Learning curve between Siemens and Nortel 6

[ITSurvivor]

Hello all, I am new to the Siemens PBX/Voicemail world, because our company has the Nortel PBX/Voicemail system. I am applying for a job and they have the Siemens system, all they mentioned was Siemens PBX/Voicemail, and I would like to get some feedbacks from all you Siemens experts on the difference.

The job mentioned Add/Move/Change type of tasks.

Thank you all.

Richard

 

[GMgerry]

I had a relative situation. With a public organization we had to take the lowest bidder....Siemens. It was a nightmare. Nortel docuemntation is excellent, Siemens, if you get any, is very difficult and tech support is not forth coming with free info. The first thing from anyone at Siemens is....."for a cost".

PBX's are all relative, you may get a good siemens tech and already have docuemntation. If you need more let me know.

Also ask the employeer for training from Siemens. Some support techs react to you if you have no Soemens training.

 

[ITSurvivor]

Thanks GMgerry. I read lots of bad reports on Siemens and their support staff from this forum. It is pretty sad that such a big company doesn't pay attention to their customer.

Asking for training is a great suggestion. I will keep you in mind if anything else comes up.

Thanks you!

 

[GMgerry]

One additional point. The Enterprise division of Siemens (the pbx side) is up for sale. They had three bidders and all of them backed out because Siemens wanted way more that it is worth. In fact they were asking Siemens for cash in the deal. In other words they wanted Siemens to pay them to take it off their hands.

Here any time.

 

[strmwalker]

ITSurvivor...to answer some of your questions.being that i am trained on both rolm/siemens and nortel. i worked on rolm systems for 12 years and siemens 5 years and nortel
6 years the documentation on nortel to me is not all that
friendly and then you can get there cd sets just as bad.
siemens how ever has this thing call a ? mark type it in
hit return and it tells you what you can enter in that field.when you get trained on a siemens you are trained to do everything to install and maintain the system nortel
you have installation and mainance ,administration for moves adds and changes nars bars for routing acd . to me
siemens is out in the field working for years doing voice over ip no problems nortel just got into it and the customer is the one who finds out i does not work and they
have to add peps for what ever you find no working.with that said whos better well what application works best and for who they have problems...

strmwalker

 

[GMgerry]

Don't judge Nortel on its IP. Siemens is just as bad. We went TDM and tryed their VoIP...3 years later it still can't work 100%. The new Hipath 4000 AMOs are differant than the old rolm days. Nortel remains the same today as it was twnenty years ago plus more.

Nortel I&M 1 week remotely no travel Siemens 4 weeks in dallas. All Siemens classes are more than 50% more than Siemens. You can get a Nortel job in any city. Siemens does not even want their techs trained, just baby sitters for TAC in Dallas.

Siemens has end of lifed many of their switchess or software after only three years costing customers millions. What a sales trick. Stay with Nortel

 

[GMgerry]

Oh and one more (after just coming from the Nortel postings) See how much help you get here on this site compaired to Siemens.

 

[strmwalker]

GMgerry...do think people who are working on the siemens
switches might have learned more on the product in that four week class in dallas and dont need to post a trouble
because they can fix without help or are you that stuck on nortel i work on both it just happen i like the siemens
product but both are good and by the way a switch only goes
in and works as good as the people who installed it both nortel and siemens i have not had any trouble with the siemens voip but nortel is a little different story.



strmwalker

 

[GMgerry]

Our Siemens Direct tech went to the four week class. When he comes out he can't fix anything. The first thing they do is call the TAC center. When we ask what the issue was they say they have no clue, TAC fixed it....four hours later.

To answer your question, No Siemens teaches no more in a four week class than Nortel does in a week. I have done all the Nortel training and it is wonderful and applies today. We stopped taking Siemens classes cause they say if you have a problem or run into trouble call TAC and half the time they are on the phone with Germany.

Also there are 10 times as many Nortels out there than Siemens maybe more.

I do agree with the VoIP issue with Nortel they are behind and do not work well.

 

[strmwalker]

GMgerry... ok let me put it to another way if you have tech that tells you that then if you are a customer has more of a problem then your tech because you take for a answer.how long have you been in telecommunications.
no way can you tell me nortel has better training in
that product than siemens.you can say what you want but no where and i mean no where do see product discontued but at nortel you know so much why tell me why go back to you being stuck on nortel look at at the stock price nortel over siemens .


strmwalker

 

[strmwalker]

GMgerry... forgot lets go apples for apples and i mean apples for apples not apples for oranges hands down siemens will beat nortel price wise product wise.the product has proved that ask the major banks which are heavy acd and voip.this post you can not say names but
you seem to know what you are talking about do a little
research before you put a product down just because it did not work out for you or you take a techs word on a problem
dont slam the product look at your tech..

strmwalker

 

[sinner2]

