Just like Apple is the computer brand I use since 1985, for me Cisco is the networking company, the one that created the first routers and switches on which the Internet was built. It has been a great surprise when last summer I have been contacted by a Cisco representative, who has asked me whether I was interested in starting a new project on NetFlow. After the initial surprise, of course I have accepted, and now it’s a few months I work with (not for) Cisco on this nice and challenging project.
I have worked (either employed or as a consultant) for a few companies in the past years, and in general companies are not quite open to new ideas for many reasons: “Who’s this guy coming here to tell us what to do?” is an answer I have heard several times. Instead the experience with Cisco has been unique. For the first time in my life, I have managed to work on a large team (sales, training, support, marketing, testing, hardware and software design) who has accepted me as a resource and not as an intruder. This is not very common, and as a non-Cisco employee, I can tell you that what’s written here is definitively true.
This week, the initial result of this project is previewed at CiscoLive in London. Yesterday I had the chance to fly over and see the new born baby on a live demo sending flows to the Plixer Scrutinizer collector. If you have a chance to be at CiscoLive this week, go to see it live at Unified Fabric – Virtualized Distributed Data Center booth in the show floor: Kedar will show you a sneak preview. Instead if you cannot fly to London, stay tuned on this blog as I will soon publish more about this project.