Taking forward its focus on SD-WAN, MEF has announced the SD-WAN Certified Professional (MEF-SDCP) program, the newest in a series of professional certifications that validate workforce skills necessary for successful digital transformation.
The SD-WAN professional certification is the industry’s only exam verifying knowledge, skills, and abilities in the domains of SD-WAN based on the MEF SD-WAN Service Attributes and Services (MEF 70) standard as well as other fundamentals of SD-WAN solutions.
This exam is designed for technically-oriented SD-WAN professionals ranging from pre-sales to network/service engineering and operational personnel in the service provider, technology vendor, and enterprise communities.
A record number of more than 200 professionals employed by 80 companies worldwide participated in the MEF-SDCP beta test phase that recently ended. Successful beta participants will receive their certification credentials in December.
“Today’s SD-WAN market shares similarities to the early days of the $85+ billion Carrier Ethernet market before standardization and services, technology, and professional certification took hold,” said Kevin Vachon, Chief Operating Officer, MEF. “Having skilled professionals who are well-versed in the emerging common language for SD-WAN will be key to enabling ecosystem stakeholders to capitalize on market opportunities.”
Recent research findings from Heavy Reading indicate that 94% of surveyed service provider professionals worldwide believe their employer will offer an SD-WAN service by the end of 2021 if they do not already. Seventy-three percent believe that SD-WAN professional certification will be “critical” or “important” for accelerating SD-WAN service sales. Heavy Reading’s SD-WAN Services Strategies survey included responses from 125 service provider professionals representing companies based in every major geographic region.
MEF-SDCP Exam & Training
The MEF-SDCP exam is scheduled to be generally available by mid-December 2019. Individuals interested in taking the exam should click here to register and learn more information.
To ensure key core competencies, the MEF-SDCP test covers:
Assessing, planning and designing: scenarios of size and scale, implementations, applications, strategy, and business requirements.
Implementation: MEF 70 related to business requirements, application flow, policy, underlay services, characteristics, and migration strategy.
Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO): service impacting issues, diagnostics, performance metrics, and troubleshooting.
Components and Features: fundamentals and characteristics of SD-WAN solutions, service components, and service attributes.
Three MEF accredited training partners are now offering training programs for the MEF SD-WAN professional certification:Perpetual Solutions,SD-WAN Academy, and Tech 2000. Others are expected to follow.
“Carrier Managed SD-WAN is one of the fastest growing markets for service providers, MSPs, and enterprises – projected to reach $4.5B in the U.S. alone by 2023 based on our latest research,” said Erin Dunne, Director of Research Services, Vertical Systems Group.
“MEF’s standards development and professional certification program will go a long way toward ensuring that the service providers, vendors, and enterprises can best monetize the benefits of SD-WAN to move their businesses forward.”
