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| Originally Posted by sillejo So this is an interesting discussion. I come from the other side. Came into a Telecom company in 1999 with data experience and started learning telecom. Then got into the Cisco stuff right when CallManager was bought up from Selsius Systems.
I gotta say that I did not know my color code either until 4 years ago when the networking guy who was an Electrical Engineer by training, quized me on my first day of putting in his IP tel system. Honestly, slate?! who knew!
But the blend is tricky. I would guess that most of you see Hybrid systems a lot and still have to deal with cable issues. For me it's not that hard. Slap in some Cat5/6 everywhere and if everything is configured correctly then bring out the cable tester. It really ONLY gets hard in a hybrid enviornment when you hit all the legacy cable.
So the rub is this. The data guys are in an everchanging developing enviornment. The telecom guys know their stuff solid, but it's not changing either. If we do an interation between a CM with certain routers and an old Fujitsu then the data and telecom guys will both learn something, but the next time we do the same integration, our stuff will have changed and the Fujitsu will have not changed.
I'm affraid that when it comes to which is harder to learn the data stuff wins out soley because it is still changing.
On the job seach front, I have a similar issue "that guy doesn't exist" in posting for guys who know MCSE, MCP, CallManager, IPCC scripting (ICM) have a CCIE or CCNP and 10 years telecom experience.
You can put 10 CCIE's in a room wth CallManager and they may get it up and running. Same to be said for 10 MSCE's. THe killer is that being either of them does not qualify you to make a server or router do phone stuff.
ICND is a good start, as is CCNA. But unless your getting trained on the particular servers and applications that are replacing the PBX's then your not really replenishing your skills. KNowing which pair to punch down does you no good when 300 phones are WiFi and the messaging system is XML or Exchange
Don't make the mistake of lumping "the Cisco guys" together Just like an Avaya PBX cert won't help you program the Avaya networking equipment.
Cisco IP Tel guys with 5+ years of experience are getting $85k+/year Specializations in WiFi, IDS, or Security will get you over $100k because it proves you can also take care of more than just the routers and switches.
In the end getting the phones up is the easy part, getting them to do something besides dial-tone is hard. |
This is a very impressive and informative response. I went to a Cisco Boot camp for the Call Manager Express not too long ago. Getting the phones up and running on the local network seemed to be quite easy. Where I think it got tricky was the dial plans between different Network "nodes" or "sites". That to me was the most confusing but I picked it up pretty fast.
I was thinking of one thing you said though which is to me somewhat correct but not fully. When you said the Data side is constantly changing.. That is totally correct. What I think is not, is that the phone side of things are not changing. When it comes to VOIP the systems I work on are constantly needing to be upgraded to be more compatible with the Data network changes. I think the industry as a whole is going in a direction that some wont be able to follow just because they are not able grasp the concept of "converged" technology.