Avaya, S'pore technical school launch comms training center

SINGAPORE--The Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and Avaya have collaborated to develop a unified communications technologies center to provide students with hands-on training in communications technologies.

Called the ITE-Avaya Unified Communications Technologies Center, the facility will train students to set up, configure, test and troubleshoot video, data, Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) networks and application services. It will be housed at ITE College West, and more than 160 students from the National ITE Certificate (Nitec) in Mobile Systems and Services course are expected to participate in this partnership annually.

Mobile technology, cloud computing and the proliferation of mobile devices have fuelled the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, said the press statement Thursday. As companies in Singapore compete globally in an environment that demands they stay connected all the time, unified communications and collaboration will be viewed as key to corporate success, it added.

"Unified Communication Systems integrate all these technologies and have become more widely deployed. There is a clear need for trained technicians to set up, manage and maintain such systems," Yek Tiew Ming, principal of ITE College West, said in the statement. "Partnership with leading industry players is one of the strategies adopted by ITE to enable the students to keep pace with rapid changes in the global economic and technology landscape."

Previously, both ITE College West and Avaya had collaborated on a contact training center for students that ran for three years till 2011, Yek said at the event here Thursday. Their satisfaction with the partnership is the reason why both are working together for the second time, he noted.

ITE College West had been chosen for the deployment of this training center because of its focus on mobile and unified communications development, Yek added. Upon graduation, students will have the knowledge and skills to work as technicians in the contact centers, corporate and enterprises that deploy VoIP phones, he explained.

For now, the center will be used for one module "Converged Networking" within the Mobile Systems and Services course, Teh Tuan Ann, section head of mobile systems of ITE College West, told ZDNet Asia at the sidelines of the event. The particular module, which teaches students to set up and troubleshoot network and application services, is a core module undertaken by students in their second year of study, he explained.

Other than setting up the training facility, Avaya will assist ITE in providing advanced training and certifications to the teaching faculty to equip it with adequate skills and tools in the field of IP telephony and unified communications technologies. At the end of the course, the teaching staff will be awarded a joint certificate by both ITE and Avaya.

"The training and certificate will enhance their teaching skills, which will then benefit our students, Teh added. "It will also add value to their employability."