Nortel Certs - they're on the up and I'm in....anybody else?

So the CCDA exam is imminent for me and my training schedule has been agreed for the next 6 months....you're guessing CCNP right? wrong!....

We run a Nortel VOIP and LAN infrastructure with Passport core switches, baystack 460/470 pwr access switches, Nortel CS1000E/T Succession running v4.5 (upgrade to 5.0 imminent also) and Call Pilot for voicemail / desktop faxing, so it makes sense for me to do some certification relevant to the environment I work in (we do have a Cisco WAN infrastructure hence the cisco certs!!).

I just thought I'd start a thread to see how many other folks on here support a Nortel VOIP/LAN environment and for the following reasons;

a) I have never seen a post about Nortel since I joined I don't think (other than my own)
b) with Nortel really developing their certification web site, resources and with the Nortel Academy and learning services being launched, along with Nortel Press publications (similar to Ciscopress) and more exams in development as we speak
c) Discuss Nortel IPT integration announced regarding Microsoft OCS
d) identify people to bounce ideas off
e) General Nortel chit chat

So is anybody else intending on doing Nortel certs now or in the future?

The exams I have in the diary are;

NCTS - Converged IPT Solutions (920-803)
http://app97.nortelnetworks.com/cgi-bin/teds/cs/maintc.jsp?level=6&category=12&subcategory=9&subtype=&trkID=TNTS00010F&crtOID=1035801&stat=A

followed by NCTE - Converged IP Networks
http://app97.nortelnetworks.com/cgi-bin/teds/cs/maintc.jsp?level=6&category=12&subcategory=9&subtype=&trkID=TNTS000111&crtOID=1035800&stat=A

For anyone that is interested in finding out more about Nortel certs here are some more handy links;

Nortel Press - http://www.nortel.com/nortelpress
Nortel Solutions Academy - http://www.nortel.com/prd/academy/index.html
Nortel Learning Services - http://www.nortel.com/ls
Nortel Certification Homepage - http://app97.nortelnetworks.com/cgi-bin/teds/cs/maintc.jsp?level=0&category=12&subcategory=
NCTS - Nortel Certified Technology Specialist (Equivelant to CCNA) - http://app97.nortelnetworks.com/cgi-bin/teds/cs/maintc.jsp?level=2&category=12&subcategory=1&desId=TNTS00000C
Integration with MS OCS Server 2007 - http://www.nortel.com/solutions/unified_communications/collateral/nn123241.pdf

Maybe if there is enough interest the webmaster could authorise having a general Nortel forum?

Even if you're not studying the Nortel certs or support a Nortel environment feel free to post your thoughts guys and gals!!!!

Cheers
Malc

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Comments

AlanJames

We're a complete Cisco shop, but we did have a Nortel voice system, until we migrated to CCM.

If Nortel push certs and training we will defiantly see more of their kit out in the future as it will give the end user the confidence and ability to use their product.

I did a job query for Nortel in Melbourne and 16 job's came up, Cisco was 100 ;p

malcybood

Yeah there's far less out cry for Nortel certified people than Cisco that's for sure. I just figure the fact I'm currently supporting a Nortel platform day in day out and with their current education drive it's probably worth doing the certification to back up my experience, another string to my bowe if you like

We are coming to a cross roads with the Nortel platform we are running, CS1000 Succession v4.5, which will not be supported for that much longer by Nortel 18 m,onths tops I'd say and we'll require either a move to v5.0 or 5.5 which are a completely new beast to 4.5 infrastructure wise or consider changing to a Cisco Platform.

It probably will not be in the budget until 2009 now as we have a WAN migration at the moment as well as a potential Novell - MS migration on the cards, but on the VOIP side of things we need to decide whether we stick with Nortel and re-invest in the upgraded version or switch to a Cisco UC platform.

Out of interest why did you move from Nortel to CCM?

