Aviatrix wants to elevate the work of cloud networking heroes who labor to keep networks secure, effective, and performant. We’re proud to highlight people who have taught themselves the necessary skills, designed and managed successful networks, and have the expertise to share.
Our next hero spotlight is on Ahmed Hamed, Program Manager. See our previous hero spotlights here.
Background: Starting with Computer Games and YouTube
Ahmed Hamed is a first-generation, self-taught mid-career professional with a background in ICT (information and communication technology). His first connection with technology started when he was about six years old, playing computer games and streaming YouTube. “I started by tinkering with modems, finding mechanisms for access, and learning English along the way. My first language is actually Arabic,” he explained. “I learned [English] through the consumption of subtitled content.” He’s currently learning Japanese using the same method.
Ahmed has been working in the networking space for the past 4 years, whether it’s access control, IOT (internet of things) devices and micro controllers, or CCTVs. “During my career, I’ve seen all types of technologies,” he said. “I’ve had the honor to work with very niche use cases that require 10 or even 20 Gig networking for video editing.”
Challenges: Checking Device by Device
Ahmed’s career has included some significant challenges. “In my past role . . . I worked in an environment with 12 departments with 20 end-user devices, and was tasked with reporting the overall infrastructure posture for budgeting the next fiscal year,” he said. “The process was manual for the most part, meaning I had to review device by device. I had to get creative.”
He enforced a Group Policy Object (GPO) on all of the domains, ran the report, cleaned the data, and exported it to Microsoft Power BI for ad-hoc reporting. “It really improved my knowledge,” he said.
The Evolution of Networking and the Next Ten Years
“Networking has progressed from conventional hardware-defined infrastructures, to SDN or Software Defined Networking, to cloud-based infrastructures,” Ahmed said. “In the beginning, everything was done manually with static configurations and significant manual intervention before transitioning to an on-premises system. Nowadays, intent-based, AI-driven networking and automation are the new industry standard.”
Ahmed made some predictions for the next ten years of networking. “Over the coming decade, I foresee the decentralization of cloud networking alongside the increase in zero trust security, service mesh architecture, and optimizing AI for enhanced performance and cost efficiency,” he said. “Increasingly, hybrid and multicloud networking will become standard as companies utilize intent-based automation to control sophisticated infrastructures without issues.”
The Network is the Cloud: Connectivity, Security, and Automation
To Ahmed, “the network is the cloud” expresses the massive changes in networking. “Networking no longer resides only in physical hardware; it lives in the cloud,” he said. “The cloud itself is an extension of the network where resources, workloads, and services dynamically communicate across software-defined infrastructures. Networking in the cloud means connectivity, security, and automation-delivering seamless, scalable, and resilient architectures across global environments.”
Cloud Costs: Starting with Visibility and Planning
From his experience, Ahmed offered some advice for fellow networking professionals dealing with a common issue: managing cloud costs. “I think that cloud cost control all starts with visibility and planning,” he said. “I recommend leveraging cloud native cost management tools to monitor usage, automating scaling of resources up or down based on demands, and leveraging reserved or spot instances where appropriate. Additionally, embracing a FinOps mindset – pairing cloud spending to business outcomes – helps optimally balance cost optimizations while ensuring performance and security, which is extremely important to businesses.”
Outside of Work
Outside of business hours, Ahmed enjoys football and running. He’s also developing an interest in MMA, especially Judo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He describes his hobbies as born out of epistemophilia, from the Greek words epistēmē and philia – knowledge and love.
“I’ll probably name my first-born daughters Philo and Sophia because [of] wisdom and love – i.e philosophia or philosophy!” he said.
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