2017 ccnp price increase

joshuamurphy75

I logged into the Cisco Pearson Vue site to register for my 300-101 ROUTE exam, and found that it is $300 instead of $250. Just thought I'd give y'all a warning so you can budget for it.

negru_tudor

Yeah, just heard about it this morning on the /r/ccnp reddit section. Bummer.

JustFred

a lot of vendors are doing this. Must be great.

viper75

And the reason for the price increase is why? Smh....greed!!!

ande0255

I would assume as they are distancing themselves from Brain **** working due to larger pools of questions, they are capitalizing on the higher failure rate for exam takers.

There is more material, the material added is more difficult / complex, and now the exams are going up. Ridiculous. So ******* ridiculous.

Iristheangel

I'm a bit bias here but let me put this out there: How many millions do you think Cisco makes on making content for the CCNA/CCNP/CCIE exams after marketing, SMEs for exam content, FTEs for maintaining lab/backend systems/etc, lawyers for legal and now suing the **** providers, etc.
That being said, what is the percentage of Cisco's overall profits would that be when you compare it against the billions they make annually on their real money makers.

No, it's not all about greed. The cost of providing and maintaining the exams have gone up in the last year or two. There was a pretty useful CCIE webinar a couple months ago that talks about some of the steps they've started taking to protect the integrity of the exams. The link is here: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-31943

Some of the things they go over include:
- Adding more variability to the exams
- Lawsuits against **** providers, working their way through the legal systems of countries all around the world to have intellectual property removed, etc
- Moving their exams to a cloud delivery model to prevent the questions from being dumped on the internet the day they're released
- Exam forensics to detect cheating
- Analytics to help them detect testing centers in areas that have anomalous results (i.e. everyone getting a pass at that testing center) and shutting them down
and more...

It isn't cheap to maintain all that and this would probably be an example of passing the cost to the consumer but every certification provider does that.

negru_tudor

Sounds nice and all but I have to see all of this happen..I'm a bit skeptical that they (Cisco) can push testing centers to improve the overall experience. I mean most of these centers provide testing facilities for other exams / vendors...and some of them are in a very lousy state. The one I've taken and will be taking tests at has 5 ancient PCs that run like they're steam powered.

Anyway, I doubt that the price increase will turn people who are really into this line of work away from Cisco BUT I expect to see improvements in the exam quality (ie. properly worded questions, sims that don't break down etc.).

Iristheangel

I didn't say that it was moving to improve the testing experience or computers that Pearson Vue uses - I don't believe Cisco has any control over what some random sub does with their testing site. It's more about exam integrity and all those things have already started happening.

negru_tudor

You're right. Read it the wrong way around. They're still a lot though; in some places close to 1/2 or 1/4 of a month's wages (even more maybe).

tuleeoh

Thanks for the info

thomas_

Cisco should probably seed questions to different test centers to see which ones are providing the questions to the **** sites. If test centers go as far as enabling testers to **** why would they stop there? They might as well film the test and then make money off of distributing the questions. I really don't think a cloud-based delivery model is going to do much, eventually the questions are going to get out there. The only way it might change things is if Cisco controlled the testing environment, which isn't going to happen.

It would get really interesting if Cisco won some lawsuits and gained access to customer lists of **** sites and then proceeded to revoke the certifications of those people. However, I'm sure that would result in additional challenges and complications for Cisco.

dontstop

I guess another benefit of the more expensive exam is that you don't end up getting people brute forcing it to pass. If the exam was $25-50 you'd have people doing it weekly in order to obtain it.

GT-Rob

Or look at it from the perspective of the thousands of people who have been laid off from Cisco in the name of stock price. Pretty easy to justify a few more $ for exams to make sure they are not a loss on the books for a publically traded company.

Iristheangel

See my first post. Cisco's primary business and money makers aren't making certifications. I'd wager that it's probably more cost neutral for them. If you want to see something expensive, see the cost of SANS, Vmware's certs + required classes, CISSP, a college degree, etc. The reason for the exam increase has more to do with protecting the integrity of the exams and the expenses that are come from that than trying to pinch pennies out of your pocket to pay for the .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% it might help their stock prices to raise certification exam prices.

