There are few more experienced engineers and lighthearted personalities than our guest today, who has been in the Extreme Hero program from its very conception. Let’s take a trip down the memory lane with Jari Koivula, a Presales Specialist from Westcon Group Nordic!
Extreme Networks. How did it all happen for you, Jari?
I remember seeing an Extreme switch for the very first time at the 1999 CeBIT fair in Hannover. At that time I worked as a LAN specialist for the company called Outokumpu, mostly dealing with end users. As it would turn out, everything changed with the turn of the century, and I don’t mean the Y2K bug 😉
Less than a year later I moved to Heltel (short for Helsinki Telephone), a small distributor of 3com which was a major vendor in Finland at the time. But the thing is, 3Com decided to… leave the networking business. The company would discontinue its CoreBuilder LAN switch line and transfer the technology to – you guessed it – Extreme Networks! Extreme provided a migration path for existing CoreBuilder customers by merging CoreBuilder products into Extreme's Summit and BlackDiamond lines of broadband network switching equipment. In a way, the history had come full circle.
Jari: have you noticed how our laptops have changed over the years but the switches actually look almost the same?
We’re talking about some very early years of Extreme in Europe here, not a lot of people remember these days as vividly as you do…
2000 was the time when I started doing some real business with Extreme. I continued my trainings and eventually became an Extreme Networks Specialist. That was the best possible certificate at that time.
Jari: I went to my first Extreme training to the Reading office in UK. And surely enough, I jumped at the chance to see the Windsor Castle!
As you can see, my very first instructor was Mikael Holmberg, who today holds the position of Distinguished Systems Engineer – Chief Architect at Extreme. I think it was actually his first or second day at the company, having just moved from – you guessed it again – 3com. 😉
Jari: my very first Extreme certificate, many would follow later.
So, yeah, I've been part of the Extreme Hero program from its very beginning. I think I already had had all the required certificates when it started. Come to think of it, this year marks an anniversary for me. I got my ENS certificate in May, 2002, so pretty soon it'll be 20 years of being certified, without any breaks. I still got all my paper certificates.
What’s the source of such dedication?
I remember that around 2009 I was working at a reseller that dealt mainly in Extreme and HP. Actually, we were the biggest HP reseller at that time in Finland. So we’re here in the middle of a sales process for the MSK Group, a leading supplier of complete cabins and plastic components for off-road machines and other industries.
Both vendors met with the customer and pitched their stories. So I went there, representing the reseller, to have a discussion about what they would need and provide my technical point of view. I came to the conclusion that for them, Extreme would be a better fit than HP. Of course, HP got a little angry at me first. One of my friends, who was working with them, said to me “Jari, you may prefer Extreme, but in any case I know you’re an ABC man”.
Meaning?
Anything but C.... 😁
So it’s been more than 20 years now. You must have racked up some seriously amazing projects involving Extreme solutions!
Of course, I have done a lot projects using purple equipment over the years. In 2003, when I worked for an ISP in the Tampere area here in Finland, we deployed this big network for a student housing company, TOASnet – EAPS MAN core and about 8000 ethernet ports.
Jari: The student housing project was pretty a big deal, even got some press coverage in the local press.
We deployed networks for all kinds of business and organizations, both from the public and enterprise sector. Almost all of the biggest companies here in the Tampere area such as Nokian Tyres or Saarioinen, one of Finland’s leading food manufacturers, have been good customers using ExtremeSwitching.
Of course, there have been a lot of different tasks and things to do over these past 20 years. Being a Presales Specialist in Westcon Group Nordic, I still do some of the implementations and installations with the customers. Configuration work is what I love doing. In my opinion, you can’t call yourself a systems engineer if you’re not actually doing the real thing. You need to get your hands dirty, at least sometimes.
We all know what runs through your veins is pure passion for technology. But there must be something else you enjoy just as much!
I’d say I have three hobbies. The first one, as you can already tell from the cover photo, is cigars. I enjoy smoking a cigar every now and then.
My second passion is strategy games. I have played them since I was a teenager, I loved all those World War 2 games like “Kampfgruppe” on Commodore Amiga. Sadly, these games are more actual than ever.
Which leads us to my third hobby, which is reading books, mostly history ones. In that regard, I’m a little bit old fashioned. I don’t listen to books, prefer them in a classic, paper form. I used to read a lot of science fiction and horrors. I have an older brother, so when I was 10 and he started to bring some Stephen King novels, I was positively terrified!
Do you think of yourself as an Extreme Hero?
My car is purple. I think that says a lot. 😄