I ask as we have had major issues in the past with Nortel system (mainly due to bad design by original company who put it in 4 years ago) and still do have alot of intermittent issues such as "caller sounds quiet" to external caller intermittently, delayed notifications on call pilot messages being left, the list goes on lol, in addidition to this, we have no kind of PSTN breakout from regional offices such as SRST in the event the call server breaks so we have 24 with a total of about 1200 users in sales, cust care, receptions etc with no voice - again down to initial design.

An example of this was when we upgraded to v4.5 three years ago on December 23rd which completely screwed the whole voice infrastructure up, it still wasn't working properly i.e. hunt groups not configured etc on something like the 7th Jan! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year..........not!

Anyway thanks for the reply!

Malc

Turgon

malcybood wrote:

Yeah there's far less out cry for Nortel certified people than Cisco that's for sure. I just figure the fact I'm currently supporting a Nortel platform day in day out and with their current education drive it's probably worth doing the certification to back up my experience, another string to my bowe if you like

We are coming to a cross roads with the Nortel platform we are running, CS1000 Succession v4.5, which will not be supported for that much longer by Nortel 18 m,onths tops I'd say and we'll require either a move to v5.0 or 5.5 which are a completely new beast to 4.5 infrastructure wise or consider changing to a Cisco Platform.

It probably will not be in the budget until 2009 now as we have a WAN migration at the moment as well as a potential Novell - MS migration on the cards, but on the VOIP side of things we need to decide whether we stick with Nortel and re-invest in the upgraded version or switch to a Cisco UC platform.

Out of interest why did you move from Nortel to CCM?

I ask as we have had major issues in the past with Nortel system (mainly due to bad design by original company who put it in 4 years ago) and still do have alot of intermittent issues such as "caller sounds quiet" to external caller intermittently, delayed notifications on call pilot messages being left, the list goes on lol, in addidition to this, we have no kind of PSTN breakout from regional offices such as SRST in the event the call server breaks so we have 24 with a total of about 1200 users in sales, cust care, receptions etc with no voice - again down to initial design.

An example of this was when we upgraded to v4.5 three years ago on December 23rd which completely screwed the whole voice infrastructure up, it still wasn't working properly i.e. hunt groups not configured etc on something like the 7th Jan! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year..........not!

Anyway thanks for the reply!

Malc

I always wanted to do them, but I think self study resources are scarce are they not?

malcybood

Turgon,

Resources have been scarce until now, there is still not a great deal, only web based, CBT, Instructor lead courses from a company called Global knowledge (Nortel Partner), publications wise Nortel Press has recently been launched. The only titles currently available are VOIP Technologies and BCM 50 Installation and Config www.nortelpress.com

Nortel Press Guides - In Development
Unified Communications Solutions: A Practical Business and Technology Approach
Written with business managers, consultants, and IT professionals in mind, Unified Communications Solutions provides a thorough foundation of Unified Communications, how it can solve business communications challenges, and how best to approach and implement Unified Communications enablement within an organization. This self-study guide also helps individuals prepare for the Nortel Certified Technology Specialist (NCTS) certification exam, Nortel Unified Communications Technology (920-807). July 2008

Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch
Designed for pre- and post- sales support of the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) product line, this guide will provide you with the requirements for properly designing and implementing a new system. This guide also helps individuals prepare for the Nortel Certified Support Specialist (NCSS) certification exams, Nortel Converged Campus ERS Installation and Configuration (920-221) and Nortel Converged Campus ERS Solution (920-220). July 2008

Data Networking Technology
Designed to provide you with an understanding of Ethernet, Ethernet switched networks, IP networking, the IP Suite and routing; this self-study guide will help prepare you for the Nortel Certified Technology Specialist (NCTS) certification exam, Nortel Data Networking Technology (920-805). August 2008

Real-Time Networking
Convergence of real-time applications with data networking is new ground for many people. This guide addresses the technology, performance requirements, and best practices for engineering and implementing real-time networks. This self-study guide will help prepare you for the Nortel Certified Technology Specialist (NCTS) certification exam, Real-Time Networking (920-180). 4th Quarter 2008

My colleague attended a Nortel user group in London 2 weeks ago and a guy from the training dept at Nortel done a presentation on all of the upcoming training stuff etc, it has list prices for the upcoming nortel press books, info about their academy and other stuff they're doing in the training side of things etc if you want it let me know and I'll email it to you.

