Technology

There is no "I" in team

We've all heard the old adage: There is no "I" in the word "team." Of course it means that in order to make a team work, we need to forget about ego and pull together. One team of engineers at Advanced UniByte GmbH (AU) learned what being a team really means, especially when earning multiple certifications to make Cisco Gold Partner status. On this journey, they proved teamwork really does make the dream work.

AU out of Metzingen, Germany, provides IT infrastructure and data center solutions as well as cloud and managed services. They deal with data protection and availability, developing new, customized solutions to drive customers' digital transformation. Their expertise lies in storage, network, computing, and virtualization solutions, as well as the technical IT integration of worldwide subsidiaries.

Leading a team of engineers and solution architects as well as a cloud business team means paying attention to skills and knowledge, and also ensuring they stay up to date as they maintain the infrastructure in their cloud data center.

Advantage of earning CCIE

It's no secret that the CCIE certification in particular is a rare and high achievement. The time it takes to earn this cert depends on skill level but also on your dedication and how much time you're willing to study per week. It could take anywhere from one to two years to prep for the CCIE lab exam.

CCIE certification is also crucial in achieving Gold Partner status. In fact, customers in Germany value it so much that you have the chance to work with public customers only if you have Gold Partner status. When they decided to earn their CCNA and CCIE certs, the team knew it was not only good for their careers but also for business opportunities.

Going for the gold

After assessing different Cisco architectures, team leaders knew they should aspire to certifications in the Advanced Data Center, Enterprise Networks, and Security specializations. They later added Service Provider to invest in their own cloud infrastructure and services. Following Cisco's regulations for Gold Partners, they added the Customer Experience specialization to the lineup, which fit well with their philosophy of customer relationship and lifecycle management.

The highest focus in this certification push was to have a minimum of four CCIEs to meet the Cisco Gold qualifications. But here's where the team aspect comes in. Around 30 team members worked together to tackle a host of certifications. Based on their knowledge and experience, they chose different roads from CCNA to CCIE in the certification program. Groups of engineers formed to prepare together, building labs for certifications. Because they had their own lab for installing products for certs, they could test and learn on products, and in the process, they could build on their knowledge for the ones they sold.

Finally, in line with the requested number of CCIEs, the group celebrated four team members passing the Data Center exam, including an eight-hour lab. Following these four, the team had five more team members working on their CCIE victory in Enterprise Networks, Security, and Service Provider Architecture.

Creating team challenges helped reach the CCIE goal

Even though CCIE is valuable in its own right for personal skills, careers, and business, the team learned an important lesson; the cert actually helped them build a personal sense of achievement. In addition to the proof from Cisco and the manufacturer of their knowledge in this scope of products, they gained confidence from earning the certification and from challenging each other.

"We found out it was crucial to have our own lab so we could use it to practice and prepare for certifications," said Stephan Körner, CTO at Advanced UniByte. "In the lab we thought about different layouts, tasks, and challenges. One of us was creating the challenge for the others so they could train on that."

The blueprints were a great source for studying, especially the section that covered fiber channel zoning on the CCNP exam. The team created their own zonings and thought about different challenges, so working as a team through Cisco labs, they were able to create their own.

"Doing it together was easier because if one of us was disappointed that he didn't pass or understand something, we always had three other team members around us to talk to about solutions," said Johannes Neu, Alliance Manager at Advanced UniByte. "Without the lab and without the group, we could not have obtained the certifications we needed for Gold."

"I talked to other CCIE team members who did this on their own, and it's quite hard," he said. "You have to work after hours and on weekends. You don't have anyone to talk to who is in the same situation. If you want to achieve, do it as a group, not alone."

Neu believes the team’s success was because the whole company was part of this process. "We were just four team members for CCIE," he said. "But for the whole process, we had about 30. So we had a great group dynamic to achieve this together. And for our purposes, it was the only realistic way to achieve our goals."

"Having a trained team has made all the difference in our success in achieving Cisco Gold Partner," Körner said. "Plus, our great group dynamic helped us build our collaborative process, linking us more strongly than before the certification because we all had the same goal."

Their achievement paid off in other ways too. Since receiving Gold Partner status, the company has seen a 40% revenue increase and plans to increase another 20% in the next two years.

Next steps include expansion through the Cisco Partner Support Service (PSS) and Cisco Partner Lifecycle Service (PLS) enablement, with potential in healthcare, research, and education, which could bring an estimated $30 million over the next three to four years.