In the summer of 2008, the concept of CCIE Hotline was born when its founder, Martin Voelk (CCIE # 13708), met with two good friends in Guildford, just outside London. The economic downturn had already started to take effect and they met to discuss ways in which Cisco Consultancy could be provided in a more flexible and cost effective way, in order to help businesses weather the harsh financial climate.
Martin Voelk commented: How would customers react to a Service which provides 24/7 CCIE Remote Support worldwide, with CCIEs on standby across all continents and covering all time zones? A great idea, Maria Boyle (CCIE # 19890) replied, explaining that not only are many customers without Cisco SMARTnet contracts or other support contracts, but that they also often find it near impossible to get hold of CCIEs at short notice.
That evening Martin Voelk had a vision of a virtual service team of multi-lingual CCIEs, that covered the entire range of Cisco CCIE technologies and specialised in providing remote CCIE Consulting Services. The how’s and when’s were yet to be decided, but the objective was clear. Martin went back to his home in Guildford and checked Google for similar offerings. To his surprise, nothing was there. He registered the domain name and in the weeks that followed he started to build the website. Martin and Maria then contacted around 100 CCIEs they had known personally through their many years of experience in the Cisco Consultancy field. The feedback was positive and many were interested in providing their remote CCIE expertise.
Just one month after the website cciehotline.com went online, the first customer located the website via Google and sent an enquiry. The request was regarding a problem with a multihomed BGP setup. Due to a sophisticated mailing system, the mail was forwarded to one of the CCIE Hotline Consultants in the UK, where the customer was based. Commercials were quickly agreed upon and the Service commenced. The solution involved some configuration changes at both the customer and the Service Provider ends, and just 2 hours later it was resolved.
The customer was not only impressed with the response time and solution, but also the fact that CCIE Hotline had only billed him for 2 hours – not a full day. Since that time the customer in question has used CCIE Hotline on 5 further occasions.
During the weeks and months that followed, CCIE Hotline received requests for Support, Configuration, Design, Troubleshooting & Maintenance, within all Cisco technologies. Now in May, 2009, the customer base has grown to nearly one hundred, and they have more than 50 CCIEs on standby every day, to ensure they can help customers from around the world with unparalleled Cisco Expert knowledge.
If you want to find more about the CCIE Hotline, please visit the website at:
cciehotline.com
