Skills shortage puts brakes on "convergence".(Global)

While IP vendors are keen to extol the business benefits of a 'converged' voice and data network to operators and end-users, those benefits will only be realised if there is a sufficient number of suitably qualified engineers to enable the migration from 'legacy' networks.

According to Alan Cobb, director general of the TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association), this is far from being the case. "It is well recognised that the rapid development of the convergence market--initially between voice and data communication products and now between communications and IT solutions--has created a skills gap across the entire channel to market," he says. "The global development of the convergence market is being hampered by this shortfall, which is most keenly felt within the reseller community."

The TIA, a non-profit trade organisation that supports 'channels to market' of enterprise communications products and services, identifies the reseller community as being most vulnerable to an IP skills shortage due to vendors encouraging 'silos of expertise'. If a reseller becomes fully acquainted with one vendor's equipment, that will not necessarily be enough to meet all the demands of the enterprise user.

"With end-user customers seeking comprehensive end-to-end solutions, resellers are now required to be experts in multiple technologies from different OEMs [original equipment manufacturers]," continues Cobb. "Resellers need to be able to provide customers with an informed view of convergent technology and have the knowledge to integrate solutions from different vendors."

To try and address this problem, the TIA launched the 'TIA Convergence Technologies Professional' (CTP) qualification as far back as 2002. It is designed to provide 'industry standard' converged communications qualifications that are vendor-neutral and give resellers the necessary technical information to deliver convergent solutions across a broad range of products.

The emergence of 'generic' training that can enable resellers to work with kit from multiple vendors is welcomed by Andrew Stevens, managing director of CableNet, a TIA-accredited training provider of infrastructure solutions based in the UK. "For the first time in my twenty years in the industry there has been a shift in power from the manufacturers to the enterprises who are demanding what they want," he says. "Resellers have to be flexible enough to ...