Elipse: a Cisco Small Business Partner Case Study

Happy Friday folks! The Toronto Raptors are the NBA World Champions, the St. Louis Blues have won the Stanley Cup for the first time, and Rafael Nadal won the French Open. Day 2 is underweigh at Pebble Beach for the 119th US Open.

What are your plans for Father’s Day here in the U.S.? I know what is in-store for me on Sunday!

I have a treat for you today. I met a fantastic partner located in Minas Gerais, Brazil a while back. I had seen an Instagram post that tagged our @CiscoBusiness account. From there, we talked, discussed and finally had a quick webex meeting. I asked Bruno to tell me a little about his company and share some pictures. What I didn’t know was that I was going to get a fantastic story and background behind this young man’s business. I think you will enjoy his story and journey. Remember his native language is Portuguese.

“My name is Bruno, I’m 29, electronics engineer, started studying IT when I was 10, when a friend of mine gave me a 386 laptop and several books. I’ve been working in IT professionally since the age of 15. I work as an IT consultant in a small town located in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. I take care of several IT infrastructures of small businesses here including Helpdesk, troubleshooting, computer network projects etc. I’ve also been part of NBC’s technical team during Rio 2016 Summer and PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics.

Elipse’s lab, in Bom Despacho, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

I’ve previously worked at a local computer shop for many years, when I finally decided to start my own business. I started fixing computers in my bedroom, after a few months I needed to disassemble my own bed to get more space for equipment and slept in a mattress on the floor for a while. After that, I moved my “business” to the living room, the customer quantity was increasing. I’ve been there for sometime while I was saving money to build an office. That was literally built from zero. After working a lot and saving some money I’ve finally finished the construction and moved to my current place, small but comfortable and equipped to work and meet my customers.

About the Cisco Small Business Equipment:I always appreciated Cisco Small Business equipment. They are robust and reliable. The thing I always tell my clients is: If your business can’t stop, go for Cisco. It’s not a only a switch or router, I use to say it’s “The Router”, that’s the best networking equipment your money can buy.

My first Cisco network for this case was for a client who owns several ink shops in Minas Gerais, something around 11. Luidar Tintas. (www.luidar.com.br) We decided to build a new network bases on Cisco SG switches, access points and RV routers for their headquarters. The result was excellent: The business owner was really happy ’cause he nevermore had the issues that always happened in the old network and decided to use Cisco in all the other shops. We’ve done 5 until now.

Another client, a logistics and transportation company called Transradar (www.transradar.com.br),  had serious issues with establishing communications with a server located on the headquarters: Everyday around 5pm, when the workload was heavy, the system started to slowdown and fail to connect. I built a new network basesd on a Cisco Small Business SG-220 Smart Switch and Cisco RV340 VPN Router. I configured ene main fiber internet connection + a backup ADSL connection. The issues were solved and the network runs much more smooth and stable after Cisco.

RV340 VPN Router and SG220 Smart Switch

This last particular project is very special to me. There’s an association in my country that takes care of people with disabilities called APAE (www.apae.com.br).

They provide education with teachers and healthcare with psychologists, physicians etc for free.

In my town, their network that they currently use is a complete mess: a lot of small, low quality desktop switches cascaded in the building, routers that are designed for home use and, bad cabling. Over a year ago I told them that they needed a new network, but, as all their services are supported by donations and events that they do for fundraising, they didn’t have financial resources for the new network until few weeks ago. So they contacted me last week and told me, “Hey Bruno, we now have the needed resources for the Cisco Small Business equipment you’ve suggested and you have our clearance to start the project”.

I am happy that I can help them with my services and knowledge in their mission of helping disabled people. I still don’t have pictures of the final setup because the electrician is still running the cables, but here are some pictures of their rack, that is already pre assembled in my office.

I love working with Cisco equipment because I trust them, they’re fast and help people to connect more effectively and I’ll probably won’t need to visit that customer to solve future network issues: the next visits will be for a firmware upgrade, network expansion or just to have some coffee and talk to them.”

above shot of the Cisco RV340 Dual WAN VPN Router

Cisco RV340 + SG220 Smart Switch

Here is more information on Bruno:

Instagram Account: instagram.com/elipseiee

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brunoalexs/

Thank you to Bruno for taking the time to send me this and to tell us your story. I will be in contact soon, very soon.

Obrigado, brother!

Marc