Today, James Cancel is in charge of Velis4's N.O.C. in Los Angeles but prior to working at Velis4, James was once a Hosted PBX repair engineer... and boy did he learn a painful technical lesson once on a large hosted VoIP installation. So much so that the Chief of Police got involved!

Internap's Director of Solutions Engineering, Paul Herrick, discusses 2 great tips on how to overcome some of the hurdles to deploying BareMetal Cloud vs. traditional Cloud VM's. These strategies will absolutely help reduce costly deployment mistakes, prior to purchasing. He also tells a great story of why he was raiding the office fridge at midnight, a couple years ago in Atlanta.

Steve Tarver, Principal Engineer at CenturyLink discusses several ways IT professionals and Sys Admins can "Level Up," and become an extremely valued and sought-after professional, through using automation and shifting to a Dev Ops mindset.

Mike Smith chats with acclaimed cloud expert, Brian Gracely, co-host of hit podcast, The Cloudcast. Brian recounts fascinating stories about his career, including his most difficult moment, what he did to attract praise from his bosses, a time when a boss gave him constructive criticism and a story from an inbound call at Cisco that will make your day.

In this episode, Evolve IP's Manager of Sales Engineering, Raj Palat, outlines his insightful "Data Center Diamond" approach to cloud implementation. It's a holistic approach to evaluating your cloud decision from every angle, which is exactly what your boss will love to see.