Probably moving into Cisco

[ECartman]

Hi Guys,

I am a Nortel/Avaya guy coming from BCM and IPOffice.

Our company is being tapped up by Cisco at the moment. They are trying to push the UC500 series product on us.

I am just looking for some thoughts from you guys that work with Cisco, day in day out. What are your feelings on it ?

I'd especially like to hear from someone that has the same background as myself that moved into Cisco and can compare for me.

Thanks in advance

 

[pbxn]

Actually I found the transistion from working soley on Nortel products to Cisco not as bad as I thought. Cisco has thought of redundancy (cluster setup) and failover is pretty quick as the phones not only send/recieve keep alives from the site their registered to, but they also send keep alive messages down the cluster route. Essentially that means if your local Sub takes a dive, the Sub next in line takes over and the end user sees minimal impact. You can do some cool stuff with the CUCM as well, such as having your company logo as the background image on your phones, custom ringtones, phone directories, ties back to your AD for corporate directories etc.. You can do alot through the GUI interface (most day to day stuff), as well as get exposure to routers/switches, which in this day in employment time isn't a bad thing to learn. Once you catch on to Cisco's terminology of routing (ex Nortel's cdp, rdp, dmi, etc) its a breeze. Just like Nortel, alot of backend programming is reverse engineered, and CUCM is pretty good at telling you that you can't program X without first configuring Z.
If you're employer is worth their weight in salt you should get some training as well. Its not uncommon to have a CCNA while studying for CCVP, which down the road should equal some extra scratch .
If you're going to use wireless sets, like the 7925g, make sure you pipe in your two cents and ask how good your AP's and wireless network is. Specifically if the AP's have A radio's on them or not, and proper coverage. I'm doing more with my CUCM's now in just a years time than I can remember doing when I first learned Nortel, so the transisiton isn't too bad. Hope this helps a bit

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Training is mandatory, but I'd suggest getting your feet wet and deferring the training for 6 months or so, until you've figured some of it out on your own. For System Administration training the Global Knowledge courses are pretty good, although a little compressed. Probably start with ACUCW1 (as the ice-breaker) then take CIPT1 then either CIPT2 or CVOICE. A good prior Cisco background would be especially helpful, particularly when you get into CVOICE. Hopefully you have someone to help mentor you. Don't expect to pick it up with only one course. You're about to discover the most granular programming interface you could possibly imagine.

Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[ECartman]

Thanks Guys.

Training is top of my agenda, before we dive into this.

What's your opinion on their contact center stuff ?

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

That's two more training classes... (UCCXD minimum, then UCCXA for the advanced course)


Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member