Hands-on experience is the top requirement for most employers when they consider applicants. It’s perhaps the best indication that a candidate can be successful in the role. It’s why medical school graduates endure lengthy internships before becoming doctors and aspiring pilots log massive flight hours before taking command of a plane. It all comes down to real-world experience on top of the base academic studies.
The SIP School is a visionary institution that trains thousands of technology experts to implement and optimize SIP trunking and business communications solutions. There is a growing demand for this expertise as more businesses implement SIP trunks for VoIP-enabled solutions that can reduce overall costs by as much as 50 percent over traditional phone systems. While SIP trunking offers tremendous financial benefits, interoperability in a mixed communications environment can be a challenge. This is where practical experience becomes invaluable.
The SIP School CEO Graham Francis wanted to provide an applied, hands-on training component to provide students the experience employers so often demand. The challenge was to build a laboratory environment and maintain it with all of the business communications technologies required for student training.
Training onTAP
The answer was a virtual environment that is already being used by vendors, service providers and enterprise businesses to evaluate interoperability for communications systems. tekVizion’s onTAP™ lab enables remote access to the leading industry solutions for virtual testing. Francis saw an opportunity to allow students to leverage that same virtual lab for training. He wanted to embed the practical experience lab work into the educational curriculum.
In fact, The SIP School saw tremendous potential to leverage onTAP for practical training. The SIP School and tekVizion have just announced a partnership that makes the onTAP service a valuable component of their SIP training, giving students applied training that will make the stronger candidates for key positions within the industry.
“We believe that experience-based learning is invaluable and helps better prepare our students for promising careers and advancement. onTAP allows students to see first-hand how Microsoft’s Skype for Business can fully leverage the benefits of SIP trunking,” said Francis.
Students have been positive about learning how to implement solutions and assess interoperability in real-time, as if they were already on the job. With onTAP, students can easily access the virtual lab remotely, view Skype for Business SIP trunk configuration details, make and monitor calls from a client across the SIP trunk to assess quality.
The SIP School’s training program involves a series of modules that cover the SIP protocol as well as how SIP works with firewalls/NAT, SBCs, trunking, security, cloud, mobile and UC amongst others areas. This is followed by online testing of the technologist’s understanding and application of SIP. An SSCA® certification demonstrates that the certified recipient can work effectively in the Voice and Video over IP environment along with SIP’s migration into Unified Communications and Collaboration.
“Our annual SIP survey shows a large and growing migration to SIP trunking, but also significant challenges in effectively deploying solutions that maximize benefits. Our training is preparing both seasoned professionals to sharpen their SIP trunking expertise as well as new talent joining the industry,” said Francis.
“With onTAP we see many businesses validate and even optimize SIP trunking implementations once they’ve been installed – toward the end of the cycle. It’s gratifying to see new students take advantage of onTAP through The SIP School to gain experience toward the beginning of the cycle. We predict a new generation of successful SIP trunking implementations in the near future,” said Vimal Andrews, director of strategic accounts at tekVizion.