I just received my copy of "VOIP Technologies" yesterday, which I've not had a real look at yet just a skim. It is good for you to pass the 920-803 and 920-804 exams NCTS - Converged IPT and NCTE respectively.

$75 face value, plus VAT plus $24 shipping to UK so ended up setting me back about £60 or so. The book has 336 pages of topics to learn and another 200 odds of appendixes and answers to end of chapter exam q's.

You get a CD with a practice exam and some additional resources too which is enough to pass the exams when combined with the book according to the "about this book" section at the front.

There is no specific author, described as being contributed to by several people (nortel design guides from the web site no doubt)

I'll give a better review when I've started reading it properly in a few weeks.

Turgon

malcybood wrote:

Turgon,

Resources have been scarce until now, there is still not a great deal, only web based, CBT, Instructor lead courses from a company called Global knowledge (Nortel Partner), publications wise Nortel Press has recently been launched. The only titles currently available are VOIP Technologies and BCM 50 Installation and Config www.nortelpress.com

Nortel Press Guides - In Development
Unified Communications Solutions: A Practical Business and Technology Approach
Written with business managers, consultants, and IT professionals in mind, Unified Communications Solutions provides a thorough foundation of Unified Communications, how it can solve business communications challenges, and how best to approach and implement Unified Communications enablement within an organization. This self-study guide also helps individuals prepare for the Nortel Certified Technology Specialist (NCTS) certification exam, Nortel Unified Communications Technology (920-807). July 2008

Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch
Designed for pre- and post- sales support of the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) product line, this guide will provide you with the requirements for properly designing and implementing a new system. This guide also helps individuals prepare for the Nortel Certified Support Specialist (NCSS) certification exams, Nortel Converged Campus ERS Installation and Configuration (920-221) and Nortel Converged Campus ERS Solution (920-220). July 2008

Data Networking Technology
Designed to provide you with an understanding of Ethernet, Ethernet switched networks, IP networking, the IP Suite and routing; this self-study guide will help prepare you for the Nortel Certified Technology Specialist (NCTS) certification exam, Nortel Data Networking Technology (920-805). August 2008

Real-Time Networking
Convergence of real-time applications with data networking is new ground for many people. This guide addresses the technology, performance requirements, and best practices for engineering and implementing real-time networks. This self-study guide will help prepare you for the Nortel Certified Technology Specialist (NCTS) certification exam, Real-Time Networking (920-180). 4th Quarter 2008

My colleague attended a Nortel user group in London 2 weeks ago and a guy from the training dept at Nortel done a presentation on all of the upcoming training stuff etc, it has list prices for the upcoming nortel press books, info about their academy and other stuff they're doing in the training side of things etc if you want it let me know and I'll email it to you.

I just received my copy of "VOIP Technologies" yesterday, which I've not had a real look at yet just a skim. It is good for you to pass the 920-803 and 920-804 exams NCTS - Converged IPT and NCTE respectively.

$75 face value, plus VAT plus $24 shipping to UK so ended up setting me back about £60 or so. The book has 336 pages of topics to learn and another 200 odds of appendixes and answers to end of chapter exam q's.

You get a CD with a practice exam and some additional resources too which is enough to pass the exams when combined with the book according to the "about this book" section at the front.

There is no specific author, described as being contributed to by several people (nortel design guides from the web site no doubt)

I'll give a better review when I've started reading it properly in a few weeks.

Cool. Let me know how you get on. I may do Nortel next year.

srcurrie

My infrastructure is Nortel. Lots of 470's, 5510's and a 5530 as core. I am interested in certifying for Nortel stuff myself. I will check out your links.

mysql1988

When talking voip anything less than cisco might get you in some trouble.

