This year, I’ve decided to focus my available study time in three main areas:

• Master of Business Administration (MBA). As if getting my CCIE Voice wasn’t enough, I’ve decided to slowly pursue a master’s degree.  Understanding the business drivers in the technology industry will help me produce designs that more closely align with customer needs.  It will also prepare me for management later on in my career.  On top of that, my employer will provide free money to get it.  It’s a no brainer.
• Renewing my CCIE status. It’s hard to believe it’ll be two years in August.  I need to study the new CCIE Voice written content, which means exploring the 8.x SRND in closer detail.
• Expanding my expertise into the video space. My employer asked me to delve into UCCX or Video.  Since I’m already fairly proficient at UCCX, Video was the next best choice.

Looks like it’ll be another busy year with plenty of content to share on the blog.

We’re already in February! What are YOUR study plans for 2012?

East of Target Field

The past two weeks have been incredibly busy.  I’m working on a UCS B-Series based project that includes CUCM, CUC, CER, CUPS, and CUEAC (what I call The Iron Fist).  I only had nine working days to get the environment to the point where users could train on test phones.

In a perfect world (i.e. non-reality), nine days would be plenty of time.  In a perfect world, the phone system would arrive pre-configured on a pallet.  Position it in the data center, plug it in, and you’re done.  Hmm…welcome to reality.

Let me just say, deploying a unified communications platform is not simple.  It gets easy over time, but that doesn’t simplify the process.

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