Conscia|has|always had innovation in their genes. To help further that innovation mindset and differentiate themselves in the competitive Danish market, Conscia Denmark recently accomplished the DevNet Specialization and are delivering programmability solutions to their customers. Recently, I sat down with an interview with Jesper Revald, Consultant Manager at Conscia, to talk about Conscia's programmability journey with the DevNet community...

Tell us about your company...

"Conscia has been an infrastructure integrator since our beginning in 2003. Through a mix of organic growth and mergers & acquisitions, we have grown to around 850 employees, many of which are very skilled Cisco experts within a multitude of fields. We have always had an extremely close relationship with Cisco with our Gold partner status and multiple master and advanced specializations as part of our commitment. The Danish part of the organization employ around 170 people that offer design and implementation assistance for complex infrastructure and security projects, as well as a host of different service offerings. Our verticals are primarily within the energy sector, pharma, banking, and government, but Denmark is a small enough market for us to move into other verticals as well. We aim to build long-term relationships with our customers and have an excellent track record of being able to maintain this goal."

What was the journey like for your company to build a programmability practice and become DevNet Specialized?

"It was quite fun and enlightening. We knew we already had a lot of the requirements as a natural part of our company but getting it all down on paper and structuring it in a manner that made sense to the outside was a very valuable lesson for us. We also used it as an opportunity to add additional layers of professionalism to our DevNet approach and offer new DevNet related services."

How does having DevNet-certified individuals trained in programmability benefit your business as a whole?

"Having certified engineers helps us brand Conscia as a serious player in this field. For the engineers themselves, it adds value to their professional profile and helps them stay relevant in today's market. Conscia has always valued certifying our engineers. We have 25+ CCIEs across most technology tracks, as well as 4 CCDEs, and everyone who wishes to pursue relevant certifications are encouraged and supported in their journey."

How has your team used their programmability skills in your business?

"Their skills are used from anything as small as a simple script to quickly take care of repetitive tasks, to full scale customized self-service portals for complex processes. We encourage our engineers to keep their programming skills fresh, no matter how often they are exposed to customer requests that are better handled through automation and a DevOps mindset."

What are your customers' biggest needs and what types of services do you offer to help them?

"Our customers are still trying to find their way in this new automation-oriented world. Besides helping them alleviate the burden of repetitive tasks, we also see an increased interest in helping them establish a real internal DevOps organization and mindset. We offer our knowledge on a consultancy-based approach, but also add packetized recurring services to go along with it. This keeps us perfectly inline with our strong focus on Customer Experience (CX)."

What are the next steps for your company's programmability business?

"Our plans are to have even better control over our programming processes and services, as well as ensure that our sales force is supported fully when it comes to addressing DevOps and automation with our large customer base. Who knows, perhaps an Advanced DevNet Specialization will be part of the roadmap too. Seeing how our current DevNet Specialization has helped us brand ourselves, we do not see why going for the next step should not increase our exposure even more."

For more information on how the DevNet Specialization can benefit you, check out this video titled "Automating Infrastructure + Transforming Business with DevNet Specialization." And please stop by the DevNet Partner page to learn more about DevNet partner programs.

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