Hey all: I've been involved with Siemens/IBM/Rolm products for over 20 years and the evolution into server based architecture and the IP solutions have created a large information knowledge base that is much too huge for any field tech to manage. From the early Rolms to IBMs, the software and hardware was pretty much straight forward. It would take maybe a year or two of daily work to become quite proficient. With the Siemens introduction in early 90s up to today, it is becoming much more difficult to become proficient in all the various areas of the software, not to mention the hardware.
That said, it seems every day I try to look for information on fixes, it becomes increasingly more obvious how much I don't know.
To ITSURVIVOR specifically: If you are going to do only MAC work, then it won't be so bad. They have a gui interface (either Assistant or Manager) that is somewhat crippled, but does most things okay. If that's all you're responsible for and the Siemens service dept does the rest, then if the money's good, take it.
p.s. I think lots of what is said of Siemens is accurate in the posts above. I was an employee for 15 years and at the end of my tenure, they would turn away from bidding on annual service contracts of greater than a million. Made us wonder what their business plan was and of course no lower management personnel knew either.
p.s.s We have the HiPath 4000 machine and its a beast!

 

[donb01]

I have been working with Siemens/Rolm since 1993 when I switched to my current Job. I started on a Rolm 8000 - a big orange monster that used single sided 8" floppy disks for its backup. I had some telephony background from doing small Panasonic systems and residential work before I started, and when I began my job I wasn't able to take vacation for the first 90 days - so I was stuck working on Thanksgiving - all alone. I sat down with just a cheat sheet of commands written down by the guy who was doing the MAC back then and taught myself how to run the thing in a day.

In 1996 we installed our first 9006 system and I went off to Minneapolis for a week of training by Norstan on basic MAC. When I bought the system I also bought the full set of EMML programming manuals and the installation manuals, and had impressed the tech with my ability enough the he trusted me with the vendor password for the system. After that point, having all the manuals, I taught myself. When Norstan sent their second tech down to Texas for 3 weeks about 6 months later (Siemens training) he came back and didn't really understand what was going on, so I spent 6 months helping him understand the whole thing - every time he didn't get something he called me first, and every time I needed some service it just happened to get done while he was in town taking care of another customer with a contract. Later on I have also acquired the closely guarded 3 disk set of CDs that has the vast majority of the Siemens/Rolm service and installation manuals on it and have been able to keep it fairly current.

I now own 6 switches running 9006 software in various flavors and also used to have 2 remote shelves as well. I take care of all of it myself and have not spent more than $10,000 on service and repairs in over 10 years. I also have the respect of just about every local tech they have, and a reputation at the service center for knowing my stuff even though I have never had time to go down to Texas for 3 weeks and get certified. Sometimes if I do have to call the service center and ask a question they know it's going to be a good one, and sometimes they even forget to bill me. I can tell you that there was a big difference when going from the very simple command structure of the 8000 to the 9006 software and it's rather involved set of cammands - the other guy refused to even learn it because he hates computers - but as it has aged and progressed I have seen many improvements and changes in the software tools used to administer the systems, and most of them are good, but just like in the days when dBase went from a command-line interface on a computer to a windows-based interface - sometimes I still like to do things the hard way from a system prompt because it is faster.

I also have a Hicom 150 OfficePro that I started with at version 1.0 and upgraded it thru 2.2 and most recently to 3.0. As with the 9006 platform, the software tools have evolved and constantly allow you to do more. Other than a computer-based course I purchased when I bought that system I was able to self teach myself on that as well, although I will admit that that line of systems is a different bird and sometimes it takes a little thought to figure out why things aren't working. Even with that software there are some things that are faster to just do with a phone, or with the "on-line" version of the programming interface. They are also much easier to screw up, as instead of modifying one device or setting at a time you download the whole brain of the system into your PC, modify it, and send it back up. It IS possible to accidentally click on something and hose the whole system if you are not careful - I will admit that.

So while I know nothing of Nortel, other than their name and that they seem to have a good installed base, I wouldn't go about bashing a company just because your tech sucks. Tell them the tech sucks and you want someone else, or work with your tech to get him the help he needs and become his/her friend - you might be surprised at how well it pays off in the end! You need to have enough understanding of your system and what you need to do to ask the right questions of the tech support center as well - I have found may times that simply rephrasing a question to make sure you are both on the same page works wonders.

 

[sonic67]

I worked for Siemens a tech for 5 years 1995-2000 and I considered my self-very proficient on the systems I was trained on. Having said that Siemens systems are more difficult to program then other systems. Siemens TAC and training center is very good but because of their difficult interfaces it is a necessity.

