South African, Kenyan CCIEs come together for the first time

Issued by NIL Africa

Johannesburg, 01 Jul 2013

On 27 June, the CCIE Club held its first event in Johannesburg, at Cisco's premises. The event, hosted by Leon Wright, CTO at Cisco, and Adrienne Vester, CCIE Club Manager at NIL, had a strong technical objective, delivering two advanced lectures on software-defined networking and fixed-mobile convergence.

"It is a unique opportunity to see such a number of CCIEs in a room, and I am proud NIL is part of this initiative. It is the first time in South Africa these experts have an opportunity to join and meet within the formal community, and we hope that at the next event, even more CCIEs from other African countries will be joining us," said Martin Camp, director at NIL Africa.

NIL and Cisco established the elite CCIE Club Africa to give African CCIE communities an opportunity to meet, network and share best practices. Launched earlier in 2013, the club currently consists mostly of CCIEs from South Africa, where NIL Africa is located. However, CCIEs from other African countries are also joining.

Already on this event, there were five CCIEs from Kenya participating, with help of Cisco TelePresence. Kenya and Egypt are the next countries where NIL will actively promote the club locally, and official launches will follow in Cairo in August, and in Nairobi in October.

"CCIE certification is among the most prestigious networking certification in the IT industry, and therefore a career booster for an individual and a competitive advantage for an organisation employing that particular individual. African CCIEs do play and will continue to play an important role as the continent is undergoing a rapid development in telecommunication and IT industry, and there is a great need for the expertise these engineers possess," said Wright.

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NIL, managing the club's activities, has a long tradition of developing CCIEs within the company and deep expertise in Cisco technologies. The company achieved its first CCIE certification in 1993, when Ivan Pepelnjak, NIL's Chief Technology Advisor, received his highly valued CCIE designation, and today NIL already employs 20 CCIE-certified engineers.

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South African, Kenyan CCIEs come together for the first time

CCIE Club Africa, a joint project between Cisco and NIL, organised its first event that brought together CCIEs from South Africa and Kenya for the first time. Founders aim for the project to eventually span over the whole African continent.