Who to send for VoIP training?

This week, we’re wrapping up our VoIP Technology Tour and what a success it has been. If you attended any of the shows, it was great seeing you and I hope you found the event useful – thanks for coming! One of the recurring questions that came up from audience members at this year’s, as well as at last year’s tour, was who should we send for VoIP training – the data networking guy or the telco guy?

I thought I’d pose that question to some training companies to see what they had to say. Of course, it was no surprise that they believed that both the technologists should be trained – after all, providing training is their business.  But they point out that the two teams will have to interact over this converged technology and having the telco guy and the networking guy be able to use and understand the same protocols and terminology would help businesses in the long run.

Mike Walsh, director of product strategy at Global Knowledge believes that the telecoms staffer would probably benefit most from training. “The telephony person in most organizations is the one who is the more customer-facing, and has the best idea of what voice features are the most valuable to the employees,” Walsh explains. “He is also the one who generally has the best eye for what new VoIP-enabled value-added features are worth rolling out.”

The telephony expert also understands the call patterns, what services are being bought from service providers and where using VoIP can produce the best cost-savings, Walsh says.

However, the telephony professional would be faced with a bigger learning curve as they tackle the IP networking terminology, says David Minutella, vice president of education services at The Training Camp. The telco guys “are on their own island and have to be ramped up to learn the new protocols,” says Minutella, adding that The Training Camp provides students who have telephony backgrounds with IP training materials before attending VoIP classes.

The network pro should also receive training because VoIP will be a new and demanding application on their network, adds Walsh. “Successful VoIP deployments require a good evaluation of the current network, possibly changes to enhance the network and continuous monitoring of the network,” he says.

So there you have it – sending both teams out for training should help to ensure a cohesive plan toward successful VoIP deployment. How to get the budget for training both teams is another matter.

* Check out the Network World VoIP Technology Tour resource center for presentations from the event and white papers from the sponsoring vendors: https://www.nwfusion.com/resources/voip/pdfs.html

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