Avaya Vs Cisco Certification

[jasonswan]

Is anyone pursuing Avaya Certification?

The Cisco IP Telephony certifications seem to be highly in demand. I am not finding near as many companies familiar with the Avaya certifications.

Is there much value put in them. Is Avaya going to survive in the data world without providing accessible material for certifications?

I have 2 ACAs, ACDA and ACSA IC 6.1. Without company sponsorship it is impossible to justify the cost of the courses for the ACS level, where as with Cisco you can skip the courses, buy the material and complete the certification through self study.

In fact if you are to survive in the data telecom industry you have to be able to obtain certifications through self study, the though of taking courses, every time I hear people task to take a course rather than buy the course material and study themselves I think much less of them on a technical and motivation level... If I were a manager I would be disappointed. With Avaya as far as I can tell you have little choice? Even with extensive experience there are questions on the exam that ask specifics about the course .i.e. ""In the course you did A, B, C or D"", umm E, I didn't take the course? I spent the last year designing and implementing...

For those looking toward designing, implementing or supporting VoIP and IP-Telephony what certification do you think you will get the most value out of as far as marketability? I do believe that Avaya is the superior product but it seems to me that Avaya Vs Cisco is beginning to look like Beta Vs VHS….

 

[BuckWeet]

AVAYA certifications are a joke..

when i took my ACACN a few years ago (company forced me to) much of the material on the tests referred to cisco proprietary information. so its like what the heck!!

As for the data world, AVAYA has no place in it, and i think they realize that. They are not beefing up their data gear product selection. Its pretty much pointless for them to do it..


I think they're pulling all of their thoughts into their telecom products, which is where it should be. With recent released of their gear its really showing. I started using AVAYA IP back in r9.x and it sucked then.. R12 is much much much better..

The same can be said for the cisco ipt solutions, but they're still not to the enterprise level IMHO..


BuckWeet

 

[jasonswan]

Correction "the thoughT of taking courses..."

Thank You,

Jason

 

[jasonswan]

The problem with Avaya not being in the data world is it leaves Cisco with a strong selling point, ONE Vendor for everything, one group to support everything. Not that that is a good thing but many people in executive management will think that sounds great and I bet Cisco is beccomming experts at selling their solution that way, it's all "Cisco" it all works together, no vendor interoperability issues... Cisco is selling in the enterprise in spite of their telephony solution's shortcomings....

Thank you for the opinion on the Avaya certs, I am thinking it's not worth it to continue to pursue... I am going to stick with he Cisco IP Telephony Design cert that I am working on now and probably drop the idea of pursuing Avaya certs any further...


I am also a bit curious because I am thinking of writing a practice test for the communications and networking exam for Boson however there could be a fair amount of work involved and if there is not much intrest in Avaya certs I don't stand to make much off of the royalties...

 

[extreme4x4mt]

I've been pretty disappointed in the AVAYA certs. I've been working on AVAYA equipment for a few years now and I just see it being so specialized for my area that I live in. I think we are 1 of 2 companies that run AVAYA gear in our small town and I just see it not buying me a whole lot. Now, if I wanted to move to a bigger city, then AVAYA would probably be okay for me.

For me, I'm going to start pursuing the Cisco certs one of these days because...I hate to say this...but everybody has Cisco gear...

 

[assistu]

I have 2 ACA's, 3 ACS's, and an ACE. I did it all without taking any classes, and without any course documentation. I have been doing this for 9 years, so it wasn't like I was doing it without any background. The thing that really surprised me was what it takes to pass. You only need a 60%-65% on the tests in order to pass, a D-!!! So, it was easy to get all the certs without much effort. I'm an ACE, but I'm a "D" ACE! Whatever, the certs look good on my wall!

The Cisco cert on the other hand is much tougher to get. They are not so easy on the test. I can only guess that Avaya WANTS people to get their certs so they make it easier than Cisco.

Oh, and I have heard from our Avaya guy that Avaya will no longer produce their data equipment (Cajun) because nobody wants it and will instead sell and push Extreme Networks stuff. Great, another cert that I'll have to try and get!

 

[BuckWeet]

exactly..

the cajun ethernet switches are crap..

i had to do one full install of cajun gear once, all using the P33x series.. total crap!


BuckWeet

 

[mikeydidit]

At one time the AT&T cert.’s did help you in the job field, but that was a long time ago. Back then it was certifications on specific products and the only classes on these products were from the manufacture. Of course that was also in the days of PS2's and a token ring LAN or if you were real lucky, maybe thick net cabling with an IBM mainframe. With the trend going towards off board processors and the VOIP world I would say that the Avaya cert., would be rather useless. I too have been considering what classes to take next being that in the near future I will be going to the S8700's world. I don’t believe that Avaya would be the best place to learn about servers or their certification would carry as much weight as one from Cisco, so Cisco is where I will be spending my training dollars...


Mike Jones
LSUHSC

 

[jasonswan]

I am one for not taking the courses but you can no longer achieve many Avaya certifications without taking the courses since they force you to, you cannot progress until you have taken the course.

 

[assistu]

As far as taking the classes. that's not entirely true. You only HAVE to take the classes if you want to take all of the assesment tests. You can always just go down and take the test at one of the testing facilities. The actual tests don't have any prereqs. When Ifound out they wanted me to take a classes after installing the things for almost 9 years I was very annoyed and just went down to take the test. I've done them all like that, haven't had any problems.

 

[jasonswan]

Maybe for ACA level but I know for ACS you do Have to take courses, and for some ACA there is no exam to test out of, so to speak. This is a relatively new development, in the last 6 months. I have called Avay U to confirm this. You can no longer just take the Vue test either you have to pass a number of Avaya U tests as well.

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