Meet EMC Proven Professionals: Eric Burns and David Alves

As part of EMC’s Journey to the Cloud, EMC IT has embarked on a mission to move to a hybrid cloud-based infrastructure, often referred to as the IT-as-a-Service transformation.

EMC IT recognizes that an important transformation initiative of this nature brings with it the need for organizational change as well as a change in behavior from its employees.  Continuous education and communications are crucial to getting the organization ready for this journey.  As a result, they have made the Cloud Infrastructure and Services (CIS) offering available to all EMC IT professionals and encouraged anyone in a technical role to earn the EMCCIS certification.  We’ve asked two members of EMC IT to share their experiences.

Eric Burns

Eric has been with EMC for seven years, and is currently a Senior Technical Analyst for the Global Client Computing group, a part of the IT Infrastructure and Services division. 

Eric has been focused on virtualization technology since 2009, and was the client lead on the first Virtual Desktop Infrastructure proof-of-concept using VMware View 4.0 to broker Windows XP desktops.  He has continued to design solutions for EMC’s current VDI production environments in Hopkinton and Bangalore.  Eric has also participated in product betas and previews of View 5.1 and Horizon Application Manager, allowing him to stay on the cutting edge of future technologies. 

As an IT employee, Eric is constantly asking his customers "what are the requirements?"  What is it--specifically--that you need?  Once he has the specifics, he can determine if delivery is possible and the request can be satisfied.  Eric is EMCISA and EMCCIS certified and found the EMCCIS certification helped him to understand the specific requirements necessary to provide IT as a Service now and in the future. As Eric points out, “it takes the term "cloud," which has been mangled with overuse, and puts real substance behind it.”

David Alves

David has been with EMC for 13 years and has recently stepped into a management role within the Global Networks and Telecommunications (GNT)  group.

In David’s new role he is leading a new team of global network engineers responsible for delivering application networking services within EMC Data Center locations with specific focus related to streamlining and implementing solutions based on business/application project requirements.

David currently holds the EMCISA and EMCCIS certifications.  He found obtaining EMCCIS certification has been a welcome chance to learn more about emerging technologies and better understand the EMC product portfolio.  He plans to sit for the Cloud Architect, Virtualized Infrastructure Specialist exam later this month and then move on to the Cloud Architect, IT-as-a-Service exam this year as well.

Following, David also shares his thoughts on receiving training through a VILT.  “Time for all IT professionals comes at a premium. Attending a training class out of the office is not always an option. The ability to watch the Cloud Services and Infrastructure Video ILT proved to be a great learning tool. The flexibility to watch specific modules and read the associated documentation at a time that was convenient to me was invaluable.  I also liked the ability to watch specific modules more than once as needed. For anyone interested in becoming Cloud Certified I would recommend the Video ILT as a viable option as it contains the appropriate amount of technical information needed to successfully pass the exam.”

To learn more about EMCCIS certification, click here.

To learn more about EMC IT journey to ITaaS, click here.