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 Mike Gibbs, Founder and CEO of Go Cloud Careers. See our previous hero spotlights here.
Background: From Internal Medicine to Network Architecture
Mike has been in networking for over 25 years. Like other Aviatrix Cloud Networking Heroes like Michael Clemmer and Allen Tyson, he started with a completely different career plan. “Prior to networking I was a nurse practitioner practicing internal medicine. I was just so fascinated with networking, I left my old career,” he said. “I got CCIE-certified within 9 months of my decision to change careers, got a great network architect position, and it's been a lifetime of fun and learning.”
While there have been massive shifts in the industry over Mike’s career, he argued that the fundamentals have not changed. “Considering the time that’s elapsed, networking has changed very little over the years,” he said. “Now the speeds and feeds have gotten faster ─ and we have gone from physical networks to physical and virtual networks. But at the end of the day, it’s like RFC 1925. Many new things are just new versions of old things.”
Mike’s favorite part of his current role is having the chance to change thousands of lives at Go Cloud Careers, which helps people build elite technology careers. “I have had the chance to work in every architecture role and have trained thousands in networking, security, and cloud computing," he explained. "I love it every time I have a new student who got their first cloud architect, network architect, or security architect position."
Controlling Cloud Costs
Mike offered some advice on a common issue for networking professionals: controlling costs. “Controlling cloud costs is about the correct architecture,” he said. “For example, a high-throughput, high-performance workload may be 5-10 times cheaper in the customer's datacenter vs. the public cloud. By comparison, event-driven architectures may be cheaper in the cloud.”
The Network is the Cloud
When asked what “the network is the cloud” means to him, Mike explained that the fundamentals have not changed. “The network has always been cloud,” he said. “The first clouds I worked with were ISDN, Frame Relay, ATM, BGP MPLS VPNs, AND VPLS. Now cloud computing also includes compute and storage, but at the end of the day, it’s all cloud.”
Outside of Work
In his spare time, Mike practices yoga. “I have practiced yoga every day for almost 19 years now. I enjoy yoga so much that I even became a yoga instructor (RYT-500),” he said. “If I’m not practicing yoga, you can find me with my wife Lisa or cat Cindy.”
Curious about other cloud networking heroes like Mike?
We’ll keep highlighting networking professionals on this blog.
Learn more about the Cloud Networking Heroes program on The Cloud Network Community.
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