About CCIE Voice Study
My name is Alex de Gruiter, and I am a network and telephony consultant based in Melbourne. My background was initially servers, programming and data networking, however in the last few years I've noticed (as we all have!) networks and telephony converging as one. After keenly persuing, albeit unfortunately never achieving (due to a myriad of reasons/excuses!) the CCIE Routing & Switching path, I realized that the market trend was towards Voice, and started investigating the posibility of persuing an alternate route.
I had hesitated on studying for the CCIE on the premise that the material tested was based on CallManager 4.1, and the market indicated a strong preference towards the enhanced features of 5.x, 6.x and now 7.x. Presence, collaboration and all those nice things; I mean, just look at the new Lab 3.0 equipment list:
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express 7.0
- Cisco Unified Contact Center Express 7.0
- Cisco Unified Presence 7.0
- Cisco Unity Connection 7.0
- 2821s and 3825s replacing the 2651XMs, 3725s and Catalyst 6503... Yum! Yum! Yum!
With Cisco finally upgrading the lab to a Linux-based version, and one with all the features of 7.x, it has really lit my fire.
This web page is an open forum for hopeful Voice engineers to blog about their experiences and learnings. I hope that you will be inspired, and can participate and learn along with me. This technology is exciting stuff, and I hope that my enthusiasm comes through in the posts.
