2/1/2005 -- Yesterday Cisco Systems added a new title to its roster of professional-level certifications: the Cisco Certified Voice Professional (CCVP).

The new Cisco Certified Voice Professional title will bring together the operations, support and design skills currently covered by the company’s IP telephony and voice-related Qualified Specialist certifications. “We were looking for a certification that would span those areas, so the individual would have validated skills … demonstrated at a broader professional level,” said Don Field, Cisco director of certification.

According to Ray Garra, senior manager of Learning & Development at Cisco, the intended audience for this title is field engineers, systems engineers, IT professionals working in telecommunications as well as large enterprise and service providers. The CCVP is also “specifically designed to bridge the gap between the CCNA and CCIE Voice,” Garra said.

The title consists of five exams: four existing Cisco Qualified Specialist exams, plus one new Gateway/Gatekeeper exam. The exams are:

• 642-642: Quality of Service (QoS)
• 642-432: Cisco Voice Over IP (CVoice)
• 642-425: IP Telephony Troubleshooting (IPTT)
• 642-444: Cisco IP Telephony (CIPT)
• 642-452: Gateway/Gatekeeper (GW/GK)

The new Gateway/Gatekeeper exam is now live, although the related training class will not be available until July 2005, Field said.

Candidates must hold a valid CCNA exam to earn the CCVP title.

The introduction of the voice certification marks the first mid-level, professional title added to Cisco’s program in the past few years since Cisco Certified Security Professional (CCSP) debuted in November 2002 and the Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional (CCIP) in June 2001.

According to Cisco, the company has over 17,500 customers worldwide using its IP communications products and leads the market for IP phones with 40 percent market share and more than 4 million IP phones shipped.

For more information on the CCVP certification, go here. -Becky Nagel and Dan Hong