Announcing Versa Academy: Education and Training for Building Secure SD-WAN
Solutions Architect
September 8, 2020
Technology changes rapidly as new products, features, and benefits constantly flood the industry; all of which promise a brighter, better, and easier tomorrow. With so many changes and promises, one thing I’ve consistently run into in the networking industry is that many of these features and capabilities often go unused, or even more frequently are used incorrectly, so that their benefits aren’t seen. When product features and capabilities go unused, disappointing performance may occur and even lead to the misconception that the product was falsely advertised and that processes were somehow broken.
I’ve been in the networking industry for about 20 years now, and I’ve been involved in roles ranging from teaching, pre-sales, content delivery, and certification. One of the most common issues that I’ve seen is a lack of understanding about how a technology works, what it’s supposed to do, or simply how to properly configure a system to deliver the performance that is expected.
Why Technical Training Matters
Technical training is often overlooked and considered a non-essential and inconvenient part of implementing networking solutions. This view of technical training is unfortunate and does a disservice to the company. While it’s true that tech-savvy engineers can usually work their way through a problem, or can identify an issue when given enough time, the process of identifying an issue doesn’t always provide the answers needed to remedy the issue. All too often the end diagnosis is that the system “just doesn’t do what we want”, when in reality it may be a simple matter of implementing a feature or making an adjustment to the existing deployment.
What is equally unfortunate is that organizations make a significant investment towards a system, but not all of the features are known to or understood by the architects, so the benefits of those features can’t materialize. Sure, the system may appear to be performing at its best, but it may be able to perform even better with the proper configuration or even a few small adjustments.
Secure SD-WAN integrates intelligent and scalable WAN technologies, world-class security, and traffic management services into every branch: placing traffic security and traffic management decisions right where the decisions need to be made – at the WAN edge. The capabilities of the Versa Secure SD-WAN solution are extensive and robust. Knowing how to properly implement and leverage those services is critical to achieving the world-class Secure SD-WAN environment that Versa Networks offers.
Versa Academy is Now Available
We are excited to announce the availability of Versa Academy. Versa Academy is your source for all the information you need to build the next generation of Secure SD-WAN. At Versa Academy, you have access to technical documentation, video demonstrations and tutorials, best-practices guides, and free or paid training resources that help you gain the knowledge you need. What’s more, you have the flexibility to train at your own pace or through our structured training courses.
Versa Academy provides access to self-paced training that mirrors the instructor-led training, all complete with full documentation and virtual lab environments. If you wish to use your own lab environment or want to take a few self-paced courses before you commit to the labs, you can access the student and lab guides for study, then come back and rent a virtual lab environment for yourself at a later time. In the virtual labs, you can work through as many lab exercises as you want – whether they come from our lab scenarios or your own.
The Versa Networks certification program provides the opportunity to demonstrate your proficiency with the Versa Networks technology and solutions through industry-recognized certification. Versa Networks certification provides digital badging to verify that you have passed the rigorous testing and validation process required to receive certification. Versa Networks certification exams are delivered through authorized 3rd party testing and credentialing services, and the exams are designed using the industry’s best development practices including 3rd party psychometric analysis and review processes.
Get Started Today!
While having the best technology available is important, knowing how to properly and efficiently use that technology is equally as important. Visit us at https://academy.versa-networks.com. Registration is free and you can immediately start learning with many of the free resources within the academy.
