2003 – 2008
Cisco Systems
Keeping critical national infrastructure running, as the single point of contact for Brazil's federal customers.
The Cisco story here actually begins in 1996, not 2003: the Cabletron years ran on Cisco routing sold as Cabletron-branded OEM (original equipment manufacturer) modules - the CRBRIM and its Cisco-IOS WAN routing siblings - installed, configured, optimized, and troubleshot daily until the YAGO-born SmartSwitch Router displaced them. Contracted through Cisco Professional Services in Brazil, this was the career at its most operationally demanding, where the work was less about any single technology and more about keeping critical systems running for customers who could not afford downtime.
High-touch operations, 2003 to 2004
As a high-touch operations manager and single point of contact, the role was post-sales customer-satisfaction management for two of Brazil's largest federal entities: SERPRO, the government's data-processing agency, and ECT-Correios, the national postal service, across Brasília and São Paulo. The technical surface included Catalyst switches and routers, PIX firewalls, and CSS, CSM, and ACE content and load-balancing appliances. The real discipline, though, was escalation management and crisis handling, maintaining high satisfaction for accounts where the stakes were national.
Cisco instruction, 2007 to 2008
The Cisco relationship also produced formal training delivery: IOS and CatOS concepts and operations, and Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking concepts, operations, and troubleshooting, in multi-day courses. This complemented the deep operational experience with the structured instruction that would later become the whole focus of the career.
What it certified
Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), 2000 and 2005. Cisco Internetwork Troubleshooting (CIT), 2003.
The company was founded in 1984. This page covers only the years worked with it.