 

[HP4KSME]

I am a Siemens HiPath 4000 certified instructor. I am not going to address anything related to Nortel, because I am not familiar with their products, their training, or their documentation. At Siemens COM, we train our students thoroughly, but we cannot guarantee that all students will return home as experts. No instructor on this planet can guarantee that. Some students come to Irving just to party. Others come to apply themselves, and learn the HiPath 4000. If a student is having difficulty grasping any topic, we work hard to identify the knowledge gap & address it. Our students actually work on the HiPath 4000 system. Per your statement that one week of training via the internet is sufficient - cannot possibly measure up to our training curriculum. If the student that you mentioned returned home and doesn't know how to work on the HiPath 4000, then that student probably did not take advantage of all the resources provided to him/her during the training. We are not a babysitting service. We take training VERY seriously. And since you mentioned an ongoing IPDA problem, as an IPDA expert, failure to resolve this problem is absolutely ridiculous. IPDA works great.

 

[GMgerry]

I went to Irving for training. I don't party so I was 100% there. The instructor was great but the materal was slim and the take home was none. Nortel has every prompt online, Siemens has none. 95% of Nortel documentation is online, Siemens has none. Local Nortel agents will give you a copy of materail (NTPs), Siemens provides nothing even after buying a 650k group of switches we could not get one AMO, Sprint lost the bid and they came back a week after that and provided us the whole libray on CD....Siemens gave us copies of some files on blank CDs a year after cutover.

I have no idea why Siemens is being so relutant on providing documentation. If I had it like Nortel gives feely I would do more. But as the years go by and system gets older why would I work on something we don't know what it will do.

 

[HP4KSME]

Like many other members of this forum, I started my career with ROLM, took the journey thru IBM, and now Siemens. I do not appreciate the Siemens bashing. Most of your negative statements are simply not true. I would love to turn this exchange into something positive - by discussing your HiPath switch problems with you, especially HiPath IP solutions. Not sure how to identify myself, as this forum's rules stated not to provide real names, telephone numbers, email addresses, etc. I am in the Irving Training Center, my initials are JL, so look me up. Each HiPath student is provided a CD/DVD with full documentation, either in HTML or PDF format. In the Hicom days, we would ship a full set of manuals to the customer site with the telecommunications system. This practice was halted because in most cases the manuals just sat in the switchroom forever - unused. Being a self-maintainer of any large, complex telecommunications system is a difficult task. At Siemens, we have vast resources to tap. A self-maintainer is very limited in that department. I admit that when a student completes our HiPath basic training, that student needs OJT to master the switch. Trunking, stations, networking, voicemail, VoIP, switch hardware, diagnostics, installation, upgrades, patching, system parameters, client/server apps, etc - are topics that cannot possibly be mastered in the classroom and lab alone. After attending our core HiPath curriculum, our field engineers typically attend "update" training via Siemens Virtual University (internet). Each Siemens field engineer receives full documentation on CD/DVD quarterly. All Siemens documentation is available to Siemens COM employees online. Self-maintainers can order documentation via the Siemens sales process. I would love to chat more, but I must go refer my students to TAC/BLS and call Germany - NOT!

 

[LeeMcCauslin]

Perhaps I missed a point somewhere but, while many of Nortel's (Global Knowledge, now) classes are 1 week long, they never say you can learn a switch in a week. You must take many classes to get the full training - basic MAC is a week, Database administration (including programming a new switch from the ground up for very basic functionality) is a week - BARS/NARS is a 2 week course by itself and then there are OTM classes and VoIP classes and many others.

So I don't know how that compares to the 4 week Seimens school but I just thought it should be pointed out that Nortel is not "just a week".

And they do have a campus in Richardson, just around the bend from Irving. Not that that has any bearing on this discussion except that maybe Nortel students and Seimens students could meet up for a beer and some fun. Shiner Bock has healing powers.

 

[HP4KSME]

I suspected that to be the case. I would gladly chug a few Shiners with the Nortel crew. We are all in the same boat. Let's just hope that the USA telecom boat is not sinking! It is a difficult market to survive these days.
And just to clarify - our HiPath core training curriculum was reduced to 3 weeks several years ago.
Cheers.

 

[GMgerry]

Well it looks like Siemens can't get anyone to buy the COM side of the business, infact the last bidders what cash to take the company so good luck on that side. I wish no ill will on Siemens and mainly its empolyees.

The last class I took in Irving was Xpressions and we did not get any CD/DVD of docuemntation. In fact when we asked they said "oh your a customer, you need to ask your sales rep" When we did he siad sure....whats your PO number. Thats right a cost. Everything we ask for has a cost. Nothing and I mean nothing is free.

I was told the reason the books stopped being delivered with the switches was two fold. One is to cut cost, second was a sales thing...sell it to them. Good thing a know a Siemens person that passes on the last quarter CDs or we would get nothing and that piss off my buddy too. Per my Siemens sales rep, we are not allowed to buy technical docuemntation such as AMO descriptions, etc. That is for Siemens employees only.

OK JL here is your question. Why can you not print a simple report out of a 4000 that simply displays Station Number, PEN and Name. If there is a way without cutting and pasting two reports, than please pass it on.