I’ve been busy these last couple of weeks while starting this new job at Applied Materials. Many would question why to leave a great company like Cisco. Well, here in Austin, I’m very limited to what I could have done locally unless I wanted to relocate. Originally, I was open to the idea of relocating when it was time to move to another department. At this time in my life, I’m not able to move and I’m really not open to working from home (a lot of things change in a year I guess).

Applied is a great opportunity for me in Austin. Their main data center is here in Austin and really puts me in the right place in the company to grow and stay local. I have the opportunity to work on many different areas of technology including :: wireless, voice, data center, storage and security. I’m currently focusing on a lot of the new data center technologies which is quite a bit of fun. I’m mainly project-based which allows me to focus more on design and implementation, not to mention the great hands-on experience.

Last week I racked 2 brand new Nexus 7000 switches to be used for our future distribution upgrade. I also got to install 2 of the brand new ASR 1000 routers as well as 2 6509E chassis with the new Virtual Switching supervisor. I can’t wait to start implementing them into our existing network. It’s nice to be hands-on again. Not to forget all the new toys to play with!

Ted

P.S. I am still working on my second CCIE in Voice as that’s still very important to me.