salmaan_systemfundamentals

=New Microsoft Office Capabilities Mean New Training=

Microsoft Office is soon to become much more than a word processing and email application. Office Communication Server is Microsoft's latest addition to its long- successful information technology desktop software. The goal of Office Communication server is to unite email, instant messaging, voice, and video in a single application.

IT Training
Once this kind of technology catches on in the business world, information technology training in the new MS Office will be a must. Getting trained on voice-over-IP and even Microsoft Office Communicator can put you ahead of the game.

Today's software technology provides fire alarm systems with greater flexibility and operational controls, but the price one must pay for this flexibility and control is an increase in the technical skill needed by those who install and maintain the systems. Technicians must not only understand the system hardware and competently troubleshoot hardware-related problems, but they must be proficient in software programming.

Finding and keeping such technicians presents a challenge to manufacturers and installers of the more sophisticated systems and drives the cost of installed fire alarm systems up, regardless of the purported savings in hardware costs. Although manufacturers continue to develop training programs to ensure that their factory technicians and their distributors' technicians have the information they need to apply, install, program, and troubleshoot their products, too few technicians actually receive appropriate training because installation company owners treat training, no matter how important, as an overhead cost that has no apparent return on the money invested. Many installers remember the "old days," when the only thing you needed to install a fire alarm system was the ability to read the instructions and the technical skill to learn how to install systems on the job. The new software-driven fire alarm control systems do not allow such a cavalier approach to training.