What are IT Geeks doin in the telcom business 25

[firefoxfire]

I am wondering what everyones experience is with these IT geeks that think they belong in the telcom business simply because they can plug an IP or VOIP telephone set into a router.

I keep hearing complaints from people all over the place that they are promised the world from these guys and they get nothing but excuses from lost and poor connections to system and networks that are continually off line.

I hear that the features and services are never correctly configured and that training is very poor or the customer is just given a manual or directed to a web site for help.

These guys are just not telephone people and have no idea how proper cable management works let alone the proper needs of the customers.

They introduce and install equipment that is overwhelming to the customers and their employees with to many features and complicated menus to work with etc.. They are trying to force a telephone to do the work of a computer or Laptop.

And the attitude I get from these guys is usually paranoid, unreliable and uncooperative to say the least.

What is your experience with these guys getting into the telcom business?

Thanks

 

[Sympology]

I guess I'm fortunate I've worked in pretty much all areas, so I guess I have a less blinkered view of the work, than both Phone and IT techs.
I started in Desktop support, moved into networking, got pulled over to phones to work on 61's and 81's with Symposium, but these slowly got replaced by softswitches, which were buggy and unreliable, but gave 100's of more features. Overtime the software got better, the hardware got better and now monitoring is rocksolid, so if some so much as farts near the server we know about it.

Please guys, don't sit there grumbling and moaning about the good old days, get some more skills. Don't leave the "network" to the network guys, learn some basics and you can fix most of the issues yourselves and fight your bloody corner.
Better to be the Phone tech guy than the miserable, grumpy old guy in the corner who gets in the way.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[Delster]

I started off as programmer on an Ericsson Md110 network. Moved from there into doing the hardware side as well.

Since then i've gradually added the data side of IT to my voice skills and i'm now an IT manager.

So i'm managing the network and the PBX while rolling out a new IP system as well.

Lets face it data and voice are converging and you'll eventually not have any specialist voice techs as such. It'll all be done by "the IT guy"

What has to happen is for Voice and Data guys to learn each others skill sets

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
umm,it IS supposed to do that, right??

 

[IPGuru]

Simpology

to answer your question IP has its place but it is not a golden bullet

as in everything it is a case of use the correct tool for the correct job.

I hate having a customer moaning to me about the S**t phone system crashing again when the cause is invariably something on their network (either poor configuration or user generated).

a number of well none phrases always spring to mind:
Eggs in baskets & Jack of all trades being the polite ones

I do not Have A.D.D. im just easily, Hey look a Squirrel!

 

[SYQUEST]

Someone has to put in the infrastructure... It doesn't wire itself!

....JIM....

 

[firefoxfire]

The point I am making is that even though the IT and telcom worlds may be merging, the people, installers, trainers and support staff that the customers have to deal with have vastly different personalities in my opinion.

IT people and just not a good fit for the customer when it comes to installation, support and maintenance of the equipment. As far as training they just do not seem to have the "personality" and patience to train the customers and their staff.

Most IT people I know just spread themselves out to thin with to many jobs and not enough organizational skills. They seem to just want to sit behind a computer and do stuff with the systems they install and not want to get into the trenches along with the customer.

I don't believe they realize how important it is to have a goal of zero down time for the telephone systems they install. They have little concern from what I have seen and heard about just rebooting a system in the middle of a busy work day causing havoc with the customers business. And so on.

I am from the old school of telephone system thinking... the telephone system should be Bell System / AT&T reliable and work all the time and a properly installed and maintained system with good customer training and education should be the order of the day. That combination equals a reliable communications system and happy customers with little if no complaints.

That is what I call satisfaction and a sense of good honest workmanship and something for one to be proud of at the end of the day.

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

What I don't understand is why people aren't being "green" and updating via upgrades their outdated Nortel Option Switches to the Avaya CS1000M which allows you to fully upgrade to VOIP platform.

Companies upon companies are throwing away Meridian switches as though they contain radioactive isotopes, when in reality these Meridian switches can be upgraded to the latest Communication Server platforms which are fully SIP/VOIP compatible. I've seen one local hospital in the Chicago area upgrade an old SL-1 first generation 1976 switch through the years to an Option 81 and now to a fully VOIP capable CS1000, ALL WITHOUT THROWING AWAY THE EXISTING INVESTMENT.

