEpursuit correctly describes the material as “a rebranded version” of the NetMasterClass training

What do you think? Post your comments here and let’s talk it out.

Also, watch for Part 2 of “My View” this week, as well as more off-shoots from this topic in other blog posts soon to come!

Also, a longtime friend (and actually one of the other top CCIE training vendors) sent me an email (with a friendly “smirk”) to an interesting blog that provides an interesting, but reasonable opinion of Cisco 360 program.  This blog can be found HERE.

Stay tuned for my (IPexpert’s) official opinion as it relates to the Cisco 360 program – my article will be posted here by the end of the week.  We’ll also be posting Mark Snow’s overview on IPexpert’s CCIE Security product / hardware offering as it relates to updates needed to be compliant with Cisco’s new CCIE Security blueprint.

Still laughing about the quote on the CCIEGURU blog, “Cisco should do a 360 and re-do it’s 360!” (at least I’m not the only one thinking this! -grin-).  Have a great evening – happy studying – we’ll be back tomorrow! – Wayne Lawson (CCIE #5244)

Background Story  

This summer, IPexpert and Internetwork Expert made public claims to being the “leader” in CCIE training. These claims sparked entertaining conversations internally at our company, and a scurry for stats at Internetwork Expert.    We conducted a poll to learn which criteria were actually important to CCIE hopefuls as they select a training partner. Since both camps have their own set of loyal customers that will defend their vendor-of-choice, we thought it would be valuable to have a third-party, unbiased entity evaluate the two vendor offerings and provide feedback.  

The Solution  

IPexpert sought out the foremost name in the IT industry for conducting independent comparison studies, then reporting the results of their findings, good or bad. The Tolly Group has been commissioned by reputable firms such as:

• Cisco
• Nortel
• 3COM
• Riverbed
• Symantec
• Foundry Networks
• Siemens
• and hundreds more!

A trusted analyst, based upon their Fair Testing Charter, The Tolly Group was selected by IPexpert to conduct a review of the competitive offerings from the perspective of a CCIE candidate assessing the top training vendors.  

The Criteria  

Comparative analyses are valuable only in “apples-to-apples” scenarios and in specific areas where both are serious contenders. In the interest of complete fairness, recognizing that Internetwork Expert (IE) has historically been primarily focused on the CCIE R&S track, the comparative study was primarily focused on this track alone.   Believing that fair-minded people would acknowledge that both IPexpert and IE provide quality training products and courses, that fact is not contested in this review. We commend IE for providing great CCIE R&S materials.   That said, The Tolly Group evaluated the value (what you get for the money) delivered by each vender, based on five criteria:

• Classroom Training: What types of classes are offered and at what frequency?
• Self-Study Programs: What programs / materials are available and at what cost?
• Rack Rental Options: What equipment resources are available to students for lab purposes? A what costs?
• Success Stories (the topic that sparked the debate!): How many students have earned certification through the vendcor traiing programs? In what technical areas have they been certified? Have students come back to a trainng vendor for additinoal certifications?
• Service Guarantees: What programs does the training provider put in place to guarantee to the student that his / her training investment is protected and that the student will receive the proper training and preparation to pass the CCIE lab exam?

The Results  

To our delight, but certainly not to our surprise, Tolly Group found that IPexpert delivers a more cost-effective set of training solutions for the CCIE Routing and Switching track than Internetwork Expert.   It is doubtful that hard-core IE fans could be swayed by any evidence, and that’s fine. However, for those candidates evaluating vendors, this evaluation authored by The Tolly Group may be a more valuable tool than the emotionally-charged rallying by individuals on various online communities.   

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE