[asterisk-biz] Digium certified asterisk professional or CCIE VOIP

[Alex Balashov]

Also, keep in mind that unless you're doing carrier-level stuff or 
combining your VoIP offering with a strong network engineering vertical, 
the kinds of problems CCIEs (the ones that don't suck) solve are in an 
entirely different problem domain.

It's sort of like an MCSE might be incidentally helpful to a ColdFusion 
programmer working on the IIS stack, but the relatinoship is orthogonal 
at best.

Alex Balashov wrote:

> No doubt, I'm going to start a controversy here without wishing to, 
> especially since Digium does have a vested interest in pushing dCAP, but...
> 
> 1) As is generally the case with certifications, they are mostly useless 
> and often actually an indicator of mediocrity.  All the best people I 
> know - the rock stars of IP network engineering and/or anything else - 
> don't have time or inclination to bother getting these.
> 
> The folks that do generally take the rote preparation required to get 
> them too seriously and as a result evidence a certain lack of creativity.
> 
> You don't want someone who can answer some trivia questions for some 
> standardised test.  You want someone who understands the technology at a 
> fundamental - dare I say, ontological - level.  Someone who may not know 
> the exact syntax to fix a weird DTMF problem or a funny bug *right* 
> *this* *very* *minute* and can write it for you on a whiteboard faster 
> than you can read it, but knows exactly how to Google the answer in 15 
> seconds but still understand its implications at a conceptual level.
> 
> Besides, if you put that kind of emphasis on concrete skills, you'll 
> find that people who tend to be the best at having them tend to be the 
> worst at learning new ones and adapting.  You want someone who can teach 
> themselves the equivalent of being a dCAP, not someone who has a dCAP.
> 
> Of course, I wouldn't hold it against a smart Asterisk guy if he was 
> smart and also happened to bother to get dCAPified, but the important 
> thing is that the converse is not true.  The fact that someone *is* a 
> dCAP has little to no imaginable correlation to their actual usefulness, 
> insight, or technical brilliance.  At least, in my experience.
> 
> While I've run into a few "enterprise" companies that seem aware of dCAP 
> and use it as some sort of differentiator, they fall into that category 
> of big, lumbering dinosaurs trying to think in very outdated ways about 
> lowering their risk of running into incompetent vendors.
> 
> Fortunately, from a marketing perspective, the liability of not having 
> staff with that sort of certification can be overcome with some decent 
> marketing and pointing to other kinds of endorsements, partners, 
> testimonials, etc.
> 
> 2) A CCIE is way, way overblown for supporting Asterisk.  I've always 
> expressed the opinion that strong IP network engineering skills are very 
> necessary to make Asterisk robust in an environment of nontrivial 
> complexity, but that's way too much.
> 
> A CCIE can take half a decade and more than ten thousand dollars to get, 
> and the marginal benefit from having one as it relates to putting your 
> clients at ease with your Asterisk/VoIP work will be virtually zero.
> 
> Also, as with point #1, a surprising number of CCIEs suck pretty 
> astoundingly given the prestige and reputation associated with that 
> level of certification.  In that case, you don't want a mediocre CCIE.
> 
> And a non-mediocre CCIE is way overblown for what you're looking for.
> 
> In short, don't rely on certifications--for what it sounds like you're 
> wanting to do, they're basically irrelevant.  In all likelihood, the 
> sorts of customers you most want won't be relying on them either.  If 
> they can't recognise solid expertise and dependability in a vendor 
> without keywords and titles, they have a decisionmaking heuristic that's 
> going to give you other business-level problems as well.
> 
> -- Alex
> 
> George Kumar wrote:
> 
>> Folks,
>>
>> I would like to start a VOIP consultancy services in my area (Silicon
>> Valley), and considering one of these certifications.
>> I am familiar with asterisk and have played with it at home by setting
>> up a linux based PBX for interconnection 2 SIP phones,
>> but have no professional certifications to put my customers at ease
>> when trying to hire me to to fix/install their VOIP systems.
>>
>> Any suggestions ?
>>
>> thanks.
>> George...
>>
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-- 
Alex Balashov
Evariste Systems
Web    : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel    : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671
Mobile : (+1) (678) 237-1775