The upgrades are made to the GWGK (Implementing Voice Gateways and Gatekeepers, 642-452) and CIPT (Cisco IP Telephony, 642-444) exams. The rest of the exams (CVoice, IPTT, and QoS) will remain the same.

The new version of the exam GWGK (642-543) features expanded labs, and updates to the lessons on IP to IP gateways and RSVP. While the new version of the CIPT exam (642-445) has been expanded to include a new topics that will validate a candidate's ability to install, configure and support Cisco Unified CallManager Release 5.0 in a Cisco Unified Communications deployment. Now candidates have a choice to achieve their CCVP by successfully passing either Call Manager 4.1 or Call Manager 5.0. This give the choice to the CCVP certification seeker to take any of these two exam as the 642-444 exam will remain available. Unlike the older GWGK exam (642-542) which will remain available only until April 24th, 2007. Afterwards, only the new GWGK exam will be available.

I believe that the newer version of the CIPT exam was neccessary. This is true because the Call Manager 5.0 has been in the market for sometime now and it should be mastered by some kind of a course or exam. But the odd thing is that Cisco Press has published a new self-study book for the 642-444 exam about two months ago. The publishing of this book gave me the impression that it will take some time to have the newer version of the exam.

However, Cisco is progressing in the VoIP market in a good manner and thier issue right now is that they do not have a large number of people certified in VoIP, well at least as compared to the number of people certified in Routing and Switching.

Cisco is also trying to take a jump start over competitors in the converged networks market with thier Unified Communications Solutions. These solutions look like a promising era that will soon evolve to become the target of Corporates.

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