Robert, This a splendid advise both to parents, teachers, industrialist and students. However, I tend to believe that the idea is not new. The question is why are people glued to vendor specific courses, Cisco has conquered the world through a superb marketing strategy. To oust them thus requires a radical strategy that I leave for the listers to deliberate on On Fri Jun 3rd, 2011 6:07 AM PDT robert yawe wrote:
Hi Listers,
I have always said that it is wrong to train IT students on proprietary system as is happening with Cisco training that is being offered as a career path. Switching and routing principles are based on an open standard so students need to have an appreciation of the technology and not a brand.
I have been having an interesting exchange with Safaricom on setting up a connection to their SMSC where their engineers insist that the solution can only be implemented using a Cisco router.
From this experience it is clear that most of the engineers at Safaricom have been trained on vendor specific and proprietary standards which has denied them the flexibility to work with none Cisco equipment.
Safaricom has been a proponent of open systems by being open to various handsets, so it is shocking that as they move towards becoming a data service provider they are opting to close their systems.
This attitude by Safaricom reminds me of Orange and their Livebox fiasco that totally killed their broadband service yet all they had to do was allow any DSL compliant equipment to be used on their network and used the funds tied in equipment on advertising and any other activity.
I hope this is just a hiccup in their transition and that we shall see a more open minded organisation as they move towards being a serious contender in the corporate data provision service.
For those of you with children or relatives basing their carriers on proprietary technologies please advice them to acquire generic education as well otherwise they might find opportunities passing them by, its the principles that matter. Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696