In the new digital era, the ability to connect data, processes and experiences are becoming critical elements of successful digital business transformation.

Enterprises need to access data from anywhere, analyze it, and make real-time decisions to fuel innovation and accelerate data-driven business outcomes. A 2014 Cisco survey found that 40 percent of enterprises believe that most data will be processed at the network edge on smart devices by 2017.

Not surprisingly, the market for big data solutions is looking pretty robust. IDC predicts the big data and business analytics market will hit$203 billion in the 2020, up from$130.1 billion today.

New skills are required

To ensure continuous delivery of business-critical initiatives, you've got to have an enterprise-class data center.  A data center that is able to support new business models that use the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and cloud to modernize existing business critical applications, is essential. Such a next-generation data center requires people with next-generation skills.

Cisco is helping customers modernize their older IT infrastructures with a hybrid-IT solution that maximizes application performance, mitigates risk, and increases operational agility in order to guide their digital transformation journeys.  This requires a complete view from on-prem networking, and data center through to end points across the cloud infrastructure.

Cisco's architectural approach ties analytics, simplicity, automation, and protection (ASAP) tightly with a consistent policy across a hybrid cloud built with industry-leading data center networking, security, converged Infrastructures, and software-defined solutions.

Organizations are looking for skilled workers who can design, deploy and manage next-generation data centers and extract actionable insights from organizational data.

At the same time, IT professionals work to keep their skills in alignment with the demands of this new digital era. Cisco is continuing to enrich its certification portfolio in support of the latest skills and technologies needed for world-class digital business transformation.  

Uniquely qualified for today's job demands

To upgrade data center architectures for the digitized world, data center and analytics professionals need a broader skill set that enables the next-generation data center, including policy-driven infrastructure, software-defined networking (SDN), unified computing, and automation and orchestration.

The demand for IT practitioners that are Cisco-trained and -certified in these rapidly-evolving fields cannot be overstated.

These next-generation data centers, like Cisco's ASAP architecture, integrate data center and cloud offerings to deliver a consistent policy-defined model across the entire hybrid cloud, letting the company scale performance, mitigate risk and extract actionable insights through analytics.

A new kind of benchmark

Today, Cisco is introducing a brand-new data and analytics portfolio that focuses on integrated data management and virtualization.

The new analytics training portfolio provides powerful skills for data professionals to connect data, processes and experiences to extract actionable insights. Beyond the new training being introduced today, we will continue to build out this portfolio to meet the customer and market demand.

In conjunction, we are also rolling out extensive updates to our data center certification portfolio. We have thoroughly revised the CCNA and CCNP Data Center certifications to skill professionals in key roles required of complex data center environments. The CCIE Data Center has been updated as well to include mastery of both foundational and evolving data center technologies, including IoT, network programmability and cloud.

These roll-outs are the latest proof points of our ongoing evolution of the Cisco certification portfolio to equip our customers with the skills they need to stay competitive and confident in today's changing market.

These data center and analytics offerings supplement the recently introduced cloud, IoT and cyber security certification programs. Together, they help professionals manage and control enterprise-wide deployments in a secure and consistent manner.

Looking ahead

The results are faster deployments, more efficient data center operations and higher return on investment with IT infrastructure powered by Cisco-certified IT practitioners. And for the IT professionals, added confidence in new skills and abilities that support the organization on its journey to digital transformation.

I welcome your thoughts and feedback in the comments.

Learn more about the new analytics portfolio and the training options available today. To discover the changes to the data center certification portfolio, visit the following sites: CCNA Data Center, CCNP Data Center and CCIE Data Center. For more information about Learning@Cisco, visit our site.