| I'm a data network guy and I consider myself as (now) relatively experienced, easily learning new subjects by myself and quickly adapting to new requirements.
Exactly two years ago, our Real Estate department wanted to get rid of managing the PBX part of the telephony services (ICT dept. was already managing the administrative part - read: contracts & billing).
We were a small team of two (my colleague with nearly 20 years of experience in a wide range of IT subjects, me a junior with just two years of experience in data) managing the LANs and the MAN for 7 sites located closely to each other, including end-user problems (network card problems, application performance issues, connection patching and troubleshooting, etc.) and in-house full-time monitoring, for about 1500 users.
When it came to chosing people for the task, the ICT dept. management decided we could manage the PBXes too. They were thinking it was just another communications equipment like a new router or a new switch and all be all right very quickly, and they would save big money in the process (switching engineering, anwers to end-users requests and cabling in-house).
It's since been two very very difficult years (my ex-colleague was fired more than a year ago for personal reasons I believe caused for some part by our added responsibilities), during which we had to learn telecom all by ourselves starting from nearly zero knowledge, we had to wrestle with the vendor we were locked in with (Siemens), we tried to provide with only two persons a better (because of an SLA policy of the ICT dept.) level of service than was provided before by: two persons for the LAN/MAN engineering (us), one person for the administrative part of the PBX (answering users request, dealing with Siemens, dealing with management requests etc.), one person for the cabling, one full-time on-site Siemens technician for the PBX engineering, and one person for dealing with telecom providers and 3rd-party connections.
I think I learned quite a lot about telecom during those two years starting from nothing even if I do not consider myself an expert yet, mainly because we are not allowed to deal with advanced features of the PBX that Siemens closes access to and reserves for itself ($$$), and I'm delighted that we are now about to ditch Siemens for an all-new IP system from another vendor, which will let us learn a lot more (new technology, no closed-down vendor policy), gain more experience (managing more of the system by ourselves) and provide a better service (as we are the experts managing both the data network and the telephony system/servers, we can troubleshoot problems quicker instead of playing games between teams and rejecting responsibility).
I can't approve or disprove if teaching networking to a telecom guy is easier, but from experience many telecom guys I've worked with knew and understood as little to networking as I understood to telecom but were more reluctant to learn (or accept!) networking than I was to learn telecom (maybe protectionism of their job in nearly-obsolete technology, especially seen with guys that work for vendors of legacy TDM systems), and I think in the end what matters is the person and her/his will to learn, not the original background he/she comes from.
I had to do the journey the other way (learn telecom being a data guy) all by myself and I think the experience it gave me is highly valuable, so my opinion is that people who know both worlds really have an advantage now with this convergence phase we are entering.
I am now excited to come back more often to this board and participate in telecom discussions to learn more and more of the telecom world and - I hope - exchanging expertise.
Best regards,
Olivier |