Some IT guy comes in and says Cisco is WAY better and everyone drops their pants and says, YES SIR HAVE MY I HAVE ANOTHER CISCO DEPLOYMENT! and all of the investment in the Nortel equipment is thrown in the trash. Personally, I'd much rather have an 1140E on my desk than a bland Cisco 7960.

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

Another example:

Large Fortune 50 company I work for.....

Largely Nortel based since 1976 with the first SL-1 system upgraded to an Option 81C with Meridian Mail in 1990.

Come 2004, Cisco enters the scene and injects their insulin shot of "Throw your Nortel stuff away and come with us to the land of Bread and Telep-HONEY"

Year 2011: Meridian equipment that hasn't been upgraded to Cisco works 365 days a year with no trouble and no outages.

Cisco 2011: At least 5-10 failures a year which occasionally require new servers, reboots, and loss of calls.

Thanks Cisco, YES your product is Much better than any legacy Nortel product....

NOT!

 

[trvlr1]

The big mistake Nortel made was to not go out and publicise what they had. About 8-10 years ago, if not longer, Cisco put everything in to going out and SELLING their wares, Nortel sat back on it's haunches and watched as their almost insurmountable position at the top of the telecom pile eroded away, and continues to do so. Their lack of funding to R&D and sales drives definitely "did them in"!
Add to that the fact that the sales were invariably to Data people who had climbed the ladder to managership, and soon there was no where to turn. Traditional Telecom techs, who got no budget to upgrade year after year, because the phone system outright performed and never went wrong (if it ain't broke, don't fix it ...)were then left in the cold when these managers were offered something they could put in place and potentially understand how it worked.
So now we have a single point of failure, get used to it, it's here to stay.

 

[pbxn]

If given a choice give me an option switch anyday. Uptime numbers alone far outway "code" upgrades on the cisco (network) side. With that said, each has their place, and if properly planned and engineered, both can work in tech harmony if you will, and you can have a mix of both tradional TDM and the fancy IP wares. Initially years ago, I was completely resistant to change, and remember way back when, I would be touting what the hell does Cisco know about phones. Well as the years went on, and Cisco and the like got their game together, I grew to accept and position myself to support both systems. Which puts me in more desirable hiring position, should I choose to look elsewhere for work. Having true Telecom knowledge and background is key to success working on either or both systems. Network and IT guys alike know their side of things (router/switch config's, vlan's, server OS etc) but lack the knowledge nor do they typically want the knowledge of what it takes to make number X route to site A and terminate on number Z, that's where us, the telecom folk come into play. Sure various vendor salesmen are pounding on the door selling their trinket of the day, but you still need us "dumb phone guys/gals" to make it all work.

 

[zktk01]

I work on both Cisco and Nortel/Avaya systems, have certifications in both as well. I agree both have their strong points, but
I do see people trying to use Cisco or VOIP systems in general for things they should not be used for. 1 example a new hospital in our town went all VOIP, we even had meetings with them to discourage them from using VOIP with Cisco ATA's for elevator phone lines. I really do not understand how the cost of the equipment to do that can out weigh the cost of installing a pots line (no worries about UPSs' and hardware failures). They still went with VOIP elevator phone lines.

I started out as an IT guy, but got trained as a telephony guy. I have been installing CPE for several years now and have had to learn alot under the gun (outages). I have to say my favorite systems are for small business the NORSTAR systems for reliability.

In Hospitals the Nortel Option Switch can't be beat because of the Analog capabilities.

Cisco is nice but the need for all the Analog can be a cumbersome solution.

As far as IP systems CISCO is far superior in my opinion to any Nortel/Avaya product.
in terms of quality and tech support.

Example we have many of the Nortel BCM/SRG's in our areas it is a challenging job just to send someone to replace a phone if it happens to fail which occurs alot on 1120 and 1140 models.
Users must login to the SRG deregister. go to the phone enter the primary registration IP S1.
Then allow it to connect to that system in local mode then go login to the CS1000 prt dnb so they can get the TN to redirect the phone to the main CS1000. Don't get me started on the firmware loop issues.

On Cisco you go to Call manager build a new phone with the Mac address plug it in and it works. CISCO SRST works much better than
Nortel's survivable solution.

I have to say my favorite systems are the old digital systems, and I think the best use for VOIP is trunking systems together across a WAN. In my opinion the digital phones just last longer than these new IP phones.

