Metaswitch eNews - February 2007

A Chat With Metaswitch Training For 2007

With Dave Brooks, Technical Instructor / Developer

The start of the New Year brings with it more Metaswitch features, more services, and a continued focus on end-to-end next generation solutions. Through the fervor of it all, we've managed to corner the Training team for a moment to answer some common questions and give us an idea of what to expect in the year to come.

Question: I've noticed over the past several months that the Training team has been very busy. Do you see this changing in 2007?

Answer: Definitely not! We have been successful as a company expanding our customer base and the outlook is good. The complexity of our customers' networks also continues to evolve to offer more and increasingly complex services to a wider audience in less time. All this is to say that the demand for good skills-based training will not likely diminish anytime soon!

Question: If that's the case, what is Metaswitch Training doing to meet that demand?

Answer: We are aggressively pursuing a couple of avenues to make training more readily available for our customers. We will of course, continue to offer courses at our training center in Alameda, CA. Starting in April, we will also be delivering regular training at a new venue just outside Boston, MA. By mid-year, we plan to have a third location in the Boca Raton, FL area.

We will also continue to offer regional classes at locations such as Des Moines, Iowa, our office in Reston, VA, and others, should we have the opportunity to do so.

We are also adding additional Instructors to our Training team. In addition to John Nevius, our Alameda-based Instructor, I have recently joined the team. I am based out of Boston and am a long-time training professional. A third Instructor will be joining us in the very near future. We continually monitor demand and "mean time to get trained" and will recruit additional talent as needed.

By growing the team and adding more venues from which we can offer training, it will be much easier in 2007 for our customers to get the training they need when they need it.

Question: Will you continue to offer on-site or suitcased training?

Answer: Absolutely! In some cases, a customer may need to train more than 4-5 people at a time. In these situations it may well be worth running a class locally at their facility. Our Training team would work with our customer to sort out the details, make any curriculum changes, and so on.

Question: Do you have any plans to add new types of courses?

Answer: As Metaswitch solutions continue to grow and evolve, the Training team will most definitely be growing the curriculum to keep pace. We've just run a new course in January for our UC9000 Unified Communications Application Server. We've had a UC9000 Unified Messaging course in the past, but we've expanded it to include additional services such as Auto Attendant, Music on Hold, Privacy Defender and Desktop Assistant. It's a fun course with lots of interaction and hands-on exercises.

Listening to our customers, we have also added a provisioning course aimed at customer service representatives. Instead of investing five days in a System Overview course, we can now offer just the skills they need in two or three days...generally right at their location.

We also have begun to use alternative approaches to bring training to our customers in a timely and cost-effective manner. In the latter half of 2006 for example, we tried out a "What's New in V4.2" webinar. The feedback was very positive so we'll definitely be doing this again for future releases.

Question: Wow...with so much going on, what's the best place for our customers to get the latest and greatest information?

Answer: As always, the training portal on the Support web page (http://support.metaswitch.com/customerportal/training/training.aspx) is the place for up-to-the-minute developments. A customer may also contact their Sales representative or Customer Service Engineer for additional information.

Question: Looks like your time with us is about up, any parting thoughts before you go?

Answer: Just this...delivering great training is our passion! Getting the right stuff to our customers at the right time is our ongoing mission. As the new year progresses, you can count on the Metaswitch Training team to offer our customers total training solutions that build the skills they need to be successful with their Metaswitch next generation roll-out. We hope to have the opportunity to work with each and every customer during this upcoming year! Thank you...

Back to the February 2007 newsletter