""Henry D."" wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > Since we're just throwing out our thoughts here... > > I tend to disagree, following your logic, if the IP network > becomes such a commodity, I think this would just create more > jobs for people like us, I mean R/S guys.
Hardly. The total jobs in a commoditized world would be much less. That's not to say there will be zero jobs, just less. Again, consider the case of electric power. Or water. How many companies, unless they're huge, have an electrician or a plumber on staff? OK, every once in awhile the company's toilet will back up and you gotta bring somebody in. But for the most part, electricity and water just work. You plug something in a wall socket and it works. You flush the toilet and it works. You certainly don't need to keep somebody on staff to take care of electricity and water, unless maybe you're really really big and you can amortize the guy's salary over lots and lots of facilities. Net effect - less demand for R/S skills. Consider the new initiatives that Cisco is trying to retrench themselves into the service-provider environment (again). Things like NSF, GRIP, and things like that to increase reliability of gear. Hey, that's real good for Cisco, but that ultimately means that as IP networks become more reliable, they just fade into the background and become a commodity, just like electricity. Let's be perfectly honest. A network that is super-reliable and super-redundant is a network that doesn't really need you around to babysit it. Ok, they might need to bring in a consultant whenever they want to make changes. But again, the net effect is less overall R/S jobs. >You seem to think that once the IP > network > is used for the services such as Voice, the Voice people > will have taken the jobs. Either the existing voice people or other people who add VoX to their skillset. >This may be so to some degree. But from the > last few years of my experience, I doubt there will be a data network > acting as reliably as PSTN any time soon - as you mention about > broadband. Naturally not anytime soon. But the long-term trend is clear. IP networks will become more and more reliable, which ultimately means that they will fade more and more into the background. >For this reason, I think R/S folks with few extra skills > will still be in demand for the telcos, someone has to keep on making > this thing work, fixing, upgrading, estimating, reporting, understanding > data networks, etc. Again, I never said there will be zero demand. But there will be less. Right now, R/S skill demand is unusually heightened because the fact is that IP networks are still pretty flaky, and so you need a bunch of guys around just to keep the darn thing up. The less flaky it is, the less people you need to babysit it. > > I agree that VOIP on the Net will not change how the telcos work. > It's one thing to have a customer use the Internet for placing calls, > the customer's expectations are already set low, knowing the Quality will > not be as great. But when you pick up the receiver at home, you expect > current quality, no delays, no noise, no whatever. Internet is simply too > unpredictable for Carrier class Voice. Yes, and so I expect private IP networks to take over. Convergence upon the Internet is most likely a red herring Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=59262&t=59262 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
