Category: Word from the author

It’s been almost exactly 11 years since I passed the R&S CCIE lab in Brussels, and now it was time to go with something more cloudy 🙂

I just passed the AWS Advanced Networking Specialty, and unlike CCIE I did this one on my first attempt.

This blog has been running for 16 years now. While the last few years have been quiet here, my professional life has been anything but. I’ve transitioned from a CCIE-focused, Cisco datacenter role into a fast-paced, startup-like environment. My focus has shifted from building physical cloud underlays to designing automated, high-performance cloud-native architectures.

Recently, I decided to validate this four-year journey into AWS by taking the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty exam. It’s widely considered one of the toughest in the AWS lineup, and I can confirm it truly tests your depth. Interestingly, this is where the “good old” networking fundamentals from my Cisco days became my greatest asset. Networking remains the heart of the cloud; only the tools have changed.

Today, my work is less about manual configuration and more about writing Infrastructure as Code (IaaC). It’s been a busy few years, and I have a backlog of drafts to prove it. It’s time to start sharing them.

Just got the news—I’ve been selected as a Cisco Champion for the 8th year in a row! Truly honored and thankful to be part of such an inspiring community.

This year is full of milestones. While Cisco celebrates its 40th birthday, I’m marking 10 years as a CCIE and 15 years from my CCNA—a journey that’s brought endless learning, challenges, and growth throughout my career.

Being a Cisco Champion year after year has been a great way to stay connected with amazing people, share knowledge, and keep up with the ever-evolving tech world.

Here’s to Cisco’s 40 years of networking—and to all of us continuing to grow and build what’s next!

It was a year of big changes in every way. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by great professionals working on huge projects and then even to get the chance to switch to some completely new technologies that I never really worked with before. It was great, it is still very intense and from my perspective, all changes were for the better.

But as with all periods with a lot of action, all those draft articles on this blog’s queue didn’t yield as much new material as I wanted. It was a year of almost no writing but a lot of learning, adapting and real-life collaboration with other fellow engineers in different fields and different places across the world.

Consequently, all that work and collaboration on projects with great tech people made this year’s nomination for Cisco Champion possible again. In the end, even this BLOGs awards nomination and TOP25 ranking was also mostly because of the support from colleagues and friends that voted for this material of mine.

Thanks!

I made it to the list of Cisco Champions for 2020 which is now the third year in a row!

The primary reason I could again be selected between the first 100 Cisco champs for 2020 in the early acceptance process is the stuff that I shared through this blog and because of the contact with people that got to me directly via my blog comments or e-mail.

Again, 2019 was another year full of great projects and big challenges with new technologies. We finally break the barrier of NFV and Automation and got some great stuff done using automation within software-defined data center solutions both with Cisco and other vendors.

Having this badge is cool, but connections and sharing with the networking community is something that’s even better and it makes me create more material and share it here soon.

This year will be a blast, again!

This blog was selected as a finalist in Cisco BLOG Awards in the Best Analysis category, the category for resources that provide insightful discussions and help for networking architects around the world.

Fancy right? Do you agree? Go and vote, hit the big green button it’s the second one on the list 😉

https://www.ciscofeedback.vovici.com/se/705E3ECD18791A68