As far as layoffs, do 3,000 employees really make that much of a difference in stock prices when the headcount doesn't reduce? https://www.statista.com/statistics/350519/cisco-employees-by-region/

From the stats, US employee count has been pretty steady at 36-37K. Year in/year out, Cisco tends to keep around the same headcount. There are layoffs - sure. Most large companies go through them but Cisco also acquires a lot of companies too. How many redundant HR, marketing, developer, helpdesk, etc teams does one company need? Or if the company as a BU or a development team for products they don't develop anymore (i.e. Invicta, ACE, etc), does it make a lot of sense to keep an open headcount on the books for that spot? Layoffs suck if you're on the receiving end but it doesn't mean that the business is failing by any means and at least they give folks time to apply for different spots within the company. Remember: Cisco is a MASSIVE company that dips their toes in routing, switching, physical security, security, collaboration, IoT, cloud, SDN, data center, wireless, etc etc etc with dozens of products, dev teams, R&D, etc in each of those architectures and with a company that large, things have to sometimes get shuffled around to keep the company adapting to the industries it dips it's toes in.

ande0255

The problem is, employers do not see read about these CCIE meetings discussing integrity, the only person getting a pat on the back is the exam taker themselves if they can make it through a CCNP series of exams while spending under $2000 on materials and exam fees (assuming you pass every test).

One example of a cash grab, please refer to the death of Cisco free IPSec VPN client, to be replaced by Anyconnect SSL VPN:

Early death of Cisco VPN Client forces VPN license fees - EtherealMind

Not that SSL VPN does not offer more flexibility, but to discontinue a perfectly good VPN solution for SMB's that was free of charge, you just can't say Cisco doesn't force consumers to swallow extra costs to keep it profitable.

You just cannot work in the industry seeing these licensing / support fee changes, and say Cisco isn't digging into customer pockets, and now seemingly its test takers as well in the interest of protecting their own exams integrity.

EDIT:

Seriously, if you are unfamiliar with what that link refers to, click it if your not already stomach sick to see a Cisco cash grab a few years back.

Iristheangel

Ok.... You're bringing up two different points and trying to draw comparison to the two. While they might be parts of the great whole of Cisco, they are not the same.

1 - Certs are pennies to Cisco in the grand scheme of things. The employer may not read anything about some public webinar but they'll notice the floods of CCNA/CCNPs who don't even know WTF ARP is. If Cisco does succeed in weeding those types out, then they'll notice the certs being less diluted and thus it increases the value to those of us who legitimately earned it.

Don't agree with the prices? That's fair. No one here or anywhere in the world is going to hold a gun to your head and force you to get the certification. In fact, if you strongly believe that the ROI isn't worth it and you're strapped for money, I think you shouldn't get any Cisco certs. The same for VCP or SANS certs that require their bootcamps, or ISC2 which is $500+ per exam + annual fees, or even a college degree (which can run $100K+). Education, degrees and certifications are expensive.

2 - Cisco's pricing model on their core business is something else. Business models change. If you look at Palo Alto, Checkpoint, Fortinet, etc, most of them have subscription elements to their VPN licenses - especially if you're looking to posture or have some sort of compliance on the endpoint. Again, Models change and, yes, Cisco is a business. That's their core business and they are going to make money and adjust to markets.

P.s. I would suggest reading more Ivan Pepelnjak or Daniel Dibs blogs than someone who thinks QoS is dead. :P

ande0255

Wait... you guys don't have people holding guns to your head to take Cisco exams? Where do you get your encouragement to study??

And actually I just googled that one link between studying for CCNP ironically for the sake of showing Cisco does make money grabs and is a business trying to make profits where they can, I guess making the candidate pay to weed themselves out for employers is a crap model of how to fix a broken system in my eyes, if you can't discern a paper CCNP from a real one in the test room with 2-3 questions you shouldn't be interviewing candidates at that level in my eyes.

I heard you smoke one out with 1 question, in about 30 seconds, 25 of them introductory seconds.