The Next Step: Brocade

I am happy to announce that I am now a Product Manager at Brocade. This is a big move for me, and one I am very excited about. I will get to work on the future of networking with a lot of smart people .

Why Brocade?

It’s simple really:

He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata! He tangata! He tangata!

What is the most important thing in the world? It is people! It is people! It is people!

Brocade has hired a lot of very clever people. This includes several Tech Field Day delegates, such as @joshobrien77, @Cloudtoad and @DavidJohnGee. I want to learn & grow, and being surrounded by great people is one of the best ways to do that.

Of course there’s more to it than just people. The problem with attending events like Network Field Day is that it’s addictive. You spend a week talking with smart people about the future. Big discussions, about what’s wrong with the current state, and what the future could be.

Then you return to a job where you’re working with networks that haven’t changed operation in over a decade. Adding VLANs to a 3750 and editing Check Point firewall rules just isn’t that exciting anymore.

The Future

Working in Product Management for an SDN vendor will be very different. Less of the past, more of the future. That previous operational experience isn’t wasted though. You need to understand the current problems to help shape future solutions.

I’m going to be busy. Very busy. I’m going to be learning a lot, and I’ll probably be travelling a lot. But I think we’ll have a lot of fun along the way.

I intend to keep this blog going. Obviously I will be hopelessly biased, but then, we all have our biases. At least you’ll know mine.

Thanks to all those who’ve wished me luck, and a special thank you to @SFoskett and the Tech Field Day crew. The people I met and connections I made at NFD8 & NFD9 helped to make this possible.