Cisco rules the VOIp market. If you study Nortel and lose your job, your cert might be worthless. Go with cisco. You are always guranteed a voip job even if you quit your job

astorrs

mysql1988 wrote:

Cisco rules the VOIp market. If you study Nortel and lose your job, your cert might be worthless. Go with cisco. You are always guranteed a voip job even if you quit your job

To put it simply - no they don't.

Avaya is still the leader in the VOIP market and Cisco only overtook Nortel for second spot at the end of last year. While I agree that they are seeing the most growth (they were 5th in 2006) the others have maintained their sales from a year ago and aren't really being knocked out by Cisco - the market is just growing substantially (up 26% from a year ago). Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent round out the top 5 vendors (and the 5 of them account for 3/4 of the total VOIP market).

Anyone with skills in Avaya, Cisco or Nortel is going to have no trouble finding work these days.

malcybood

mysql1988 wrote:

When talking voip anything less than cisco might get you in some trouble.

Cisco rules the VOIp market. If you study Nortel and lose your job, your cert might be worthless. Go with cisco. You are always guranteed a voip job even if you quit your job

Sounds like you're Cisco guy through and through.......

Cisco doesn't rule the VOIP market at all, it does have a large share, but astorrs summed it up pretty well. The hotels, retail & healthcare sectors in the UK are pretty evenly mixed between Cisco, Nortel & Avaya. I know of a bank that just replaced all of their call centre's in the UK Nortel system for yes you guessed it...........Avaya!

Just because you study for Nortel certs doesn't mean you completely forget abour Cisco. it's most likely that in a Nortel VOIP environment you still have a cisco WAN infrastructure for core and edge WAN routers, just you have Nortel passport core and baystack access LAN switches as opposed to catalyst LAN switches, although Nortel VOIP can also work with Cisco switches.

.....So you're a solutions architect working for a preferred managed services company, where a company approaches you wanting to migrate 500 locations of 100 voip users at each location from nortel VOIP to cisco CCM. How do you do this with no knowledge of Nortel in a phased migration and get the call manager to "talk" to the nortel succession? erm call in a nortel consultant? or say sorry we can't do that and lose out on a couple of hundred grand £££

Having both skill sets puts you into a niche market and makes you potentially head-hunting material if you're good. Yes full blown Nortel jobs are not as common as Cisco, however the technology is widely adopted (certainly in the UK where I live) and is growing in popularity especially with Succession 5.0/5.5 now on the roadmap removing the hybrid IP/traditional PBX utilised in 4.5 and using a purely IP based solution. Having an appreciation of more than Cisco doesn't do you any harm.

"Finding well rounded, skilled engineers in both Nortel & Cisco are extremely hard to come by" - our lead Nortel engineer, who is also CCNP/CCVP with about 15 years exp in comms.

We're a user base of around 2000 users and had Nortel VOIP since 2003 and never really seriously considered changing it and probably will not in the near future, hence why I'm doing the certs. If I lost my job I's still have CCNA, CCDA to fall back on and after I've got a few Nortel certs it's onto CCNP.

networker050184

I do VoIP integrations and I see a lot more Avaya than Cisco out there. Most people are migrating from a PBX to VoIP environment (or adding VoIP extensions) and choose to go with their usual voice vendor.

It usually ends up being the telecom guys running the VoIP equipment and not the network guys and they are a lot more comfortable working with a vendor like Avaya they are already comfortable with rather than Cisco. I have seen a lot more Avaya SES out there for SIP integration rather than Callmanager.

That being said, I'd still go with the CCVP as my first choice for a VoIP cert as they do have a large share of the market and will probably keep growing as networks continue to converge into one for all applications.

filkenjitsu

I work for a CDMA Cellular Telecommunications Carrier in their NOC. I have always been interested in becoming Nortel Certified (since 2004) and the only complaint I have is that they do not have certifications for their Cellular stuff (BSMs, CDPD, MTX, CSVS, etc).

There would be no point in certifying for some LAN switch for me as I will never work with that stuff.

We use Lucent, Nortel, Glenaire/Movius, and Cisco gear on our network.

