November 16, 2023
Mindsight sat down with our newest Principal Solutions Architect, Ryan Hanna, to get to know him, and his processes, a little better. Welcome to the team, Ryan!
M: How long have you been at Mindsight?
RH: I have been at Mindsight for a little over 2 months now.
M: What is your role?
RH: I’m a Principal Solutions Architect. My focus is on the area of networking. Generally wireless, firewalls, and networking.
M: What does your day to day look like? Responsibilities? Interactions with clients?
RH: My typical day to day is either meeting with new or existing clients virtually or in person and discussing their future technological needs or problems with their current technology. Based upon our meeting, I will develop a solution for them based upon their current needs to incorporate a future growth plan. I am also involved in performing network related professional services projects for our clients.
M: Can you provide an example of one of your most memorable experiences working with a Mindsight client? What problem were you trying to solve? How did you solve it? How did it help the client?
RH: Recently, I worked with a client to build a next generation solution by upgrading their current network with new firewalls and switches to add additional staff to incorporate a future employee growth plan while providing high availability. They are a smaller company that plans on growing larger in the coming years and have specific needs in terms of latency and high availability. I developed a high availability solution that scales for their core/access layer along with a design of a future proof firewall design to leverage SD-WAN solution to expand out their European operations. The customer was thrilled with the solution provided and checked all their boxes for their business requirements.
M: What has made you successful in your role? Skills? Personality traits? Communication style?
RH: I’m a continuous learner. Technology changes so rapidly that you must keep up with the training and trends as new technological solutions evolve. I often do a lot of self-studying and create an ever-growing home lab environment to practice the new technology. One of my skills I have been developing over the years is network automation. This skill helped me in rapid deployment, troubleshooting, monitoring, and configuration deployment in any environment size. I believe these skills and experience helped me effectively communicate the technology with clients.
M: How do you define client success?
RH: Client success I think is when the client expectations are surpassed, and the client’s desired outcome is fulfilled beyond their expectations.
M: There’s a lot of talk about maintaining a work-life balance. What does that mean to you, and to what degree have you achieved it?
RH: I think that I finally achieved a good work/life balance, it’s vital for myself and my family. I worked about 20 years in the financial trading sector, it was very high stress and long days. It means the world to me to have work/life balance to spend the time with my young kids.
M: Favorite ways to escape and recharge?
RH: My favorite way to recharge is a beach vacation with my wife and kids. We try to get away once or twice a year to a beach vacation in Florida or Mexico.
M: What’s one thing you know now that you wish you’d known at or near the start of your career?
RH: Troubleshooting is a journey, and not a destination. I felt that I was well prepared to troubleshoot any network problem. You can read all about it but performing troubleshooting but it’s a developing skill. The more you troubleshoot an issue, whether it be right or wrong, you learn. You continually develop troubleshooting as you grow as an engineer to learn more efficient ways. I had some great mentors early on in my career that taught me some valuable troubleshooting skills but I’m always continuing to develop the skill.
About Mindsight
Mindsight is industry recognized for delivering secure IT solutions and thought leadership that address your infrastructure, cybersecurity, and communications needs. Our engineers are expert level only – and they’re known as the most respected and valued engineering team based in Chicago, serving medium-sized to enterprise organizations around the globe. That’s why clients trust Mindsight as an extension of their IT team.
Visit us at http://www.gomindsight.com
About the Expert
Ryan Hanna, Mindsight’s Principal Solutions Architect, has a well-versed knowledge of all things network and network security related. He can be found creating and maintaining global networks using advanced network engineering, monitoring, and network automation. He has over 20 years experience working for international mission critical low latency financial networks and managed financial hosting operations. Ryan brings real world experience to provide customers with practical solutions for any network and network security architecture. Ryan is a 3x Juniper JNCIA in Junos, Security, and DevOps and is ITIL certified.