Unfortunately, all of our new system installs are IP based.
which doesn't make sense to me in alot of small business where they don't have a good network infrastructure.
It does keep me busy though learning all these quirks on these systems.

Thank god for tek-tips this forum has helped me with several issues!

 

[stsguy]

i have been tip and ringing for 35 years. the 4 biggest problems i have with IT guys are #1- they don't have problems, they have issues. #2- they do not believe in wire management. #3- an IT guy will do it his or her way, there are no standards to their work.#4- low or no troubleshooting skills. they can see the forest but they can't see the tree. don't get me wrong, i think IT folks are very smart people.they have helped me and hurt me.

WORK SMART NOT HARD

 

[firefoxfire]

Stsguy, my feelings exactly you have put it into a nut shell. Thus the questions once again:

"What are IT Geeks doin in the telcom business"?

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

The comments above are totally evident in a large BIG 10's School's telecom room I visited recently. The CS2100 and associated cabinets including SIP and VOIP related telephony servers all were wired clean, colored coordinated, and perfectly. Then the telecom guy walked me over to where the IT end of the room was with all the Cisco servers.....a mess of knots and rainbow of colors of CAT5 cable running everywhere and anywhere....a lot of the IT guys just don't care and they just all wish the Nortel equipment could be converted to Cisco so they could get their hands on it. That is what is happening at my current company. A perfectly upgradable Option 81 switch being thrown away for a Cisco system. WASTE! So much for being "green" these days.

 

[Sympology]

I'll point out the advantages of VoIP and "IT Geeks" have over Telecoms Geeks (I'm both!).

1. Large office moves, pah 2 of us can relocate and enitire office of 50 odd people in a afternoon, no switch preprogramming, now pain in the **** wiring. Just literally plug and go.
2. Small offcie moves, just tell them to unplug the phone and swap it over.
3. New builds. We just set up 263 new users on a system in 30 minutes! Most of that was typing in the MAC addresses of the phone into a CSV file.
4. New starters. Copy > Paste, change 4 fields. Punch in tftp address into phone. Stick in post.

When we were all legacy kit, we had 3 staff plus 2x maintainers for remote equipment and we struggled to keep up to with demand, call outs often taking 2 - 3 weeks to complete.
No we have 30% the more employees in the company, 2 menbers in the team and the maintains only look after what little legacy stuff we still have.

However all that said, I still say if we could get the uptime of an 81, then I'd be 100% happy with the hardware. That said, I took great pleasure in cutting several hundred pair the other week when we had to gut out part of our server room and patching.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[Mamoose]

Symp, uptime of 81, Does that men 81%?
As a hospital with 2000+ phones (3 main campuses) and only one telephone man I can assure you that 81% won't cut the mustard around here. Last year I moved 2 departments and about 150 digital phones plus their faxes to a new building and we didn't miss a call. Granted, I had a few weeks to run new cabling in but we would have had to do that in any case. I also have responsibility for adding data lines and I am slowly reworking our infrastructure to upgrade from cat5 to cat6 on our data lines, as well as changing out 66 blocks to 110 blocks on our voice lines to eliminate a messy long jumper situation in some closets.
I am very much eager to put in our first Voip and SIP phones and will probably do that soon to give us some flexibility. I'm busy as the dickens but I usually give same day service on 90% of the trouble or adds moves and changes. I love my job and am tickled to have one and at 65 I'm not looking for some young fella to tell me I'm doing things wrong.
Been a fool with my money and I will work till I die and I don't regret a thing. lol

 

[trvlr1]

That would be an Option 81 ... not 81%. Most Nortel Option PBX (and other TDM manufacturers too) have an up time measured in the 99.999% range. Our Option 81 has only been down once to move it and twice to upgrade it in 12 years and it was not really down very long those 2 times.

 

[firefoxfire]

Sympology I am glad to hear you are that organized and are that concerned about your network. However MOST IT guys have absolutely zero interest in organization and have the personality of prima donnas who take customers hostage and bill them for services not provided. They are NOT by any means Telco folks.

 

[Fixin]

My biggest beef with IT people is when a cat 5 wire needs to be run down the hall and fished into a wall and terminated on each end, they ask the customer to call old reliable phone guy to come and do it.

 

[crumthwacket]

But that should be a good thing, right?

 

[Dexman]

But that should be a good thing, right?

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