And just like that a year that seems to have no end, is finally coming to a close. We all have seen things that we thought we would never see happen in our lifetime, become a reality in what seems like a blink of an eye.
But one thing that has not changed is our drive to push forward and continue to excel at our craft, and that makes us as Airheads unique and strong.
With several things not really going our way this year, we felt like a strong note to end the year on is to focus on the positive things 2020 has brought us in the Aruba/Airheads world. So, I am going to highlight a few of the many bright spots we had this year and give us a good starting point going forward in the year 2021!
Airheads Volunteer Corps:
The #1 thing that immediately sticks out to me is the effort that was put behind you all who stepped up to help across the globe! When the unthinkable happened, started to unfold you all stood up and decided that you had an obligation to be there for each other, and that is remarkable.
We launched the Airheads Volunteer Corps program in March of 2020 just as we were all figuring out how to work from home. We did this to support the healthcare workers, facilities, and school systems who would be faced with additional networking infrastructure to augment capacity and deliver around the clock connectivity effectively.
When we sent out asking for help to deploy networks our Airheads did not disappoint. We effectively collected 754 volunteers from 69 countries. This was a huge win for our program, and we could not be more thankful for the results we have gotten.
The Volunteer program is still active, and we are still deploying when it is requested. With over 2,000 requests, the impact that has been made from this effort cannot be overstated. This is what community is all about.
Atmosphere Digital:
2020 has been full of surprises and challenges, but we were happy to have the expert teams at Aruba still pull together and have our annual Atmosphere event! Just like everything in 2020 it was new and different, but effective and successful, nonetheless. With thousands coming together for our first ever digital event, we were able to give the users an experience they had never seen before from Aruba. Speakers from all channels from Aruba including Keerti Melkote, David Hughes from Silver Peak, and Partha Narasimhan. It really has become and Aruba event like no other.
The results of ATMD really speaks to the resiliency of Aruba Networks and their people. It really is remarkable what this team can do when their abilities are put to the test.
Silver Peak Joins Aruba:
As I said earlier, we are focusing on some of the positives of the year. The acquisition of Silver Peak is one of the biggest bright spots without a doubt. One thing we learned from 2020 is there is a need for a highly distributed work environment—where employees need the flexibility to work from home or their traditional workplace. Enterprise-grade access that delivers reliable and secure access to their cloud applications is critical for both branch and home workers so they can remain safe and productive. Together, Aruba and Silver Peak will be able to meet these needs with critical connectivity, security, and AI capabilities that are needed to connect the Edge to the cloud.
With more than 1,500 production SD-WAN customers globally, Silver Peak helps enterprises and service providers quickly migrate to secure enterprise-grade SD-WAN connectivity, while dramatically improving application performance and lowering connectivity costs. With the addition of Silver Peak to the Aruba portfolio, customers will be able to achieve dedicated WAN-like performance while running all cloud applications and services via broadband. Silver Peak is also one of two Leaders recognized in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure, which complements Aruba’s leadership in wired and wireless networking.
This acquisition represents an exciting milestone for both companies. To say that we are excited to have them as a part of the Aruba team is a huge understatement!
Airheads New Look:
Here at Airheads, we are always thinking about the users. What can we do to make it better, simpler, and more user friendly? So, what did we do? We built a whole new community with a new look, a layout, and all the bells and whistles we could get. On the front end this change was with the UI in mind and what we could do to make sure that you, as a user had a great experience as well as enjoying the overall lay out of the community. With member input, what you see today is what we felt was the best course of action. This is a combination that will effectively make this the best place you can obtain support, give support, and connect with your professional peers. It really does have it all. We thank every one of you for your efforts, patience, and the support that you give the community every day and we could not be happier with where we are today! 2021 will be the year that we really put the pedal to the metal and take off into the future with The Airheads Community!
MVP’s:
All the success that we continue to have is greatly in part to the group that we call our MVP’s. So, from all of us here at Airheads and Aruba Thank you for continue to help us grow and ultimately become the best support community that we can be!
The 2020 MVP’s were:
MVP Guru Elite - @cjoseph @alagoutte
MVP Guru - @parnassus @cappalli @Herman Robers @Craig Syme @vincent.giles
MVP Expert - @Matthew_Fern @Willem Bargeman @jhoward @Rafaeldelcerro @Greg_Weaver @Pavan Arshewar @mkk @fjulianom @Victor Fabian @Jamie E
MVP - @Fabian Klaring @ariyap @Mr.RFC @Jö @cclemmer @FlorianBaaske @westcott @ArubaDK @onno @esupport @level2k7 @Vishnu Mannil @N3tw0rk3r @alexsuoy @xbrugne @Fayyaz Mohammed @Borja @Dinusha Chandrasinghe @msabin @mrtwentytwo @Kapildev Erampu @jgoff @CañaWave @vf556 @SteffLeroux @kshimono @justin.noonan @arnaud.legall @RLitchfield @pubjohndoe @jrwhitehead @Tiffany.Chiapuzio-Wong @cordless @jsolb @Gowri Amujuri @arpitb @koen @ProbeRequest @jmuedsam @mharing @scottm @../smb/air @Ronin101 @kdisc98 @MatthewSeymour @gbenedict @Jibran.Aziz @bosborne @Sureshreddy @rgin @tarnold @johannfroehlich