During the course of my 16-year career in the technology industry, the one area or skillset that I have always found lacking was networking. I am not talking about personal networking, I’m talking about computer networking, 1’s and 0’s and subnets and routes. I am really good at operating systems, virtualization and storage, but I never really had a good grasp on networking. At this point in my career, I am working as a Virtualization Sales Engineer for Citrix Systems. In addition to “powering the digital transformation,” CITATION Cit161 \l 1033 (Citrix Systems, 2016) Citrix also sells products in the networking space. Specifically, the Citrix NetScaler product line deals with application delivery, load balancing, routing, application firewall …show more content…
This course will help me earn my CCNA certification, which will in turn help me gain a “knowledge of foundational technologies, and stay relevant with skill sets needed for the adoption of next generation technologies.” CITATION Cis16 \l 1033 (Cisco Systems, 2016) I can use this foundation to build upon as I try to grasp the more advanced topics like load balancing and …show more content…
The broader requirements for the Sales Engineer position open up doors into other areas and job functions. A Bachelor’s degree is a requirement for a lot of networking and non-networking related positions. The sales engineer must be up to speed with complementary and competing products. They must also be able to architect and present solutions for the products they cover. In contrast, the support positon will limit the experience to break fix of Citrix’s networking line and leaves little options for advancement outside of the support organization. Again, personal experience, but there have been a few engineers that I have worked with who have tried moving from support to sales engineering. They have a hard time selling, presenting solutions and competing. They tend to spend a lot of time with break/fix, which isn’t the job of a sales