Our data network is all cisco routers with a few Juniper here and there. I am pursuing my CCNA and CCNP for more opportunity in the company, but I wish Nortel had a CDMA or GSM certification (They both use the same commands and structure with Nortel). THAT WOULD BE AWESOME AND I WOULD TAKE IT IN A SECOND.

Oh well....

malcybood

filkenjitsu wrote:

I work for a CDMA Cellular Telecommunications Carrier in their NOC. I have always been interested in becoming Nortel Certified (since 2004) and the only complaint I have is that they do not have certifications for their Cellular stuff (BSMs, CDPD, MTX, CSVS, etc).

There would be no point in certifying for some LAN switch for me as I will never work with that stuff.

We use Lucent, Nortel, Glenaire/Movius, and Cisco gear on our network.

Our data network is all cisco routers with a few Juniper here and there. I am pursuing my CCNA and CCNP for more opportunity in the company, but I wish Nortel had a CDMA or GSM certification (They both use the same commands and structure with Nortel). THAT WOULD BE AWESOME AND I WOULD TAKE IT IN A SECOND.

Oh well....

Yeah too bad man, I think the closest thing you'll get to your line of work is optical networking certs for the Metro Ethernet switches etc.

Nortel appear to be concentrating on Specific product sets in the convergence space, Multi layer switches and unified comms etc, but you never know in the future. The Nortel certification is a fairly new venture relatively speaking so I'd keep my eyes peeled.

Good luck with the CCNP anyway

Turgon

malcybood wrote:

mysql1988 wrote:

When talking voip anything less than cisco might get you in some trouble.

Cisco rules the VOIp market. If you study Nortel and lose your job, your cert might be worthless. Go with cisco. You are always guranteed a voip job even if you quit your job

Sounds like you're Cisco guy through and through.......

Cisco doesn't rule the VOIP market at all, it does have a large share, but astorrs summed it up pretty well. The hotels, retail & healthcare sectors in the UK are pretty evenly mixed between Cisco, Nortel & Avaya. I know of a bank that just replaced all of their call centre's in the UK Nortel system for yes you guessed it...........Avaya!

Just because you study for Nortel certs doesn't mean you completely forget abour Cisco. it's most likely that in a Nortel VOIP environment you still have a cisco WAN infrastructure for core and edge WAN routers, just you have Nortel passport core and baystack access LAN switches as opposed to catalyst LAN switches, although Nortel VOIP can also work with Cisco switches.

.....So you're a solutions architect working for a preferred managed services company, where a company approaches you wanting to migrate 500 locations of 100 voip users at each location from nortel VOIP to cisco CCM. How do you do this with no knowledge of Nortel in a phased migration and get the call manager to "talk" to the nortel succession? erm call in a nortel consultant? or say sorry we can't do that and lose out on a couple of hundred grand £££

Having both skill sets puts you into a niche market and makes you potentially head-hunting material if you're good. Yes full blown Nortel jobs are not as common as Cisco, however the technology is widely adopted (certainly in the UK where I live) and is growing in popularity especially with Succession 5.0/5.5 now on the roadmap removing the hybrid IP/traditional PBX utilised in 4.5 and using a purely IP based solution. Having an appreciation of more than Cisco doesn't do you any harm.

"Finding well rounded, skilled engineers in both Nortel & Cisco are extremely hard to come by" - our lead Nortel engineer, who is also CCNP/CCVP with about 15 years exp in comms.

We're a user base of around 2000 users and had Nortel VOIP since 2003 and never really seriously considered changing it and probably will not in the near future, hence why I'm doing the certs. If I lost my job I's still have CCNA, CCDA to fall back on and after I've got a few Nortel certs it's onto CCNP.

Good points. Not everything is a greenfield site installation. Migration and integration work is out there and understanding more than one platform will pay dividends. I found this to be true when I did MCSE and CNE studies. I recall working on a Nortel PBX years ago. It's true that there was a dash from Nortel certs to Cisco for the LAN switching side of things but the voice business of Nortel is still doing pretty well.