No OEQs for Cisco’s 360 Students? (Not Quite)
Wayne A. Lawson II (CCIE #5244) – Founder & President, IPexpert, Inc.
Cisco announced, today, (March 16th) that “qualifying students” from Cisco’s 360 CCIE training program would be able to request a waiver for the “Core Knowledge” section of the CCIE Routing and Switching and Voice exams. Sounds good? Well… we think otherwise! First of all, in order to qualify, students need to undergo the authorized 360 “workshop” (be sure to recognize that it’s 2 weeks of training and quite a bit more expensive than some of the other options out there) and, as usual, waiver requests need to be approved by the instructor from the workshop. The waiver is then submitted to Cisco for approval and approved or disapproved without clear indication of success of that request. The program is temporary and begins on April 1st 2010… just as another waiver program (that seems to have failed) is about to end.
The IPexpert team is determined to provide our students with the best possible training material available on the market. For that reason, we pledge right here and right now, that we will have the best preparation material on the market for the Core Knowledge section of the lab exams… by the time this program goes live. Yes, by April 1st of this year. All IPexpert clients will have access to an OEQ / Core Knowledge eBook (we will be delivering eBooks for the R&S, Voice, Security and Service Provider labs).
Combine that with our current products and offerings:
- World-class Video on Demand (with supplemental Student Slide & Topology Books)
- World-class Audio on Demand (lecture different than VOD)
- World-class ILT Training (Week 1)
- World-class OWLE Training (Week 2)
- World-class Workbooks (and accompanying Detailed Solution Guides)
- World-class Workbook Video Walkthroughs (Hundreds of hours of video solutions)
- World-class Rack Rental at ProctorLabs (Latest & greatest hardware, online, with an unmatched GUI)
- World-class Online Community at OnlineStudyList.com (free online mentoring avenues)
- World-class Technical Support for all issues
- The largest alumni of successful CCIE students overall
In addition to all of the above (current offerings and upcoming FREE Core Knowledge eBook), we are shortly going to introduce two additions to our family of products in all tracks. We call them “vLectures” and “Ask the Expert Sessions”.
vLectures will be 2-4 hour long, live online lectures, delivered by one or more of our instructors on a given subject through our online classroom. These sessions will also be recorded and posted to our student accounts.
Ask the Expert sessions will be 2-4 long online sessions with one or more of our instructors and will focus on either a specific technology or a given lab from our Workbooks. Students attending the sessions will interact with the instructors, ask the questions and gain invaluable expertise. These will, also, be recorded and posted to student accounts.
Oh and one more thing…
These three new products … are going to be FREE for all our current BLS customers in all tracks. No need to qualify or pay premium.
Do our students need OEQ waivers? We think not. Here at IPexpert, we deliver on our promise to make you experts – with no shortcuts. We don’t think you need to “purchase” the ability to pass or “waive” the OEQ portion of your lab (by paying upwards of x2 or x3 as much for less training, less support and less proven success).
Good idea by the 360 team, or an act of desperation to salvage a failing program? You make the call…
Regards,
- Wayne A. Lawson II (CCIE #5244) – Founder & President, IPexpert, Inc.
The full text of this announcement with responses can be read here.