Success story: Why Alex chooses Pluralsight

Alex's story

Currently, I work as a Senior Solution Architect for a managed services provider, using Microsoft, VMware and Citrix quite often. I've been doing it for a couple of years now. And I kind of think about it as being a bit like playing with giant Lego bricks. We go in to speak to customers and we have a certain number of Lego bricks to play with-some of them are VMware, some Microsoft, and some Citrix, etc. Then, it's just a case of working out what the customer actually needs, and plugging those Lego bricks together to build it.

How did you discover Pluralsight?

Around the vSphere 4 days, I started using Pluralsight training-and that was before it was online, so I literally watched the DVDs to train. A colleague introduced me to Pluralsight and he loaned me the DVDs. And they were absolutely superb training materials.

How has Pluralsight helped you in your career?

Last year, a couple of the exams that I actually passed were the Citrix Certified Administrator and the Citrix Certified Advanced Administrator. Though I had some Citrix experience in the past, after the training I got involved in a lot of Citrix projects. I don't think I necessarily would have had that depth of involvement had I not had the basic skills through the training program.

Also when I've been doing my VMware VCAP Certification, I've referred to the training materials from the VMware courses. And there are others, too. I mentioned earlier I work as a solution architect and we have to work with a very wide range of different technologies – sometimes going into areas where we don't necessarily have that much experience – and sometimes what you need to do is kind of get a bit of an overview or a bit of background. And quite often, we basically have to pick up new or specific tech really, really quickly; and it might be something that you don't necessarily have to go into huge depth, but you just need to get a good feel for how something hangs together or how a system is architected. And in those instances, I've used Pluralsight quite a lot.

What do you love most about Pluralsight?

I find the approach the Pluralsight authors take is a nice, laidback style-kind of talkative, a bit chatty and not too dry. One of the authors, Elias Khnaser, has a really good style. I really enjoy his training and he's quite amusing, so it's always good to be training and still be able to have a bit of a chuckle. The training is interesting, especially since some of the trainers mix real world experience, as well as approaching it from a training perspective. It's not just teaching the material, but it's actually saying where they've used it in the past.