With the CCIE being the &quot;king of the hill&quot; IT certification for years, I was a little skeptical when a friend of mine told me Cisco had released a new, HIGHER ranking IT certification. But sure enough, they've raised the bar again.

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The new Cisco Certified Architect track has a prerequisite of a CCDE (or CCIE depending on which news release you read), requires an application and subsequent acceptance into the program,  pre-board exam work, and finally, a board exam.

Cisco explains, &quot;<span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">A Cisco Certified Architect gathers the business requirements and objectives necessary to produce a blueprint for an integrated, large-scale, complex, global network. They can translate business parameters and objectives into functional requirements for a network design.  In addition, Cisco Certified Architects can clearly communicate and advocate proposed Cisco network architectures.&quot; </span> </span>

It's been referenced as the &quot;Phd&quot; of certifications-- awesome! Less than 10 per year are expected to be certified within the first few years of program, which launches in January of 2010.

For more info, please visit this <a title="Cisco Certified Architect" href="http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/cisco_certified_architect/index.html" target="_blank">link</a>